Posts Tagged ‘Colonization’
Happy Star Wars Eve, One… Last… Time
* Not that anybody has asked, but if I had to come up with a definitive ranking of all the “Star Wars” episodes — leaving out sidebars like the animated “Clone Wars,” the young Han Solo movie and the latest “Mandalorian” Baby Yoda memes — the result could only be a nine-way tie for fourth place. A dismal farewell to the trilogy. Even Solo got a better reception. The Rise of Skywalker—and the Fall of Fun. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is what happens when a franchise gives up. ‘The Rise Of Skywalker’ Is A Convoluted And Clumsy End To The Star Wars Saga. The Rise of Skywalker Is So Bad It Actually Makes the Trilogy Worse. The Most Incoherent Star Wars Movie Ever Made. watching the rise of skywalker is like telling an acquaintance you ate potato salad once and enjoyed it, and then having that acquaintance break into your home in the middle of the night, tie you to a chair, and mash potato salad into your face and eyes for 2+ hours
* Of course the real content of Episode 9 discourse is The Last Jedi nostalgia.
* How ‘Watchmen’s’ misunderstanding of Vietnam undercuts its vision of racism.
* Don’t Hold Your Breath for That Quentin Tarantino Star Trek Movie. “In a strange way, it seems like [‘Hollywood’] would be my last. So, I’ve kind of taken the pressure off myself to make that last big voilà kind of statement,” Tarantino told Consequence of Sound. “I mean to such a degree there was a moment when I was writing and went, ‘Should I do this now? Should I do something else? Is this the 10th one?’ No, no don’t stop the planets from aligning, what are you, Galactus? If the Earth is saying do it, do it…But in a weird way, it actually kind of freed me up. I mean, I have no idea what the story of the next one’s going to be. I don’t even have a clue.” Kill Bill 3 confirmed.
* Netflix and the monoculture.
* Click Here to Kill: The dark world of online murder markets.
* Living through the era of school shootings, one drill at a time.
* Why did my sweet 5-year-old become so stormy when she started kindergarten? The Miseducation of the American Boy.
* A New (Jesuit) Model for Community Colleges.
* You Shouldn’t Have to Be Good at Your Job.
* The World The Economist Made.
* Why Naomi Klein Has Been Right.
* The Oil Age Is Coming to a Close.
* A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health.
Regardless, the point is obviously not to get out of depression so that we can get back to the work that caused the depression to begin with. The point must be, rather, to destroy the material conditions that make us sick, the capitalist system that destroys people’s lives, the inequalities that kill. Thus, creating another world together. But to do that, to get to where that becomes possible, what is called for is not competition among the sick, but alliances of care that will make people feel less alone and less morally responsible for their illness. In alliance with each other, people might eventually be able to get up and throw some bricks.
* The 2010s Killed Off the Polite Climate Change Conversation.
* Trump’s Plan to Criminalize Homelessness Is Taking Shape. Police officer admits he told homeless man to lick public urinal to avoid arrest.
* How Families Cope with the Hidden Costs of Incarceration for the Holidays.
* Devin Nunes lives on a congressman’s salary. How is he funding so many lawsuits?
* Memo: the Senate is an irredeemable institution.
* Insulin prices double since 2012.
* Self-Driving Mercedes Will Be Programmed To Sacrifice Pedestrians To Save The Driver. For an extra $50,000 it’ll kill a poor person every time you turn it on just because.
* 15 major cities around the world that are starting to ban cars.
* America is still innovating.
* An Oral History of the Folgers Incest Ad.
* John Mulaney Made a Kids’ Special. We Sent a 10-Year-Old to Interview Him About It.
* ‘Civilization’ and Strategy Games’ Progress Delusion: How strategy games have held on to one of colonialism’s most toxic narratives, and how they might finally be letting it go.
New Year’s Links!
* The Journal-Sentinel has links to its original coverage of the Steven Avery trial highlighted in the Netflix series Making a Murderer.
* In a statistical analysis that controlled for a host of other influences, we found this: Negative racial views about blacks were the single most important predictor of white opposition to paying college athletes.
* As college sports revenues spike, coaches aren’t only ones cashing in.
* What to do when you’re not the hero anymore.
* Old Navy hates art and artists and all things that are beautiful.
* The end of Cosby. The Real Cosby Story: Prosecutors Have Had Enough Information To Charge Him For More Than A Decade.
* George Lucas Says He Sold ‘Star Wars’ to ‘White Slavers.’ Uh, sure.
* Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Paranoid Style of American Policing.
* What is 21st Century Photography?
* A favorite from the archives: Modern art was CIA ‘weapon.’
* Tolkien Reads from The Hobbit in Rare Archival Audio from His First Encounter with a Tape Recorder.
* Academic freedom and its limits: The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the University of New Hampshire’s 2013 firing of Marco Dorfsman, an associate professor of Spanish, after he admitted to altering a colleague’s student evaluations. Appeals court rules U of Hawaii was justified in denying student teaching experience to man who was qualified academically but whose statements about adult-child sex and students with disabilities alarmed professors.
* The forgotten contest between colonists and seafaring Indians for command of the American coast.
* This one is almost directly out of The Sheep Look Up, if not Silent Spring: Many pregnant women across Brazil are in a panic. The government, under withering criticism for not acting sooner, is urging them to take every precaution to avoid mosquito bites. One official even suggested that women living in areas where mosquitoes are especially prevalent postpone having children.
* Frankly I’m amazed they’ve let this go on as long as they have: CBS bites itself in the ass, sues makers of crowdfunded Star Trek fan film. In other Star Trek news, I collect stamps now.
* Elsewhere on the copyright beat: The Diary of Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf Both Enter the Public Domain on Friday
* Aldous Huxley’s Predictions for 2000 A.D.
* Why time is the fire in which we burn, explained.
* Yes, yes, bring back Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, the whole enchilada.
* How did they limit themselves to just 50?
* Meanwhile: Bizarre, Deadly Weather Is Sweeping the Country. The Scariest Part of This Season’s Weird Weather Is Coming Soon. The Storm That Will Unfreeze the North Pole. Even fireworks aren’t fun anymore. Happy new year, one and all!
Sunday Morning Links!
As Marquette’s faculty gathers in the basement of the Bradley Center for commencement, some links…
* I have sat in philosophy seminars where it was asserted that I should be left to die on a desert island if the choice was between saving me and saving an arbitrary non-disabled person. I have been told it would be wrong for me to have my biological children because of my disability. I have been told that, while it isn’t bad for me to exist, it would’ve been better if my mother could’ve had a non-disabled child instead. I’ve even been told that it would’ve been better, had she known, for my mother to have an abortion and try again in hopes of conceiving a non-disabled child. I have been told that it is obvious that my life is less valuable when compared to the lives of arbitrary non-disabled people. And these things weren’t said as the conclusions of careful, extended argument. They were casual assertions. They were the kind of thing you skip over without pause because it’s the uncontroversial part of your talk.
* There’s tons of great stuff in issue 17 of Jacobin, from the Peter Frase editorial on automation to a call to democratize the universe to ruminations on edutopia and the smartphone society.
* Mad Max: Fury Road Is the Feminist Action Flick You’ve Been Waiting For. 3 Brief Points on Mad Max: Fury Road.
* Alastair Reynolds Says What It’ll Take To Colonize Other Planets.
* University of Wisconsin flunks the financial transparency test.
* Juxtaposition watch: Maryland governor vetoes $11 million for schools, approves $30 million for jails.
* The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit.
* Hillary Clinton personally took money from companies that sought to influence her. The next couple years are going to be a bottomless exercise in humiliation for Democrats.
* People Who Opposed The Iraq War From The Beginning Are The Best Americans.
* History is a nightmare for which I’m trying to hit the snooze: NJ Republican Introduces Resolution Condemning ‘Negative’ AP History Exam.
* City leaders approve plan for National Slave Ship Museum.
* Let the Kids Learn Through Play.
* Why Are Palo Alto’s Kids Killing Themselves?
* I also won’t accept that Someone Did a Shit So Bad On a British Airways Plane That It Had to Turn Around and Come Back Again.
* When Sandy Bem found out she had Alzheimer’s, she resolved that before the disease stole her mind, she would kill herself. The question was, when?
* If Catch-22 appeared a few years before Americans were ready to read it, Something Happened jumped the gun by decades, and the novel was already forgotten when its comically bleak take on upper-middle-class life became a staple of fiction.
* Jurors In The Boston Bombing Case Had To Agree To Consider The Death Penalty Before Being Selected. This is a very strange requirement of the law that seems to strongly interfere with the “jury of your peers” ideal.
* Deleted scene from Infinite Jest. So bizarre.
* Dibs on the young-adult dystopia: Teenagers who show too much leg face being sent into an “isolation room” for breaching the new uniform code.
* New Zealand Legally Recognises Animals as ‘Sentient’ Beings.
* Schools are failing boys because lessons have become “feminised”, says a leading academic who wants to see outdoor adventure given greater emphasis in the curriculum. That’ll solve it!
* What Even Can You Even Say About The Princess-Man of North Sudan?
* What Would You Do If You Could Censor Your Past? A Visit to the UK’s Secret Archives.
* The Ecotourism Industry Is Saving Tanzania’s Animals and Threatening Its Indigenous People.
* “On the occasion of David Letterman’s retirement after 33 years of hosting a late-night talk show, Jason Snell presents his take on Letterman’s significance, told with the help of a few friends.”