Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘Earwolf

Another Very Busy Couple of Weeks, Another Absolutely Too Long Linkpost

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* ACLA 2016: The 21st Century Novel at the Limit. Feminism and New Generations of Old Media. Aesthetic Distance in a Global Economy.

* And one for NEMLA: Women Authors from the Great War.

Special Issue CFP: Queer Female Fandom.

* You broke peer review. Yes, I mean you.

* Graduate students are employees when that’s bad for them, and students when that’s bad for them.

* Last year, Yale paid about $480 million to private equity fund managers as compensation — about $137 million in annual management fees, and another $343 million in performance fees, also known as carried interest — to manage about $8 billion, one-third of Yale’s endowment. In contrast, of the $1 billion the endowment contributed to the university’s operating budget, only $170 million was earmarked for tuition assistance, fellowships and prizes.

Why financial aid might make college more expensive.

* Scenes from the schadenfreude at UIUC.

* TurnItIn doesn’t even work.

First, Do No Harm? The Johns Hopkins System’s Toxic Legacy in Baltimore.

* SF short of the month: the found footage / time travel narrative “Timelike.” “Suicidium” is pretty good too. Both are very Black Mirror.

* Salon’s Michael Berry interviewed me and a bunch of other SF scholars recently on the greatness of Dune.

* No more fire, the water next time: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Global Warming and White Supremacy.

* Hobbes v. Snoopy.

* Science fiction and class struggle, in Jacobin.

* Precrime comes to Pennsylvania.

* Seven habits of unsuccessful grad students. Job market secrets from the English department at U. Iowa. How to avoid awkward interactions during your tenure year.

* Clinton’s ed plan poised to continue the bad disruptivation of the Obama administration. Yay!

Northwestern Football Players Cannot Form Union, NLRB Rules. Former Berkeley Football Player Sues Over Concussions. UNC-Chapel Hill Reports New Possible NCAA Violations.

* Coca-Cola and the denialists.

* Life extension and prison.

* Abandoned college campuses of Second Life.

Yes, your gadgets are ineluctably engineering your doom.

* What If Stalin Had Computers?

* The NLRB might (finally) shut down the temp economy.

On average, it’ll take four minutes for you to get to the end of this piece, and quite frankly you should be spending those four minutes asleep.

Crowdfunding Is Driving A $196 Million Board Game Renaissance.

* Sesame Street and neoliberalism, but like for real this time.

Why 35 screenwriters worked on The Flintstones movie.

Yes, We Have “No Irish Need Apply.”

* Epigenetics: Study of Holocaust survivors finds trauma passed on to children’s genes.

* Evergreen headline watch: “Michigan Fails to Keep Promise to Native Americans.”

UC Davis workers: “We exposed students to asbestos.”

* Understanding Neal Stephenson.

* The Bucks as case study for the stadium scam. Bucks affiliate the Biloxi Shuckers and their endless tour.

They had no inkling about what was really going on: Gubb was a serial fraudster who made a living by renting houses, claiming to be a tenant, then illegally subletting rooms to as many residents as he could cram in—almost always young women desperate for a piece of downtown living.

How a jerk scams a free quadruple espresso at Starbucks 365 days a year.

* US and Boeing developing a targeted EMP weapon. Looking forward to the surplus sale.

* Another car remotely hacked while driving. If a Cyberattack Causes a Car Crash, Who Is Liable?

How Much Of California’s Drought Was Caused By Climate Change?

By 2100, Earth Will Have an Entirely Different Ocean. You probably can’t undo ocean acidification even if you find a way to pull carbon out of the air.

* The climate hackers.

* The ice bucket challenge may have been a much bigger deal than you thought.

In just eight years, Pinellas County School Board members turned five schools in the county’s black neighborhoods into some of the worst in Florida.

* The bail trap.

* The end of Columbia House.

* An oral history of Six Feet Under.

* Death penalty abolition in Connecticut.

* Being Stephen Colbert.

* Happy Earth Overshoot Day.

* The new Cold War is a Corn War.

* Donald Trump and fascism. This is the moment when Donald Trump officially stopped being funny.

* Writing the second half of the Harry Potter series replacing Cedric Diggory with a Slytherin.

Banksy’s Dismaland.

* Twilight of the Bomb.

* Interactive widget: How to fudge your science.

* Science proves parenthood is a serious bummer.

How We Could Detect an Alien Apocalypse From Earth.

* Who mourns for the Washington Generals?

* Well, it makes more sense than the official story: ‘Aliens prevented nuclear war on Earth’: Former NASA astronaut makes unexpected claim.

* Is Howl the Netflix of podcasts? Watch Earwolf’s user base revolt.

* The kids today and the end of funny. The unfunny business of college humor.

Racial Bias Affects How Doctors Do Their Jobs. Here’s How To Fix It.

* Here comes Star Wars Land.

NBC chairman threatens ALF reboot if Coach reboot is successful. Just give them what they want! Pay anything!

Controlling the Narrative: Harper Lee and the Stakes of Scandal.

* Hell, with same-day delivery.

Locked in Solitary at 14: Adult Jails Isolate Youths Despite Risk.

* I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave.

Mars One Is Still Completely Full of Shit.

A Troll in the Lost City of the Dead.

In 2010, anonymous emails started popping up in the inboxes of Department of the Interior officials. The messages accuse museums across the country of failing to deal with their massive collections of Native American bones. Those remains are there illegally, the emails allege, and should be returned to the tribes to which they belong. They’re all signed “T.D. White.”

* Science proves the universe is slowly dying

* How DC has played Suicide Squad all wrong.

* The law, in its majestic equality, permits both rich and poor to sleep outside.

Dutch Artists Celebrate George Orwell’s Birthday By Putting Party Hats On Surveillance Cameras.

Ancient whistle language uses whole brain for long-distance chat.

* “We’re Fighting Killer Robots the Wrong Way.”

An early YA novel gets lost in the Freaky Friday canon.

* My dad was right! Social Security really is a Ponzi scheme.

Don’t freak out, but scientists think octopuses ‘might be aliens’ after DNA study.

* Don’t bring your dogs to work.

* Today in Wikipedia hoaxes.

* Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal continues to overthink Superman in the best possible way.

Architects are trying to raise $2.8 billion to build this city from Lord of the Rings.

You Know Who Hates Drones? Bears. They love pools though.

* Don’t say it unless you mean it.

* And we shall Truffle Shuffle no more forever.

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Written by gerrycanavan

August 23, 2015 at 10:13 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Weekend Links! So Many!

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Harris Wittels has died. I really loved his appearances on Earwolf, but the one I keep thinking about is his appearance on “You Made It Weird” last November, where he spoke about his addiction at length. The humblebrag.

* Oliver Sacks writes about his terminal cancer diagnosis in the New York Times.

* The Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference began today. This year’s theme is “Animacy” and both Lee Edelman and Lauren Berlant are keynotes.

* TNI has a great excerpt from the beginning of Creepiness.

* A President’s Day remembrance of Ona Judge.

* Neill Blomkamp is making an Alien. ​The Man In The High Castle Gets Series Order From Amazon. Amazon should greenlight this next.

* The City and the City may be a BBC drama. I would have said it was unfilmable, but sure, let’s give it a try.

* Boston’s winter from hell. What the massive snowfall in Boston tells us about global warming.

A Siberian blast—seriously, this air is from Siberia—has turned the eastern U.S. into an icebox featuring the most extreme cold of anywhere on Earth right now. Looking ahead, there’s plenty more where that came from.

* Rudy Giuliani, still horrible.

Melodrama is so powerful, then, because by promising heroic emancipation from terrorist villainy, it implies that US citizens can overcome their feelings of diminished political agency and lost freedom. Melodrama promises that both the US state, and individual Americans, will soon experience heroic freedom by winning the War on Terror. They will cast off their feelings of vulnerability and weakness through heroic action—even when the villain they attack is not the primary cause of their powerlessness or suffering.

* The fastest way to find Waldo. You’re welcome.

waldo-ga-optimal-search-path-680x442

Would you like to understand how the “new” Harper Lee novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” came to be billed as a long-lost, blockbuster sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird” — one of the definitive books of the American 20th century — when, by all the known facts, it’s an uneven first draft of the famous novel that was never considered for publication? Would you like to get a glimpse into how clever marketing and cryptic pronouncements have managed to produce an instant bestseller, months before anyone has read it?

* Republicans think this is their moment to kill higher education in America. And they might be right.

Congressman Says We Don’t Need Education Funding Because ‘Socrates Trained Plato On A Rock.’ Checks out.

* The outlook for the rest of Illinois isn’t much better. We Need Syriza in Illinois.

* That there are any homeless children anywhere in the country is an unthinkable national tragedy.

* Save the Wisconsin Idea. You may have to save it from its saviors.

* The inexorable tuition explosion that will result is proving to be politically untenable, and Walker has moved immediately to head it off, consequences be damned. And UW leadership, having adopted a posture of supporting the public authority on principled grounds, is left in the politically deadly position of having to fight for the power to raise tuition arbitrarily.

Meanwhile let’s kill all the state parks too.

* Meanwhile Milwaukee is one of America’s poorest cities. Though it still has one thing going for it.

* “Scott Walker says he consults with God, but his office can’t provide documents to prove it.”

* Thank goodness we were able to take all that valuable real estate we were wasting on schools and turn it profitable again.

Ideology Seen as Factor in Closings in University of North Carolina System. No! It can’t be!

New Education Initiative Replaces K-12 Curriculum With Single Standardized Test.

* The best and worst presidents. The hottest U.S. presidents. The beardiest presidents.

* Mother Jones loves Minnesota governor Mark Dayton.

* Gender and J School.

* The visiting professor scam.

We don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.

* “The academic atmosphere, produced mainly by the humanities, is the only atmosphere in which pure science can flourish.”

* Academic interviews are horrible, mealtime edition.

Oklahoma Lawmakers Vote Overwhelmingly To Ban Advanced Placement U.S. History.

* The end of Miami.

* The West Coast cargo strike.

* Charting the Bechdel Test.

* DWYL, porn industry edition.

* Defund DHS.

What is going to happen to all of those African-languages-speaking, archive-obsessed, genre-discovering graduate students? Listen, I have some terrible news.

* The death cult called the MLA wants you to have hope for some reason though. Really strange study.

Florida Passes Plan For Racially-Based Academic Goals.

* Meanwhile, affirmative action for men in college admissions.

* “A Superbug Nightmare Is Playing Out at an LA Hospital.”

In the current movement against white supremacy and the police we can see the beginnings of a new Black Arts Movement.

But one of America’s ugliest secrets is that our own whistleblowers often don’t do so well after the headlines fade and cameras recede. The ones who don’t end up in jail like Manning, or in exile like Snowden, often still go through years of harassment and financial hardship. And while we wait to see if Loretta Lynch is confirmed as the next Attorney General, it’s worth taking a look at how whistleblowers in America fared under the last regime.

Boston Using Prison Labor To Shovel Heaps Of Snow In Frigid Temperatures For Pennies.

* Revealing scenes from the deranged thinking in the tech industry.

* SMBC messing with the primal forces.

* LARoB reviews Kelly Link’s Get in Trouble and Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary and Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1.

* Clarissa Explains White Supremacy.

* Iceland begins to jail bankers.

* “College Apologizes for Way It Gave M&Ms to Children.”

* “Can There Be Too Many Museums?”

* “Which sexual positions are more likely to break your penis?”

Giant Ron English art-book: Status Factory.

* An excerpt from David Graeber’s The Rules of Utopia.

* Oral histories of the early days of the HIV epidemic.

* National Adjunct Walkout Day is growing near. It’s Time to Review Your Adjunct Employment Policies.

* Trying to create a promotion track outside the tenure stream at Denver.

* The adjunct unionization movement. And more on that.

* Campus cops prepare for National Adjunct Walkout Day.

* Here’s a thing about @OccupyMLA that uses me as its stooge for part of it. Yay?

* Interesting Kickstarter: “Pioneers of African-American Cinema.”

* “DoJ report on Montana justice: Don’t get raped in Missoula, even if you’re only five years old.”

Justice Department ‘seriously examining’ Ferguson race case.

* Another piece on the rise of the Title IX industry. Provocative Harvard Law Review forum on Title IX overreach. However bad we’re doing, though, we can certainly always do worse.

Perhaps with each tuition bill, students should receive a breakdown of how their dollars are spent.

* Academic hiring: The Trading Places hypothesis.

How Arizona State Reinvented Free-Throw Distraction.

* Best wishes, Ed Balls.

* The Oscars and racism. The Oscars and sexism.

* The Brazilian town where the Confederacy lives on.

* DC Comics is bringing back Prez, this time as a teenage girl who gets elected president by Twitter.

Holding Out For a Heroine: On Being a Woman and Loving Star Wars.

10 Worst Misconceptions About Medieval Life You’d Get From Fantasy Books.

* A rare piece from NRO worth linking: The Right-Wing Scam Machine.

Former Nazi Guard Charged with 170,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder. Take the plea deal!

The CIA asked me about controlling the climate – this is why we should worry.

To misappropriate the prophecy of another technological sage: the post-human dystopia is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

* Mark Bould has another post on Jupiter Ascending trying to wrangle its treatment of gender. Lots of good discussion of Princess Leia here too.

* Plans to whip us up into another invasion in the Middle East are proceeding apace.

* When horrific child abuse becomes quirk.

* Florida police officer: “Planting evidence and lying in your reports are just part of the game.”

* Cuteness in history. Why when you see something cute you (sometimes) want to destroy it.

Another Reason To Worry About The Measles.

Wearable Workplace “Mood Monitors” Are About To Become A Thing.

* A People’s History of Franklin.

* Asexuals and Demisexuals in Wired.

* Five-alarm nerd alert: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has begun its final arc.

* Settlers of Catan: The Movie.

* And in case that’s not enough here’s some more proof we as a nation are still capable of great things.

clownarmy1

Written by gerrycanavan

February 20, 2015 at 11:37 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Friday Links!

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I’ve pointed out before that even as academic institutions are more and more distrusted, professors oddly retain a good deal of public respect. We have it because we’re free: free to say the unpopular thing, free to teach the passionate course, free to study what we think needs studying. To be free means we have to occupy the whole possibility space that waits for our explorations, and take not just our students but our publics along for the ride. We have to keep a trust as well as walk the paths we see before us.

Researcher loses job at NSF after government questions her role as 1980s activist.

* On Campus, Grenade Launchers, M-16s, and Armored Vehicles.

At least 60 institutions have acquired M-16s through the program. Arizona State University holds the most, with 70 in its arsenal, followed by Florida International University and the University of Maryland with 50 M-16s each. Central Florida received its grenade launcher in 2008; Hinds acquired its in 2006.

* In a never-before-released thesis, Reagan’s FEMA director discussed the potential internment of millions of blacks in concentration camps.

The Islamic Roots Of Science Fiction.

Here’s How Global Warming Is Already Worsening Extreme Deluges In The U.S. Trees Are Dying From ‘No Obvious Cause’ In Rocky Mountains, Report Says. A Major Accounting Firm Just Ran the Numbers on Climate Change.

* On ISIS: Where Is Obama’s Exit Strategy?

Once again our country is invited to support the “long war” described by key Pentagon officials as lasting as long as 50 to 80 years. It’s probably both unwinnable and unaffordable, but no president and few politicians have the political ability to acknowledge failure and end it.

So they escalate enough to pass it along to their successor. War on an installment plan.

Every American President in the past quarter century has now gone on television during prime time to tell the nation and the world that he has decided to bomb Iraq. Last night was Barack Obama’s turn, and it was a vexing performance.

* What Do We Save When We Save the Internet? We cannot champion Network Neutrality without admitting that the Internet is no Utopia.

* Reddit made over $100,000 off stolen celebrity nudes.

* U2, Apple and rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail. There’s really only one cure.

Update: All Clear. The suspect has been located and the reported weapon has been identified as an umbrella.

A Brief History of Typographic Snark and the Failed Crusade for an Irony Mark.

* The kids are all right: Millennials Are Reading More Books Than You Think They Are. Why Indie Bookstores Are on the Rise Again.

Congressional Hearing Slams Feasibility Of Commercial Asteroid Mining. “The American Space Technology for Exploring Resource Opportunities in Deep Space Act.” You dicks.

Everyone Knows Hedge Funds Are a Ripoff.

* Scientists warn of faulty Wisconsin wolf estimates. Learn to count, wolves!

* “Why English Majors are the Hot New Hires.”

* What Is Hope? Alex Trebek Is Bringing Back His Mustache.

* Dutch Girl Fakes a Trip to South East Asia.

Archaeologists Have Made An Incredible Discovery At Stonehenge.

* The Cold War University is back! The Real Story Behind Canada’s Sudden Interest In Arctic Archaeology.

* The Soviets sent stray dogs to conquer space. This is what happened next.

China Is Mass-Producing Islands To Extend Its Strategic Borders.

What Happens to “Holdouts” Who Refuse to Sell Their Homes to Developers?

* Here’s What’s Becoming Of America’s Dead Shopping Malls.

* Wearable tech as triumph for bosses.

* Interview With a Time Traveler.

So, ironically, if we had done absolutely nothing in response to 9/11 aside from hold funerals and shake our heads in disbelief, we would have been no less safe than we are now after two useless wars, trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost, and a decade of taking off our shoes for domestic flights.

* Another roundup of all the many things that are more likely to kill you than a terrorist.

* And Comedian Joe Mande remembers brands remembering 9/11. Never forget.

Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday

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* Read the article on professor-mothers that set Twitter aflame. Guaranteed to be the worst thing you read this week!

* No one can figure out how Borislav Ivanov is cheating in chess. Via Boing Boing.

* The rise and fall of the American arcade.

The Earwolf podcasting network (beloved home of Comedy Bang! Bang!) has added live mimages to its offerings.

* The intentional fallacy: Kathryn Bigelow says Zero Dark Thirty’s fine because she’s a lifelong pacifist.

* Single charts that explain everything.

screen-capture

* #nodads: California convicts twelve-year-old boy for murdering his neo-Nazi father at ten-years-old.

Finally, proof that all movie trailers use the same color palette.

Todd Glass looks back on a year since “the Marc Maron thing.”

Here Are Obama’s 23 Executive Actions on Gun Violence. 11. Nominate an ATF director. That’ll solve it!

You can carry a loaded firearm into national parks and can tuck your rifle and ammunition into stowed luggage on Amtrak trains. Federal product-safety law subjects everything from toys to toasters to safety inspection and recalls, but exempts guns. Little-known laws shed light on NRA influence.

* I know people will believe anything, but I have to believe Sandy Hook Trutherism is almost entirely a media phenomenon.

* And when the GOP has lost the Koch brothers…