Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘international students

CoronaFRI!vus

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Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful. No other country has been this far into the pandemic and still had the number of cases growing at the rates the U.S. is seeing. Without Urgent Action, Coronavirus Could Overwhelm U.S., Estimates Say. I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed.

* David Harvey: Anti-Capitalist Politics in the Time of COVID-19. The Politics of the Pandemic. You and Your Boss Have the Same Interests Right Now. That Is a Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity. Sara Nelson Says People Are Ready for Solidarity. COVID-19 Emergency Tenant Protections. Homeless families occupy vacant homes in LA. Dealing With Coronavirus Requires Bold Action. The Democratic Leadership Won’t Take It.

* 9% of Working Americans (14 Million) So Far Have Been Laid Off As Result of Coronavirus; 1 in 4 Workers Have Had Their Hours Reduced; 2% Have Been Fired; 20% Have Postponed a Business Trip; Shock Waves Just Now Beginning to Ripple Through Once-Roaring US Economy. U.S. Jobless Claims Jump to Two-Year High Amid Closures. 2700% increase in unemployment claims in Ohio — midweek. [Calfornia] averages 2,000 unemployment applications a day. Two or three days ago, it received 40,000. On Tuesday, 80,000 applications were filed. JP Morgan is forecasting -14% RGDP growth in Q2. That’s so bad it isn’t even on the historical axis.

So, It’s Bad. Free, Widespread Testing Is The Only Way America Goes Back to Normal. This Is How We Can Beat the Coronavirus. Coronavirus will radically alter the U.S. US sales of guns and ammunition soar amid coronavirus panic buying. The Stimulus Plan That We Need Now.

* Curb Your Enthusiasm: “The Virus.”

* I’m reminded somehow of the way you end a SimCity game by unleashing every disaster on your city as once. The Midwest Is Preparing To Get Hit With Major Floods During The Coronavirus Outbreak. How the Coronavirus Crisis May Hinder Efforts to Fight Wildfires. Locust crisis poses a danger to millions, forecasters warn. Earthquake in Utah. A Huge Chunk of Yellowstone Is Pulsing.

* Weeks Before Virus Panic, Intelligence Chairman Privately Raised Alarm, Sold Stocks. Senator Dumped Up to $1.7 Million of Stock After Reassuring Public About Coronavirus Preparedness.

* Coronavirus Is Speeding Up the Amazonification of the Planet. Amazon Workers Shut Down Warehouse After Employee Is Infected With Coronavirus. The tech execs who don’t agree with ‘soul-stealing’ coronavirus safety measures.

Mitt Romney’s $1,000 Isn’t Our Universal Basic Income. Americans may see first round of checks from US government by April 6. I really should have known.

* Before Virus Outbreak, a Cascade of Warnings Went Unheeded. In Coronavirus Testing Ramp-Up, U.S. Called Private Sector in Late. How the CDC Botched Basic Science in Its Attempt to Make a Coronavirus Test. Don’t Let Trump Off the Hook.

* I had a lot of question about this, so perhaps it will be useful to you too: No, The World Health Organization Is Not Recommending Against Ibuprofen For Coronavirus Symptoms.

The world’s fastest supercomputer identified chemicals that could stop coronavirus from spreading, a crucial step toward a treatment. Japanese flu drug ‘clearly effective’ in treating coronavirus, says China. Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID‐19: results of an open‐label non‐randomized clinical trial.

“I’m Not An Epidemiologist But…”: The Rise Of The Coronavirus Influencers. This is certainly a problem but I became attuned to the reality of coronavirus precisely through these sorts of non-experts while Trump and the CDC were still lying to everyone. I haven’t seen anything better for learning true information about this crisis than Reddit’s upvote/downvote system.

* Today in the trolley problem. Today in the simulation argument. Today in career goals. Today in Star Trek Studies. Today in Watchmen fan fiction. Weird time.

* Rikers Island inmate has contracted coronavirus: officials. How coronavirus could explode at Riker’s Island. Reducing prison population protects us all from coronavirus.

You Need Me to Have a Mask. ‘It Feels Like a War Zone’: Doctors and Nurses Plead for Masks on Social Media. A New York Doctor’s Coronavirus Warning: The Sky Is Falling. Simple math offers alarming answers.

* Rural America Isn’t Ready for a Pandemic.

* This picture tells a story about America.

* As Cities Around the World Go on Lockdown, Victims of Domestic Violence Look for a Way Out.

* The COVID-19 Crisis and International Students. Colleges offering dorms as hospital overflow for virus cases. A Brief Letter to an Institution that Believes Extensions are the Accommodations We Need Right Now.

* ‘Panic-gogy’: Teaching Online Classes During The Coronavirus Pandemic. As Schools Look for Guidance, Educators Are Left Asking, ‘What?’ New Coronavirus Package Could Unravel Protections For Students With Disabilities. Is online school illegal? With schools closing from coronavirus, special education concerns give districts pause.

* Waaaaaay ahead of you.

GameStop claims it is ‘essential retail’ to remain open amid coronavirus shutdowns. It didn’t work.

Minnesota and Vermont Just Classified Grocery Clerks as Emergency Workers.

* There’s plenty of food.

* The Quiet Emptiness of a World under Coronavirus.

* The desire for public sex is, of course, nothing new. In his book Tell Me What You Want, sex researcher and Kinsey Institute fellow Justin Lehmiller found it was one of the seven most common fantasies, but the way people are having it in a coronavirus-ridden world definitely is. Now, instead of treating it as nothing more than a novel thrill to “spice things up,” some people are using it as an act of resistance against the virus-induced lockdowns that have squashed so many of the liberties we hold dear. Sex etiquette during the coronavirus.

* Kim Stanley Robinson releases a chapter from his latest novel, though weirdly it’s listed as “news.”

I spent four months pretending to live on Mars. Here’s what I learned about staying sane and passing time.

* I’m beginning to think you just can’t trust billionaires: When he joined the race last year, the billionaire said he would employ his campaign staff through the November election, even if he weren’t the nominee. But Bloomberg dropped out after a poor showing on Super Tuesday, and he has since fired staffers in multiple waves. His campaign had announced earlier in March that it would launch an independent expenditure group to take on Trump that would employ former campaign staffers in swing states.

The Sanders worldview wins even as Bernie loses.

* You know it’s bad when politicians are leaving elected office to join the priesthood.

* A false accusation nightmare in the Times.

* Moffat leaving Doctor Who seemed like a good exit ramp for me, so I haven’t seen any of the new episodes — but wow, this latest retcon looks like a mess, as well as a pretty clear “find some way to tie this off and wrap it up” directive from the BBC.

* Rethinking the Apocalypse: An Indigenous Anti-Futurist Manifesto.

* Octavia Butler gave us a few rules for predicting the future.

An “Extinction Event” for the Comic Shop or “Too Stupid to Quit, Too Dumb to Die”?

The Ending of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, Revisited.

* Star Wars in ruins: The Most Problematic ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Plot Twist Ruined Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy. Disney has embarrassed itself issuing Episode 9 retcons but it really ought to explain why it’s being so elliptical about this one issue for no apparent reason.

* And Star Wars resurgent: The Mandalorian Casts Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano.

* Because you demanded it: A new Disney Princess historical fiction series finds Belle in the French Revolution.

* And they were nearly almost done, too! I swear!

* Hey, it’s me, the first sign of civilization in a culture.

* Coming soon: The Collapsing Empire, Book 3. A Cixin Liu story collection. And some free coronavirus reading: Short Changes, a story collection by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

All Your Friday Links!

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* The itself.blog Star Trek: Discovery event is underway! Star Trek: Discovery Is Optimism, But Not for Us. “Can you bury your heart”? Having feelings about Discovery. Star Trek: Discovery as the End of Next Generation Triumphalism.

* CFP: Activist Speculation and Visionary Fiction (MLA 19).

* Jaimee Hills is officially a dangerous woman.

* The Male Glance.

* The university in ruins: UW Stevens Point. The administration clearly doesn’t even understand what it’s proposing:

When releasing the plan, university officials said that English majors for teacher certification would continue. But Williams said that under the state Department of Public Instruction’s certification criteria, a person looking to become an English teacher has to have been an English major.

“They just both have to exist, or both have to be eliminated,” Williams said. “One depends directly on the other.”

Professors earn about 15 percent less than others with advanced degrees, finds a study circulated Tuesday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Though perhaps some of us make it up in job satisfaction (really).

* It’s gotten so bad in the humanities even the Yale grads don’t get jobs handed to them as soon as they graduate.

Why Creative-Writing Programs Have Been Havens for Harassment.

It has taken me two and a half decades to recognize that my experience of having a senior male nominal adviser and a female (usually more junior) actual adviser is common throughout academe. On Ghost Advising.

* Abusers and enablers in faculty culture.

* 5% raises in West Virginia. Onward to Oklahoma.

* Marquette vs. Trauma.

Snowflake students claim Frankenstein’s monster was ‘misunderstood’ — and is in fact a VICTIM.

On the Blackness of the Panther.

* Loved this from Barbara Ehrenreich: Body Work: The curiously self-punishing rites of fitness culture.

If anything, the culture of fitness has grown more combative than when I first got involved. It is no longer enough to “have a good workout,” as the receptionist at the gym advises every day; you should “crush your workout.” Health and strength are tedious goals compared to my gym’s new theme of “explosive strength,” achieved, as far I can see, through repeated whole-body swinging of a kettleball. If your gym isn’t sufficiently challenging, you might want to try an “ultra-extreme warrior workout” or buy a “home fitness system” from P90X, which in 2016 tweeted a poster of an ultra-cut male upper body, head bowed as if in prayer, with the caption “A moment of silence please for my body has no idea of what I’m about to put it through.” Or you could join CrossFit, the fastest-growing type of gym in the world, and also allegedly the most physically punishing. The program “prepares trainees for any physical contingency,” the company boasts, “not only for the unknown, but for the unknowable, too. Our specialty is not specializing,” and the latter category includes the zombie apocalypse. The mind’s stuggle for mastery over the body has become a kind of mortal combat.

* Too big to tax.

In this economy you’re either burned out, or you’re boxed out.

* The Secret NYPD Files: Officers Can Lie And Brutally Beat People — And Still Keep Their Jobs.

A prosecutor who obtained a wrongful conviction that sent a Houston man to death row for nearly 10 years didn’t just withhold evidence but also denied under oath that he had information that supported Alfred Dewayne Brown’s alibi, court records show.

* Twilight of the cult film.

Could Trump get a White House job if he weren’t president? Didn’t we already know Trump couldn’t get a loan before he was president?

Beware Liberal-Baiting “White House in Chaos” Stories. Trump’s Position Is As Solid As It’s Ever Been.

* Gratuitous cruelty by Homeland Security. Lying to the immigrant soldiers you promised citizenship.

A Dozen Democrats Want To Help Banks Hide Racial Discrimination In Mortgages.

Guess Who’s Not Coming To America? International Students.

* Kobe Steel’s Chief to Step Down as It Discloses Wider Quality Problems Fifty-Year Conspiracy to Defraud Customers.

* Toddler feelings helpline.

— If you still feel pretty messed up about how they were just going to burn the Velveteen Rabbit, please mash all of the keys but mostly 2.

* White flight remains a reality.

* Liberate our schools.

‘50 or 60. If I get lucky maybe 150.’

* The grim reality of job hunting in the age of AI.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe only really makes sense when you remember Captain America is a trans man.

Wait, what exactly was Luke Skywalker’s plan in Return Of The Jedi?

* The opioid crisis has become an “epidemic of epidemics.” Meanwhile, a new study suggests opioids are no better than Tylenol for treating some kinds of pain.

* Kentucky’s ‘child bride’ bill stalls as groups fight to let 13-year-olds wed.

* U.N. Report On Magical Realism Warns Of Increased Incidences Of Women’s Tears Flooding The Entire World.

False news stories travel faster and farther on Twitter than the truth.

* There’s no idea so terrible there isn’t someone in favor of it.

York University philosophy professor and team submit brief supporting chimpanzee personhood.

* Ok, but you’re on a very short leash.

Her name was Kanga and she was trouble.

* I Am the Very Important Longread Everyone Is Talking About.

* The United States of Middle-earth.

* Understanding Fight Club.

* And the arc of history is long, but.

Written by gerrycanavan

March 9, 2018 at 11:39 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Tuesday Links!

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* FiveThirtyEight has been doing a great series on Mars colonization. Today’s entries are all about space sex. Also: Everything About Mars Is The Worst.

* Also at FiveThirtyEight: The Odds You’ll Fill Out A Perfect Bracket.

* TRAPPIST-1 seems like a no-go for humanity, but three of the worlds are close enough for life to hop between them.

New York 2140 vs. The Collapsing Empire: Which New Sci-Fi Novel Is for You?

* ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Turns 20, from my Buffy at 20″ co-organizer James South.

* On the coming apocalypse (and other’s people’s babies).

* What if Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Had Swapped Genders?

* From the archives: Snow Days Under Socialism.

No, big snowstorms like this aren’t normal.

* America elected a parasite. Let’s take away health insurance from 24 million people. Or 26 million, who’s counting. This Level of Corruption Is Unprecedented in the Modern History of the Presidency. Gotta save money to steal money. “Senate Democrats prepare for spring battle over Trump’s border wall.”

Remember the People America’s Healthcare System Has Already Killed.

* The university in ruins, Trump edition.

* The Party of Eugenics. They both are, honestly, but the GOP is just so much more vulgar about it.

At every moment when Trump might have been stopped, when he might have been forced into bankruptcy, had his credit denied, had his loans called in, his licenses revoked, at every juncture where he might have been convicted of a crime or sent to jail—and, again, this is well before he makes his successful bid for the White House—some unplanned and unintended conspiracy of economic reason and political lowlifery mobilizes to protect him. (And it really is unplanned and unintended. The genius of the American system is how the Invisible Hand works to produce systemic vice rather than incidental virtue.)

* Must be nice.

* We’re heading towards something very ugly: Employers can ban staff from wearing headscarves, European court rules.

* American Empire: The Reboot.

Seeing red: Membership triples for the Democratic Socialists of America.

* The Onion struggling to lampoon Trump.

* Museums and activism.

* Violent video games found not to affect empathy, again.

* The hype for Logan seems to be reaching comical proportions, but still, you’d be hard-pressed to find another recent superhero movie that was worth emulating.

* Behold, the super-agers.

Should a Chimpanzee Be Considered a Person?

* MMMBop: Hanson announces 25th anniversary tour as your death rapidly approaches.

The economics of airline classes.

Bowie impersonates other singers like Springsteen, Lou Reed. Everything has been bullshit since Bowie died.

* Because you demanded it! Young Sheldon.

* USA Today discovers Hello from the Magic Tavern. They’ve hit a real stride lately as story events have allowed them to move away from their standard format — and they were great before.

Every Author on Your English Syllabus, Summed Up in a Single Sentence.

It’s Donald Trump’s Fault Iron Fist Is Bad, Not Marvel’s, Says Star Finn Jones. If you say so.

* A People’s History of the Marvel Universe. Via Abigail Nussbaum’s second Hugos post.

* And a nation turns its lonely eyes to Veep.