Posts Tagged ‘Die Hard’
Christmas Hangover Links!
* An excerpt from the conversation between Tim Morton and Jeff VanderMeer from my and Andy Hageman’s issue of Paradoxa is up at LARB. You can read our introduction too! The issue has been printed and will be on its way to subscribers (and available for purchase) soon.
* acting as if nothing terrible has happened
is a failed strategy you yell and this docility
has ruined and crushed us and afraid as I am
I cannot hold your vehemence against you
at this political moment as I watch you dig
your fingers into the rubble you’re sitting on
and you say maybe it’s impossible to believe
in politeness or civilization anymore…
* Ken Liu’s “Paper Menagerie” is the first story to hit the Hugo / Nebula / World Fantasy Award trifecta. Read it!
* The Christmas archives: Home Alone! Die Hard!
* Being a parent really is a second childhood: I’m even terrified of nuclear war again. “A tense new battle over nuclear arms erupts between Donald Trump and his staff.” Tweeting our way to Armageddon.
* How to Be a Guy: What I Learned My First Year Living as a Guy (at Age 34).
* Carrie Fischer is apparently in stable condition, but George Michael is gone.
* Ted Chiang talks adapting Arrival.
* Blade Runner 2 (“Blade Runnest“) and the Koreanization of the future.
* #TheResistance: American Mustache Institute takes a stand against Donald Trump’s anti-facial hair bias. John Bolton Vows Not to Shave Moustache.
* Today’s purge: Donald Trump is demanding the names of federal employees working to curb violent extremism.
* Trump to inherit more than 100 court vacancies, plans to reshape judiciary. Trump to dissolve Trump Foundation, having moved on to bigger grifts. And why not dissolve the UN while he’s at it?
* Reading Fake News, Pakistani Minister Directs Nuclear Threat at Israel.
* Neo-Nazi March Planned for Whitefish, Montana.
* The GOP Theocracy: Xmas vs Hanukkah Statements. And don’t worry: RNC: The ‘new King’ is not Trump.
* Looking back: The collapse of the Obama coalition. What could explain it? More data that couldn’t possibly explain it. Having presided over the catastrophic collapse of his party and the possible end of American democracy, Obama gives himself high marks. Why Did Planned Parenthood Supporters Vote Trump?
* 2016 wasn’t actually bad, he explained. I’ll give it one point, for this.
* We can end the war on milk in our time.
* Prime Minister Dreamboat can’t wait to Keystone XL again.
*A consummate bullshit artist, Bucky Fuller’s career was built on failure, if not outright fraud. With few of his ideas achieving commercial success, he amounted to nothing more than a hand-waving proponent of outlandish notions. Worse still, he was an aggressive manager of his own profile and patents, an authoritarian technocrat who sought not students but compliant disciples to disseminate his muddled messages. The lynchpin of this view: even the geodesic dome, Fuller’s greatest “success,” rested on a concept borrowed (to be charitable) from an aspiring student sculptor. Buckminster Fuller in the 21st Century.
* John Williams Hasn’t Seen a Single Star Wars Movie.
* Don’t make the joke, don’t make the joke: Sex robots will ‘come a lot sooner than you think’, scientist claims.
* Elsewhere in the rise of the machines.
* A&E Cancels KKK Docuseries Following Criticism. That whole network needs a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
* BREAKING: All pro sports are bad.
* Actually, my speciality is evil ethics.
* Gasp! Colleges Respond to Racist Incidents as if Their Chief Worry Is Bad PR, Studies Find.
* They did it: They found the worst Star Wars take.
* The arc of history is long, but it can kick over its own head.
* Meanwhile, in Japan: Can the Emperor abdicate?
* And wherever we are on the political spectrum: let’s give the giant meteor a chance.
Happy Weekend Links!
* CFP: Octavia E. Butler Legacy and Society Call for Papers.
* I want to complain to the studio execs who commissioned the current season of “21st century”; your show is broken.
* But maybe a big reboot is coming! Astronomers may have found giant alien ‘megastructures’ orbiting star near the Milky Way.
* The Many, Many Times Astronomers Mistook Mundane Phenomena for Aliens. Cult of the cosmic — How space travel became the unofficial religion of the USSR.
* Another potential redirection for the series: Women who sniff this Hawaiian mushroom have spontaneous orgasms.
* “To call for capitalism to pay its way is to call for the abolition of capitalism.”
* World federalism isn’t dead, it’s never even been tried!
* The Alphabet of Assassination.
* US intelligence knew bombed Afghan site was a hospital.
* Potentially major finding: Huntington’s disease protein controls movement of precious cargo inside cells, study finds.
* Colleges Are Spending 7 Times More on Athletics Than They Are on Academics.
* Speaking my language: A strong El Niño may mean a warmer, drier winter in southern Wisconsin.
* World’s most depressing tour of LA planned for October 21, 2015. Come to Marquette English’s BTTF events instead!
* Watch Doc and Marty travel to the real 2015, where everything is terrible.
* You can time travel with Marquette another way, too: here’s a sneak preview of our Spring 2016 course offerings.
* Scenes from the class struggle against that one weird Cornell ad: 1, 2.
* First-year composition, in other words, is more than a course in grammar and rhetoric. Beyond these, it is a course in ethical communication, offering students opportunities to learn and practice the moral and intellectual virtues that Aristotle identified in his Nicomachean Ethics as the foundation for a good life. And that’s why America is such a paradise today.
* Good news: it’s your spouse who’s ruining your career, not your kids.
* The dark art of curriculum review.
By the same token, I know that an emphasis under a major has the same student-learning outcomes as the parent major, so I can create a new program without expanding the number of assessment reports that I have to do. This just means that a major is basically a magical bag of holding for emphases: I can fit as many emphases as I want inside a major without becoming encumbered by more paperwork!
* Famous quotes, the way a woman would have to say them during a meeting.
* A judgmental map of Milwaukee.
* When Marquette tore down a historic mansion to build the AMU.
* I’m sure the policy is being written as we speak: When May I Shoot a Student? Guns on Campus: A Terrible Idea.
* Pretty good selfie-based horror short.
* Die Hard was the gold standard of unprequelizable films. Kudos to all involved in this important project.
* Wayne Simmons, a regular Fox News commentator who claimed to have worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for almost three decades, was arrested on Thursday for allegedly fabricating his agency experience.
* Through the Plexiglass: A History of Museum Dioramas.
* How the NSA broke cryptography.
* Huntington Library and UC Riverside teaming up to hire humanities professors.
* Why Google Ngrams are garbage.
* How The Black Dot Campaign Grew Into A Dangerous Viral Hoax.
* People being shot by toddlers on a weekly basis in the US.
* Artists got ‘Homeland is racist’ Arabic graffiti into the latest episode of ‘Homeland.’
* CCP Adjunct Professor, Black Lives Matter Activist Suspended After Speaking at Rally.
* Aunt Loses Lawsuit Against 12-Year-Old Nephew Who Allegedly Broke Her Wrist With a Hug. But there’s more! Aunt Didn’t Want to Sue Nephew, Lawyer Says, Insurance Company Left Her “No Choice.”
* Žižek, social reformist: The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make do with what is possible.’ The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.
* I’m so glad this turned out to be the case: Standing Desks Are Mostly Bullshit.
* These Are the American Cities That Could Be Buried Underwater by 2200.
* The Man Who Builds Luxury Bomb Shelters for Paranoid One Percenters.
* Jeb makes an almost pathetically transparent bid for my endorsement.
* Sorry!, and the Nature of Suffering.
* Just don’t tell Shia: FX is turning Y: The Last Man into a TV series.
* And teach the controversy: Your Favorite Band Sucks.
Wednesday Links
* There’s an Earthlike planet in Alpha Centauri. This is the best news I’ve ever heard and I’m halfway to my space victory already I just have to research Fusion and Ecology.
* Compared to this the discovery of a planet with four suns and another all-diamond planet just seems boring.
* The other day they drove the Space Shuttle through Los Angeles.
* University of Phoenix to close 115 locations.
* Like Lee Bessette I’m pretty skeptical of this move towards a “teaching track.” Has establishing multiple tiers like this ever improved labor conditions?
* World’s biggest geoengineering experiment ‘violates’ UN rules. I’ve been fascinated for years that large-scale geoengineering projects are now within the reach not just of nations, but of individuals. Things are going to get interesting, in the “ancient Chinese curse” sense.
* Title suggestions for Future Die Hard Movies.
* The Problem with Presidential Precedent.
* Will California end the death penalty this year? They should.
* Firefly animated spinoff? I really think at this point I’d rather just be happy with what we got than ride a bad version of the thing I love into the ground. #geekheresy
* The Strange Death of Alfalfa.
* Debt Collector Illegally Seizes Disabled Vet’s Savings, Tells Him ‘You Should Have Died.’
* How Buffy Predicted Geek Misogyny. I’m not sure predicted is really the right tense here. What an Academic Who Wrote Her Dissertation on Trolls Thinks of Violentacrez. Michael Brutsch, ViolentAcrez, and Online Pseudonyms. On Ruining Violentacrez’ Life. I’m told r/creepshots is already back, masquerading as a “fashion police” subreddit.
* Gallup and Josh Marshall teases crisis as a real divergence seems possible between the popular and the electoral vote.
* Some debate highlights: a brutal on-the-spot fact-check that will be part of presidential debate prep for years to come. How epistemic closure hurts a candidate. The binder story that launched a thousand memes wasn’t even true. Leaked Debate Agreement Shows Both Obama and Romney are Sniveling Cowards. And whoever is elected, the planet loses. What an embarrassing spectacle for the people of the future to witness. Not that it’s anything new.
* Trove of Kafka Documents Must Be Released, Israeli Judge Rules. You can pick them up at the Castle…
Gerry Canavan 