Posts Tagged ‘Islamophobia’
Wednesday Links!
* How the US built the world’s largest immigrant detention system. A list of companies that contract with ICE.
* Checking in on Duke and UNC under siege.
* 2019 Genius Grant awardees, including Lynda F’ing Barry.
* Allegations of white supremacy are tearing apart a prestigious medieval studies group. The Whitesplaining of History Is Over.
* The kids are all right: Students protest demonstration policy, deliver letter to Zilber.
* Wisconsin students make up smallest share of UW-Madison freshman class in at least 25 years. The Great Decline.
* And on the China and college beat: US universities see decline in students from China. China’s Higher-Ed Ambitions Are at Odds With Its Tightening Grip on Academic Freedom.
* Impacts ‘accelerating’ as leaders gather for UN talks. Earth’s Oceans Are Getting Hotter And Higher, And It’s Accelerating. ‘Unprecedented Conditions’ Will Rule the Oceans This Century, Striking New Report Finds. The African Congo Is Quietly Being Deforested As The Amazon Rainforest Burns. Scientists Set Out to Drift With Arctic Ice for a Year to Study Climate Change. On white supremacy and green living. The Environmental Movement Needs to Reckon with Its Racist History. This is daytime. Nation Perplexed By 16-Year-Old Who Doesn’t Want World To End. “You’re So Accustomed to the Erasure and the Normalization of Catastrophism.”
* Can a burger help solve climate change?
* The Bible may have a naming discrepancy, and a Duke researcher plans to correct it.
* I might have done this one already, but what the hell: Le Guin’s work is distinctive not only because it is imaginative, or because it is political, but because she thought so deeply about the work of building a future worth living.
* A real “hold my beer” moment for neoliberalism: A doctor and medical ethicist, who happens to be Rahm Emmanuel’s brother, argues life after 75 is not worth living.
* Chris Ware, whose Rusty Brown is finally out, about which I am very excited, celebrates Peanuts.
* Epic Disasters: Revisiting Marvel & DC’s 1980s Famine Relief Comics.
* What Ad Astra Gets Wrong About Space Travel, Astronomy, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life.
* Normal society that is definitely normal and good.
* Die a villain, or live long enough to rebound as a hero.
* Will Google’s quantum computing breakthrough change everything?
* The 50 Best Video Games of the 21st Century. Surprisingly solid #1 and #2 picks.
* And I’d like to see Ol Donny Trump wriggle out of this jam! Impeachment step by step.
Monday Night Links!
* Navajos on Mars: Native Sci-fi Film Futures.
* They’re renaming the Tiptree Award after all. From Julie Phillips: On Tiptree and naming.
* The Tragedy of GJ237b: A Role-Playing Game for No Players.
* Happy 82nd Birthday to The Hobbit. And from the archives, in celebration: The Most Metal Deaths in Middle-earth, Ranked.
* Students protest climate change, MU demonstration policy.
* Essay mills are using TurnItIn to prove they’re selling original content.
* Terrible, if inevitable: Grad Students at Private Colleges Could Lose the Right to Unionize.
* Got Shakespeare? What about Milton on Shakespeare?
* The university in ruins in Buffalo.
* Humanities ‘risk becoming cherry on top’ of other disciplines.
* The Problem with Sugar-Daddy Science.
* Today in actual threats to free speech: U.S. Orders Duke and U.N.C. to Recast Tone in Mideast Studies.
* The Trump administration’s crackdown on campus criticism of Israel is Orwellian.
* New Mexico Announces Plan for Free College for State Residents.
* Johns Hopkins Ends ICE Contracts.
* Can’t believe MOOCs didn’t work.
* Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard.
* Is Meritocracy Hurting Higher Education?
* To Protect Your Faculty from Right-Wing Attacks, Follow the Money.
* US academic given two weeks to leave UK after eight years.
* Thoughts on the planetary: An interview with Achille Mbembe.
* A new issue of Analog Game Studies is up.
* On Dark Matter and White Empiricism.
* CFP: UW Women and Gender Studies Consortium Call for Proposals: Resistance and Reimagination. CFP: U Chicago Grad Student Symposium: Race and Capitalism Defined.
* Actually, Gender-Neutral Pronouns Can Change a Culture.
* A Brief History of Trans Philosophy.
* Dear Disgruntled White Plantation Visitors.
* We Didn’t Stand a Chance Against Opioids.
* Most American teens are frightened by climate change, poll finds, and about 1 in 4 are taking action. It’s right to be scared, says top UK scientist. Climate change is morally wrong. It is time for a carbon abolition movement. Millions Of Young People Around The World Are Leading Strikes To Call Attention To The Climate Crisis. ‘We will make them hear us.’ Best Protest Signs From the Global Youth Walkouts. How to be Young in a Climate Emergency. I have a dream that the powerful take the climate crisis seriously. The time for their fairytales is over. ‘You’re not trying hard enough. Sorry.’ This is all wrong. Why Greta is Good.
* Only a Green New Deal can douse the fires of eco-fascism.
* Hello From the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything Is Different.
* It’s Kids vs. the World in a Landmark New Climate Lawsuit.
* Does Science Fiction Have a Moral Imperative to Address Climate Change?
* To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution.
* Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns.
* Elsewhere in headlines from the Anthropocene: SF’s Treasure Island, poised for building boom, escaped listing as Superfund site.
* Faster Than We Thought: What Stories Will Survive Climate Change?
* ‘Worse Than Anyone Expected’: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions. Only 8 People in This Indigenous Tribe Still Speak Their Native Language. The Amazon Fires May Wipe It Out Completely. North America Has Lost a Quarter of Its Birds in Fifty Years. ‘Opening the Door to Hell Itself’: Bahamas Confronts Life After Hurricane Dorian. ‘This situation brings me to despair’: two reef scientists share their climate grief. Exposing The Myth Of Plastic Recycling: Why A Majority Is Burned Or Thrown In A Landfill. America’s Nuclear Power Plants Were Not Built for Climate Change. America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys. 9 Oldest Trees in Africa, Some Over 2,000-Years-Old, Now Dead. The Capitalocene.
* That’ll solve it: Following the lead of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a former 2020 contender, many candidates have set a target date for, at minimum, requiring all new passenger vehicles be zero-emission: Sen. Kamala Harris of California and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg put it at 2035, for example, while Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts aim for 2030.
* The Student Debt Problem Is a Family Crisis.
* The Case Against the Popular Vote.
* More voters are registering than dying — but differences by state could shape 2020.
* Elizabeth Warren’s Crusade Against Corruption.
* It’s Not Just Millennials — Gen Z Is Dealing With A Lot Of Debt Now Too. Wisconsin remains in the top ten states in the nation for the percentage of graduates with student loan debt.
* Elsewhere in everyone being super broke. Millennials believe they’ll die before they retire. America has two economies—and they’re diverging fast.
* WeWork and the Great Unicorn Delusion.
* How Boeing’s Managerial Revolution Created the 737 Max Disaster.
* Sandy Hook parents release chilling ‘back to school’ PSA.
* ‘Fantasy Island’: How the American Dream fueled Puerto Rico’s decline.
* In 2007, 47 dogs were rescued from an illegal dogfighting ring organized by NFL quarterback Michael Vick. They could have been euthanized. Instead, they became family pets.
* She Quit Her Job. He Got Night Goggles. They Searched 57 Days for Their Dog.
* New York Judge Fines Landlord $17,000 for Threatening to Call ICE on Tenant.
* King of Kong sequel shaping up nicely.
* This game should be illegal.
* This question about art predicts Trump support better than educational attainment.
* There’s a shortage of perfect movies in this world. It would be a pity to damage this one.
* Emma Thompson’s new movie The Lost Girls paints Peter Pan as the villain he’s always been.
* Watching Toy Story 4 I simply assumed this was how the movie would end, and was shocked when it didn’t.
* Saved by the Bell: The New Class: The New Class.
* How Wes Anderson Makes Films.
* We needed the X-Men, and now — thank the mutant gods — they’re back.
* Why do people believe the Earth is flat?
Why don’t we agree on the urgency of climate change? Because of a moneyed conspiracy to make us doubt it. Why did we let a single family amass riches greater than the Rockefellers while peddling OxyContin and claiming it wasn’t addictive? Because of a moneyed conspiracy. Why do some 737s fall out of the sky? Why are our baby-bottles revealed to be lined with carcinogenic plastics? Why do corrupt companies get to profit by consorting with the world’s most despicable dictators? Conspiracies.
In other words: Big Tech doesn’t have a mind-control ray, but it does have an incredibly sophisticated people-finding machine, and if you’re looking for people who might believe in your conspiracy, it helps if there’s a massive pool of people around who’ve been battered (and had their lives irreparably harmed) by conspiracies.
* What the Apps That Bring Food to Your Door Mean for Delivery Workers.
* China forcefully harvests organs from detainees, tribunal concludes.
* Industrial agriculture and #MeToo.
* A 6-Year-Old Girl Was Arrested After Throwing A Tantrum.
* Look at this incredibly over-the-top unveiling for Staples new logo.
* How the Black Turtleneck Came to Represent Creative Genius.
* How TikTok Holds Our Attention.
* How a sneaky asteroid escaped detection.
* How we invest in our cities is broken.
* We’ve Reached Peak Wellness. Most of It Is Nonsense.
* Why Jeffrey Epstein Loved Evolutionary Psychology.
* Purdue Pharma, Maker of OxyContin, Files for Bankruptcy.
* Graffiti That Helps You See Through Walls.
* So, the Navy just admitted the Blink-182 guy leaked actual UFO footage.
* A Lunar Space Elevator Is Actually Feasible & Inexpensive, Scientists Find.
* The Socialists Who Think Revolution Will Come When the Aliens Get Here.
* How a ‘Sesame Street’ Muppet became embroiled in a controversy over autism.
* Artificial Intelligence Confronts a ‘Reproducibility’ Crisis.
* MIT Media Lab Kept Regulators in the Dark, Dumped Chemicals in Excess of Legal Limit.
* Impossible Burgers Aren’t Healthy, and That’s the Whole Point.
* Meet Shampoodler, the podcast and Twitch superfan who’s the future of fandom in interactive media.
* Frozen II just remains inscrutable to me.
* Aron Eisenberg, the Actor Who Played Nog on Deep Space Nine, Has Died.
* Hey, God, which beings are conscious?
* And I’ve been saying it for years: Scrabble is broken.
Wednesday Links!
* Marquette now requires permission for on-campus protests. An Open Letter Opposed to Marquette U.’s Anti-Demonstration Policy.
* Elsewhere in academics behaving badly: Professors rally behind MIT Media Lab director after Epstein funding scandal.
* The Quantitative Easing of the Humanities.
* Most-Expensive 4-Year Private Nonprofit Institutions, 2018-19. Impressive for Harvey Mudd to be so committed to that last three dollars to tick just over $75,000/year.
* College Board Drops Its ‘Adversity Score’ For Each Student After Backlash.
* The Next Recession Will Destroy Millennials.
* I just knew it would be something like this.
* This Professor Compared a Columnist to a Bedbug. Then the Columnist Contacted the Provost. A Q&A With the Man Who Called Bret Stephens a Bedbug. Bret Stephens’s “bedbug” meltdown, explained. Who Gets to Speak Freely? Aaron Bady goes all the way back to 2005 for a good old-fashioned blog post.
* Speaking of the mystery of free speech: Incoming Harvard Freshman Deported After Visa Revoked.
“When I asked every time to have my phone back so I could tell them about the situation, the officer refused and told me to sit back in [my] position and not move at all,” he wrote. “After the 5 hours ended, she called me into a room , and she started screaming at me. She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the US on my friend[s] list.”
* Southern California police arrest 3 middle school students for inciting a riot.
* Photos: The Burning Amazon Rainforest. The basic premise of geoengineering is that it will be easier to get the planetary atmospheric and ecological systems to change the way they work than to get the capitalist economy to change the way it works. It is immoral to have climate change in the era of babies. Wildfires and Floods Push Russia to Revise Its Stance on Climate Change. Let’s just spray trillions of tons of snow on Antarctica?
* The Affair, climate change, and the new realism.
* Florida Marine vet teacher on leave after telling students he would ‘be the best school shooter.’
* Bigotry and hate are more linked to mass shootings than mental illness, experts say.
* Trump suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them from hitting U.S. (A rebuttal.) Science division of White House office left empty as last staffers depart. Trump Allies Reportedly Set Up Network to Smear Journalists Ahead of Election. He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said.
* The Entire Plane of the Milky Way Captured in a Single Photo. Keep scrolling, there’s more!
* A reading list on alcoholism.
* School Administration Reminds Female Students Bulletproof Vests Must Cover Midriff.
* Native American Lacrosse Teams Reported Racial Abuse. Then Their League Expelled Them.
* When your kids start beating you in games.
* Where the candidates campaign. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Understands Democracy Better Than Republicans Do.
* When you’re extremely on message.
* Dairy Queen burgers are not made of human flesh, a county coroner is forced to confirm. He’s in on it.
* Johnson & Johnson must pay over $572 million for its role in Oklahoma opioid crisis, judge rules.
* Drug prices in 2019 are surging, with hikes at 5 times inflation.
* 2 California towns where chickens have free range.
* Uber And Lyft Take A Lot More From Drivers Than They Say.
* A growing army of ‘Airbnb’ police gets paid to expose the addresses of homeshare hosts.
* Human-guided burrito bots raise questions about the future of robo-delivery.
* More evidence of YouTube rightwing radicalization. In a study of >79 million YouTube comments, @manoelribeiro et. al. shows that a high % of people who now comment on Alt-Right videos used to comment exclusively on IDW or Alt-lite videos.
* ProPublica found that – despite the TSA saying it is committed to treating all passengers equally and fairly – five per cent of civil rights complaints against the TSA related to the treatment of trans passengers, despite trans people making up less than one per cent of the US population.
* Lots of nerds *think* they like science fiction because of the technology and perditions.
* Marvel Comics Just Retconned the Entire Vietnam War.
* There Are People Who Think The West Invaded Iraq Over a Stargate.
* Mystery Deepens Around Newly Detected Ripples in Space-Time.
* “We are in a mass delusion that it’s all Gary, that he’s the father of role-playing games,” he said. “Humans do not like to admit they’ve been hornswoggled, lied to, cheated, or fooled.”
* The Campbell Award gets a new name.
* How Do We Colonize the Moon?
* And submitted for your approval: the new culture industry.
Thursday Links!
* Call for Papers: Essays on Hootie & the Blowfish. Call for Papers: Reappraising Stephen King. Call for Papers: International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts 41: Climate Change and the Anthropocene.
* Looking for a postdoc? Here’s one on the history of Viagra.
* Congrats to the Hugo winners! And here’s a special shoutout: Why Archive of Our Own’s Surprise Hugo Nomination Is Such a Big Deal. “John W. Campbell, for whom this award was named, was a fascist.” Jeannette Ng, John W. Campbell, and What Should Be Said By Whom and When.
* We Have Ruined Childhood. Wait a minute here, don’t you try to pin this on me!
* How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition.
* The notion that students have somehow been coddled is just 100% bullshit. It’s the opposite. They’ve been asked to run a gauntlet which is disengaged from a sense of community, family, even their own natures.
* Persistent Partisan Breakdown on Higher Ed. The partisan rift over college will haunt us.
* Life expectancy drops in Wisconsin due to alcohol, drugs.
* The 1619 Project. Who Got the Maddest About the New York Times’ Slavery Coverage? The 1619 Project made conservatives tell on themselves.
* Very few of us, myself included, are Kant, but very many of us now must decide how and where to think as the academy contracts. We are losing a community of thinkers at the moment when all of our old modes of thinking are looking increasingly like diversions or repetitions of that which we know too well, while the broader culture dismisses humanists as idiots who forgot to get STEM degrees. At the same time, we are refusing to give those who remain the space to fail, to gawk, to marvel, to stagger in front of the arguments they don’t know how to make, and instead are rewarding the articles and arguments that look familiar in form, if not content. To succeed in academia we demand they fail at failing.
It may be that we fail (and I mean this “we” to include myself) to think anything new about climate change because there is nothing to be thought. Perhaps the danger of climate change is not so different from the threat of nuclear annihilation as the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot once put it in his essay “The Apocalypse is Disappointing”— “an event of enormous size but enormously empty, about which it can say nothing, save this banality: that it would be better to prevent it.”
* Columbia Had Little Success Placing English Ph.D.s on the Tenure Track. ‘Alarm’ Followed, and the University Responded. WHAT YEAR IS IT
* Can Starbucks Save the Middle Class? No. But It Might Ruin Higher Education.
* The Humanities in the Age of Loneliness.
* Alaska Regents Vote to Terminate Exigency Declaration.
* Jeffrey Epstein’s Intellectual Enabler.
* Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Pace of Climate Change. The Amazon Is on Fire and the Smoke Can Be Seen from Space. Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is burning at a record rate, research center says. Bolsonaro says his critics are setting the fires, to make him look bad. On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon, Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe. Scientists decry ‘ignorance’ of rolling back species protections in the midst of a mass extinction. We Can’t Confront Climate Change While Lavishly Funding the Pentagon. At the bottom of a glacier in Greenland, climate scientists find troubling signs. Greenland’s Deepening Ecological Grief. Don’t forget the Siberian forest fires. The guy whose sole platform was climate change never polled higher than 1%. The Case for Climate Rage.
* Huge, if true: Golden age superheroes were shaped by the rise of fascism.
* Truth and Reconciliation and Science Fiction.
* On Representations of Disability: A Reading List.
* India’s military blockade of Kashmir is breathtaking in its brutality and violence. We can’t let them silence Kashmir’s dreams for freedom and justice.
* Militant Neo-Nazi Group Actively Recruiting Ahead of Alleged Training Camp. Militant Neo-Nazi now the acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Militant Neo-Nazis run the New York Times.
* How Trump’s Policies Are Leaving Thousands of Asylum Seekers Waiting in Mexico. After ICE. An undocumented Chinese restaurant worker has been fighting for backpay to the tune of $200K. Then ICE arrested him while giving a deposition in a lawsuit. The Trump Administration Wants To Hold Undocumented Children In Detention Indefinitely. Trump admin weighs letting states, cities deny entry to refugees approved for resettlement in U.S. The US won’t provide flu vaccines to migrant families at border detention camps. How the US Exported Its Border Around the World.
* Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled rise of The Epoch Times. Donald Trump Is Not the Messiah, He’s a Very Naughty Boy. Why Some White Liberals Will Probably Vote For Donald Trump. The President Is on Some Real Shit Right Now, Honestly. Trump draws another primary challenger. Meanwhile, I’ve laid my marker down.
* Buying Greenland isn’t a good idea — it’s a great idea.
* The more I look at it, the more this photograph is punctum, punctum, punctum. It barely holds together. It is all disturbance, all accident. Even the wallpaper starts to tremble: Who at the University of El Paso Medical Center violated the Hippocratic Oath by approving this particular photo-op?
* Not exactly a democracy, now, is it.
* The boomers going bust: why elderly bankruptcy is rising in America.
* Their Mothers Chose Donor Sperm. The Doctors Used Their Own.
* In “How to Be an Antiracist,” Ibram X. Kendi argues that we should think of “racist” not as a pejorative but as a simple, widely encompassing term of description.
* NYPD fires officer who put Eric Garner in chokehold. I lost my job for keeping Charlottesville police accountable. I’d do it again. Fearing for his life, Cleveland cop…
* School reopens inquiry into teens giving Nazi salute as new clips emerge, reports say.
* “We’ve wasted all their fucking resources to make this rally,” Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said in video captured during the latest extremist rally held Saturday in Portland. “We want them to waste $2 million and we’ll do it again in two months.”
* I was skeptical of unions. Then I joined one.
* Amazon’s Ring wants police to keep these surveillance details from you.
* Pressured To Spy On NYC Mosques For Two Years, An Immigrant FBI Informant Seeks A Way Out.
* To save the Church, Catholics must detach themselves from the clerical hierarchy—and take the faith back into their own hands. Abolish the Priesthood.
* A first grader who found his grandmother’s loaded gun at school this spring pointed it at another student, according to an email released Monday by Highland Local Schools in Morrow County.
* $48M Michigan high school has places to hide in case of mass shooting.
* What Would Happen If the Whole Internet Just Shut Down All of a Sudden?
* Designer babies are on the way. We’re not ready.
* In this way, the violent, cathartic fantasies of Tarantino’s recent historical-ish trilogy allegorize the very function of fiction itself. They intervene in matters of fact not to rewrite the record, but to remind us that stories are the spaces where we consider alternatives, rework our real-world mythologies, rethink history, and expand upon ideas.
* California’s Forgotten Confederate History. A History of White Nationalism in the Pacific Northwest.
* Who’s to Blame When Algorithms Discriminate? No one, silly, that’s the whole point!
* DoorDash is still pocketing workers’ tips, almost a month after it promised to stop.
* Dungeons and Dragons Rules for Progressives.
* Dr. Evil wants to refresh his moonbase.
* One Man’s Modernism: J. R. R. Tolkien.
* There is no Africa in African studies.
* The dialectic of enlightenment.
* My life as a background Slytherin. Legolas, what do your elf eyes see?
* Our favorite candid photographs of wild animals—taken via camera trap.
* Another good thread: What’s the fantasy or SF book that’s not some big famous award winning thing that you think I should read?
* The language of Mario Maker.
* Twilight of the MCU. Here comes Matrix 4, at least.
* The arc of history is long, but Marquette has prohibited motorized scooter use on campus property.
* From the archives: 50 years later, Bob Dylan’s motorcycle crash remains mysterious.
* And this is some extremely relatable content.
Friday Morning Links!
* ICYMI! SFFTV CFP: “When the Astronaut is a Woman: Beyond the Frontier in Film and Television.” At the link there’s also details for SFFTV’s year-round reading period.
* Climate Scientists Warn That All Super Mario Levels Will Be Underwater by 2025.
* Okay, but it’s only barely half.
* Ethnic cleansing remains the one arena of policy where this White House can focus. Emboldened by Trump, U.S. Border Officials Are Lying to Asylum Seekers and Turning Them Away.
* Trump Lawyer Marc Kasowitz Threatens Stranger in Emails: ‘Watch Your Back , Bitch.’
* I sincerely hope the lawsuits associated with this pronouncement bankrupt Anthem.
* Game of Thrones fan fiction getting serious now.
* At the end of the second Obama administration, there seemed to be more time and world in which to noodle around with those questions than there is today. In this new age of anxiety and emergency, existential threats seem very close indeed. Our own game of thrones has taken a terrifying turn. Winter is other people.
* It is ridiculous how beyond debate the collusion case has become and how little it matters anyway.
* Why Are We So Unwilling to Take Sylvia Plath at Her Word?
* SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (dir. John Hughes, 2017). This will definitely hold up in court. I hope this is still legally binding. At this point I’d at least hear them out. When you stare too long into the abyss. From A to Z.
* The war on drugs goes speculative.
* Income Inequality Will Survive the Nuclear Apocalypse.
* And Here’s Your First Look at an Insanely Detailed Model of Disney’s Star Wars Land.
I May Have Committed A Little Light Treason Links
* thisisfine.jpg: An iceberg the size of Delaware has broken off Antarctica. My kids are three and five. Just 90. And you’re a little late.
* Blogger completely debunks claim Amelia Earhart was a Japanese prisoner.
* CFP: The George Slusser Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy, University of California, Irvine, on April 26–29, 2018. CFP: Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction. And our deadline was extended a month with the rest of the SUS: Suvin Today?, A Roundtable Discussion, The Society for Utopian Studies (November 9-12, 2017 in Memphis, TN).
* Nothing now would better serve the maturity and the invigoration of the Democrats than to give up any hope of sound advice or renewal from Bill or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. They were pleasant to think about, but their politics have turned out wrong, and there’s nothing they can do for us now. The Age of Detesting Trump.
* Fredo, Fredo, Fredo. I tried to warn you: These revelations—and the possibility that more is yet to come—have made it increasingly untenable for Trump’s supporters to argue that there is nothing to the collusion story. And so, many have now begun to argue that even if there was collusion of the kind suggested by the Times, it wouldn’t be a crime—or even all that out of the ordinary. Some Trump loyalists are even making the case that it was smart and savvy for the campaign to pursue help from the Russians. Trump supporters know Trump lies. They just don’t care.
* I mean the wheels are really coming off.
* Trump still hasn’t resigned from his businesses like he promised, either.
* Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen: The Democrats! The Democrats Are Eisenhower Republicans.
* The attempt to stay faithful to the actual facts of the world that would make this impossible tanks the piece, but the overall message — that our political elites are soulless monsters without any hint of integrity or principle — is absolutely sound: What If Trump Had Won As a Democrat?
* Democrats should take the class warfare message to upscale suburbs.
* Science Fiction and Dystopia in the Age of Trump.
* What happens to America if Anthony Kennedy retires?
* Cancer researcher was held at Boston airport. Now he is being sent back to Iran.
* 23 emotions people feel, but can’t explain.
* Space colonization, faith, and Pascal’s Wager.
* In St. Louis, America’s nuclear history creeps into the present, leaching into streams and bodies.
* Between 2009 and 2011 more than 1 in 8 Milwaukee renters experienced a forced move. Rent Is Affordable to Low-Wage Workers in Exactly 12 U.S. Counties.
* Stage four credentialing. The Library of Heaven.
* The Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) garnered more than 3,000 complaints regarding the uniforms. They conducted their own tests and found concerning evidence: a short-sleeved jacket had levels of cadmium, a highly toxic chemical, that were above the acceptable textile industry standard. The tests also found traces of formaldehyde, nickel, and tetrachlorophenol, all of which can cause major irritations. Formaldehyde, for instance, is even on the American Cancer Society’s list of known human carcinogens. What’s more, in 2011, Alaska Airlines experienced a very similar problem after issuing uniforms from Twin Hill. Around 10 percent of employees reported reactions and that airline issued a recall. Despite this damning evidence, American Airlines maintains that their uniforms are safe.
* Looking forward to this movie: Chicago Library Seeks Help Transcribing Magical Manuscripts.
* Gotta love a headline that has the courage of its convictions: CRISPR gene editing technique is probably safe, study confirms.
* We were driving away from Hedgesville when the third overdose call of the day came, for a twenty-nine-year-old male. America leads the world in drug overdose deaths — by a lot. Trump-Loving Sheriff Won’t Let Deputies Carry Overdose Antidote. A Small-Town Police Officer’s War on Drugs.
* The Klan comes (back) to Charlottesville.
* Drones keep dropping drugs and porn into prisons.
* Yes! Yes! Yes! And I’m especially all in for this: Quentin Tarantino’s Next Movie Will Be About the Manson Family.
* Remembering Milwaukee’s Own Cordwainer Smith.
* The mass defunding of higher education that’s yet to come.
* Jeff VanderMeer Amends the Apocalypse. Russia 1917: You Are There. Nor Secret Griefs Nor Grudges: Laura Kipnis’s Unwanted Advances. Cottage Industry.
* The racial daring of Sundance’s Cleverman gives it an edge most superhero stories can’t match.
* The main reason for the contemporary evasion of Arendt’s critique of careerism, however, is that addressing it would force a confrontation with the dominant ethos of our time. In an era when capitalism is assumed to be not only efficient but also a source of freedom, the careerist seems like the agent of an easy-going tolerance and pluralism. Unlike the ideologue, whose great sin is to think too much and want too much from politics, the careerist is a genial caretaker of himself. He prefers the marketplace to the corridors of state power. He is realistic and pragmatic, not utopian or fanatic. That careerism may be as lethal as idealism, that ambition is an adjunct of barbarism, that some of the worst crimes are the result of ordinary vices rather than extraordinary ideas: these are the implications of Eichmann in Jerusalem that neo-cons and neoliberals alike find too troubling to acknowledge.
* As you can probably tell by looking around, every employee at our startup is 23 years old. On the morning of your 24th birthday, the barcode on your employee ID stops working and you can no longer enter our building. We do this to ensure our company has a ceaseless, youthful energy. We believe old people are displeasing to look at and also, bad at ideas.
* Nightmare jobs I’d never even though about: Rape Choreography Makes Films Safer, But Still Takes a Toll on Cast and Crew.
* First object teleported to Earth’s orbit.
* Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again! Junot Diaz and Margaret Atwood in conversation.
Monday Morning Links!
* On Saturday night the SFRA announced its award winners. Congrats to all! And here’s a Storify of the weekend’s #SFRA2017 tweets.
* Civilizations in Crisis: Chinese Speculative Fiction. And at the New Yorker Radio Hour: The Cultural Revolution and the Alien Invasion.
* The Jobless Utopia of La Zarzuela.
* ‘Seat 14C’ short stories imagine a 20-year time warp – and now you can hop on board.
* As one of the four finalists for the Edward Said Chair, I returned from the campus interview to experience a prolonged waiting period. When the news was finally delivered, I did not learn whether I had gotten the position or not. Rather, the email informed me that the position had been cancelled altogether, due to unforeseen administrative issues.
* Constructing the cyber-troll: Psychopathy, sadism, and empathy.
* President Trump appears to have sourced his CNN wrestling tweet from a racist troll on Reddit.
* Proponents insist that the emails, as deranged as they might seem, work. Critics argue that the tactic has a short shelf life and is deceptive. But Their Emails.
* D.C. police are investigating whether patrol officers struck an 11-year-old bicyclist with their cruiser Thursday night in Northwest Washington’s Park View neighborhood and drove away without reporting the incident.
* Did Trump break the law over alleged Morning Joe National Enquirer blackmail threat? Oh honey. The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians. Trump’s CNN Tweet Linked To Reddit User HanAssholeSolo.
* Democrats completely around the bend.
* How handsome is Mike Pence? We asked the experts.
* Once we dispense with the pragmatic-compromise explanation for the MSPRA, it’s much easier to understand what CAP is doing. They are proposing a “bipartisan” patch on Obamacare, not because they think they can win through compromise, but because they largely agree with what Republicans want to do. They are promoting market-based healthcare instead of embracing popular support for single payer because they do not want to see single payer succeed. There’s no counter-intuitive chess game going on here; liberals are telling the left exactly what they want, and we would do well to take them at their word.
* Generation Catalano rebrands again, again.
University of Melbourne Associate Professor of Sociology Dan Woodman—who, probably not coincidentally, was born in 1980—says the “Xennial” label applies to those born between 1977 and 1983. It’s a unique demographic group, he argues, because Xennials spent a significant chunk of their childhoods without access to computers—and indeed, will someday be among the last people on Earth to remember a time before the internet—but experienced the internet revolution early enough to still become early adopters of new technologies. People who were actually college aged when Facebook came out, in other words.
* Another one: Generation Space.
* The forgotten cyberspace of the Neuromancer computer game.
* Iran’s temperature hit 127 degrees yesterday.
* Being James Thomas Hodgkinson’s widow.
* Methadone for social media addiction.
* How valuable is Stephen Curry?
* Phone Sex Operators Say They Are Making Less Than Minimum Wage.
* Escaped elephant takes a stroll through Wisconsin neighborhood.
* Ancestry.com presents: Descendents of the Founding Fathers.
* disappointedspringsteen.gif. I mean really.
* McConnell’s nearing a deal. Don’t sugarcoat this. Trump just called for 32 million people to lose health coverage.
* A Muslim doctor in Trump country.
* New Florida law lets any resident challenge what’s taught in science classes.
* ‘Terrorism’ misspelled on bench at Indiana war memorial.
* Mass Grave Of Dozens Of Tortured Black Men Found In Deceased KKK Leaders Estate. UPDATE: This was a fake story.
* Personally, I think teaching is improv.
* Against Gorsuch. Against Gorsuch. Against Gorsuch.
* Fascinating analysis: The newspaper offered no definitive answer, but the question itself points to a broader issue that tends to be underexplored in the context of wrongful convictions: what typically happens with respect to the underlying crime—and, by implication, the cause of justice and of public safety—when the person found legally responsible for committing it later is determined not to be.
* A Brutal Intelligence: AI, Chess, and the Human Mind.
* In Honoring Enslaved Laborers, Colleges Seek to Blunt the Force of Their Pro-Slavery Icons.
* Wikipedia as Text Adventure.
* The Hardest Job in the World. I’m like an X-Man with psychic attack powers. Time Management: A Guide for Busy Moms.
* Factionalism / small talk. All things carry yin and embrace yang. Look for the helpers.
* Horror is the only film genre where women appear and speak as often as men.
* And I consider this a canonical part of Zefram Cochrane’s backstory.
#SFRA2017 Links for All Your #SFRA2017 Needs!
* 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).
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
Monday Links!
* Academic freedom in Wisconsin.
* This is silly, but I confess I found it an interesting wrinkle: Wonder Woman Actor Says Chief Is Actually a Demi-God.
* People shouldn’t live in Arizona.
* Democrats Don’t Need Trump’s Voters To Retake The House. The overall message of 2017 special elections is that Republicans are in trouble. Why Paul Ryan’s race for Congress next year bears watching, even if he’ll be hard to beat. An Associated Press study of U.S. House races found that Republicans may have gained up to 22 additional seats in the 2016 election due to redistricting. The AP’s analysis also found four times as many states with GOP-skewed state legislative maps as Democratic-skewed ones. Voter suppression is a greater threat to U.S. democracy than Russian election tampering, if you can imagine it.
* Bernie and Jane Sanders, under FBI investigation for bank fraud, hire lawyers.
* Senate GOP expected to add new penalties for the uninsured into their health bill. Privately, health plan worries Senate bill would “cause most small employers’ premiums to go up.” Coverage Losses Under the Senate Health Care Bill Could Result in 18,100 to 27,700 Additional Deaths in 2026. Crazy waivers: the Senate bill invites states to gut important health insurance rules. Medicaid Cuts May Force Retirees Out of Nursing Homes. You’re Probably Going to Need Medicaid. Pure Class Warfare, With Extra Contempt. Can the moderates save us? Even Ron “Horrible” Johnson: ‘We should not be voting’ on healthcare this week. (But, you know, partial credit at best.) The principled support for the bill is apparently pass it no matter what’s in it just cause Team Red. Trump and Social Darwinism. Keep calling.
* What we have just witnessed can, I think, be legitimately referred to as the popping of the Blair-Clinton bubble. That is, the ending of the assumption that a tepid, compromised, market-friendly, bureaucratic centrism that nobody actually liked was the only form left-of-centre politics could take, because everyone was convinced that everyone else thought so.
* What It Was Like to Star in the Trump-Themed Julius Caesar.
* Centrist Democrats are now the great defenders of social justice? Please.
* Trump’s Deflections and Denials on Russia Frustrate Even His Allies.
* Remember when we had laws and dumb stuff like that? God, we were such dorks.
* NJ Assembly Passes Bill Requiring Kids Be Taught to Interact With Police. Maybe give some of the same training to off-duty cops next?
* Cops Sent Warrant To Facebook To Dig Up Dirt On Woman Whose Boyfriend They Had Just Killed.
* I wasn’t one, but congratulations to all the Locus Award winners!
* The Many Lives of the Medieval Wound Man.
* Pale Blue Dot. The Weinersmith Test for Artificial Intelligence. Everything happens for a reason. Hot lava. Markov dating.
* Alarmingly, one source speaking to THR claims that upon the announcement to the crew that Ron Howard would step in to take over the film a day after Miller and Lord’s firing, applause broke out. Report: Lucasfilm Was So Concerned About Alden Ehrenreich’s Han Solo Performance It Brought in an Acting Coach. What a mess.
* The race to save Florida’s devastated coral reef from global warming.
* Crimebook noplane freedomhate.
* High Court Mostly Revives Trump Travel Ban, Will Hear Appeal.
* High-stakes scenarios and market failure.
* The amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it.
* Everyone, get your guesses in! Last call for Kennedy bets.
* This is no time for optimism.
* Prince Was a Secret Patron of Solar Power.
* Flashback: David Bowie’s Failed Attempt to Adapt George Orwell’s ‘1984.’
* 150 times actors were forced to say the title of the movie they’re in.
* Riot at Disney tonight, details TK.
* Superhero Rescues Put Everyone in Danger, Urge Scientists.
* This is why we can’t have nice things. Do not panic; the authorities are in complete control. Bitch I might be. Happy last week of summer school.
* And I’ve said it all along: don’t blame me, blame the world.
Sunday’d Reading!
* Presenting the International Journal of James Bond Studies.
* On graduate labor and the Yale commencement protest.
* A shadowy international mercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counterterrorism measures, collaborating closely with police in at least five states, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents provide the first detailed picture of how TigerSwan, which originated as a U.S. military and State Department contractor helping to execute the global war on terror, worked at the behest of its client Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, to respond to the indigenous-led movement that sought to stop the project.
* Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared!
* So old I can remember when Eric and Donald Jr. were going to run the business and not have a political role. (January.)
* Cool, thanks for looking into it.
* Google’s AI Is Now Creating Its Own AI.
* The Republicans Broke American Politics, and Media Elites Are Blind to It. A week that reveals how rotten today’s Republican Party is.
* The life and death of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. It’s too late, of course, the cultists will believe in it for all time.
* Horrific hate crime in Portland. Seems to be part of a disturbing trend.
* New Orleans principal loses job after wearing Nazi-associated rings in video. Glowing 2015 profile.
* Meanwhile, in Arizona. In New Jersey.
* New Jersey not doing great in my newsfeed today generally. Though this was good.
* U.S. Airstrike Killed Over 100 Civilians in Mosul, Pentagon Says. The U.S. Is Helping Allies Hide Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria.
* ‘Mostly Toddlers’ Among 31 Drowned.
* A spectre is haunting Goldman Sachs.
* Trump going to the mattresses.
* How Alleged Russian Hacker Teamed Up With Florida GOP Operative.
* Democrats doing much better, still can’t win a damn thing. The only answer is to keep offering them nothing and telling them they’re stupid, until they finally come around. Wake up, liberals: There will be no 2018 “blue wave,” no Democratic majority and no impeachment. Donald Trump Is A Big Reason The GOP Kept The Montana House Seat.
* Remember how terrible the AHCA is?
* Sheriff Clarke and some totally appropriate, not at all batshit insane behavior.
* A GoFundMe Campaign Is Not Health Insurance.
* A 31-year-old undocumented Honduran bicyclist, Marcos Antonio Huete, was hit by a car in Key West, Florida, on his way to work. The policeman’s camera shows him inquiring about the victim’s immigration status before offering medical assistance. He was later detained by the Border Patrol.
* “We want you to think Luke is bad” is an awfully large part of Last Jedi hype. I have to think that means they won’t actually do it…
* Title IX Policy shift at the University of Oregon: Faculty members at the University of Oregon will no longer be required to notify campus authorities when students confide in them that they’ve been sexually assaulted or harassed but say they don’t want the information reported.
* Wealth, I realized, is the adult version of magic: an incredibly powerful but ultimately arbitrary resource that transfers primarily through inheritance. It has some logic to it— but also enough randomness that those without can hope for a spontaneous windfall in the form of an improbably lucrative investment or a secret inheritance.
* Unexpected and interesting: Joss Whedon isn’t just finishing Justice League; he’s been working on it for a while.
* Truly, ours is the darkest timeline.
* A chance meeting with Mr. Rogers.
* If you’d bought $1,000 of Bitcoin in 2010, you’d be worth $35M.
* Uber: a cheap scam all the way down.
* Original draft of Revenge of the Sith actually treated Padme as an interesting character.
* Obituaries My Mother Wrote for Me While I Was Living in San Francisco in My Twenties.
* These birds have the right idea.
* This one cuts me. When you’re in your thirties. Call CPS. #TheResistance.
* Everything was connected, and I was fucked.
* Can someone please explain the physics of Casper?
* And N6946-BH1 is all of us right now.
Weekend Links!
* Angela Davis at Marquette, March 29.
* CFP: From Sanctuary to Sabotage: Fighting the Fascist Creep at and beyond Universities.
* “Virtually nothing about our standard model of sleep existed as we know it two centuries ago.”
* 20 Years Ago, Starship Troopers Showed Us What Happens When Fascism Wins.
* 11 things I learned about academia by analysing 14 million RateMyProfessor reviews.
* Remember that Iowa lawmaker who wanted to purge universities of Democrats? Guess what!
* Nice, low-key interview with Kim Stanley Robinson on Flash Forward TV.
* Abigail Nussbaum walks you through her Hugo short fiction nominations.
* Trump and the Myth of Nuclear Flexibility.
* Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War.
* America divided into states with the population of California. Which is to say, if we allow ourselves a crudely democratic understanding of what representative democracy should be, there would only be 16 senators in a Senate that fairly represented people living in California.
* America has locked up so many black people it has warped our sense of reality.
* Exiting the Roach Motel, or, What’s the Matter with the Democratic Party?
The Democratic Party is a roach motel for leftists. We go in full of vision and energy, like the Sanders kids, like the Ellison supporters, and we get crushed and stuck in the slime. Sanders and Ellison had to play by the rules and call for continuing support for the Dems after their losses. Having played the game, they were stuck with the rules in the roach motel. Once you go in, you may never come out.
* Twilight of the meritocrats.
* Palantir and ICE. Freeze on H-1B Visas. Customs Giving Literacy Tests At JFK Is A Thing Now. Deportation fears impacting criminal case. Don’t Get Your Undocumented Friends in Trouble: A How-To. Are you listening, SXSW?
* White House aide Sebastian Gorka said Wednesday that objections to President Donald Trump’s creation of a new office to highlight crimes committed by undocumented immigrants are “un-American.” All right, then, I’ll go to Hell….
* “Accompanied by his wife Jessica, a U.S. citizen who is six months pregnant with their first child.” Trump administration considering separating women, children at U.S.-Mexico border. Detained after a press conference, Daniela Vargas was seven when she came to the U.S. A 13-Year-Old Girl Sobbed While Recording Her Immigrant Father Get Arrested By ICE Agents. ICE Plans To Deport Oregon Immigrant With 5 Children, No Criminal Background. Immigration agents deport Houston father of two who previously held immigration reprieve. After Decades In The U.S., NY Immigrant With Years-Old Pot Misdemeanor Faces Deportation. Does even a single person with a conscience work for this administration?
* Kushner and Flynn. Two other Trump advisers also spoke with Russian envoy during GOP convention. Your cheat sheet to four potential investigations of Russia and President Trump. Mysteries of Jeff Sessions. Recusal is not enough. Isn’t it pretty to think so? The Innocent Explanation. Why Trump Sounding ‘Presidential’ Only Makes Him More Dangerous. Style and Substance. Trumpism and heroism. You Cretins Are Going To Get Thousands Of People Killed. This one broke while I was tagging the post.
* Hard to blame them: European Parliament votes to end visa-free travel for Americans.
* Four mosques have burned in seven weeks. Nearly half of the country’s Jewish community centers have received bomb threats in 2017. Today’s arrest (an apparent copycat) covered less than 10% of that.
* Destroying the planet is too important to let a silly little thing like national borders get in the way. The end of the Great Lakes. Gutting the Chesapeake Bay. Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Portends Huge Carbon Release. Antarctica hits record high temperature at balmy 63.5°F.
* The rich are different: they control everything.
* Adam Roberts rereads The Time Machine.
* The Feminist Bookstore Movement.
* Fascinated by this: Price of Lab-Grown Burger Falls from $325K to $11.36.
* A rough stat from up the street: Only 1 in 5 black students enrolled at UW-Milwaukee graduates in 6 years.
* Team Plagiarizes Golden State Warriors. Team Is Undefeated.
* Could different borders save Europe?
* A diabetic boy’s parents ‘didn’t believe in doctors.’ Now they’re guilty of his murder.
* Are the Yuuzhan Vong coming back?
* After oil was discovered on their Oklahoma reservation, the Osage Nation became the richest people per capita in the world. Then they began to be murdered off mysteriously. In 1924 the nascent FBI sent a team of undercover agents, including a Native American, to the Osage reservation.
* 69 Cock Lane is yours for £449,950, but is it Britain’s naughtiest address?
* This is the future liberals want. Though of course the meme is good too.
* But not this one: “basically a Fitbit for your man bits that tracks thrust speed and velocity.”
* Disney is super proud of itself for this incredibly progressive leap forward. Next: Scar, Ursula, and Captain Hook were all gay, too!
* There’s nothing sweet in life: Protesting Dr. Seuss Week.
* Nobody hates college more than the people who run colleges.
* A transgender boy just won the Texas girls’ state wrestling championship.
* No More Saturday Marches. While the Iron Is Hot: The Case for the Women’s Strike.
* The line must be drawn — here!
* A People’s History of Daria.
* These colleges are better than Harvard at making poor kids rich.
* George W. Bush, with the soul of an artist.
* Massive Open Online Rubber Arrow through the Head.
* Statement of teaching philosophy.
* This week’s I Was There Too interviews someone I’ve always wondered about, the actor who replaced Crispin Glover in Back to the Future Part Two. The Biff episode was good too though if you follow Back to the Future arcana you’ve probably heard a lot of it before.
* Trump’s worst crime is forcing me to agree with David Frum.
* Neoliberalism in everything: “Ark Encounter doesn’t live up to economic promise.”
* NASA’s about to learn a valuable lesson about the Internet.
* And the positive reviews have done it: I’m going to ruin my career and buy a Nintendo Switch so I can play the new Zelda.
Weekend Links!
* Are you at AWP? Or in DC generally? Jaimee is! She’ll be doing a book signing at the Waywiser Table at 12:30 Saturday and then reading at the Waywiser reading at 7:30 PM at the Den.
* This is so outrageous. 21 years in the US, arrived at 14, two US citizen children, arrested at a scheduled check-in with ICE. You could hardly find more compelling proof that this is entirely and exclusively about cruelty.
* “Pentagon journal explores what could happen if a president called for Muslim internment camps.” Gee, I wonder.
* Meanwhile, in another classic authoritarian maneuver, the outsized ego at the heart of the Trumpist seizure of power has surrounded himself with an obliging retinue of enablers and quisling yes-men. Trump likes to divide people between “haters and losers”—a cheap shot that is actually a fairly useful way to categorize his own team. It’s Already Happened Here. How to Stop an Autocracy. Profiles in Courage: Rand Paul, Civil Libertarian.
* Every day. Something crazy happens every day.
* The history of this era is going to be so, so unbelievable.
* Neither Nordstrom nor Ivanka but International Socialism.
* It’s getting to the point where you can’t even call for the wanton slaughter of students without some PC SJW raising a stink about it.
* How Political Fear Works. Beware of Self-Censorship. Who Benefits From Trump’s Chaos? What’s in it For The Collaborators? There Are No Good Reasons Not To Fight.
* Obama’s Lost Army: When Obama Killed OFA.
* I liked this: The Meitheal Manifesto: Thirteen Agreements to Save the World.
* Some rare good news on the climate.
* Darkest thing I’ve ever seen, first for one the one reason and then for the other.
* The arc of history is long, but Mac malware is slowly catching up to its Windows rivals.
* Solitary Confinement Is a Great American Shame.
* Remembering Richard Rorty on Trump (and the reformist left) (again).
* No one is reading those reference letters. “Truly, this is the single easiest fix in academic culture.”
* Science education in the time of Trump.
* You can’t argue with facts, little brother.
* Bees aren’t endangered anymore! Surprisingly easy fix actually.
* Everything is hot now and getting hotter. Everything seems off or wrong and it is hard to get your bearings because so few of the old landmarks remain. It is hard to believe that some things ever happened, that certain places ever existed. Sometimes I am convinced my memory is wrong or fooling me. The idea that there might be a United States. The idea that this vast and unruly countryside, these ruined cities, these endless refugee camps, might have once been something else. If no one invades us now and only some countries send food and aid, it is only because they too are under stress. Or because we are so fucked up and so many of us have so many weapons. Somewhere in the lost places, there are still nukes, too. Jeff VanderMeer’s “Trump Land.”
* SF Cities Beyond Blade Runner.
* Graverobbing the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
* Source map from the first great comic book crossover.
* TGIF!
* Oh, this was so brutal to read. There but for the grace of God go I at least for now.
Here are my vitals: I have more than $200,000 in student loans and $46,000 in credit card debt—all accumulated during my B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., and then search for a tenure-track job. My annual salary translates to a little more than $3,000 in monthly take-home pay. I pay $800 a month in rent, $1,100 in credit card bills (paying only the monthly minimums), $350 in student loans, and have $285 a month car payment. I also pay the usual insurances, utilities, groceries, gas, et al. I don’t have cable. Or a kitchen table. Or blinds on any of my windows. I’ve cancelled all magazine and newspaper subscriptions—an actual dilemma for a journalism professor. For my first year in Bangor I didn’t even have a bed. Instead I slept on a Target air mattress until it lost its breath; then I moved to the couch (which I had purchased on credit), until my back finally demanded I buy a bed (credit, again).
* And of course you had me at A New Deep Space Nine Documentary Reveals What Would Have Happened in Season Eight. Here’s another good writeup.
Trumpsday Reading
* Trump is targeting up to 8 million people for deportation. Making America Cruel Again. The triumph of cruelty. Inside the White House-Cabinet battle over Trump’s immigration order. 24 Hours at JFK. ‘Breathtaking violation of rights.’ Constitutional crisis. Hero Lawyers. Stop that plane: The frantic race to halt a deportation. A Q&A With the ACLU. Our New Itinerary. Travel ban causes high anxiety for Milwaukee’s international students. The little-noticed bombshell in Trump’s immigration order. Half Of World’s Refugees Are Running From U.S. Wars. Trump’s First Weeks Leave Washington— and the White House Staff—Panting. The leaks coming out of the Trump White House right now are totally bananas. Yes, all this happened. Gasp! Trust Records Show Trump Is Still Closely Tied to His Empire. Ivanka lied about the leaving the Trump organization too. Make War with Mexico Great Again. Trainwreck in Yemen. Even Australia. Onward to Iran! 14 Versions Of Trump’s Presidency, From #MAGA To Impeachment. Trump and the Republicans Are on a Suicide Mission Together. Editing Trump. Authoritarian Government Watch. We just let this one go without even making a big deal about it. And this one was crazy too! A Series of Unfortunate Events. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. Seems legit. This is not normal. #TheResistance. A Reader for Trumplandia. Trump: A Resister’s Guide. SNL 1, 2, 3. Oh man. The law, in its majestic equality. 4 in 10. A whole year? Jesus. The numbers. A 3,900 percent increase. It takes 3.5% of a population engaged in sustained nonviolent resistance to topple brutal dictatorships. Here’s how much the anti-Trump protests cost, at Trump paid-turnout rates. Disobey.
* * The worst, most terrible things that the United States has done have almost never happened through an assault on American institutions; they’ve always happened through American institutions and practices. These are the elements of the American polity that have offered especially potent tools and instruments of intimidation and coercion: federalism, the separation of powers, social pluralism, and the rule of law. All the elements of the American experience that liberals and conservatives have so cherished as bulwarks of American freedom have also been sources and instruments of political fear. In all the cases I looked at, coercion, intimidation, repression, and violence were leveraged through these mechanisms, not in spite of them.
* There is a style of political reasoning which the Trump moment lends itself to, which can be called conspiracism. Against omniscience.
* Everyday Authoritarianism is Boring and Tolerable.
* Screaming about Trump into a Well: A Text Adventure.
* The Democratic Response to Gorsuch Is Easy: Just Say No. Why Democrats Should Oppose Neil Gorsuch. Make Republicans Nuke the Filibuster to Confirm Neil Gorsuch.
* Football players at private institutions in college sports’ most competitive level are employees, the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel stated this week, and will be treated as such if they seek protection against unfair labor practices.
* Chris Ware on George Herriman. A rebuttal.
* The African Speculative Fiction lecture series at the University of London.
* The Hot New Brand of Higher Education.
* Riot at Berkeley. #Milosexual and the Aesthetics of Fascism.
* After-the-Horse-Has-Left-the-Barn Department. Well at least you’re sorry.
* Who Cares If the Dow Jones Hit 20,000?
* Under A New System, Clinton Could Have Won The Popular Vote By 5 Points And Still Lost.
* The U.S. military’s stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported.
* Academics boycotting the U.S.
* The end of Locked-In Syndrome… in the Twilight Zone.
* Same.
* The new issue of the SFRA Review is up.
* The Youth Group That Launched a Movement at Standing Rock.
* Other Space, the best SF series no one but me watched.
* Against the Constitution. Against the Supreme Court.
* Video Game Voice Actor Strike Now Second-Longest In SAG History.
* How a Cult That Believes Cats Are Divine Beings Ended Up in Tennessee.
* Why the voting age should be lowered to 16.
* February 17 is the next time the general strike isn’t actually going to happen.
* In the Trump International Penal Colony and Golf Resort.
* Marquette in the ne — come on, again?
* Also they enslaved and tortured generations of animals, but that’s not important right now.
* If you want a vision of the future.
* Decolonizing Science Fiction.
* How an Interstellar Starship Could Actually Explore Alpha Centauri.
* How Astronauts’ Brains Are Changed By Spaceflight.
* In the future, everyone will be hated by thousands of strangers for 15 minutes.
* The Milwaukee Bucks Century.
* The war comes to Whitefish Bay.
* The richest society in human history.
* And like Nietzsche said: it is forgetting, not remembering, that makes life possible.
#NoBan
Trump’s Muslim Ban Triggers Chaos, Heartbreak, and Resistance. Unknown number of U.S. permanent residents stuck overseas as a result of Trump’s immigration ban. Trump Visa Ban Also Applies to Foreigners With More Than One Passport, State Department Says. Inside the confusion of the Trump executive order and travel ban. Trump redefines the enemy and 15 years of counterterrorism policy. Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence. Could affect up to 500,000. This Is a Constitutional Crisis. Heartbreaking Refugee Stories Following Trump’s Muslim Ban. A Yazidi Refugee, Stranded at the Airport by Trump. Warm Welcome for Syrians in a Country About to Ban Them. Anne Frank and her family were also denied entry as refugees to the U.S. Boston-area academics are facing bans on entering US. University Of Michigan Defies Trump By Refusing To Release Immigration Status Of Students. Trump’s anti-immigration orders are ‘inhuman,’ says Newark archbishop. There Have Been No Fatal Terror Attacks In The U.S. By Immigrants From The 7 Banned Muslim Countries. Middle Eastern immigrants to U.S. confront upended lives. Hours after Trump signs Muslim ban, Texas mosque goes up in flames. The Lawyers Showed Up. Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos and Outcry Worldwide. After His Own Lawyers Can’t Justify It. Giuliani not even pretending. Yes Netflix, yes Lyft, no Uber. Nothing can express more contempt for the ideology of legal immigration than what Trump has now done. Even the war machine doesn’t like it. A few hundred of my tweets from yesterday, if you want more. Donate to the IRC and the ACLU, if you can.
Gerry Canavan 