Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘Infowars

Tuesday Night Links!

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* ST: TNG: TNG: Patrick Stewart to Return as Capt. Picard in New ‘Star Trek’ Series for CBS All Access. Well, that’s something! CBS All Access Is Laying the Groundwork for Non-Stop Star Trek.

* I’m about a thousand times more excited for the Untitled Captain Picard Project than this Star Wars thing.

Celebrating Black Panther, Afrofuturism, and black creativity at the first-ever Wakandacon.

* Draft schedule for the Worlding SF conference I’ll be keynoting at this December. Looking forward to it!

* Poem of the day: “A Metaphor.”

* Pedagogy flashback: Basic Needs Security and the Syllabus.

* How to Prepare for Class. Against the Grade. The Rise of the Promotional Intellectual.

* Another list of 10 of the best words in the world (that don’t translate into English).

* That rare thing, a good Twitter thread: What is the most interesting and revealing and hard-to-believe/understand statistic you know?

* Gasp, shock: Data shows a surprising campus free speech problem: left-wingers being fired for their opinions.

What You Need To Know About Democratic Socialism.

* “But Tikopia is an *insanely abundant* place by the standards of space. You can breathe, for starters. The seas teem with fish. Throw a pawpaw seed in the ground and you’ll have a food tree in a few years.”

Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not “Human Nature.” How Not to Talk About Climate Change. No, we didn’t almost s­olve the climate crisis in the 1980s. When Will Capitalism Answer For Its Crimes?

* 2018 Was Probably Already Doomed, But We Might Have Saved 2030.

The apocalyptic tone of heatwave-reporting doesn’t go far enough – not when the issue is human extinction.

* ‘Many parts of Earth could become uninhabitable’: Study’s grim warning.

These 360 Drone Photos of the California Wildfires Are Devastating.

* ‘Capitalism, The Sole Culprit of the Destructive Exploitation of Nature’ by Alain Badiou.

* Brexit continues to give Trump a run for his money in the deliberate-national-suicide-Olympics.

* Conspiracy theories are for losers. QAnon is no exception. The rise of QAnon Is a Sign That Trumpism Might Not Be Primarily About Trump at All. After mainstream exposure, QAnon is starting to fracture.

* Twilight of Alex Jones.

* Trump just keeps confessing to crimes and it just keeps not mattering.

Alejandra ultimately decided to “self-deport” to Mexico, rather than turn herself in to be detained and then deported. After 20 years in the United States, she no longer has family or friends in the country, so she chose Merida, a city in the Yucatan where a small community of deported military spouses might help her. U.S. historians are rallying to stop federal immigration agencies from destroying records of their treatment towards immigrants. Worker Charged With Sexually Molesting Eight Children at Immigrant Shelter. Man Detained by ICE Claims He Went Blind in One Eye After Agent Didn’t Believe He Had Diabetes. How Trump Radicalized ICE. Border family separation isn’t “zero tolerance” – CBP looked for parents to charge so they could kidnap kids. New Jersey Jail is Holding Nearly Triple its Capacity in ICE Detainees. What happens after ICE tears your family apart: ‘The storm descended.’ Now the Trump administration wants to limit citizenship for legal immigrants. Judge upholds ruling that DACA must be restored. The Power of Abolish ICE.

* The Idea of Children.

* “We Need to Fight for Aloha”: Hawaii congressional candidate and democratic socialist Kaniela Ing on taking on Hawaii’s biggest corporations, a bold climate change agenda, and the necessity of opposing US imperialism.

I’m a WNBA player. Men won’t stop challenging me to play one-on-one.

* Markets in everything: More Schools Are Buying ‘Active-Shooter’ Insurance Policies.

* The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Isn’t What You Think it Is: It’s not all bottles and straws—the patch is mostly abandoned fishing gear.

* Meanwhile, in serious environmentalism: Trump Accuses California Of Causing Wildfires By ‘Diverting’ Water To Pacific.

* Fields medal stolen moments after it was awarded.

* There’s so much corruption in the federal government at this point it’s impossible to keep track of.

A mother orca’s dead calf and the grief felt around the world.

The Trader Who Made a Massive Short Bet Against Nintendo.

* NRA Legal Strategy / Fundraising Appeal Goes Viral.

A criminal justice expert says Avoyelles Parish law officers who wrestled a Marksville man off a tractor while serving an arrest warrant last year used too much force, needlessly escalating a confrontation that ended with the man’s death. A second expert said he doesn’t agree the officers used excessive force, but said they may have acted negligently by failing to administer aid once Armando Frank was unconscious. His crime was calmly asking what he was being charged with.

* How the NYPD recriminalized marijuana after the state decriminalized it. Internal documents reveal how Bronx prosecutors are taught to slow down cases.

* Democrats do the darnedest things.

* ‘The most bizarre thing I’ve ever been a part of’: Trump panel found no widespread voter fraud, ex-member says.

1 In 4 Foster Kids In Missouri Are Taking Strong Psychoactive Drugs And The State’s Not Keeping Track, Lawsuit Says.

How the Cold War Created Astrobiology.

* A small-town couple left behind a stolen painting worth over $100 million — and a big mystery.

These The Last Jedi Fans Put on a Mock Court Martial for Poe Dameron.

* Missing the point is the point: Pre-reading Young Aragorn.

* You Bet Your Life: ‘Death Bonds,’ the Investments That Want You Dead.

The elderly are particularly vulnerable to “post-hospital syndrome,” some experts believe, and that may be why so many patients return.

Amazing arbitrage opportunity.

* Reading the Rock’s body.

Sexuality and gender in science fiction games.

* Somebody get me Michel Foucault on the phone: Open Office Plans Increase Employee Stress, Reduce Productivity.

* Ask your doctor if R’lhygrex is right for you.

* Facebook getting pretty brazen even by Facebook standards.

Anti-Vaccine Activists Have Taken Vaccine Science Hostage.

* The Great Recession Never Ended.

* Well, if they’re really sorry.

* Potemkin AI.

* The end of the writers’ room.

* The next stage of the Tesla scam.

Chilling Testimony in a Tennessee Trial Exposes Lethal Injection as Court-Sanctioned Torture.

* Mom Says Doctors Performed ‘Horrifying’ C-Section Without Anesthesia, Gets $25 Gift Certificate for Her Trouble.

* Women More Likely to Survive Heart Attacks If Treated by Female Doctors.

* Here comes Captain Tripps.

* And now they tell me! Why punishing your children doesn’t work.

Written by gerrycanavan

August 7, 2018 at 4:02 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Thursday Morning Links!

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* CFP: Speculative Fiction, Pedagogy, and Social Change. CFP: Teaching 9/11 and Its Aftermaths. CFP: Crafting the Long Tomorrow: New Conversations & Productive Catalysts Across Science and Humanities Boundaries as the Global Emergency Worsens. CFP: Episodes VII, VIII, IX.

* Boots Riley on communism, Sorry to Bother You, and what kind of political action the present moment demands.

The ‘feel-good’ horror of late-stage capitalism.

* Unreal.

* Twilight of the omniversity.

* All about QAnon, if you’re just catching up to the latest nonsense.

Alex Jones, Pursued Over Infowars Falsehoods, Faces a Legal Crossroads. Man, I hope he loses everything.

Plymouth State University said Wednesday that a retired professor who defended a convicted child rapist in a letter to the court will not be rehired as an adjunct instructor or “in any other capacity.” Two other faculty members who defended the Plymouth State graduate and high school guidance counselor convicted of sexually assaulting a student will complete sexual harassment training prior to their return to campus and will work closely with other professors upon their return, the university also said.

“The UNC Board of Governors respects each of the varying opinions within the university community concerning this matter. However, after consulting with legal counsel, neither UNC Chapel Hill nor the UNC System have the legal authority to unilaterally relocate the Silent Sam statue,” the board wrote in a statement. “Thus, the board has no plans to take any action regarding the monument at this time, and we will await any guidance that the North Carolina Historical Commission may offer.”

But in order to turn a story about the U.S. politics of climate change into a story about the entirety of the human species, Rich has to make a strange argument. He has to dispatch with the two most powerful and prominent enemies of a climate policy in the United States: the fossil-fuel industry and the Republican Party.

* A reminder: Just 90 companies are accountable for more than 60 percent of greenhouse gases.

* How the Carr Fire became one of the most destructive fires in California history.

Europe facing its hottest day ever.

Here’s a different question one could ask: Could it be that reporters like Chait, who are obsessed with finding the next Watergate and tend to err on the side of military intervention, aren’t exercising enough skepticism?

* Snowflake students have become the target of a new rightwing crusade. But exaggerated claims of censorship reveal a deeper anxiety at the core of modern conservatism.

Months later I not only considered my own future, but the far-reaching political implications of these cases: Why did the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia find it appropriate to hang virtual life sentences over the heads of 214 people after an indiscriminate mass arrest? How could they have so shamelessly gleaned evidence from far-right groups like Project Veritas, a discredited organization known for making deceptive gotcha videos, as well as the paramilitary group the Oath Keepers, and still felt they had a legitimate case? Where was the motivation—the conspiracy—to pursue these cases coming from?

Immigration crackdown: U.S. soldier honored for service could be heading for ICE custody.

* Everything a grift: Kris Kobach went around helping towns pass anti-immigration ordinances, & then got himself hired to defend them in court. Towns then spent millions on legal fees, faced financial crisis, & usually lost— while Kobach earned $800K.

‘Like a kidnapping’: ICE snatches 25-year Minnesota resident from his family in harrowing video.

* Another migrant child molested at a DHS facility. And a WaPo story about the migrant child who died shortly after their release from an unsafe, unhygienic detention center.

* Source close to Ivanka Trump confirms no one so beautiful could be evil.

* From the archives: What Is Socialist Feminism?

* Can’t anyone in Congress have a normal hobby?

* Inside the first database that tracks America’s criminal cops.

* Breaking: leftist politics are very popular. Still / again / always.

* The art of the murder mystery.

* Meet the Anarchists Making Their Own Medicine.

* Maybe it’s possible to have too much money.

* Nobody powerful ever makes a mistake, MCU edition.

* Something is happening in America.

At some point in the process, all four of these nominees—Haynsworth, Carswell, Bork, and Ginsburg—seemed like shoo-ins for confirmation, much as Kavanaugh does today. And yet they were all defeated. And the Justices who took their places were closer to the judicial and political mainstream.

* Running for office again is probably the single most destructive Al Franken could possibly do at this point, so I’m sure he will.

Parents Are Paying Fortnite Coaches So Their Gamer Kids Can Level Up.

Pope declares death penalty inadmissible, changing Church’s stance.

…in the U.S., water park rides are not tightly regulated. Although the federal government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission has the authority to set safety standards for such products as baby cribs and bicycles, it has no authority to regulate water parks. That responsibility lies entirely with the states. Some states have agencies that inspect water parks; others rely on the parks’ own insurance companies to do inspections. Texas law, for instance, says that a park must obtain a $1 million liability policy for each of its rides and must have all rides inspected once a year by an inspector hired by the insurance company. But there is nothing in the law that requires the inspector to have any particular certifications. Nor does the law require an inspector to evaluate the safety of such factors as the ride’s speed or the geometric angle of its slide path. According to Texas Department of Insurance spokesman Jerry Hagins, the inspector is charged only with making sure that the ride is in sound condition and meets the “manufacturer’s specifications.” In other words, a water park is allowed to police itself.

* Can Mars even be terraformed?

* Yikes.

The Songs We Banned From Our Weddings. The answer to a wedding soundtrack is always just all Motown, I think.

* Film Crit Hulk considers Nanette.

Once upon a time, the house on Red Bark Lane wasn’t just another address in a sprawling suburban development: It was originally built as a nearly exact three-dimensional replica of 742 Evergreen Terrace, the Springfield residence of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson. Working on a short schedule, architects and builders de-fictionalized the home featured in The Simpsons for a 1997 giveaway that was intended to leave one lucky fan with the ultimate in cartoon memorabilia. No detailwas spared, from a food dish for their cat, Snowball II, to Duff beer cans in the fridge.

But controversy soon erupted in this faux-Springfield mock-up. The homeowner’s association wasn’t keen on having a cartoon house that broke conformity requirements by being painted solar yellow. The sweepstakes winner rejected it outright. And the current owner had to learn to live with the property being a source of perpetual curiosity for fans of the show who brazenly turn her doorknobs and peer through her windows at all hours of the day and night. As it turns out, the reality of living in a fantasy can get a little complicated.

Spooooooooky Friday the 13th Links!

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* Exciting new anthology alert! A People’s Future of the United States.

* Cool job at UCSD in Media and Popular Culture.

* Hamilton and Laurens. As I mentioned a bit on Twitter, we actually talked about this quite a bit in my Hamilton class, including how some elements in the show point to queer possibility here and the likelihood that performances in the future will likely play the relationship as explicitly queer. And just for fun, also via Twitter: A countervailing view!

A Theory-Fiction Reading List.

If you were going to teach a class on Russian literature at a juvenile detention center, what would the reading list include?

Medieval studies groups say a major conference is trying to limit the number of diverse voices and topics. The debate is part of a bigger fight over whether medieval studies should remain a fundamentally European field. Whose Medieval Studies?

Unpacking Murad Osmann’s #FollowMeTo Instagram Travel Series.

Facebook Proves It Isn’t Ready To Handle Fake News.

* Peterson’s Complaint.

* As the GOP base tries to find new ways to funnel money to its white, bougie, suburban base, bonkers tax policy like this proposed tax break for gym memberships will become more and more common.

* Marvel has run out of options and is finally going to do a Black Widow movie.

* This franchise keeps getting worse all the time.

* These woodchucks are heroes.

There’s a reason employees stay at the Pantry for a lifetime: it’s one of the few restaurants in Los Angeles where the workers are represented by a union. Peña-Suarez is one of the 23,000 members of Unite Here Local 11, the service-workers’ union behind the Pantry and a number of iconic LA restaurants: Langer’s, Nate ’n Al Delicatessen, Philippe the Original, La Golondrina, and La Scala.

* Solid thread from Corey Robin on the political meaning of Kavanaugh’s debts.

How the New Supreme Court Could Halt Climate Action.

Forty-year-old Efrain De La Rosa, a Mexican national who was held in an ICE detention facility in Georgia, committed suicide and was pronounced dead late Tuesday evening, making him the eighth person in ICE custody to die in the 2018 fiscal year.

* ACLU: Fed Gov’t Not Giving Promised Notice As Immigrant Families Reunited.

* Asylum seekers, even those who do not present themselves at points of entry, are not “illegal”; under international law they are “irregular” and subject to an array of rights and protections, including immunity from punishment.

Today’s US-Mexico ‘border crisis’ in 6 charts.

Hey is it me or does this guy sound like a white supremacist?

Since Trump was elected, more than 1,400 mayors have agreed to shift their cities to 100-percent renewable energy by 2035, in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Last fall, St. Louis became one of the biggest cities so far to set that lofty goal. The city of Berkeley, California, went even further recently, declaring an “existential climate emergency” and aiming for net-negative emissions by 2030.

The real reason the sound of your own voice makes you cringe.

* “I refuse to let Hollywood #whitewashout the Thai Cave rescue story.”

* Want to feel old? Jared Kushner still lacks security clearance level to review some of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence in White House role.

* When Trump’s dumb obsession with CNN accidentally leads to good policy.

* Leaked report exposes how unprepared FEMA was for Maria. I want to see the leaked report detailing all the many ways they’ve failed Puerto Rico in the year since the storm.

* Another #TheResistance rando turns out to have serious personality problems, first and foremost a pathological need for attention. Not unrelatedly: Liberals playing detective are missing an opportunity to engage in meaningful politics.

* Plastic straw bans are the latest policy to forget the disability community.

* The latest in the search for humanity’s origins in Africa.

Why freelance writers are a fucking pain in the ass with broken brains.

* Can your god explain it? Marx can.

Dark Horse Is Turning William Gibson’s Alien 3 Script Into a New Comic.

* Dune references signal shared knowledge to those in the know, and that’s about it. Dune fandom is an un-fandom.

* Retirement tips.

* And I linked this yesterday, but do keep your eye on this. I’m officially calling shenanigans.

#SFRA2017 Links for All Your #SFRA2017 Needs!

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* Watch #SFRA2017 for all the tweets from SFRA2017! I’ll be presenting this afternoon in the 4 PM session: “No, Speed Limit: Hyperspace in the Anthropocene,” mostly talking about John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire but also hitting Octavia Butler, Cixin Liu, Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood, H.G. Wells, and others.

* And just in time for #SFRA2017, SFFTV 10.2 is now available! A special issue on the SF films of Stephen King.

* From Canavan’s Razor to Kotsko’s Hammer: If you believe that you have caught your enemy in a contradiction, you are mistaken. At best, you have misjudged their real priorities and goals. At worst, you have fallen for a deliberate smokescreen, designed to confuse and distract you.

* CFP: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at 200 (Science Fiction Studies, Special Issue).

Emma Watson has been hiding copies of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale around Paris, with a handwritten note inside each one.

The City University of New York picked the worst time to raise the salaries of its top administrators to as much as $402,700 — the same day it cut the operating budgets of its four-year colleges and raised tuition.

* Can’t you see? Star Wars needs mediocrity.

* Return of the travel ban. Return of the lawsuits. The travel ban going into effect would have saved zero lives from terrorist attacks in the last 20 years. It’s going to get worse.

* This seems normal and fine.

Gun Sales Are Plummeting and Trump Wants to Help.

GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn.

Republican Health Care Bill Cuts Medicaid 24 Percent By 2036. Trumpworld’s push to get a Senate health deal. Senate GOP Health Care Surrender Watch.

* “California decided it was tired of women bleeding to death in childbirth”: The maternal mortality rate in the state is a third of the American average. Here’s why.

The Case for Paying Less Attention to Donald Trump. And Now the Trump Presidency Begins to Fail for Real. MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski say President Trump and his White House used the possibility of a hit piece in the National Enquirer to threaten them and change their news coverage.

* Hell yes, Rep. Barbara Lee.

* Normally I’d say “teach the controversy,” but these allegations are simply too serious to treat flippantly: NASA Denies That It’s Running a Child Slave Colony on Mars.

* Cyberattack attacks Chernobyl radiation monitoring station.

* On desistance and detransition.

* Global warming will intensify regional inequality in the United States, according to a revolutionary new economic assessment of the phenomenon.

* Two brothers, two deaths.

Illinois Approaches 3rd Year Without Budget.

US quietly publishes once-expunged papers on 1953 Iran coup.

SCP-3008-1 is a space resembling the inside of an IKEA furniture store, extending far beyond the limits of what could physically be contained within the dimensions of the retail unit. Current measurements indicate an area of at least 10km2 with no visible external terminators detected in any direction. Inconclusive results from the use of laser rangefinders has lead to the speculation that the space may be infinite. SCP-3008-1 is inhabited by an unknown number of civilians trapped within prior to containment. Gathered data suggests they have formed a rudimentary civilisation within SCP-3008-1, including the construction of settlements and fortifications for the purpose of defending against SCP-3008-2.

* Just what is happening at Disney?

* Rick and Morty season three, at last, by God.

And Jurassic Park but with the dinosaurs from the 90s TV show Dinosaurs, forever and ever amen.

Return of the Son of Occasional Linkblogging

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With new and unexpected obligations in the last few months it’s become very hard for me to keep up with the link-blogging. Sorry! It’s bad enough that I’m considering putting this function on the blog on (likely permanent) hiatus. But, for now at least, some links…

* Wordless, but one of the best things about parenting I’ve ever read: Dan Berry’s “Carry Me.” Made me cry each time I read it.

For the night, which becomes more immense /and depressing and utter / and the voices in it which argue and argue. / For this conflict with the stars. / For ashes.  For the wind. / For this emergency we call life. All-Purpose Elegy.

* This is really good too: “the best Spider-Man story of the last five years.”

* CFP: Utopia, now!

Class, Academia, and Anxious Times. From Duke’s Own Sara Appel.

* Hugo nominations 2017! How well did the new rules do against the Sad Puppies? Meet the Hugo-Nominated Author of Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By the T-Rex.

* The African Speculative Fiction Society holds the Nommo Awards to celebrate the year’s greatest speculative fiction written by African authors.

* A list of contributors has been announced for Letters to Octavia, which has been renamed Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (which I’m in, by the way — I’m the rascal writing about “whether we should respect Butler’s wishes about not reprinting certain works”). I’m also a small part of the Huntington’s current exhibit of the Butler archives, presenting at the associated research conference in June.

* I wrote a small encyclopedia article on “Science Fiction” for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia, which is live now…

* And some lovely, kind words for my Butler book on the latest episode of “The Three Hoarsemen”, around an hour thirty in!

Desperation Time: Visions of the future from the left.

‘Doomsday Library’ Opens In Norway To Protect The World’s Books From Armageddon.

The 43 senators who plan to filibuster Gorsuch represent 53 percent of the country.

* The history of all heretofore existing society is the history of archery dorks. Evidence that the human hand evolved so we could punch each there.

* Check out my friend David Higgins on NPR’s On Point, talking dystopias.

* War, forever and ever amen. What We Do Best. Trump’s bombing of Syria likely won’t be met with a wall of “resistance,” certainly not within the halls of power. That’s because for nearly all liberal and conservative pundits and politicians, foreign wars — particularly those launched in the name of “humanitarianism” — are an issue where no leader, even one as disliked as Trump, can ever go wrong. The Syrian Catastrophe. A Solution from Hell. Profiles in courage. There are no humanitarian wars. 7 Charities Helping Syrians That Need Your Support. The only answer is no.

* Incredible story: Hired Goon Drags Man Off United Flight After He Refuses to Give Up Seat. More details here. It’s only going to get worse.

Trump Conspiracy Tweetstorms Are The Infowars Of The Left. It is shocking how these things erupt through my timeline day after day, then evaporate utterly as if they’d never happened.

* This week in the richest country that has ever existed in human history.

Being Wealthy in America Earns You 15 Extra Years of Life Span Over the Poor.

New York will no longer prosecute 16 and 17 year olds as adult criminals.

* I loved this story about the connections that expose us: This Is Almost Certainly James Comey’s Twitter Account.

* We did it guys, we did it. But let’s not lose our heads yet.

* On Becoming a Stepmother.

* When Women Negotiate.

What Happens When Your Internet Provider Knows Your Porn Habits?

* Activism we can all believe in: Protesters raise more than $200,000 to buy Congress’s browsing histories.

* Democrats Against Single Payer.

How to Survive the Next Catastrophic Pandemic.

* An epidemic of childhood trauma haunts Milwaukee. An intractable problem: For the last half-century, Milwaukee has been caught in a relentless social and economic spiral. Milwaukee celebrates groundbreaking of new Black Holocaust Museum site.

Dolphins beat up octopuses before eating them, and the reason is kind of horrifying.

* Wild situation in X-Men Gold #1. The artist’s statement.

* If nothing else, Operation Blue Milk had me at “Nnedi Okorafor.” Everything Cut from Rogue One. The Final Star Wars Movie Will Include The Late Carrie Fisher.

* The Minnesota Eight Don’t Want to Be Deported to a Country They’ve Never Lived In. Abolish ICE. Abolish ICE Yesterday.

* 7 Tips for Writing a Bestselling Science Fiction Novel.

* Can the Great Lakes Be Saved?

Does This Band Name Start With The? A Quiz.

America’s first female mayor was elected 130 years ago. Men nominated her as a cruel joke.

Diabetes is even deadlier than we thought, study suggests.

The Biggest Employer in Each US State. Look at all those universities we don’t need!

* Already old news, but worth noting: whether out of general interest or revenge Joss will be doing Batgirl. If I had Joss’s ear I’d pitch about 20-30 minutes of kung-fu action girl Batgirl and then have her paralyzed and do the Oracle plot instead. It’d be something different in this genre and something different for Whedon too, as opposed to something we’ve frankly seen from him a few too many times by now.

* Pedagogy watch: Why won’t students ask for help?

* More on the history of sleep: Why Do We Make Children Sleep Alone?

* When Every Day Is Groundhog Day: The Danny Rubin Story.

* No thanks: Disney Could Go Westworld With New Patent Filing for Soft ‘Humanoid’ Robots.

* There are dozens of us! Dozens! The Life Aquatic might not be Wes Anderson’s best film. But it is his greatest: The director’s misunderstood classic knows that sadness can’t be defeated, only lived with.

* Star Trek: Discovery ZZzzzzzzZZzzzzzZzzzz.

* Joe Hill (son of Stephen King): In the late 1990s I asked my Dad how to write a cover letter for my short fiction submissions. He was glad to help out.

* I always call Chuck Schumer the worst possible Democrat at the worst possible time, but Rahm Emanuel really gives him a run for his money.

Margaret Atwood is dropping hints about a Handmaid’s Tale sequel. She even wrote a little bit extra, just in time for me to teach it this summer!

* KSR talks NY2140. KSR talks world building. KSR in conversation with Adam Roberts and Francis Spufford.

* Geoengineering watch. Sadly, this is probably our civilization’s only hope.

These Are the Wildly Advanced Space Exploration Concepts Being Considered by NASA.

* If you want a vision of the future.

Tyrannosaurus rex was a sensitive lover, new dinosaur discovery suggests.

* PS: Conservatives and liberals united only by interest in dinosaurs, study shows.

The proliferation of charter schools, particularly in areas of declining enrollment and in proximity to schools that have closed, is adding financial stress to Chicago’s financially strapped public school system, a new report co-authored by a Roosevelt University professor shows.

How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons.

* Where the Water Goes.

Great Barrier Reef at ‘terminal stage’: scientists despair at latest coral bleaching data.

The Original Ending of Alien Was Both Terrifying and a Huge Bummer.

* Fuck You and Die: An Oral History of Something Awful.

* The arc of history is long, but New York now has more Mets fans than Yankees fans.

* Congratulations to North Carolina.

* OK. OK. But I’m watching both of you.

Teach-Ins Helped Galvanize Student Activism in the 1960s. They Can Do So Again Today.

* The kids are all right.

* The Uses of Bureaucracy. Browser Plug-In Idea. A Brief History of Theology. To thine own self be true. Stop me if you’ve heard it.

* Politics. Democracy. Art. #2017. Submitted for Your Approval. We lived happily during the war. Five years later. Pretty grim. Any sufficiently advanced neglect is indistinguishable from malice. How to tell if you are sexually normal. Juxtaposition of wish fulfilment violence and infantile imagery, desire to regress to be free of responsibility… Join the movement. Know your sins.

* And even in the darkest times, there is still hope: Spiders could theoretically eat every human on Earth in one year.

Written by gerrycanavan

April 10, 2017 at 5:53 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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