FNL

* Nation Celebrates Full Week Without Deadly Mass Shooting (UPDATED). The vast majority of those injured today were apparently shot by police, putting the lie to any fantasy that “more guns” will solve this problem. If trained police can’t return fire without harming bystanders, weekend gun enthusiasts don’t stand a chance.

* Towards a market solution to homicides.

* GOP Attorneys General: Democracy Is Unconstitutional. Well, it’s certainly not what the Founders intended.

* Close to home: the number of voters lacking proper ID in Wisconsin is greater than Obama’s 2008 margin of victory.

* At last, something that won’t destroy the soul: LEGO Rivendell.

* And of course you had me at The Most Breathtaking Space Pictures You’ve Never Seen Before. Below: The Tholian Web.

Thursday Links

* Put this one on humanity’s tombstone: But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer. That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty, but the effort has been a struggle.

* College debt and the upper middle class. Well, that’s almost everyone; can we act now?

* How Much Water Debt Are We Taking On? This Scary Map Shows How Much.

* Male Superheroes See How The Other Side Lives.

* “Over the course of fifty episodes, Breaking Bad has turned its fans into some of the worst people on the internet.” This is certainly true with respect to discussions of Skylar, as the piece notes. As my totally 100% accurate quote from fake Vince Gilligan noted last night: “Dear Internet, I literally could not have made it any clearer that Walt is a villain and Skylar one of his many victims.” How is this even up for debate? More Breaking Bad tweets from this morning at Storify.

* Harry Potter Books Out, Fresh Prince of Bel Air In as Gitmo Prisoners’ Entertainment of Choice.

* Returning home from work Wednesday evening, area woman Caitlin Levy suddenly realized that, quite unusually, she had not been harassed or propositioned for sex even once the entire day, the puzzled 28-year-old told reporters.

Noting that she had experienced a lingering sense of ease and safety all day long that “just felt off,” the paralegal told reporters that, strange as it may sound, she somehow could not recall one single instance from the past 10 hours in which she had been gawked at, hit on repeatedly, or otherwise leered at by a male as she conducted her daily routine.

“Huh, that’s weird,” said Levy, remarking on the fact that at no point during her day did a total stranger attempt to provoke her with suggestive language. “No unwanted sexual advances, no creepy comments, no obscene gestures, nothing.”

“Can that be right?” she asked as she ran down a checklist of emotionally scarring behaviors she has been confronted with every day of her life, in some form or another, since age 13. “No, that’s impossible. I must be forgetting something.”

Thursday Night Links

* Lucylou is illustrating Harry Potter.

* Parts 3 and 4 of Foundation Week at io9.

* Also at io9: An infographic explaining the Phantom Time Hypothesis. Is the idea really that complicated?

* TEPCO has confirmed what we already knew: Fukushima suffered a full meltdown.

* Even more Portal 2 speedruns.

* When Facebook smeared Google.

* Republican follies! Jon Huntsman pulls a Pawlenty, pretends he doesn’t believe in climate change anymore. The John Ensign case has been referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution. John McCain hates torture again. The Wall Street Journal hates Mitt Romney. And so does Mitt Romney.

Monday Afternoon Links

* The tenure chase as hazing ritual.

* Sign me up: Argentina is to consider granting a special pension to writers on the grounds that they generate “social richness” but often end up impoverished.

* How will single payer actually work in Vermont? Ezra Klein reports.

* Toward a Unified Theory of Republican Flip-Flops. Related: Policy in an Age of Post-Truth Politics.

* And one of the great pleasures of incumbency is watching your enemies fight. Today’s entry: Why (the odious) Erick Erickson will not support Jon Huntsman.

The End

The possibility that the House flips again and there will be 60 votes in the Senate for serious climate action — or for significant funding for clean energy — this decade is just not terribly plausible.  We can certainly wait for the inevitable climate Pearl Harbors, but they would have to be a bunch of them this decade worse than these and they would have to be unambiguously linked to human-caused warming by the media.

Climate Progress makes the case that on the most important environmental questions of our time Obama’s may already be a failed presidency.

Indeed, he has, arguably, poisoned the well for the next president, not merely through because of the “shellacking,” but also by his failure to use his bully pulpit to be an unabashed defender of climate and clean energy action.  Team Obama helped created the broad-based misperception that those issues are political losers, in spite of every poll to the contrary, in spite of the fact that in the one place where a broad coalition combined with political leaders who were genuine climate hawks, Californians won the clean energy and climate trifecta, including a stunning 20-point win preserving their landmark cap-and-trade climate bill.

And so the chances have dropped sharply of averting multiple catastrophes post-2040 — widespread Dust-Bowlification; multi-feet sea level rise followed by SLR of 6 to 12+ inches a decade until the planet is ice free; massive species loss; the ocean turning into large, hot acidified dead zones; and ever-strengthening superstorms that bring devastation to country after country that equals or surpasses what happened to Moscow and Pakistan and Nashville and New Orleans.

And all this was happened without even a national debate on this most important of all issues.

Can’t Get Enough Election Links

* It gets worse: Why the GOP will likely control the House for a long time.

* Ezra Klein: Blame the kids.

* Matt Yglesias: No, blame the upper half of wage earners.

* ThinkProgress: Don’t blame the Affordable Care Act. Drum: Don’t blame cap and trade.

* And confidential to Iowa, the rest of the Midwest, and the South: This is why it doesn’t make any sense to elect judges.

Belatedly Closing Some Tabs

* When Breitbart says “Jump!”, the Obama administration asks how high. Humiliating. They should reinstate Shirley Sherrod tomorrow and call Breitbart and Fox out by name. More links and discussion at MetaFilter.

* Surprising: The generic Congressional ballot again favors the Democrats. Steve Benen says caveat emptor. Could this have something to do with their bizarre new “rehabilitate Bush” strategy?

* How Roger Ebert destroyed film criticism.

* How the universe might handle time travel paradoxes.

* Climate change whip count. Doesn’t look good.

* Sarah Palin has a 76% favorability rating among Republicans. If the economy hasn’t significantly recovered by 2012 she could really be president, folks.

* Constance McMillen has received $35,000 from her Mississippi school district. I thought the damages might be higher.

* Arizona, desperate for me to like it again, has disabled all its speed cameras.

* Friends don’t let friends commit confirmation treason.

* Rumors of the next Superman film.

* The Catholic Church’s official impotence index.

* And Glenn Beck says he’s going blind. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Late Night Monday

* While my cousin was visiting last weekend we saw both Toy Story 3 and Exit Through the Gift Shop, both of which I endorse for entirely different reasons. What I find most interesting about Exit is the possibility that large swaths of the documentary, perhaps even the whole thing, are a high-concept Banksy prank; what I like best about Toy Story 3 is how bravely it faces down the themes of mortality and obsolescence that have always been the subtext of the series. That the toys (spoiler alert) receive their inevitable reprieve is ultimately a small consolation; in the end, we must admit Lotso had it right.

* This short but intriguing post from Crooked Timber compares the Toy Story franchise to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, concluding (as we must) that Stinky Pete is the existential hero of the series, the only character who is genuinely free.

* World Cup supervillain Koman Coulibaly apparently fired.

* Steve Benen and Ezra Klein look at how a utilities-only compromise on cap and trade might work. Here too is Brad Plumer on what EPA regulation can and cannot accomplish.

* If I’m reading this correctly, Matt Yglesias wants to turn Detroit into District 9. More on Detroit and this week’s U.S. Social Forum here and here.

* Speaking of District 9: Will Neill Blomkamp direct The Hobbit?

* There’s something about this piece on spiked anti-rape protection in South Africa that gets people talking. I can’t count how many times it’s shown up in my Facebook feed.

* One day late for Father’s Day: “Daddy, could we have our planet back now?”

* Pandagon highlights a study linking sexual aggression and heavy porn use.

* Why the Right is fantasizing about a 2012 primary challenge.

It’s easy to see why conservatives would be salivating at the thought of a Hillary primary challenge. Presidents who face serious primary challenges—Ford, Carter, Bush I—almost always lose. The last president who lost re-election without a serious primary challenge, by contrast, was Herbert Hoover. But in truth, the chances that Obama will face a primary challenge are vanishingly slim, and the chances that he will lose re-election only slightly higher. No wonder conservatives are fantasizing about Hillary Clinton taking down Barack Obama. If she doesn’t, it’s unlikely they will.

* And so it’s come to this.

Friday Night Everything

* No holiday for death: Rest in peace, José Saramago.

* Univ. of Puerto Rico Students Declare Victory in 2-Month Strike.

* President Maddow. We can dream. She’d do a lot better than the other guys.

* The Obama Plot for a Carbon Tax? We can dream. Related: Fix Global Warming for 40 cents a day (though Benen reminds us not to get your hopes up).

* Everyone seems to have forgotten about coal ash.

* Sometimes the bad guys accidentally tell the truth.

* Every country is number one at something.

* Quit your job: Civ V trailer.

* Look for Toy Story 3 1/2 in front of Cars 2 later this fall.

* Smurfs 3-D, thy name is abomination.

* Don’t know whether to be happy or terrified about the forthcoming adaptation of Cloud Atlas.

* Ban the best friend! Via MeFi.

* The headline reads, “Life in New Jersey Now More Dissatisfying Than Ever.”

* Destroying capitalism one World Cup at a time.

* And today’s dose of liberal guilt, in essay and infographic forms.

Wednesday Wednesday

* In case you missed it, I have pieces in Reviews in Cultural Theory and American Literature online now.

* Mission accomplished: Obama has lost everyone. Well, almost everyone.

* “Something of a waterloo for publishing”: Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage Publications are suing four librarians at Georgia State University for making portions of electronic copies of articles available to students when the text is places on reserve in the library, which is likely protected under fair use.

* Closing arguments in California today in the determining the constitutionality of Proposition 8.

* Celebrating Bloomsday all over: 1, 2. Thanks Tim!

* How to keep someone forever: create a sick system. Via MeFi.

* The 2010s will bring you edgy Fraggles.

* A secret history of beloved Northern New Jersey field trip site the Cloisters.

* And Flickr has hidden posters of the long-sealed-off Notting Hill Gate Tube station.

Wednesday Is The Day When I Get Nothing Done

* Urban geography: where do locals (blue) and tourists (red) take their photographs? At right: New York. Via Alex.

* Cutting against its usual strategy of keeping its students completely isolated from the larger Durham community, Duke had contributed funding towards free bus service connecting the campus and downtown.

* Lindsey Graham, pathetic liar. More here from Ezra Klein, who denounces for the millionth time the inevitable failure of legislative outreach to Republicans, and Steve Benen, who denounces for the millionth-and-first time the inevitable failure of legislative outreach to Republicans.

* The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Via Kottke.

* And more fun from Nevada: Harry Reid’s opponent is strongly dedicated to the preservation of our precious bodily fluids.

Saturday Night’s All Right for Something

* “The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield”: a great comic about vaccine panic. Via Pharyngula.

* “If Gandalf recited the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme” is far better than it has any right to be. Of course, there’s no bit so good you can’t completely drive it into the ground.

* The Republican Party has finally discovered its Platonic form. Via MeFi.

* Is the Obama administration a historic presidency or a colossal missed opportunity? Steve and I seem to come down on different sides on this—though I’d hasten to add there’s no reason it can’t be both, and I suppose the jury’s technically out until 2017.

* Naked Capitalism on the cap and trade scam.

* And some easy listening: David Harvey on the crises of capitalism.

Quick Links

* After Spill, More Gulf Drilling Plans Got Environmental Exemptions. Via Ioanna.

* Greenwald v. Lessig re: Kagan on Democracy Now.

* ThinkProgress has a first look the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill.

* On the sex life of H.G. Wells.

* Towards a positive definition of monogamy? Via @AmandaMarcotte.

* And the headline reads, “Climate change could make half the world uninhabitable.”

Annihilation of All Life on Earth Links

* In 1989 we were six hours away from the annihilation of all life on earth.

* Humans think we run the place, but we haven’t even built the most awesome dam in the world. That honor belongs to the beavers.

* At the Early Warnings blog: There is a horrible paper in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences … which looks at how the limits of human physiology interact with upper-range global warming scenarios.  The bottom line conclusion is that there is a small—of order 5%—risk of global warming creating a situation in which a large fraction of the planet was uninhabitable (in the sense that if you were outside for an extended period during the hottest days of the year, even in the shade with wet clothing, you would die). Five percent, of course, is five times higher than the Cheney threshold that gives us the right to invade any country in the world at any time for any reason. Via MeFi.

* Nonetheless we can’t pass any climate legislation this year, not even weak-tea no-auction cap-and-trade, because Lindsey Graham is still sulking over God knows what. Obama was wise to hitch his wagon to this star.

Late Night Links With Very Little Context

* James Franco, will you never cease your cruel mockery of my life?

* Pawlenty already going after Romney on health care. This should be fun to watch.

* Via Yglesias, John Holbo has the only critique of bipartisanship you’ll ever need.

* Bernie Sanders doesn’t like the climate bill.

* The Walking Dead will be a series.

* Superman, New Atheist.

* Barack Obama looking at awesome things.

* And, via Tim, this perfectly reasonable report:  A federal appeals court says three Seattle police officers did not employ excessive force when they repeatedly tasered a visibly pregnant woman for refusing to sign a speeding ticket.