* So, look: I’m not saying the Democrats are definitely going to blow it. But they’re more than capable of blowing it.
Posts Tagged ‘Lauren Lapkus’
Saturday Morning Links!
* Canonical Handmaid’s Tale sequel from Matt Besser and Lauren Lapkus.
* Marquette getting attacked in the right-wing anti-college fever swamp for the stupidest reason yet.
* College campuses haven’t been immune to a surge of hate speech and violence over the past year. BuzzFeed News found 154 incidents at more than 120 campuses nationwide.
* I didn’t like the bizarre ableist framing at the beginning (1, 2, 3, 4), but this piece on genetic testing and prospective disability is worth reading nonetheless.
* Another study demonstrates student evaluations should not be used for job evaluation.
The nationwide decline of the English major. Guys, can we talk about this? (BTW I made this chart using https://t.co/xv72jEvgJ1 data) pic.twitter.com/3kVFqEnngo
— amardeep singh (@Electrostani) September 29, 2017
* Quite the contrary: this has happened over and over and over again. Inflammatory claims about Russia get mindlessly hyped by media outlets, almost always based on nothing more than evidence-free claims from government officials, only to collapse under the slightest scrutiny, because they are entirely lacking in evidence.
* Trump’s Upbeat Puetro Rico Rhetoric Clashes with Reality on the Ground. Gasp. He’s now attacking the mayor of San Juan on Twitter. From yet another golf course.
And precisely the sort of by-the-day news roundup I said yesterday I wasn’t going to be doing anymore:
* DHS says it will force everyone who’s ever immigrated to the USA to hand over social media.
* In search of Charlottesville 2.0.
* The new reality of old age in America.
* Mr. Lent said the group’s system of heads and handmaids promotes “brotherhood,” not male dominance. He said the group recently dropped the term “handmaid” in favor of “woman leader.” Well, I hardly see how anyone could object to that!
* Trump Could Save More Than$1 Billion Under His New Tax Plan. Oh, is that all?
* The end of public unions, the end of Democrats.
* And a classic from Tom Gauld, found on Twitter.
Written by gerrycanavan
September 30, 2017 at 9:22 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with ableism, academia, actually existing media bias, Charlottesville, class struggle, Democrats, disability, Donald Trump, eldercare, English departments, English majors, fall, Fermi paradox, gay rights, genetic testing, genetics, Handmaid's Tale, hate speech, homeland security, How the University Works, Huntington's disease, immigration, improv, KKK, Lauren Lapkus, Marquette, Matt Besser, old age, podcasts, politics, prospective disability, public sector unions, Puerto Rico, race, racism, Russia, sequels, student evaluations, taxes, the humanities, Tom Gauld, Tom Price, unions, web comics, white supremacy, writing
Closing Every Tab Not In Anger But In Disappointment Links
* I have a new essay out on zombies and the elderly in this great new book on zombies, medicine, and comics: The Walking Med: Zombies and the Medical Image. And if you’re interested in my Octavia Butler book, podcaster Jonah Sutton-Morse (@cabbageandkings) is going through it piece by piece on Twitter with #mmsfoeb. Also, check out this LARB interview with Ayana Jamieson on her work in the Butler archives!
* CFP: Comics Remixed: Adaptation and Graphic Narrative, University of Florida. CFP: ASLE 2017 (Detroit, MI). CFP: Special Issue of Green Letters on Crime Fiction and Ecology. CFP: Global Dystopia.
* Maybe the best thing you’ll read this year: Clickhole’s Oral History of Star Trek.
* Wes Anderson made a Christmas commercial. Updated Power Rankings coming soon!
* ‘Feast or Famine’ for Humanities Ph.D.s.
* Las Vegas is a microcosm. “The world is turning into this giant Skinner box for the self,” Schüll told me. “The experience that is being designed for in banking or health care is the same as in Candy Crush. It’s about looping people into these flows of incentive and reward. Your coffee at Starbucks, your education software, your credit card, the meds you need for your diabetes. Every consumer interface is becoming like a slot machine.”
* Jesuit university presidents issue statement supporting undocumented students. Catholic college leaders pledge solidarity with undocumented students. Dissent on sanctuary cities.
* Public universities and the doom loop. UW-Madison drops out of top five research universities for first time since 1972. Student visas, university finances, and Trump.
* Stealing it fair and square: In split decision, federal judges rule Wisconsin’s redistricting law an unconstitutional gerrymander. And so on and so on.
* The 13 impossible crises that humanity now faces.
* How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red.’ Maybe the Internet Isn’t a Fantastic Tool for Democracy After All. Postelection Harassment, Case by Case. Here are 20 lessons from across the fearful 20th century, adapted to the circumstances of today. Making White Supremacy Acceptable Again. Trump and the Sundown Town. No one can stop President Trump from using nuclear weapons. That’s by design. If only someone had thought of this eight years ago! A time for treason.
Justification for all of America’s bananas, anti-democratic institutions was always to prevent the exact trainwreck they are now abetting.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) November 29, 2016
* Texas Elector Resigns: Trump Is Not Qualified And I Cannot Vote For Him. Trump and the End of Expertise. On Taking the Electoral College Literally. Some Schmittian reflections on the election. Stop Calling the United States a Banana Republic. Potential Conflicts Around the Globe for Trump, the Businessman President. Emoluments. A running list of how Donald Trump’s new position may be helping his business interests. A billionaire coup d’etat. Wunderkind. Voting under the influence of celebrity. We have an institution that could stop this (no not that one), but it won’t. Wheeeeee! Wheeeeeeeeeeee!
* And I’m afraid the news only gets worse.
* “I would rather lose than win the way you guys did,” Ms. Palmieri said.” Respectfully disagree! The Myth of the Rust Belt Revolt. Who Lost the White House? Careful! We don’t want to learn anything from this.
It's not only The Simpsons who "predict" the future! A model Donald Trump crushes NY in this now-eerie still from the Ghostbusters set, 1984 pic.twitter.com/aSdhGM2h9v
— Histry in Pictures (@Histreepix) November 24, 2016
* I was reminded recently of this post from @rortybomb a few years ago that, I think, got the Obama years right earlier and better than just about anyone. And here he is on the election: Learning from Trump in Retrospect.
* Maybe America is simply too big.
* Inside the bizarre world of the military-entertainment industry’s racialized gamification of war.
* Trump’s already working miracles: Dykes to Watch Out For is out of retirement.
* The Nitty-Gritty on Getting a Job: The 5 Things Your English Professors Don’t Teach You.
* Remembering Scott Eric Kaufman.
* Huge Cracks In the West Antarctic Ice Sheet May Signal Its Collapse.
* Four Futures: Life After Capitalism review – will robots bring utopia or terror?
* If I developed a drug and then tested it myself without a control group, you might be a bit suspicious about my claims that everyone who took it recovered from his head cold after two weeks and thus that my drug is a success. But these are precisely the sorts of claims that we find in assessment.
* A world map of every country’s tourism slogan. Here Are the Real Boundaries of American Metropolises, Decided by an Algorithm.
* The youth concussion crisis.
* Cheating at the Olympics Is at Epic Levels.
* Mr. Plinkett and 21st-Century Star Wars Fandom. An addendum.
* Moana before Moana. This one’s pretty great by the way, my kids loved it.
* From the archives: Terry Bisson’s “Meat.”
* Stanislaw Lem: The Man with the Future Inside Him.
* U.S. Military Preps for Gene Drives Run Amok.
* Fidel Castro: The Playboy Interview.
* Cap’n Crunch presents The Earliest Show.
* Coming soon: Saladin Ahmed’s Black Bolt. Grant Morrison’s The Savage Sword of Jesus Christ.
* Parker Posey Will Play Dr. Smith and Now We Suddenly Care a Lot About Netflix’s Lost in Space. TNT fires up a Snowpiercer pilot. Behind the scenes of the new MST3K. The Cursed Child is coming to Broadway.
* “Magneto Was Right”: Recalibrating the Comic Book Movie for the Trump Age.
* Now my childhood is over: both Florence Henderson and Joe Denver have died.
* Of course you had me at “Science fiction vintage Japanese matchbox art mashup prints.”
* A brief history of progress.
* The first, last, and only truly great object of our time.
* And say what you will about OK Go, this one’s pretty damn good.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 2, 2016 at 12:30 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with academia, adaptation, addiction, aliens, Alison Bechdel, America, Antarctica, apocalypse, art, assessment, austerity, Ayana Jamieson, B.F. Skinner, banana republics, Barack Obama, behaviorism, billionaires, Black Bolt, Brady Bunch, Broadway, business, Calvin and Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, Castro, Catholicism, celebrity culture, CFPs, cheating, Christ, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, cities, class struggle, comics, concussions, Connor, coups, crisis, Dan Hassler-Forest, democracy, Democratic primary 2020, Democrats, Disney, domestic surveillance, Donald Trump, Dykes to Watch Out For, dystopia, ecological humanities, Edward Snowden, Electoral College, emoluments, English majors, entertainment, expertise, fascism, Florence Henderson, food, football, futurity, games, gasification, gene bombs, general election 2016, genetics, Ghostbusters, graduate student life, Grant Morrison, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hillary Clinton, How the University Works, ice sheet collapse, ignorance is bliss, immigration, Infinite Jest, Japan, Jesuits, jobs, Joe Denver, kids today, Lauren Lapkus, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lone Wolf, Lost in Space, Magneto, maps, Marquette, Marvel, Marx, Marxism, meat, medicine, meritocracy, metropolises, military-industrial complex, Moana, mobility, moral panic, music, music videos, my scholarly empire, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Nazis, neoliberalism, Netflix, NSA, nuclear weapons, nuclearity, Octavia Butler, OK Go, oral histories, over-educated literary theory PhDs, pardons, Peter Frase, Playboy, politics, public universities, race, racism, reality TV, resistance, rortybomb, run it like a sandwich, Rust Belt, sanctuary campus, sanctuary cities, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, Scott Eric Kaufman, Scott Walker, Skinner boxes, Snowpiercer, soccer, sports, Stanislaw Lem, Star Trek, Star Wars, student debt, student visas, sundown towns, superheroes, surveillance society, surveillance state, teenagers, Terry Bisson, the archives, The Earliest Show, the humanities, the Internet, The New Inquiry, the Olympics, The Savage Sword of Jesus Christ, the Wisconsin Idea, they say time is the fire in which we burn, time, tourism, trason, true crime, undocumented students, University of Wisconsin, Utopia, war huh good god y'all what is it good for? absolutely nothing say it again, war on education, Wes Anderson, white supremacy, Zoey, zombies
Monday Mega-Links
* Donald Trump Isn’t Going to Be President. Trump Has Won and the Republican Party Is Broken. Clinton Releases a Brutal Anti-Trump Ad. 5 not-totally-crazy electoral maps that show Donald Trump winning. Could Trump Put Georgia in Play for Democrats? Only a Democrat can stop Trump now. Misperceiving Bullshit as Profound Is Associated with Favorable Views of Cruz, Rubio, Trump and Conservatism. The six days of Carly Fiorina’s vice presidential campaign, ranked.
* Report: FBI Preparing to Interview Hillary Clinton About Email Thing.
* Wave of no-confidence votes sweeps Wisconsin campuses.
* Why graduate students should be allowed to see the letters we write on their behalf. I was in strong disagreement with the headline but was won over by the text.
* Recommendation for a quick, great read: Nnedi Okorafor’s novella Binti, an Afrofuturist space-age riff on Harry Potter with more than a little bit of Octavia Butler in there…
* Another thing I’ve been enjoying, which you might too: “Hardcore Game of Thrones” on howl.fm. (First three episodes available for free here.) It’s completely sold me on the viability of a prequel spinoff, and I may actually like it more than the actual series.
* Two Great Tastes: On Civil War and Hamilton. Meanwhile, a great review from Abigail Nussbaum asks whether Civil War (which I liked a lot) has ruined the MCU.
Some quickie CIVIL WAR thoughts: better job balancing the sides than the comic. Much better than BvS. Still should have never come to blows.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 8, 2016
And the choreography on the last bit of the last fight of CIVIL WAR is such a great, subtle character moment. Really stellar work there.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 8, 2016
Overall, deantastic, would dean CIVIL WAR deangain.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 8, 2016
socialistdefenseofsuperherofantasy.notreally.docx
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) May 8, 2016
* The Norton Writer’s Prize will be awarded annually for an outstanding essay written by an undergraduate. Literacy narratives, literary and other textual analyses, reports, profiles, evaluations, arguments, memoirs, proposals, mixed-genre pieces, and more: any excellent writing done for an undergraduate writing class will be considered. The winner will receive a cash award of $1,500. Two runners-up will each receive a cash award of $1,000.
* “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
* Unable to analyze meaning, narrative, or argument, computer scoring instead relies on length, grammar, and arcane vocabulary to do assess prose. Should you trust a computer to grade your child’s writing on Common Core tests?
* A Bibliographic Review of Neoliberalism.
* Conservatives can be spotted in the sciences and in economics, but they are virtually an endangered species in fields like anthropology, sociology, history and literature. One study found that only 2 percent of English professors are Republicans (although a large share are independents). In contrast, some 18 percent of social scientists say they are Marxist. So it’s easier to find a Marxist in some disciplines than a Republican.
* Why are Tenured Philosophy Professors Unhappy?
* Ivy League economist ethnically profiled, interrogated for doing math on American Airlines flight. This situation is absolutely untenable and I cannot believe the airlines are willingly participating.
* Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills.
* Maps of the end of the world. The post keeps going after the image!
* Why Refrigerators Were So Slow to Catch On in China.
* U.S. Justice Department officials repudiated North Carolina’s House Bill 2 on Wednesday, telling Gov. Pat McCrory that the law violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act and Title IX – a finding that could jeopardize billions in federal education funding.
* Resettling the First American ‘Climate Refugees.’
One of those grants, $48 million for Isle de Jean Charles, is something new: the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community struggling with the impacts of climate change. The divisions the effort has exposed and the logistical and moral dilemmas it has presented point up in microcosm the massive problems the world could face in the coming decades as it confronts a new category of displaced people who have become known as climate refugees.
* Why You Can’t Lose Weight on a Diet.
* Happy Mother’s Day: Kids’ Screen Time Is A Feminist Issue. Keep scrolling!
A moment of silence for all of the fictional mothers that had to die in the name of tragic back story and character development.
— Professor Snape (@_Snape_) May 8, 2016
* Nonhuman Rights Project Chimpanzee Clients Hercules and Leo to Be Sent to Sanctuary.
* Lab-grown meat is in your future, and it may be healthier than the real stuff.
* The modern banking system and zero-factor security.
* University of Oxford acquires rare map of Middle-earth annotated by Tolkien. There’s still more after the image!
* Here’s the Table Of Contents For Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s Amazing Big Book of Science Fiction.
* The day we discovered our parents were Russian spies.
* Before the word processor, perfect copy was the domain of the typist—not the literary genius.
* Fullest House, A Never-Ending Stream of Daily ‘Full House’ Scripts Generated by a Neural Network.
* Before Hamilton, there was… An Oral History of Rent.
* Leicester City’s Impossible, Anomalous Championship.
* Grimdark realism isn’t realistic: where is kindness on Game of Thrones?
* Twilight of The Antioch Review.
* Why we sued the American Studies Association.
* When Robinson Met Bacigalupi.
* Daredevils Jump Out of Plane, Play Quick Game of Quidditch Before Landing. Keep going.
* The Flight of the Navigator sequel/reboot just wrote itself.
* New J.M. Coetzee novel announced.
* Daredevil and the Problem of the Not Bad.
Ultimately, there’s not much you can say about Daredevil because its not-goodness derives from the fact that it doesn’t have anything to say. This makes it hard to say anything about the way it’s not saying anything. Based on the first season, I would have argued that the show uses the superhero genre tode-familiarize gentrification and the way crime plays into struggles over urban land use. Similarly, I would contend that Jessica Jones uses the superhero-detective genre to de-familiarize trauma and addiction. Coming out — dare I say, being flushed out — of Daredevil season two, I would say that it uses the Batman-genre to re-familiarize the Ninja-genre. And for all the violence it does to its characters and setting, the real problem is this reinvestment in the fetish of ninja violence. The show uses the spectacle ofliteral violence to render unnecessary the organic narrative flow of people just being people in the world. Instead of the hidden injuries and traumas of class, as they play themselves out across our lives, we get a story of a ninja fighting ninjas because, well, ninjas.
* CEI et al. argue that TSA’s final rule fails to consider one important factor related to the deployment body scanners: a potential increase in highway injuries and deaths. If that sounds crazy, let me explain. Past research suggests that post-9/11 airport security policies were so invasive that a number of would-be air travelers decided to drive instead. Given the fact that auto travel is far more dangerous than air travel,three Cornell University economists found that TSA’s invasive, time-consuming airport screening policies resulted in about 500 additional highway fatalities annually in the years following 9/11—more than a fully loaded 747 per year.
* Google is working on a computer that is literally injected into your eye. Hard pass.
* Why America Can’t Quit the Drug War.
* What I Gained from Having a Miscarriage.
* On women’s bodies in academia.
* Educated people are usually critical of absolute truths, no matter if they come from statistics or religious revelation. Facts need to be understood within a larger cultural context in order to be deemed plausible or implausible. Today, however, we see an increasing tendency to describe the world not in terms of cultural values, but in terms of fundamental truths. In the cases of fundamentalism and neoliberal education of excellence, as I’ve shown here, this “deculturation” takes the form of a dangerous combination of religion and pseudoscientific thought peddled as excellence.
* There’s a Sci-Fi Novel Secretly Unfolding in Reddit’s Comments.
* 78% of Reddit Threads With 1,000+ Comments Mention Nazis.
* Sure, let’s clone Leonardo da Vinci. Things could hardly get worse.
* I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
* Historical memory is not about the past — it is about the future.
* And some scenes from the Anthropocene: Zone Rouge: An Area of France So Badly Damaged By WW1 That People Are Still Forbidden To Live There. Fort McMurray Wildfire: 80,000 Evacuated Over Out-of-Control Blaze. Fleeing Fire in Oil Country. Alberta Wildfires Expected to Double In Size and Burn for Months. The First Coral Reefs Are Starting to Permanently Dissolve. Facebook is a growing and unstoppable digital graveyard. Have a great week, everybody!
Written by gerrycanavan
May 9, 2016 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #accelerate, academia, actually existing academic biases, actually existing media bias, Afrofuturism, air travel, airport security, Alberta, America, American Studies, American Studies Association, animal personhood, apocalypse, Aristotle, banking, Barack Obama, bathrooms, Big Book of Science Fiction, Binti, blogs, Book of Revelation, books, boycotts, bullshit, Canada, Captain America 3, Carly Fiorina, chimpanzees, China, Chris Matthews, Civil War, class struggle, climate change, climate refugees, cloning, Coetzee, common core, coral reefs, cultural preservation, Daredevil, Democrats, diabetes, diets, Donald Trump, drugs, ecology, Electoral College, Elsa, emails, espionage, excellence, Facebook, FBI, feminism, Flight of the Navigator, Fort McMurray, France, Frozen, Frozen 2, Fuller House, Fullest House, fundamentalism, futurity, Game of Thrones, general election 2016, George R. R. Martin, Georgia, Godwin's Law, Google, grading, graduate students, Hamilton, Harry Potter, Hillary Clinton, How the University Works, howl.fm, iPads, Israel, Jeff Vandermeer, journalism, kids today, Kim Stanley Robinson, kindness, lab-grown meat, Lauren Lapkus, Leicester City, Leonardo da Vinci, letters of recommendation, literature, Lord of the Rings, Madison, maps, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marxism, math, memory, MFAs, Middle-Earth, miscarriage, misogyny, Mother's Day, musicals, Nazis, neoliberalism, Nestle, Netflix, ninjas, Nnedi Okorafor, no confidence, North Carolina, ocean acification, Octavia Butler, oil, Palestine, Paolo Bacigalupi, parenting, philosophy, podcasts, politics, postdocs, pregnancy, pseudoscience, Quidditch, Reddit, refrigerators, Rent, Republicans, Russia, science fiction, security, sexism, skydiving, spies, standardized testing, sugar, superheroes, tenure, the Anthropocene, The Antioch Review, theory, Tolkien, trans* issues, transphobia, trolling, TSA, typing, University of Wisconsin, war huh good god y'all what is it good for? absolutely nothing say it again, war on drugs, wearable tech, wildfires, Wisconsin, work, writing