Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘David Harvey

CoronaFRI!vus

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Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful. No other country has been this far into the pandemic and still had the number of cases growing at the rates the U.S. is seeing. Without Urgent Action, Coronavirus Could Overwhelm U.S., Estimates Say. I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed.

* David Harvey: Anti-Capitalist Politics in the Time of COVID-19. The Politics of the Pandemic. You and Your Boss Have the Same Interests Right Now. That Is a Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity. Sara Nelson Says People Are Ready for Solidarity. COVID-19 Emergency Tenant Protections. Homeless families occupy vacant homes in LA. Dealing With Coronavirus Requires Bold Action. The Democratic Leadership Won’t Take It.

* 9% of Working Americans (14 Million) So Far Have Been Laid Off As Result of Coronavirus; 1 in 4 Workers Have Had Their Hours Reduced; 2% Have Been Fired; 20% Have Postponed a Business Trip; Shock Waves Just Now Beginning to Ripple Through Once-Roaring US Economy. U.S. Jobless Claims Jump to Two-Year High Amid Closures. 2700% increase in unemployment claims in Ohio — midweek. [Calfornia] averages 2,000 unemployment applications a day. Two or three days ago, it received 40,000. On Tuesday, 80,000 applications were filed. JP Morgan is forecasting -14% RGDP growth in Q2. That’s so bad it isn’t even on the historical axis.

So, It’s Bad. Free, Widespread Testing Is The Only Way America Goes Back to Normal. This Is How We Can Beat the Coronavirus. Coronavirus will radically alter the U.S. US sales of guns and ammunition soar amid coronavirus panic buying. The Stimulus Plan That We Need Now.

* Curb Your Enthusiasm: “The Virus.”

* I’m reminded somehow of the way you end a SimCity game by unleashing every disaster on your city as once. The Midwest Is Preparing To Get Hit With Major Floods During The Coronavirus Outbreak. How the Coronavirus Crisis May Hinder Efforts to Fight Wildfires. Locust crisis poses a danger to millions, forecasters warn. Earthquake in Utah. A Huge Chunk of Yellowstone Is Pulsing.

* Weeks Before Virus Panic, Intelligence Chairman Privately Raised Alarm, Sold Stocks. Senator Dumped Up to $1.7 Million of Stock After Reassuring Public About Coronavirus Preparedness.

* Coronavirus Is Speeding Up the Amazonification of the Planet. Amazon Workers Shut Down Warehouse After Employee Is Infected With Coronavirus. The tech execs who don’t agree with ‘soul-stealing’ coronavirus safety measures.

Mitt Romney’s $1,000 Isn’t Our Universal Basic Income. Americans may see first round of checks from US government by April 6. I really should have known.

* Before Virus Outbreak, a Cascade of Warnings Went Unheeded. In Coronavirus Testing Ramp-Up, U.S. Called Private Sector in Late. How the CDC Botched Basic Science in Its Attempt to Make a Coronavirus Test. Don’t Let Trump Off the Hook.

* I had a lot of question about this, so perhaps it will be useful to you too: No, The World Health Organization Is Not Recommending Against Ibuprofen For Coronavirus Symptoms.

The world’s fastest supercomputer identified chemicals that could stop coronavirus from spreading, a crucial step toward a treatment. Japanese flu drug ‘clearly effective’ in treating coronavirus, says China. Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID‐19: results of an open‐label non‐randomized clinical trial.

“I’m Not An Epidemiologist But…”: The Rise Of The Coronavirus Influencers. This is certainly a problem but I became attuned to the reality of coronavirus precisely through these sorts of non-experts while Trump and the CDC were still lying to everyone. I haven’t seen anything better for learning true information about this crisis than Reddit’s upvote/downvote system.

* Today in the trolley problem. Today in the simulation argument. Today in career goals. Today in Star Trek Studies. Today in Watchmen fan fiction. Weird time.

* Rikers Island inmate has contracted coronavirus: officials. How coronavirus could explode at Riker’s Island. Reducing prison population protects us all from coronavirus.

You Need Me to Have a Mask. ‘It Feels Like a War Zone’: Doctors and Nurses Plead for Masks on Social Media. A New York Doctor’s Coronavirus Warning: The Sky Is Falling. Simple math offers alarming answers.

* Rural America Isn’t Ready for a Pandemic.

* This picture tells a story about America.

* As Cities Around the World Go on Lockdown, Victims of Domestic Violence Look for a Way Out.

* The COVID-19 Crisis and International Students. Colleges offering dorms as hospital overflow for virus cases. A Brief Letter to an Institution that Believes Extensions are the Accommodations We Need Right Now.

* ‘Panic-gogy’: Teaching Online Classes During The Coronavirus Pandemic. As Schools Look for Guidance, Educators Are Left Asking, ‘What?’ New Coronavirus Package Could Unravel Protections For Students With Disabilities. Is online school illegal? With schools closing from coronavirus, special education concerns give districts pause.

* Waaaaaay ahead of you.

GameStop claims it is ‘essential retail’ to remain open amid coronavirus shutdowns. It didn’t work.

Minnesota and Vermont Just Classified Grocery Clerks as Emergency Workers.

* There’s plenty of food.

* The Quiet Emptiness of a World under Coronavirus.

* The desire for public sex is, of course, nothing new. In his book Tell Me What You Want, sex researcher and Kinsey Institute fellow Justin Lehmiller found it was one of the seven most common fantasies, but the way people are having it in a coronavirus-ridden world definitely is. Now, instead of treating it as nothing more than a novel thrill to “spice things up,” some people are using it as an act of resistance against the virus-induced lockdowns that have squashed so many of the liberties we hold dear. Sex etiquette during the coronavirus.

* Kim Stanley Robinson releases a chapter from his latest novel, though weirdly it’s listed as “news.”

I spent four months pretending to live on Mars. Here’s what I learned about staying sane and passing time.

* I’m beginning to think you just can’t trust billionaires: When he joined the race last year, the billionaire said he would employ his campaign staff through the November election, even if he weren’t the nominee. But Bloomberg dropped out after a poor showing on Super Tuesday, and he has since fired staffers in multiple waves. His campaign had announced earlier in March that it would launch an independent expenditure group to take on Trump that would employ former campaign staffers in swing states.

The Sanders worldview wins even as Bernie loses.

* You know it’s bad when politicians are leaving elected office to join the priesthood.

* A false accusation nightmare in the Times.

* Moffat leaving Doctor Who seemed like a good exit ramp for me, so I haven’t seen any of the new episodes — but wow, this latest retcon looks like a mess, as well as a pretty clear “find some way to tie this off and wrap it up” directive from the BBC.

* Rethinking the Apocalypse: An Indigenous Anti-Futurist Manifesto.

* Octavia Butler gave us a few rules for predicting the future.

An “Extinction Event” for the Comic Shop or “Too Stupid to Quit, Too Dumb to Die”?

The Ending of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, Revisited.

* Star Wars in ruins: The Most Problematic ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Plot Twist Ruined Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy. Disney has embarrassed itself issuing Episode 9 retcons but it really ought to explain why it’s being so elliptical about this one issue for no apparent reason.

* And Star Wars resurgent: The Mandalorian Casts Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano.

* Because you demanded it: A new Disney Princess historical fiction series finds Belle in the French Revolution.

* And they were nearly almost done, too! I swear!

* Hey, it’s me, the first sign of civilization in a culture.

* Coming soon: The Collapsing Empire, Book 3. A Cixin Liu story collection. And some free coronavirus reading: Short Changes, a story collection by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Tuesday Afternoon Links!

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* SFFTV 12.2 is here, with articles on Afrofuturism, time-travel surveillance cinema, Avatar, and the Anthropocene…

* CFP: Tolkien/Whedon.

* A people’s history of New Coke.

* The Atlanteans and the Middle Passage.

Stonewall, Before and After: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany.

Are we living in a simulated universe? Here’s what scientists say. Scientists are trying to open a portal to a parallel universe.

* Ugly academic war ends with unprecedented apology from USC, $50-million settlement.

* The California coast is disappearing under the rising sea. Our choices are grim. Alaska is having an environmental and political meltdown. Alaskan glaciers melt at fastest pace in centuries. Trump Administration Is Suppressing Science and Public Opinion to Drill the Arctic Refuge. Six shocking climate events that happened around the world this week. Are parts of India becoming too hot for humans? A Ferocious Heat in Delhi. India staring at a water apocalypse. All Mississippi Beaches Close Due To Toxic Algae Bloom. The Internet Is Drowning. Fish die-offs in Wisconsin expected to double by 2050, quadruple by 2100, report says. Breaching a ‘carbon threshold’ could lead to mass extinction. And sure let’s go back to killing all the bees while we’re at it.

 

* Fear of immigration raids looms as plans for ICE ‘family operation’ move forward. FBI, ICE find state driver’s license photos are a gold mine for facial-recognition searches. (81% of ‘suspects’ flagged by Met’s police facial recognition technology innocent, independent report says.) Hungry, Scared and Sick: Inside the Migrant Detention Center in Clint, Tex. ‘It’s a Terrible Existence’: The Crisis of Emergency Dialysis Care for Undocumented Immigrants. ICE deports dozens of Cambodian refugees. Officials expect Trump to try and add citizenship question to the census via executive action this week — an idea officials say was not a serious one as recently as Wednesday. Attorney General Barr tells SC reporters he’s found a legal recourse on Census question. Trump Lied to the Supreme Court, and Four Justices Don’t Care. Whatever’s coming, the career folks couldn’t abide.

On the migrant crisis, European governments are failing the first test of climate change.

The Postcolonial Case for Rethinking Borders.

Amazon Workers Plan Prime Day Strike at Minnesota Warehouse.

* Democratic candidates’ school integration plans, explained.

* Democrats will never allow the system to be reformed.

* But this time around, I don’t think 2007–8 produced anything. The resulting policies were, if anything, even more neoliberal. But the problem is that neoliberalism has lost its attractiveness and legitimacy, so is now enforced by authoritarian and right-populist means.

The Millennial Condition: History, Revolution, and Generational Analysis.

To see how the Koch brothers’ free-market utopia operates, look no further than Corpus Christi.

* I’ve always been cold on Russiagate, but I’ll believe any conspiracy theory you have to sell me about Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who is friends with Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, explained. The Mystery Around Jeffrey Epstein’s Fortune and How He Made It. How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime. Epstein indictment renews questions about earlier case handled by Trump Cabinet official. When Jeffrey Epstein Joked About Sex Abuse. DA knew Jeffrey Epstein was a dangerous pedophile when arguing for leniency. Flashback to 2003. Inside Epstein’s $56 Million Mansion: Photos of Bill Clinton, Woody Allen and Saudi Crown Prince. Barr won’t recuse, again.

* So much corruption you can’t even keep it all straight: Investigation Intensifies Into Top Trump Fund-raiser.

Nancy Pelosi Has Chosen Her War, and It’s With Her Own Party’s Future.

* Haunted by the Reagan era.

Progressive Boomers Are Making It Impossible For Cities To Fix The Housing Crisis.

* The Bernie-Warren Suicide Pact to Save America.

Americans Shouldn’t Have to Drive, but the Law Insists on It. Don’t Count on U.S. Regulators to Make Self-Driving Cars Safe for Pedestrians.

* MSP troopers blow through stop sign, arrest driver that ran into them.

* Most Americans like to think of their country as a meritocracy, a system that rewards hard work and intelligence over privilege. But if you look at how things actually work, @sarahrlnrd argues, it’s clear the U.S. is more of an aristocracy…

* Far from Home saving the MCU from itself.

MLMs Are A Nightmare For Women And Everyone They Know.

One woman quits coloring her gray hair and investigates the human and environmental costs of this contentious female beauty standard.

When Philip K. Dick turned to Christianity.

* Chernobyl and Russiagate.

Stranger Things and Nostalgia Now.

* Full circe.

* When a car crashed outside of tiny Tonopah, Nevada, volunteer EMS workers raced to the scene in minutes. But ever since Tonopah’s hospital closed, the town is now hours away from the nearest emergency room.

* Another animal intelligence roundup.

* Zoos Called It a ‘Rescue.’ But Are the Elephants Really Better Off? Despite mounting evidence that elephants find captivity torturous, some American zoos still acquire them from Africa — aided by a tall tale about why they needed to leave home.

* Principal Refused to Call the Holocaust a Fact. Five seconds later: Principal Who Tried to Stay ‘Politically Neutral’ About Holocaust Is Removed.

Digital Jail: How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants Into Debt.

* Damn, that’s dark.

On average, older adults spend over half their waking hours alone.

* A retired teacher found some seahorses off Long Beach. Then he built a secret world for them.

The Rise of the Professional Dungeon Master.

* Baseball has a home-run problem.

Will Impossible Burgers be the norm for Gen Z?

* And if aliens call, what should we do? Scientists want your opinion.


Written by gerrycanavan

July 9, 2019 at 12:20 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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2016 Links!

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20081210* This Man Is Claiming To Be Able To Bring The Dead Back To Life By 2045. That’s good news, because Scientists Say They Can Recreate Living Dinosaurs Within the Next 5 Years. Perhaps relatedly.

* So tragic: These parents cryonically froze their toddler in the hope she might live again.

* Like looking into a mirror.

* More bad news for my particular demographic.

* I’m at MLA this week, giving a paper on Saturday evening on Richard McGuire’s fantastic graphic novel Here for a panel on “The Anthropocene and Deep Time in Literary Studies.”

* The Year of the Imaginary College Student.

Facebook ran experiment to see how long users would wait before giving up and going elsewhere, but people ‘never stopped coming back.’

Can’t Disrupt This: Elsevier and the 25.2 Billion Dollar A Year Academic Publishing Business.

* Keywords for the Age of Austerity 24: Sullen. Also, here’s John Pat’s current syllabus on Innovation: A Cultural History of the Contemporary Concept.

* I think this one is old, but maybe it’s not old to you: Soc 710: Social Theory through Complaining.

This video about the aging pipeline below the Great Lakes should be this summer’s top horror flick.

* That’s when New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman filed an amended lawsuit against the two companies, this time asking for them to give back all the money they made in New York State, to give it back to those who lost money and to pay a fine of up to $5,000 per case.

* In February 1964, then future NS editor Paul Johnson wrote an article attacking the Beatles and all they stood for. It became the most complained-about piece in the Statesman’s history.

I Studied Oregon’s Militia Movement. Here’s 5 Things You Need to Know.

What Writing Shared World Fiction Taught Erin M. Evans About Worldbuilding.

12 reasons to worry about our criminal justice system.

Entire Florida police department busted for laundering millions for international drug cartels.

* David Harvey on Consolidating Power.

No More Statutes of Limitations for Rape.

* Some Last Words on Pessimism.

* I’m finally #ready4hillary.

New Heights (Lows?) in Philosophy Job Application Requirements.

Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 8.05.41 AM* The Far-Out Sci-Fi Costume Parties of the Bauhaus School in the 1920s.

What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2016?

When a prison closes, what happens to the prison town?

* Four years later, Liss-Riordan is spearheading class-action lawsuits againstUber, Lyft, and nine other apps that provide on-demand services, shaking the pillars of Silicon Valley’s much-hyped sharing economy. In particular, she is challenging how these companies classify their workers. If she can convince judges that these so-called micro-entrepreneurs are in fact employees and not independent contractors, she could do serious damage to a very successful business model—Uber alone was recently valued at $51 billion—which relies on cheap labor and a creative reading of labor laws.

* Tufts in the news! Researchers Teaching Robots How to Best Reject Orders from Humans.

* The novelistic sublime: Joseph Heller’s handwritten outline for Catch-22.

* If Google is a school official, I wonder if it’s a mandatory reporter.

* Tom Lutz and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

* Through the looking glass: Game of Thrones author George RR Martin misses last TV deadline for new book.

* On reading Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. On reading Ten Little Indians.

Debunking “The Big Short”: How Michael Lewis Turned the Real Villains of the Crisis into Heroes.

Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

The Sherlock special “The Abominable Bride” was terrible. Has this show completely lost its way? My DVR, in a noble effort to save my sanity, opted not to record it.

* It’s all happening again: Infinite Winter. A flashback.

What I learned not drinking for two years.

Lifting the Veil on the New York Public Library’s Erotica Collection.

Harvard’s Find of a Colonial Map of New Jersey Is a Reminder of Border Wars.

What would a technological society look like that somehow managed to side-step the written word?

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Target List From The Cold War Declassified For The First Time. 

This Asian Time Travel Thriller Could Be Next Year’s Breakout Action Movie.

An Appreciation of Chuck Jones’ ‘One Froggy Evening’ On Its 60th Birthday.

When Gene Roddenberry’s computer died, it took with it the only method of accessing some 200 floppy disks of his unpublished work. Here’s how this tech mystery was solved.

Periodic table’s seventh row finally filled as four new elements are added.

* The rising academic field of David Bowie Studies.

* A Brief History of Farting for Money. (via)

* Hybrids. Uncanny Valley. And then there’s the weirdest, most unbelievable SF short film I’ve ever seen.

* Barbasol presents Disney’s James Cameron’s Avatarland.

* And of course there’s always more Star Wars links: The Feminist Frequency Review. Editing The Force Awakens. Listening to Star Wars. The Original Star Wars Concept Art Is Amazing. A Not-So-Brief History of George Lucas Talking Shit About Disney’s Star Wars. Is Han Solo Force-Sensitive? The Bigger Luke Hypothesis. Cross Sections of TFA Spaceships and Vehicles. Most Citizens of the Star Wars Galaxy are Probably Totally Illiterate. Are droids slaves? Rey & BB8. Reading Anakin Skywalker after Jessica Jones. If you want a vision of the future.

heller

Written by gerrycanavan

January 5, 2016 at 9:00 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Weekend Links!

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* The commentators calling $3,000 salaries evil a century ago would have an aneurysm at the sight of coaching contracts today. Deadspin found last year that college football coaches were the highest-paid state employees in twenty-seven states. (Basketball coaches held that status in another thirteen.) The salary inflation is a direct product of increasing college sports revenue, thanks in large part to massive television deals. Because the colleges and their athletic departments are nonprofit, they need to spend the money they bring in, and since they can’t pay players, there are only so many places that money can go. Head coaches and other athletic staffers are direct beneficiaries.

* My Favorite Graph of 2014: The Rise and Rise of the Top 0.1 Percent.

* Americans Have Spent Enough Money On A Broken Plane To Buy Every Homeless Person A Mansion.

* Elsewhere in the richest society ever in the history of the world.

* David Harvey and Leo Panitch: Beyond Impossible Reform and Improbable Revolution.

* North Korea, Sony, and stenography.

* The successful attempt to reduce fat in the diet of Americans and others around the world has been a global, uncontrolled experiment, which like all experiments may well have led to bad outcomes. What’s more, it has initiated a further set of uncontrolled global experiments that are continuing. Editorial in the British Medical Journal.

A new study from Stanford looks at what happened in Italy, when a 1961 law doubled the number of students in STEM majors graduating from the country’s universities.

* …when people claim that the “free market” system outproduced Soviet Communism, what they are saying is that markets more effectively produced discipline. It was more successful at imposing patterns of human action and restriction conducive to military and economic production than a command economy was capable of imposing.

“Why Is My Curriculum White?”

When Rioting is Rational.

* If Tom Joad is alive after 1945, what is his future? Am I the only who sees him becoming a conservative like most of his fellow ex-sharecropper migrants and voting for Goldwater in 64? Grapes of Wrath fanfic at LGM.

* Neill Blomkamp’s Secret Alien Movie Looks So Good We’re Furious.

Math Suggests Most Cancers Are Caused By “Bad Luck.”

* Florida: We’re The Worst. Arizona: Not So Fast.

* And then there’s Wisconsin. Pregnant woman challenging Wisconsin protective custody law.

At the clinic, a urine test showed Loertscher was pregnant, and also revealed her past drug use. Another test confirmed she had a severe thyroid condition.

Medical officials shared the findings with the county social services personnel, who subsequently went to court and had a guardian ad litem appointed for Loertscher’s 14-week-old fetus.

Social workers asked Loertscher repeatedly to release her medical records to county officials, and said that if she didn’t, she would be jailed until she had her baby, which would then be put up for adoption.

* Is the Gates Foundation Still Investing in Private Prisons?

* UNC-Chapel Hill Firing Professor Over Academic Fraud Scandal.

* Lines mankind was never meant to cross: LEGO Awarded 3D Printing Patent, May Allow Users to Print Own Bricks.

* The NYPD is Ironically Proving that Most of Their Police Work is Completely Unnecessary. The Benefits of Fewer NYPD Arrests.

* The eclipse of democracy.

* And Traci Reardon and J.W. Stillwater have a good old fashioned New Year’s Sentiment Off.

Tuesday Shazbat

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* The world is awash in Robin Williams remembrances today, but for my money I’d recommend his recent appearances on WTF and Harmontown. Louie. Longreads has also collected four essays and his appearance on Charlie Rose. Robin Williams’s Best Bad Movie. Suicide contagion and social media. How to report a suicide. The MetaFilter thread.

* It’s primary day in Wisconsin. Endorsements from Shepherd-Express.

* Eyewitness to Michael Brown shooting recounts his friend’s death. Police Reportedly Refused Offer to Interview Man Who Was With Michael Brown During Shooting. Police in Ferguson Fire Tear Gas on Protesters Standing in Their Own Backyard. Ferguson Police Cite Safety Risk in Decision Not to Name Officer in Shooting. Ferguson, MO, is 67 percent black, and its police force is 94 percent white. The FBI steps in to investigate ultimately sign off on everything’s that happened. Dystopia as how-to manual.

jamisonfoser_2014-Aug-12

WilbotOsterman_2014-Aug-12

* Paramilitary Police Are Changing Law Enforcement in the Suburbs. Jon Burge, Torture, and the Militarization of the PoliceAmerican Gulag.

* Against civil forfeiture.

* Hillary Clinton’s campaign will be predicated on “peace, progress, and prosperity,” with “peace” defined as “forever war.”

ISIS Post PR Photos They Took With John McCain.

* CFP: Mean Girls.

* Nnedi Okorafor’s syllabus for ENGL 254: Science Fiction.

* On the greatness of Metroid.

* The NCAA Is a Wreck Now.

What’s less known, however, is that in the 2012 constitutional case, these same challengers filed briefs describing Obamacare to the court in precisely the way they now say the statute cannot possibly be read. Namely, they assumed that the subsidies were available on the federal exchanges and went so far as to argue that the entire statute could not function as written without the subsidies. That’s a far cry from their argument now that the statute makes crystal clear that Congress intended to deny subsidies on the federal exchanges.

* Ursula K. Le Guin: About Anger, Part I.

* The City and the City watch: a proposal that Israel and Palestine become grosstopic, overlapping states.

* Cary Nelson keeps digging: Zionist groups planned to lobby Univ. of Illinois trustees over Salaita appointment. Corey Robin has been coordinating some boycott campaigning for English and Political Science / Philosophy, though personally I think the English statement’s extension to tenure review cases is just too self-undermining to commit to.

* Announcing The Daily Show Podcast, without Jon Stewart.

* Marquette will give John Lewis an honorary degree at the new student convocation on August 20.

* California debates ‘yes means yes’ sex assault law.

Legislation passed by California’s state Senate in May and coming before the Assembly this month would require all schools that receive public funds for student financial assistance to set a so-called “affirmative consent standard” that could be used in investigating and adjudicating sexual assault allegations. That would be defined as “an affirmative, unambiguous and conscious decision” by each party to engage in sexual activity.

Silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. The legislation says it’s also not consent if the person is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep.

For some reason that escapes me, this is hugely controversial.

* The time Bruce Wayne had an affair with Barbara Gordon while she was dating Dick Grayson, impregnated her, before prompting her to head out and have a miscarriage while crimefighting. You know, for kids.

* Uber vs. Lyft: whoever wins, we lose.

* Apple’s workforce after 30 years of operation is still 70% male. And that’s better than most of the tech sector.

* Hoarders are the new Luddites.

Help a hoarder consolidate and safe-keep their things today. Lend them money to rent a storage locker. Volunteer to help them keep their things at your place. Their stuff is the final shred of resistance to the destruction of all non-Apple-approved human endeavors.

* Activision is making a new King’s Quest. Space Quest and Quest for Glory next!

How American Universities Have Destroyed Scholarship in the U.S.

* And because everything is a bummer today: Ponzi Scheme Capitalism: An Interview with David Harvey.

My question would be: can we not foresee a continuation of that ridiculousness for the foreseeable future, where you have one fiction built on another fiction, one crisis to the next?

Yes. I raise that question a bit in the book by saying there are these fictitious forms of capital that can continue to circulate and feed off each other, and they’re all Ponzi schemes, which can sometimes go on for a long time. Yes, there may be some possibility we’re moving into this era of fictitious capital formation and circulation, which is then managed by the central banks because they can just add zeros to the money supply at the drop of a hat, and have been doing so. First off, it seems to me increasingly senseless, and I suspect that people will start to say, well what’s the point of all of this? Secondly, I think the internal contradictions of that are that there’s going to be crashes, but then there have been financial crashes popping off all over the place for the last 20 years and capital has survived. For instance, there’s one in Indonesia, one in Argentina and then there’s one somewhere else. Dubai World goes bankrupt, somebody else goes bankrupt, there are all these asset bubbles popping up all over the place, and maybe we can continue in that vein for a while. But at some point, I think the possibilities will run out.

Written by gerrycanavan

August 12, 2014 at 3:29 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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A Few for Friday

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* All Your Nightmares Are Real: Massive Mayfly Emergence in Wisconsin.

So, I would like to suggest the following as a starting point: we should highlight the accomplishments of “high-profile” faculty members at our institutions and then show the relatively (or very) modest impact that those accomplishments have had on their compensation; then we should offer, as a point of comparison, the compensation, including bonuses, of largely anonymous administrators whose “accomplishments” will be next to impossible to describe to a general audience. This sort of messaging will do two things at once: it will undercut the notion that faculty are over-paid while simultaneously undercutting the notion that administrators are simply being paid what “the market demands.”

* I would venture to say that back when societies were structured according to religious principles and everyone basically believed in God, a political or business leader who claimed to be a direct channel for God’s will would’ve been regarded as either insane or dangerously disingenuous. Re-label “God’s will” as “the market” or “the politically feasible,” however, and no one bats an eye.

* It’s been a decade since New Orleans’ post-Katrina charter school experiment began. The results have been devastating.

 

* My son has been suspended five times. He’s 3.

In a four part investigation, MPR News details the cover up of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

In Its Death Throes, For-Profit College Chain Spent Over $100,000 A Month On Lobbying.

 

* …the Education Department has confirmed that it has since awarded two more exemptions to Title IX to Christian colleges that want to discriminate against transgender students.

Among the claims that form part of the case against Thomas Docherty is that he sighed and made “ironic” comments when interviewing job candidates.

* Beyoncé Class Is in Session.

* Burger King Is Run by Children.

* Ban College Bands.

California Man Fatally Shoots Allegedly Pregnant Home Invader. Man Shoots Teenaged Neighbor Three Times Over Argument About Lawnmower.

* David Harvey at LSE: The 17 Contradictions of Capitalism.

* The Committee to Save the World: Climate Change and the Santa Fe Institute.

Perhaps, Kabat concludes, the positivity should be economic incentives, that every new threat creates some business opportunity. To illustrate this, he shows a slide of a giant wave crashing down on a man. Then he shows another slide showing the same wave coming down, but this time it forms the shape of a hand shaking the hand of the man.

Oh, okay, so you’re saying we’re doomed.

* Google still doesn’t pay any taxes.

* Dibs on the screenplay: According to a NASA study, the Earth just missed what would have been not a civilization ending but a truly massive global catastrophe in 2012 because of a huge solar storm.

Space Junk Is Becoming a Serious Security Threat.

* An Elegy for the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

* Philip K. Dick’s cult novel ‘Man in the High Castle’ becoming an Amazon TV pilot.

* Indiana Jones and the Temple of Middle-Aged Sadness.

* A Brief Hiss tory of Autocorrect.

* The inventor of the high-five.

* Is it just me, or does 3 1/2 years in prison for stealing a basically irreplaceable Stradivarious actually seem pretty low by American standards?

* Here’s an Obamacare loophole that actually seems like it will significantly impact the viability of the law.

* Republicans want to impeach; Obama wants to be impeached. Gee, what do you think is going to happen?

* And if Republicans are really so stunningly incompetent why does American politics only move rightward? I guess some things will always be a mystery.

Tuesday Links

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* My favorite website is having big financial problems. The New Internet Gods Have No Mercy.

The museum as classroom: Marquette professors use art for pilot project.

* Insuring the apocalypse.

* Commencement speakers, reaction, and the hatred of students. In Defense of Protesting Commencement Speakers. Remember: writing a letter to a public figure is wildly inappropriate, but personally attacking students from the podium at their own graduation is just fine.

* A Commencement Address from Jonathan Edwards.

* Online Education and The Erosion of Faculty Rights.

* Whole Foods Realism: US-China Relations, futurity, and On Such a Full Sea.

It makes a canny kind of sense, then, that a 2014 incarnation of the film that bears his name would reprise visual scenes of global environmental catastrophes and dare us to think of them in tragic terms.   is a film for the anthropocene — the age when human actions have caused irreversible ecological damage.  Tragedies, like feelings, happen at a human scale.  But ours is a time when human actions work off the human scale, causing events in our world that require much more strenuous interventions than sympathy and tears.  It’s hard to know what to feel, in the face of the catastrophe we have made, or what difference our feelings would make.

* Silicon Valley Dreams of Fascism.

* NYU Issues Apology for Mistreatment of Workers on Abu Dhabi Campus. Well, that settles that!

* Executive Compensation at Public Colleges, 2013 Fiscal Year. Former University Presidents and Their Pensions. A new report finds that student debt and low-wage faculty labor are rising faster at state universities with the highest-paid presidents.

* NLRB May Reconsider Unionization Rights For Graduate Students In College Football Case.

What are the humanities good for? The negative magisterium of the humanities.

* …or what’s an MLA for?

* Disruptive Innovation! The original theory comes from Clayton Christensen’s study of things like the hard drive and steel industries where he realized that disruptive products tend to combine new technologies, cheaper production, and — crucially — worse products.

* Pamela Anderson, survivor.

* Torture of a mentally ill prisoner in a Miami jail.

* Buzzfeed and Schizophrenia. And they said theory is useless!

Economics in Fantasy Literature, Or, Why Nerds Really Like Stuff.

* Clickbait dissertations.

* We’ve hit Peak Should I Go to Grad School.

* Exit Through the Gift Shop: 9/11 Museum Edition.

* Three months in jail for Cecily McMillan.

The United States has 710 prisoners per 100,000 people. Iceland has 150. Total.

White House Promises To Never Again Let The CIA Undermine Vaccinations. Oh, okay, then all is forgiven!

‘There Will Be No World Cup’: Brazil on the Brink.

* Add “DUI” to the list of crimes rich people don’t have to worry about anymore.

* Duke Libraries is still running its Mad Men series of period advertising. Here’s the link for the latest episode.

* Presenting the Netflix Summary Glitch.

Washington Archdiocese takes to the heavens, with a drone. Can autonomous robot baptism be far behind?

* The water main breaks will continue until morale improves.

The actress who helped Lincoln defeat the Confederacy.

* Corey Robin: The Republican War on Workers’ Rights.

* David Harvey reviews Piketty.

* Law and Order: Westeros.

* If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on your fond memories of Star Wars, forever. At least the maximally unnecessary Harry Potter prequels suddenly have a chance of being good.

* And the 90s are literally turning to dust.

Written by gerrycanavan

May 20, 2014 at 9:00 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Links from the Weekend!

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* Wes Anderson bingo. Meanwhile, Moonrise Kingdom is setting records.

* Great television contrarianism watch: Neoliberal Holmes, or, Everything I Know About Modern Life I Learned from Sherlock. In which I analyze my allergy to Sherlock.

* David Harvey: The financial crisis is an urban crisis.

* Utopia and dystopia in quantum superposition: New parking meters text you when time’s running out.

Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it.

* Shaviro reviews Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. LRB reviews Embassytown. LARoB reviews Railsea. The New Yorker reviews Game of Thrones.

But there is something troubling about this sea of C.G.I.-perfect flesh, shaved and scentless and not especially medieval. It’s unsettling to recall that these are not merely pretty women; they are unknown actresses who must strip, front and back, then mimic graphic sex and sexual torture, a skill increasingly key to attaining employment on cable dramas. During the filming of the second season, an Irish actress walked off the set when her scene shifted to what she termed “soft porn.” Of course, not everyone strips: there are no truly explicit scenes of gay male sex, fewer lingering shots of male bodies, and the leading actresses stay mostly buttoned up. Artistically, “Game of Thrones” is in a different class from “House of Lies,” “Californication,” and “Entourage.” But it’s still part of another colorful patriarchal subculture, the one called Los Angeles.

* Terrible news, state by state:

Louisiana Incarcerated: How We Built the World’s Prison Capital. Via MeFi.

* The Institute for Southern Studies covers North Carolina’s answer to the Koch brothers, Art Pope.

* Detroit shuts off the lights.

* Kansas Republicans reinstitute feudalism, deliberately bankrupting the state.

* Voter purges in Florida, again.

* Contemplating these dreary statistics, one might well conclude that the United States is — to a distressing extent — a nation of violent, intolerant, ignorant, superstitious, passive, shallow, boorish, selfish, unhealthy, unhappy people, addicted to flickering screens, incurious about other societies and cultures, unwilling or unable to assert or even comprehend their nominal political sovereignty. Or, more simply, that America is a failure.

* The New Yorker‘s science fiction issue is live. If you wanted to get me to read New Yorker fiction for the first time in years, well, mission accomplished…

* And we’re still pouring college money down the for-profit drain. Because never learning from your mistakes is the most important thing we have to teach.

Letter from Zuccotti Park

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Written by gerrycanavan

October 30, 2011 at 11:53 am

David Harvey Animated

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Written by gerrycanavan

June 29, 2010 at 1:02 pm

Saturday Night’s All Right for Something

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* “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.

Just a Few More

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* Hugo Chávez on the Twitter.

* BP predicting “lots of illegitimate” lawsuits in the wake of an unprecedented ecological disaster caused by its own negligence because “this is America.”

* Conservatives win big in U.K., because nothing good ever happens anymore.

* David Harvey on the end of capitalism, in long and short forms.

* Frontline on College, Inc.

* And Buzzfeed introduces a whole new generation to time travel’s problem with space. My time travel daydreams have been wrestling with this for years…

Promised Linkdump

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* Ryan has rightly demanded that these images of superheroes photoshopped into old war photographs be posted on this blog.

* Also via Ryan: David Harvey, “Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition.”

* As promised, nuclear power will shortly save us all.

Weinberg and his men proved the efficacy of thorium reactors in hundreds of tests at Oak Ridge from the ’50s through the early ’70s. But thorium hit a dead end. Locked in a struggle with a nuclear- armed Soviet Union, the US government in the ’60s chose to build uranium-fueled reactors — in part because they produce plutonium that can be refined into weapons-grade material. The course of the nuclear industry was set for the next four decades, and thorium power became one of the great what-if technologies of the 20th century.

Today, however, Sorensen spearheads a cadre of outsiders dedicated to sparking a thorium revival. When he’s not at his day job as an aerospace engineer at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama — or wrapping up the master’s in nuclear engineering he is soon to earn from the University of Tennessee — he runs a popular blog called Energy From Thorium. A community of engineers, amateur nuclear power geeks, and researchers has gathered around the site’s forum, ardently discussing the future of thorium. The site even links to PDFs of the Oak Ridge archives, which Sorensen helped get scanned. Energy From Thorium has become a sort of open source project aimed at resurrecting long-lost energy technology using modern techniques.

Via MeFi.

* The way the White House has been trumpeting the “Passenger Bill of Rights” today suggests to me they may finally be getting the hang of the publicity end of things.

* Another round of MLA interview suggestions from ProfHacker.

* Ten ways to traverse deep space.

* Top ten cryptozoology stories of 2009. Via Boing Boing.

* The ten worst things about the Bush presidency.

Marxism 2009

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Verso has your video from the Marxism 2009 last week in Bloomsbury. Below: David Harvey.

Written by gerrycanavan

July 12, 2009 at 10:38 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged with , , , , ,

What Comes After Capitalism? Don’t Say Socialism

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Does the word postcapitalism look odd to you? It should, because you hardly ever see it. We have a blank spot in our vision of the future. Perhaps we think that history has somehow gone away. In fact, history is with us now more than ever, because we are at a crux in the human story. Choosing not to study a successor system to capitalism is an example of another kind of denial, an ostrich failure on the part of the field of economics and of business schools, I think, but it’s really all of us together, a social aporia or fear. We have persistently ignored and devalued the future—as if our actions are not creating that future for our children, as if things never change. But everything evolves. With a catastrophe bearing down on us, we need to evolve at nearly revolutionary speed. So some study of what could improve and replace our society’s current structure and systems is in order. If we don’t take such steps, the consequences will be intolerable. On the other hand, successfully dealing with this situation could lead to a sustainable civilization that would be truly exciting in its human potential.

What comes after capitalism? Kim Stanley Robinson has a report on the future, while David Harvey investigates what comes right before what comes after capitalism.