Posts Tagged ‘defeatism’
March 1 Links! March 1 Only and Then They’re Gone!
* Contemporary African literature as taught in today’s classrooms is pathetically 20th century. The keepers of those gates overwhelmingly think of contemporary African literature as the three A’s: Achebe, Adichie, Abani. When pressed, they add Habila. It is pathetic, really. The bulk of our literature is on the Internet and ancient professors are still photocopying what Achebe wrote in 1958.
* We are possibly witnessing the implosion of American capitalism (i.e., neoliberalism) and hopefully its empire as well. Liberals, those who are protesting today, did not protest the mass incarceration and forceful expulsion of individuals who had been in this country for decades, did not protest the drone wars and illegal killings and fomenting of civil wars and mass displacement under our auspices ever since 9/11. The Obama presidency is destined to go down in history as a footnote; we are simply picking up fascist steam now from where we left off in 2003, before the Iraq War started going awry. The world war that began on 9/11 has resumed. We never left it in the intervening years, because we never sought accountability. The case for moral disengagement from politics in the age of Trump. I found this a brutal, sobering read. Obviously we have to fight in whatever ways we can fight — but I’m sorry to say the predictions laid out here seem much more likely to me than any notion of heroic #Resistance on the part of institutional Democrats or liberals more generally.
* The basic critique of Bruenig et al is right: The leadership of the Democratic Party, nationally and in most states, has resisted acknowledging the failures of the Obama years.
* Now seems like a fine time to listen to Kurt Vonnegut’s sermon on nuclear annihilation.
* Keep America weird: Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge wins UFO Researcher Of The Year award.
* The Hunt for the Perfect Sugar.
* Why You Can’t Ever Call an Enslaved Woman a “Mistress.”
* Some investigative details on the horrifying wave of bomb threats targeting Jewish centers.
* If you’re really asking: yes.
* And it’s not all bad news: Black Holes Devour Stars a Lot More Frequently Than We Thought.
"What it feels like to be a college professor in 2017" shelfie pic.twitter.com/3jUUs5Q1EY
— Andrew Pilsch (@oncomouse) February 28, 2017
Written by gerrycanavan
March 1, 2017 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #TheResistance, academia, actually existing media bias, Africa, African literature, America, apocalypse, Are we living in a simulation?, artificial sweeteners, autocracy, Barack Obama, beautiful-soulism, black holes, Blink-182, C-3PO, capitalism, Captain America, Chinua Achebe, class struggle, collapse, defeatism, Democrats, disengagement, empire, fascism, futurity, How the University Works, it's not all bad news, liberals, literature, nuclear weapons, nuclearity, outer space, pessimism, politics, postcoloniality, protest, protocol droids, quietism, rape, rape culture, resistance, retreat, Sally Hemings, science, sermons, slavery, Star Wars, stars, sugar, Super Bowl, the media, the Oscars, the truth is out there, the university in ruins, this is fine, Thomas Jefferson, totalitarianism, UFOs, Vonnegut
Happening Now: Thursday Links!
* CFP: Resistance and Dissent in America.
* Another piece on Octavia Butler’s Unexpected Stories at LARoB: Noah Berlatsky on Octavia Butler’s “Unexpected Stories” and Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind.”
* Like a delinquent sibling, Mars is all we’ve got.
* An oral history of Galaxy Quest.
* Comedians in Cars Getting Cocaine.
* Rutgers Athletics: Robbing Academics to Fund Big Sports. Libraries Receive Shrinking Share of University Expenditures. Historically Black Colleges and Universities Face Uncertain Future. Predictors of depression, stress, and anxiety among non-tenure track faculty.
* The Tech Utopia Nobody Wants. The Banality of Dystopia. Soak the Rich: An exchange on capital, debt, and the future. Ancient Apocalypse films use the past to project a reactionary present into the future.
* ThinkProgress on the latest bad-faith nonsense ruling against Obamacare. Don’t worry, the ruling against heath care subsidies is going to be reversed. What the D.C. Circuit Got Wrong About Obamacare.
* BREAKING: Pay It Forward Plans Make Everything Worse.
* BREAKING: The death penalty is an obscene horror show.
* The way we live now: One out of every 21 New Yorkers is a millionaire.
* We turned the border into a war zone. Arizona’s Checkpoint Rebellion.
* Change we can believe in: The World Health Organization Wants to Legalize Sex Work and Drugs.
* Three Out of Four Newark Police Stops Are Unconstitutional. Prosecutors Are Reading Emails From Inmates to Lawyers.
* Emotional labor and the third machine age.
* Water is a human right, but who is considered a human being?
* What could possibly go wrong? DARPA Wants Wants to Fund Research into “Predatory” Bacteria.
* Parker Lewis Can’t Lose: Women And People Of Color Get Punished For Hiring To Increase Diversity, White Men Get Rewarded.
* They say time is the fire in which we burn: The Queen aging over time on bank-notes.
* The time the United States blew up a passenger plane—and tried to cover it up.
* ‘I withdraw’: A talk with climate defeatist Paul Kingsnorth. And it’s not all downside: Climate Change Could Threaten The Future Of Hockey.
* Wrapping up all the loose ends: Aliens Will Go To Hell So Let’s Stop Looking For Them.
* And someone in Congress edited the ‘Lizard People’ Wikipedia article. I knew. I always knew.
Written by gerrycanavan
July 24, 2014 at 8:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with "Is Health Care Reform Constitutional?", academia, adjunctification, adjuncts, air travel, airplanes, aliens, altac, America, ancient apocalypse, antibiotic resistant bacteria, apocalypse, Arizona, Arrested Development, austerity, bacteria, bad faith, Barack Obama, care work, CFPs, Christianity, climate change, college sports, Comedians in Cars Getting Cocaine, comedy, community, Congress, David Graeber, death penalty, debt, defeatism, depression, Detroit, dissent, diversity, drugs, Durham, dystopia, ecology, emotional labor, futurity, Galaxy Quest, Gone with the Wind, Hell, historically black colleges, hockey, horror, How the University Works, hydrofracking, immigration, Joel McHale, libraries, lizard people, Mars, medicine, military-industrial complex, millionaires, NCAA, neoliberalism, New York, New Yorker, Newark, NHL, Noah, nonsense, North Carolina, Octavia Butler, Oregon, Pay It Forward, police state, prison, prison-industrial complex, prostitution, public health, race, religion, resistance, robots, Rutgers, science, science fiction, sex work, Star Trek, Supreme Court, surveillance society, the Constitution, the courts, the law, the rich are different from you and me, they say time is the fire in which we burn, Thomas Piketty, Tony Hale, tuition, Unexpected Stories, Utopia, Veep, water, We're screwed