Posts Tagged ‘Kent State’
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.
Good Morning, It’s the Weekend
* Teach the controversy: are students cuddly little bunnies to be drowned, or shot with Glocks? This story is actually worse than even the original reporting indicated.
* I’ve argued here before (I think) that probably the greatest thing for-profit colleges could do to scrub the designation “for-profit” of its negative connotation is to win a few sportsball championships. That’s how traditional not-for-profit colleges did it. There was a time when the idea of a residential college for wealthy young men was considered very strange (and also very effeminate). College sports “butched” up college and it also gave the millions who would never in a million years qualify for admission a fictive relationship with a system that is, by design, unequal. Sportsball and For-Profit Legitimacy.
* The Grand Jury in the Tamir Rice Case May Not Have Taken a Vote on Charges.
* Salary cuts, layoffs at ISIS. Meanwhile, incredible if true accusations from the FBI against a Kent State professor.
* David Bowie and the Anthropocene.
* Making a Murderer’s creators have finally responded to criticisms of missing evidence.
* A French Communist Utopia in Texas.
* Swedish TV Accidentally Runs Kids’ Show Subtitles On A Political Debate.
* The Big Search to Find Out Where Dogs Come From.
* Coates v. Sanders. Killer Mike vs. Coates. Guthrie v. Trump (Sr.). Meanwhile: Democrats in disarray!
* Bloomberg wants to save everyone from Trump. But a lot of people don’t know who he is.
* Four tendencies in liberalism.
* How One Man Tried to Write Women Out of CRISPR, the Biggest Biotech Innovation in Decades.
* Counterpoint: Harley Quinn is an insanely flawed character almost impossible to reconcile with feminist norms.
* Forget Schrödinger’s Cat: The Latest Quantum Puzzle Is About Three Pigeons in Two Holes.
* Alexander Litvinenko: the man who solved his own murder.
* Chess forbidden in Islam, rules Saudi mufti, but issue not black and white. This part of the history of games I always find fascinating.
* It’s called anthroponuclear multiple worlds theory, and it’s basically my actual cosmology.
* The singular “they” is your word of the year. A chronology of early nonbinary pronouns. A little more. Bring back he’er, him’er, his’er.
* When DoD paid Duke U $335K to investigate ESP in dogs. But more research is required.
* Virtual reality porn, the god that failed.
* Concept art for Episode 8 (not really). At least it might help tide you over.
* What if not having a beard is nonhygenic? Checkmate.
* Plastic to outweigh fish in oceans by 2050, study warns. Meanwhile, the same headline they run every January, just with all the numbers incremented by one.
* Twilight of De Niro. AND BEYOND.
* Sold in the room: Orphan Black Writer Making Time-Travel Movie For Netflix.
* And it’s possible that there is a “mirror universe” where time moves backwards, say scientists. Of course the poets always knew.
Happy Monday
* Secret origins of gonzo journalism: “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” by Hunter S. Thompson.
* What’s so frustrating about really upper class kids who go on to become elite pundits and write stupid stuff about this topic is that, had they any self-awareness whatsoever, they should know all about intergenerational class entrenchment. In most cases, their parents have done everything they can to make sure social mobility remains a myth.
* When a campus building is named for a famous white supremacist. Oh, hi, Duke!
* The Melancholy, Crumbling Remains Of Great Socialist Murals.
* The failures of Title IX. How a Title IX Complaint Is Processed.
* Which states have the highest levels of student debt?
* How Athletic Departments (And The Media) Fudge The Cost Of Scholarships.
* Partisan politics, segregation, and Milwaukee.
* I worry a bit that giving the 1% the option to become literal vampires might not work out great.
* Samuel R. Delany reviews Star Wars.
* A collision of greed, neglect, and mismanagement is endangering young people in America’s college capital while enriching some absentee investors — landlords who maximize profits by packing students into properties — and universities that admit many more students than they can house.
Where the show has faltered — and where it comes up against its contradictions — is when it attempts to look at those who are no longer living in the Before. So effective in detailing the quiet terrors of the old order, it has been largely unable or unwilling to present anyone who stands for this challenge in a serious way.
* Today in the rule of law: The Harris prohibition has resulted in law enforcement agencies using the stingrays without obtaining a court warrant, because the agencies have interpreted the contract to mean they cannot even tell a judge about their intent to use the devices.
* Milwaukee officer shoots man after struggle at Red Arrow Park. Drunk NYPD Officer Allegedly Shot a Stranger 6 Times.
* Meanwhile people are just straight-up setting up murder traps now in Stand Your Ground states.
* The Incidental State: Coercion in the Age of Big Data.
* But it turns out that if you consider the facts reported; he wasn’t a genius. His violations of anti-trust law were obvious crimes. Instead, his key characteristic was the one we always emphasize is critical about the most fraudulent CEOs – audacity. Jobs had gotten away with committing so many crimes that he came to believe he was immune from prosecution.
* On crafting a nonwhite Spider-Man. Spider-Man execs kill our dreams of seeing Miles Morales on the big screen. They must really hate money.
* To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand.
* Want to Go to Mars? It’s Not That Expensive.
* Vulture: Is television art yet?
* Path to student loan debt relief for adjuncts just got a little easier–but still a long way to go.
* Ross Douthat hates your loose libertine morals so much he’ll even become a communist to oppose them.
* Gun That Can Only Be Fired By Owner Exists but No One Will Sell It Because of New Jersey.
* How Much Source Material Does HBO’s Game of Thrones Have Left to Work With? The worst news is: it seems like it’s all Jon Snow stuff…
* For ‘Game of Thrones,’ Rising Unease Over Rape’s Recurring Role.
* The secret history of White Coke.
* Louis C.K. versus the Common Core.
* The Ocean Floor Is Littered with Humanity’s Garbage.
* “Let It Go” was inspired by Prince, who also contributed its most memorable line.
* Should we be teaching him civics at such a young age?
* The oldest man on earth lives on the Upper West Side. Take that, Okinawa!
* Fanwanking a reason why there doesn’t seem to be many women in the Star Wars universe.
* Presenting the Wes Anderson cruise.
* And Slate celebrates the world’s best statues.
Thursday Night Links: Liars, Scoundrels, Star Trek, and More
* Transcript from the September 19 meeting of the Cooper Union Board of Trustees. Even putting aside that their short-sighted and obviously bad decisions caused the problem in the first place, the enthusiasm with which these supposed trustees speak about the possibility of closing the school is just unreal.
* All of which brings you back to one central point: if you care about the integrity of elections and people actually being able to vote, the supposed cures for vote fraud are vastly more destructive than the problem. All evidence suggests that vote fraud is a minuscule, minuscule problem. Voter ID and most of the other nostrums are solutions looking for a problem. The people who support these policies are either ignorant of the facts or actually want to cull a certain subsection of the population from democratic participation. There are simply no two ways about it.
* “Since it won’t reform itself, Starfleet needs to be destroyed.” Star Trek into Darkness Hostile to Star Trek, Intelligence.
Remember how Kirk was going to nobly take Khan to Earth to stand trial? Did this actually happen? Is it possible to imagine such a trial ending with a court imposing the punishment of cryogenic stasis? How could a court not demand the other 72 be brought back to life? Wouldn’t such a trial inevitably entail Marcus’s cimes — leading to the exposure of his massive corruption and a public outcry to structurally reform Starfleet?
* Bridge collapse in Washington State, sending vehicles and people into the water.
* Scenes from the fight over Obama’s judicial appointments. Obama won one battle today.
* The best headline ever? The FBI Investigated the Song ‘Louie Louie’ for Two Years.
* Diane Kendig’s letter of resignation from her adjunct position at Kent State.
* Senate Accepts Deal to Kick Formerly Incarcerated Off Food Benefits.
* The kids are all right: Teens hate Facebook.
* Historian Helen Fry, who has written a book called The M Room: Secret Listeners who bugged the Nazis, says the information gleaned by the eavesdropping of the German generals was vitally important to the war effort – so much so that it was given an unlimited budget by the government. She believes what was learned by the M room operations was as significant as the code-breaking work being done at Bletchley Park.
* The Boy Scouts inch forward.
* And This Incredible Full Scale Lego X-Wing Is the Largest Model In History. I’ll allow it.
All Right, Prepare to Fire
The Ohio National Guardsmen who fired on students and antiwar protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 were given an order to prepare to shoot, according to a new analysis of a 40-year-old audio tape of the event
Tuesday Morning
* An arrest has been made in the Times Square car-bombing case. Click the link to find out the ethnicity of the accused and therefore whether this was terrorism.
* New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has broken a 63-year precedent and refused to reappoint a sitting judge to the New Jersey Supreme Court, opting instead to nominate someone who has neither been a judge nor active in politics. Click the link to find out the ethnicity of the two judges and therefore whether Christie’s a bold innovator or bowing to special interests.
* Superman vs. offshore drilling. Zack Morris vs. offshore drilling.
* Discussion question: When is an entirely manmade disaster an act of God?
* WTFArizona: Arizona Senate Majority Leader Follows Stormfront on Twitter.
* A rare thing that isn’t soul-crushingly terrible: Jimmy Fallon’s ongoing Lost parody, Late.
* And it was forty years ago today.
It Was 38 Years Ago Yesterday
Crooks and Liars has a post on yesterday’s 38th anniversary of the Kent State shootings.
Gerry Canavan 