Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘climate fascism

Happy Captain Picard Day Links!

leave a comment »

* Speaking of: a nice reflection on the first episode of Picard at the LARB blog.

The more important observation at this point is that none of the Democrats have faced the full force of the contemporary Republican attack machine and none of them have demonstrated their capacity to survive it. I would argue that if Sanders seems unready, then all of his Democratic rivals are vastly more unready. And that all Democrats are now equally vulnerable to the way that the Republican Party now conducts itself politically, because the Republican Party no longer has any constraints on its behavior. Neither accuracy nor probity matters any longer. Legality is unimportant to a lawless party. The preservation of democratic norms and structures doesn’t matter to a party that no longer believes that the opposition has a right to govern if elected. The contemporary GOP and its base believe that by definition, only they have political legitmacy. The Democrats are still preparing to run in an election, while their opponents are preparing to go to war.

* Four ways America’s system of government is rigged against democracy (and Democrats).

* First Bernie, now this: Vermont might broaden license plate comedy forever by allowing emojis.

* Fair wages are anti-doctrinal: A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Duquesne University’s status as a Roman Catholic institution exempts it from National Labor Relations Board’s rules on forming an adjunct union.

The Age of Climate Authoritarianism Is Upon Us.

Funded by the federal government, local governments in coastal states are buying out thousands of homes in vulnerable areas every year, reshaping and breaking up communities as they go. In their wake, the departed residents of these communities have left what may be the country’s first climate ghost towns, abandoned places made uninhabitable by the warming of the planet. The vacant lots of Arbor Oaks and neighborhoods like it provide a stark warning about the shortcomings of the government’s haphazard, market-driven response to climate change, and raise difficult questions about the rights of people who live in the path of climate disaster.

* Rewilding the Arctic could stop permafrost thaw and reduce climate change risks.

Student group calls for university to divest in fossil fuels.

* How the gig economy leaves people poorer, in three or four tweets.

The company that literally manufactured and sold Zyklon-B to the Nazis doing a Holocaust Memorial Day tweet is a great example of how the Holocaust exists in the Western imaginary as a decontextualized, abstract and perfect evil.

The Curious Worldview of Michael Schur’s Television.

* This is exactly what Joe Biden sounds like, and I can’t understand how everyone doesn’t see it. Why does Joe Biden keep losing his cool with voters?

* Abolish the Senate!

* It would sell! It would sell.

Untitled Goose Game devs donate a percentage of profit to indigenous groups.

Minneapolis police no longer to ticket for equipment violations under new policy. This seems like it could actually be good policy, as long as it’s not a smokescreen for surveillance or harassment.

Here Are the Fare-Evasion Enforcement Data the NYPD Fought to Keep Secret.

* A constitutive contradiction in the law surrounding sex offender lists I hadn’t realized.

* What Earth Would Have Looked Like If It Spinned Clockwise Instead Of Counterclockwise.

* And in a dark time, true art finds a way.

Monday Morning Links!

leave a comment »

* CFP: Art as Liberation in the Black Fantastic.

Fredric Jameson donates personal, professional papers to UCI Libraries.

* Tolkien report: Tolkien’s Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is probably a misogynist satire of women’s rights campaigner Victoria Sackville-West. I’m fascinated by Lobelia because as far as I can tell she is the one and only character in LOTR to receive the opportunity to repent and then actually do so (rather than immediately betraying the forgivers) — so I certainly take the “misogyny” part (it’s undeniable), but her becoming a reformed philanthropist after the Scouring of the Shire remains interesting (and probably still misogynistic in a different way).

* The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving.

* Factchecking yet another English major takedown.

A Complete-ish List of Grad Students / Postdocs / Adjuncts / Alt-Acs / Whoevers in SF, Fantasy, and Horror Studies.

How Much Does An Adjunct Actually Make?

* Truly bizarre list of the top 100 films of the 21st century, almost tailor-made to annoy every single person viewing it.

* Employers have become obsessed with improving the health of their employees. But does it do anyone any good?

Naomi Klein: ‘We are seeing the beginnings of the era of climate barbarism.’ The US and Brazil have agreed to promote private-sector development in the Amazon, during a meeting in Washington on Friday. Our lethal air. Cold war, hot planet. There used to be ice off the north coast of Alaska in the summertime. Now there’s not. How climate change affects mental health. This Is Not the Sixth Extinction. It’s the First Extermination Event.

* Trump in all things big and small: USPS will leave the Universal Postal Union on October 17, ending 144 yrs of involvement in the international body that governs the exchange of mail & postal parcels between countries.

* Can’t imagine anyone having any objection to this.

Recession Already Grips Corners of U.S., Menacing Trump’s 2020 Bid.

What Happens if Trump Won’t Step Down?

* Shots fired, Milwaukee.

* Oh, so there’s my problem.

Socialism and the Self-Checkout Machine.

* When a woman ran for president in 1872.

* Only one way to get to Robot Heaven. I say let the robots have their turn.

* Shock Survey Says People Want to See Less Trailers Before Movies.

* All power to the union: Nearly 50,000 GM auto workers go on strike for first time since 2007.

* The John Mulaney profile you didn’t know you needed.

* Teenager’s memory resets every two hours after being kicked in the head, meaning she wakes up thinking every day is 11 June.

* Human corpses keep moving for over a year after death, scientist say.

* Veering dangerously close here to someone who did teach me to be weird.

* How not to mourn Toni Morrison.

* And American Pharoah has done more to resist the Trump administration in a single afternoon than the Democrats have done in the last nine months.