Posts Tagged ‘famine’
Wednesday Links!
* People are figuring out that the “anthology” era of Star Wars was a bad idea. And a chilling report from the set of Han Solo: Ron Howard Once Defended Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Calling It “Truly Amazing.”
* Behind the Scenes of Disney’s Donald Trump ‘Hall of Presidents’ Drama.
* In the same vein, the proliferating but ever meaningless distinctions between the “bad” Uber and the “good” Lyft have obscured how destructive the rise of ride-sharing has been for workers and the cities they live in. The predatory lawlessness that prevails inside Valley workplaces scales up and out. Both companies entered their markets illegally, without regard to prevailing wages, regulations, or taxes. Like Amazon, which found a way to sell books without sales tax, this turned out to be one of the many illegal boons.
* Democrats and the working class.
* Senate postpones health care vote as critical mass of Republicans defect. Keep calling! Tens of thousands per year. Trumpcare kills.
* This chart shows the stunning trade-off at the heart of the GOP health plan.
* Democrats Help Corporate Donors Block California Health Care Measure, and Progressives Lose Again.
* Destroying the university in Illinois.
* Chaffetz calls for $2,500 legislator/month housing stipend.
Buy fewer iPhones, Jason https://t.co/4Hr5OdLRl2
— Jenna Ruddock (@natlsciservice) June 27, 2017
* Sometimes ideology critique just writes itself.
* And Now Director Jon Watts Claims Peter Parker Was In Iron Man 2.
* Someone’s Trying to Adapt Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series Again.
* I say teach the controversy.
* As Lake Chad vanishes, seven million people are on the brink of starvation.
* The inside story of how TMZ quietly became America’s most potent pro-Trump media outlet.
* Trinity Suspends Targeted Professor. And U Delaware. Why can’t free speech advocates ever defend adjunct professors and people of color? Stop firing professors for having controversial views, says academic.
* But as the land enters its 120th year in the family, the Allens are struggling to hold on to it. Because of ambiguities surrounding the land’s title, there is no primary owner of the property; all of the heirs of the original owners—and there are more than 100 known heirs—are legally co-owners. As such, the land is classified as “heirs’ property,” a designation that makes it vulnerable to being sold without the family’s full consent. As the Allens attempt to overcome a stacked legal system—exacerbated by corrupt lawyers and predatory developers—they are at the center of a decades-long fight to retain black-owned land across the South.
* Social media won’t let toxic grudges die.
* Trump’s EPA won’t let toxic pesticides die.
* Carbon in Atmosphere Is Rising, Even as Emissions Stabilize.
* Amazing the stories that don’t even rate as scandals in this trainwreck administration.
* As predicted, the Super Nintendo Classic is on its way.
NINTENDO: We have announced the SNES Classic. It contains some of the best games ever made. We have made only one. May the odds be ever in y
— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) June 26, 2017
* The Tory-DUP Deal Proves the Magic Money Tree Is Real.
* Lynching and the sick history of the death penalty.
In Sumterville, Florida, in 1902, a black man named Henry Wilson was convicted of murder in a trial that lasted just two hours and forty minutes. To mollify the mob of armed whites that filled the courtroom, the judge promised a death sentence that would be carried out by public hanging—despite state law prohibiting public executions. Even so, when the execution was set for a later date, the enraged mob threatened, “We’ll hang him before sundown, governor or no governor.” In response, Florida officials moved up the date, authorized Wilson to be hanged before the jeering mob, and congratulated themselves on having “avoided” a lynching.
* Huge Star Trek: Discovery scoop: the entire series is a Holodeck program Riker is running during a commercial break.
* When you don’t want your hip retro soundtrack to be scooped.
* “Nuclear power plant faces backlash after choosing interns by way of a bikini competition.” Photos at the link, of course; this is the Internet, after all…
* The ‘i before e, except after c’ rule is a giant lie.
* The weird logic of Facebook’s hate speech algorithms.
* SF short of the night: They Will All Die in Space.
* An AI Generates the Inspirational Posters We Need Right Now.
* And because you demanded it, it’s back up at An und für sich: Why remake The Handmaid’s Tale now? Gilead as ISIS.
Written by gerrycanavan
June 28, 2017 at 1:08 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with academia, academic freedom, actually existing media bias, Africa, AHCA, algorithms, artificial intelligence, austerity, Baby Driver, Blood Drive, Brexit, Britain, California, carbon, class struggle, climate change, Colbert Report, communism, death penalty, Democrats, Disney, disruption, Donald Trump, DUP, ecology, English, EPA, Episode I, Facebook, famine, Foundation, free speech, games, Gilead, grudges, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Hall of Presidents, Han Solo, health care, How the University Works, Illinois, iPhones, Iron Man 2, Isaac Asimov, ISIS, Jason Chaffetz, kids, kids today, Lake Chad, land, lectureporn, Lyft, lynching, magic money tree, Margaret Atwood, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Milwaukee, misogyny, motivational posters, music, neoliberalism, Nintendo, nuclear power, nuclearity, Octavia Butler, oil, oil ontology, outer space, parenting, pesticides, politics, race, racism, Republicans, Ron Howard, scandals, science fiction, Sean Hannity, sexism, single payer, social media, spelling, Spider-Man, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Wars, Super Nintendo Classic, tax cuts, taxes, The Daily Show, The Handmaid's Tale, the Internet, the Senate, the white working class, TMZ, TNG, Tories, Trinity College, Uber, University of Delaware, war on education, Wisconsin, xkcd
Sunday Night Closing All My Tabs
* My review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s (excellent!) New York 2140 is finally up at the Los Angeles Review of Books: Utopia in the Time of Trump.
Where most contemporary histories of the future imagine climate change as either an annoying irritation or else the end of history — the disaster that will end civilization — in New York 2140 Robinson cuts more of a middle path. Climate change does indeed prove utterly catastrophic in this novel, laying waste to the coastal cities where a startling percentage of the world’s population currently lives, and devastating a huge amount of infrastructure and fixed capital, costing trillions of dollars — but humans are incredibly versatile problem-solvers, and we adapt. Technical solutions like sea walls and skybridges are really only the start of what would be necessary in a flooded Manhattan. Think of the immense social changes, the legal, economic, and architectural structures that would need to be innovated when huge areas of major cities are permanently underwater, or indeed become part of the intertidal zone. Even by 2140, nearly 100 years after the start of the crisis, the long work of retrofitting civilization to rising sea levels goes on, and not all of it is even that unhappy; it’s no secret that the capitalists use the same phrase to denote both crisis and opportunity, creative destruction….
* Don’t worry, kids, it’s just a story.
* More Hugos lists! Octavia E. Butler is actually listed on a few of these! Keeping my silly Hugo dream alive.
* Also at LARB: A Mark Fisher memoriam and a review of his last book, The Weird and the Eerie.
* Getting ready for Marquette’s big Buffy at 20 conference: Every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ranked. Buffy the Vampire Slayer video games, ranked from best to worst. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a feminist parable for everyone – including Anthony Stewart Head. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the greatest show in the history of television. The Enduring Legacy. Genocide of the Vampires. How Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Most Hated Season Became Its Most Important. On “The Body.” Twenty years later, the world needs Buffy more than ever. A few more at MeFi. And from the archives, David Graeber.
* CFPs at Science Fiction Studies on climate change fiction and Frankenstein.
* And don’t sleep on the CFP for SFRA 2017, due at the end of the month.
* Marquette: a university on the… grow?
* Want To Know About Racially Motivated Policing? Ask Literally Any Person of Color in Milwaukee.
* Data Draws Link Between Metro Milwaukee’s Segregation and Poverty.
* 50th Anniversary of the Milwaukee Fair Housing Marches.
* #4.
* This isn’t a complete picture — it is too nostalgic for a lost age of exclusion, and misses completely the despair caused by the total collapse of the profession — but all the same I found it a powerful critique of the university today: Our Hallways Are Too Quiet.
* Probably the best piece of art criticism ever written: Appraising the Brady Bunch’s Art Collection.
* More Lovercraft from the great Ali Sperling! H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird Body.
* The New York Times reviews Lower Ed by the great Tressie McMillan Cottom.
* Sold! Wild New Theory Suggests Radio Bursts Beyond Our Galaxy Are Powering Alien Starships.
* Think Twice About Escaping Earth to an Exoplanet. Trappist-1 is already ruined.
* On zeitgeist: Ozymandias statue found in mud.
* What will the 25th Century Call the 21st?
* The Handmaid’s Tale in the Age of Trump.
* A Women’s Strike Syllabus. And another.
* U.S. Colleges: Where Does The Money Go?
* Rutgers also diverted $11 million in student fees and $17.1 million from its general fund to cover the athletic shortfall. The average undergraduate now pays more than $300 in activities fees exclusively for the university’s N.C.A.A. teams.
* Gotta spend money to explain why you aren’t spending money.
* Bodies on the Gears at Middleburg. And from the right: Middlebury Reckons With a Protest Gone Wrong. From Mother Jones to Middlebury: The Problem and Promise of Political Violence in Trump’s America.
* Ideology of the March for Science.
* Are the Democrats totally screwed? The Democratic Party Seems to Have No Earthly Idea Why It Is So Damn Unpopular. Outsmarted: on the Liberal Cult of the Cognitive Elite. There Really Was A Liberal Media Bubble. The SEIU at the end of the world.
* Trump can’t even do a standard thing like firing all the US Attorneys without turning it into a train wreck. But here’s how he can turn it around. Why the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and the Media. Descent into Liberalism. Fantasizing about President Pence. Of no fixed address. Here’s How Much ‘Trumpcare’ Fucks You, Based On How You Get Your Insurance Now. Who wins and who loses under the Republicans’ health care plan. A Trumpcare flashback. Truly, freedom isn’t free.
Then, before you know it, the Wall Street Journal is an oracle of truth. You’re rooting for Cold War II. The FBI is your BFF. You’re a Democrat.
* This is so evil: Bill Would Let Employers Demand Workers’ Genetic Tests.
* In the future, everyone will publicly beg for health care for 15 minutes.
* If you want a vision of the future.
* The Perils of the New, Shiny George W. Bush.
* The Revolutionary Force of Stupidity: A Conversation with Matt Taibbi.
* Enemies of the People: How hatred of the masses bridges our partisan divide.
* Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is heaven — for spies!
* The Great Lakes Are Sicker Than You Think. Editorial: Don’t slash funding for the Great Lakes.
* Towards a Unified Theory of Why Men Send Dick Pics. Obviously, more research is required.
* Neonazis! I hate these guys. Indiana Jones and the Okay Fine We’ll Try Again.
* Why Dentistry Is Separate From Medicine.
* Twenty-First Century Headlines: Radioactive Boars in Fukushima Thwart Residents’ Plans to Return Home.
* Brain activity recorded as much as 10 minutes after death.
* West Virginia county sues drug distributors over opioid crisis.
* Today in the massive screwed-uppedness of American democracy.
Los Angeles County (red) has a larger population than each of the 43 individual states shown in blue. #mapping #geography pic.twitter.com/hBbPFWxwzB
— Mark Abraham (@urbandata) March 1, 2017
* George Republicans Pass Mid-Decade Re-Gerrymander Just in Case.
* Purple America Has All But Disappeared.
* Every semi-competent male hero has a more talented female sidekick. Why isn’t she the hero instead?
* Star Trek: Discovery announces exciting “the captain is probably evil and in any event will die at the end of the season” arc.
* Knives out for Marvel: they finally made a mistake big enough to be noticed. More from Noah Berlatsky.
* Study: Hillary Clinton’s TV ads were almost entirely policy-free.
* Officials with Alberta’s environment agency inspected the water lines on Tuesday afternoon and proclaimed it safe, while the town completed the required repairs by the end of day. Town’s Water Turns Pink In Horrifying Ghostbusters Throwback.
* Requiem for a Dil. We’re Looking for People with Management Potential. An Experiment to Determine if Rats Can Be Made to Hate Thanksgiving. It’s Not So Bad. Sad Truths: Mythological Creatures Edition. I wish human beings were as peaceful and loving as bonobos. We all have our struggles.
* Silicon Valley’s Secretive Alt-Right Followers.
* Review is back, thank heaven.
* Nostalgia for the childhood you never had: The Japanese opening for the X-Men Animated Series.
* Inside the cruellest RollerCoaster Tycoon park ever created.
* The arc of history is long, but Rookie Doctors Will Soon Be Allowed To Work Up To 28 Hours Straight.
* Aliens, Antisemitism, and Academia.
* “King Kong” and American Cultural History.
* 20 million at risk of starvation in world’s largest crisis since 1945, UN says.
* Interesting: The New Avatar Theme Park Is a Giant Spoiler.
In an interview conducted inside the park, Cameron said that the park is set in a timeline after the five movies. A time when the war between humans and Na’vi is over. A time when the Na’vi have begun to welcome humans onto their planet with opens arms.
* How the 20,699-word iTunes T&Cs became this year’s hottest graphic novel.
* Should California lower its voting age to 17? Yes.
* And dibs on the screenplay: Right now, in a vault controlled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, there sits a 752-pound emerald with no rightful owner. This gem is the size of a minifridge. It weighs as much as two sumo wrestlers. Estimates of its worth range from a hundred bucks to $925 million. Over the past 10 years, four lawsuits have been filed over the Bahia emerald. Fourteen individuals or entities, plus the nation of Brazil, have claimed the rock is theirs. A house burned down. Three people filed for bankruptcy. One man alleges having been kidnapped and held hostage. Many of the men involved say that the emerald is hellspawn but they also can’t let it go.
Written by gerrycanavan
March 12, 2017 at 4:19 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #BlackLivesMatter, a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, abolish men, abolition, academia, academic freedom, actually existing media bias, administrative blight, advertising, Africa, Alberta, aliens, alt-right, America, Andy Daly, Angel, anniversaries, anti-Semitism, art, austerity, Avatar, Berkeley, bonobos, brains, Buffy, Bush, California, Canada, capitalist realism, CEOs, CFPs, Charles Murray, CIA, cities, class, class struggle, climate change, cloning, college, college football, college sports, comedy, comics, conferences, crowdfunding, David Graeber, death, democracy, Democrats, dentistry, despair, dibs on the screenplay, dick pics, Dilbert, drugs, ecology, emeralds, espionage, famine, FBI, feminism, Fermi paradox, for-profit schools, Frankenstein, free speech, Fukushima, futurity, games, gems, general election 2016, general strike, Georgia, gerrymandering, GINA, grading, graphic novels, Great Lakes, Hamilton, Harry Potter, health care, Hillary Clinton, How the University Works, Hugo awards, ideology, Indiana Jones, Iron Fist, ITunes, James Cameron, Japan, JCCs, Joss Whedon, Kim Stanley Robinson, King Kong, liberalism, look upon my works ye mighty and despair, Los Angeles County, Lovecraft, Lower Ed, maps, Mar-a-Lago, Mark Fisher, Marquette, Marvel, Mary Shelley, medicine, men, Middlebury, Mike Pence, Milwaukee, Milwaukee Fair Housing Marches, mortality, my media empire, my pedagogical empire, Nazis, NCAA, neoliberalism, New York, New York 2140, NFL, nuclear power, nuclearity, Octavia Butler, opioids, outer space, Ozymandias, pedagogy, police brutality, police state, police violence, politics, polls, pollution, poverty, pre symptomatic genetic testing, prison, prison-industrial complex, privacy, protest, psychedelic drugs, race, racism, radiation, Republicans, resistance, Review, Russia, Rutgers, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science, science fiction, science fiction studies, scientific racism, segregation, SEIU, sex, SFRA, Siberia, Silicon Valley, standardizd testing, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, starvation, stories, strikes, stupidity, teaching, terms and conditions, terrorism, The Bell Curve, The Brady Bunch, the eerie, The March for Science, the weird, Trappist-1, Tressie McMillan Cottom, true crime, Trump, Trumpcare, unions, universities, US attorneys, Utopia, Venn diagrams, violence, voting, water, West Virginia, white supremacy, women, woolly mammoths, X-Men, zeitgeist
Thursday Links!
* 2015 CFP for the MRG: “Enthusiasm for Revolution.”
* Reminder: Call for Postdoctoral Fellow: Alternative Futurisms.
* The Long, Wondrous Interview with Junot Díaz You Have to Read. By the great Taryne Taylor! From the same issue of Paradoxa that has my essay on Snowpiercer in it.
* Ellen Craft, the Slave Who Posed as a Master and Made Herself Free.
* Having paddled so hard to avoid the Scylla of hyperprofessionalization in English studies, some promoters of alternative careers may not notice that they are in the grip of Charybdis’s hyperprofessionalization of everything else. The harder they paddle, the harder the whirlpool pulls us all down. Great piece from Marc Bousquet addressing a number of key issues in academic labor.
* Universities without Austerity.
* A History of the MLA Job List.
* The headline reads, “UMass Ends Use of Student Informants.”
* Loved Your Nanny Campus? Start-Up Pledges Similar Services for Grads.
* These Two States Will Revoke Your License If You Can’t Pay Back Your Student Loans.
* These World Leaders Are a Worse Threat to Free Press Than Terrorism.
* Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Newspaper Edits Female World Leaders Out of Charlie Hebdo March.
* What’s Missing From the Debate on Obama’s Free Community-College Plan.
* The end of the university in Louisiana.
* Malcolm Harris: The Small Miracle You Haven’t Heard About Amid the Carnage in Syria.
* Report: Duke Ignored Warnings on Research Fraud.
* 53 Historians Weigh In on Barack Obama’s Legacy.
* Back to the Future, Time Travel, and the Secret History of the 1980s.
* To be clear, late-night votes might be a bit of a problem for Joseph Morrissey, the newly sworn-in Virginia House delegate who must report to his jail cell about 7:30 each evening.
* Muslim Americans are the staunchest opponents of military attacks on civilians, compared with members of other major religious groups Gallup has studied in the United States. Seventy-eight percent of Muslim Americans say military attacks on civilians are never justified.
* $1 Million Prize for Scientists Who Can Cure Human Aging. Sure, I’ll go in for a few bucks on that.
* Too real: Woman’s Parents Accepting Of Mixed-Attractiveness Relationship.
* What If We Could Live In A World Without War But Way More Famine?
* Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor.
* A Cybernetic Implant That Allows Paralyzed Rats To Walk Again.
* In 2014, Florida recorded at least 346 deaths inside of their prison system, an all-time high for the state in spite of the fact that its overall prison population has hovered around 100,000 people for the five previous years. Hundreds of these deaths from 2014 and from previous years are now under investigation by the DOJ because of the almost unimaginable role law enforcement officers are playing in them.
* Last week: The City Is Reportedly Losing $10 Million a Week Because the NYPD Isn’t Writing Enough Tickets. This week: NYPD Slowdown Turns Into “Broken Windows” Crackdown.
* The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Time to Shut it Down.
* Albuquerque cop mistakenly guns down undercover narcotics officer during bungled $60 meth bust. Elsewhere in Albuquerque.
* 1 In 3 College Men In Survey Said They Would Rape A Woman If They Could Get Away With It.
* Danny Boyle Having “Serious” Conversations About 28 Months Later. I’m in as long as it’s the first step towards Years.
* Radically unnecessary Avatar sequels reportedly having script problems. What could explain it?
* Frozen in everything, forever and ever amen.
* Seems legit: NASCAR driver says his ex-girlfriend is a trained assassin.
* This Computer Program Is ‘Incapable Of Losing’ At Poker.
* Scholar and activist Glen Coulthard on the connection between indigenous and anticapitalist struggles.
* This seems like glorified Avengers fan fiction but I’m on board. Meanwhile, in Fantastic Four news.
* Ah, there’s my problem: iPhone Separation Anxiety Makes You Dumber, Study Finds.
* I’m you, from the future! At the 16th most popular webcomic.
* They say time is the fire in which we burn.
* The Marquette Tribune is following the ongoing McAdams suspension at the university.
* Study says we prefer singers who look like big babies during good times. This research must be stopped. Some things mankind was never meant to know.
* Community get a premiere date.
* whothefuckismydndcharacter.com.
* And Cookie-Based Research Suggests Powerful People Are Sloppier Eaters. Of course the sloppy among us have always known this.
Written by gerrycanavan
January 15, 2015 at 8:30 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #FreeCommunityCollege, 1985, 28 Months Later, 28 Years Later, academia, academic freedom, academic labor, addiction, adjunctification, adjuncts, Adnan Syed, Afrofuturism, aging, Albuquerque, altac, assassins, austerity, Avatar, Avengers, Back to the Future, Barack Obama, Big Data, blue eyes, broken windows, cancer, CFPs, Charlie Hebdo, civilians, class struggle, community, computers, Cookie Monster, cookies, cultural preservation, Danny Boyle, Duke, Dungeons & Dragons, Ebola, Ellen Craft, Elvis, famine, Fantastic Four, fantasy, film, flashbangs, Florida, free range parenting, free speech, Frozen, gambling, games, genetics, grenades, How the University Works, indigenous futurism, indigenous peoples, informants, interviews, iPhones, Islam, Islamophobia, James Cameron, jokes, Judaism, Junot Díaz, kids today, Kojave, labor, longevity, looksism, Louisiana, love, LSU, Marquette, Marvel, Marxism, medicine, misogyny, MLA, moral panics, murder, music, Muslims, my media empire, NASCAR, Nixon, Nnedi Okorafor, NYPD, orgasms, over-educated literary theory PhDs, pandemic, paralysis, parenting, peace, platinum-coin seigniorage, poker, police, police brutality, police state, police violence, politicians, politics, prison, prison-industrial complex, rape, rape culture, research, revolution, satire, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, science is magic, Scooby Doo, Serial, sexism, slavery, socks, Sofia Samatar, Spider-Man, startups, strikes, student debt, teaching pedagogy, tenure, the rich are different, the sublime, theory, they say time is the fire in which we burn, This American Life, time travel, true crime, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Texas, war huh good god y'all what is it good for? absolutely nothing say it again, war on drugs, Won't somebody think of the children?, zombies, zunguzungu