All the Weekend Links, Existential Despair on the Side

* In case you missed it: the call for papers for SFFTV‘s special issue on the Mad Max franchise. And our Star Trek special issue is still open, too!

* Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment.

* Horror in Charleston.

* What that means is that in South Carolina, the Confederate flag abides by its own rules. While governors—as well as the president—can usually order that all state and national flags within their jurisdiction be flown at half-staff, this one is exempt. Instead, the Confederate flag’s location can be changed only by a two-thirds vote by both branches of the General Assembly. “In South Carolina, the governor does not have legal authority to alter the flag,” said a press secretary for Haley. “Only the General Assembly can do that.” Take down the flag.

* Confederate flag in Orlando to be burned in symbolic burial.

* Denmark Vesey, Forgotten Hero. A recent flashback.

* Meet Debbie Dills, Florist Who Called in Tip that Led to Dylann Roof’s Arrest.

* It’s Juneteenth.

* We still need to talk about white male pathology.

* The Treasury is going to put a woman on the $10. That’ll fix it!

* Poverty and the brain.

* What Would Happen If We ALL Stopped Paying Our Student Loans, Together?

* California Says Uber Driver Is Employee, Not a Contractor.

* Tech isn’t really making a “sharing” economy. So what is it making? The Servitude Bubble.

* Reasonable Doubts About the Jury System.

* Hemingway’s rough drafts.

* We Regret to Inform You That in 4 Days You and Your Family Will Be Deported to Haiti.

* Women’s soccer will only achieve greater growth when we have a FIFA not run by sexist men.

* Performance-Based Funding Can Be Fickle, One University’s Close Call Shows. Florida State would have lost $16.7 million if its median graduate had earned just $400 less.

* 7 Seriously Bad Ideas That Rule Higher Education.

* “When a non-tenure-track lecturer position is the fairy tale reward for a PhD and more than 7 years on the job market, it’s time to break things.”

* The Cult of Jurassic Park.

* The sheep look up: don’t drink the water edition.

* Did abortion cause the drought? I say teach the controversy.

* It’s a weird, weird world: Obama is going to be on WTF. I’ll never accept this is real.

* Theses on Hating.

11. Enthusiasts have hitherto only loved the world in various ways; the point is to hate it (too).

* Precarity rising.

* Maladministration killed Sweet Briar, says former board member.

* The Best And Worst Airlines, Airports And Flights, Summer 2015 Update.

* ‘Screen Time’ For Kids Is Probably Fine.

* Your Children Won’t Be Able To Live In Space, Without A Major Upgrade.

* Another pedagogy gimmick, but at least it’s cheap: roleplaying games.

* Science explains why you hate the word “moist.”

* There Have Only Been 9 Days This Year When Police Didn’t Kill Someone.

* Another piece on the trolley problem and the self-driving car.

* Vermont vs. the Affordable Care Act.

* Euthanasia and non-terminal illness.

* Harris Wittels’s sister remembers her brother.

* SethBling wrote a program made of neural networks and genetic algorithms called MarI/O that taught itself how to play Super Mario World. This six-minute video is a pretty easy-to-understand explanation of the concepts involved.

* X-Men and the spectrum.

* Making the world safe from Marjane Satrapi.

* Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro in conversation.

* A people’s history of Singled Out.

* Game of Peanuts.

* Everything you want, in the worst possible way: please god don’t ever let Captain Worf happen.

* No pricey pension plans, some argued. No promotions based solely on seniority. No set hours for a given workweek. No prohibitions against layoffs. Unions! Catch the fever!

* The arc of history is long, but Mitch Horwitz is doing a Netflix comedy series with Maria Bamford.

* Didn’t we do this one already? All six Star Wars films at once.

* And if you want to know why there’s no future for our civilization, just read this.

Weekend Links

* Because you demanded it! The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction is now available in Kindle format as well for just $9.99.

* SFRA CFP: “The SF We Don’t (Usually) See: Suppressed Histories, Liminal Voices, Emerging Media.” June 25-27 at Stony Brook.

* Mark Bould on African Science Fiction 101.

* The Moral Hazard of Big Data.

* Racism, monuments, and historical memory.

* The Anthropocene Project. An Encyclopedia (2014–).

* The Crusades: Teach the controversy!

* Friendship Is Complicated: Art, commerce, and the battle for the soul of My Little Pony.

* “In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded anonymously, but the boys outscored the girls when graded by teachers who knew their names.”

* Now, a union that’s been rapidly organizing adjuncts around the country thinks that number should quintuple. Last night, on a conference call with organizers across the country, the SEIU decided to extend the franchise with a similar aspirational benchmark: A “new minimum compensation standard” of $15,000. Per course. Including benefits. To put this in perspective, a tenure-track professor earning $50,000 on a 4/4 (100% teaching, no research, no service) is paid $6250 a course — so this is definitely a realistic target.

* 12 Tech Fads in Higher Ed.

* Auburn Approves $14-Million Scoreboard, College Football’s Largest.

* Scott Walker thinks my university has fat to trim. Yet my department is barely scraping by.

* Scott Walker amends the Girl Scout Oath. From otherscottwalkeredits.tumblr.com.

* The disjuncture then comes when I consider how we are encouraged to carry ourselves in the academy. I feel a lot of pressure to professionalize, and the prescriptions for professionalization often run counter to my way of being in the world. I also struggle with the directive that I am supposed to professionalize my students. I don’t hold with the idea that I should train students to be better workers, because the content of “better” — more obedient, more efficient, whatever — runs counter to what I want to teach. In my feminist theories courses, I say, “Yeah, I  just gave you assignments with deadlines! But I also want to say to you, what’s so great about work? Why do we believe work is supposed to be edifying? Should we always have to be productive? Why do we imagine work as something that gives us dignity? What if it’s just wearing us down?” My history in punk totally informs these attempts to practice other ways of being in a classroom, and other ways of being a professor.

* Jury Awards $400,000 to Professor Laid Off by Clark Atlanta U. This is an amazing result especially considering that there are 53 other people eligible for a payout.

* Thousands Of Dominicans Woke Up This Week Without Citizenship In Any Country.

* How Science Fiction Will Help Us Go to Mars.

* Paging J. Walter Weatherman: Family arrested in fake kidnapping plot to teach 6-year-old stranger danger, police say.

* And here is where we see the true malignant force that drives the Internet: It is the purest mechanism yet through which everyone can express every idiot opinion they have about everything to everyone else.

* Ableism, neurotypicality, and the vaccine debate.

* Mississippi, #1 in vaccination. The Anti-Vaccine Movement Should Be Ridiculed, Because Shame Works.

* Rufus King named one of the most challenging high schools in America.

* We Can Now Build Autonomous Killing Machines. And That’s a Very, Very Bad Idea. I say teach the controversy!

* Dibs on the screenplay: Half the DNA on the NYC Subway Matches No Known Organism.

* Science is magic: Engineers Developing a Retainer That Could Let the Hearing Impaired Experience Sound With Their Tongue.

* Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is now yielding exciting results.

* The Beginning of Mein Kampf, as Told by Coca-Cola. Alas, nothing gold can stay.

* Why every member of the crew should have been courtmartialed after Generations.

* Parents who raise their kids without religion are doing just fine, studies say, possibly even better. Overall, not believing in God seems to make people and their offspring more tolerant. Less racist. Less sexist. Enviro-friendly. And their kids care less about what’s cool, which—say it with me—only makes them cooler.

* Teen mom sends breast milk to baby she gave up for adoption. Dad Refuses to Give Up Newborn Son With Down Syndrome. Armenia, we need to talk.

* How Men’s Rights Leader Paul Elam Turned Being A Deadbeat Dad Into A Moneymaking Movement.

* DC Comics will rebrand, again. More details.

* Fewer Top Graduates Want to Join Teach for America. I’ve seen a lot of celebration of this fact that seems not to see the improving economy as a factor.

* Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews: This interactive chart lets you explore the words used to describe male and female teachers in about 14 million reviews from RateMyProfessor.com. Is the Professor Bossy or Brilliant? Much Depends on Gender.

* Canada’s Highest Court Affirms The Right To Doctor-Assisted Suicide.

* We Are Watching Brian Williams’ Entire Career Implode.

* And it’s a little unbelievable that it’s taken this long: Netflix reportedly developing new live-action series based on Legend of Zelda.