Posts Tagged ‘Michael Jackson’
Nothing Changes on New Year’s Day Links
* Call for Papers: Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene.
* People that found their doppelgängers in art museums.
* We are often told that we need to articulate the case for the humanities in order to survive the current budgetary and political landscape. Many of us stutter and stumble when confronted with such requests, mumbling some barely audible phrases involving “skills,” “relevance,” “a changing economy,” “engagement,” and “values.” The reason it does not come out as something coherent or articulate, much less compelling, is that the ideas behind the words are just as hollow, and we know it. Somewhere inside we all know that there is no case for the humanities.
* George Ciccariello-Maher Resigns: “We are all a single outrage campaign away from having no rights at all.” Iowa senator proposes bill decried as ‘political litmus test’ for universities. A note to tenured faculty.
* Meet the black architect who designed Duke University 37 years before he could have attended it.
* J.R.R. Tolkien, Beyond Good and Evil.
* What was Leia supposed to do in Episode 9?
* Teach the controversy: the legend of Mark Hamill’s face.
* Another profile of the worst job on the Internet.
* NANO issue 12, a special issue on The Force Awakens.
* Ada 12, radical speculation and Ursula K. Le Guin.
* What if Parents Loved Strangers’ Children As Much As Their Own?
* Anomie. Quantum Mechanics. Love. Stotting. Zeno. Choice paralysis. Frosty. Melville. Poetry. Keep scrolling!
* Unearthing the Capitalocene: Towards a Reparations Ecology.
* Why Is a Small Montana Town a Hotbed of Far-Right Activity? Emboldened white nationalists? Look no further than this liberal Oregon college town.
* Price of 40-year-old cancer drug hiked 1,400% by new owners.
* US nuclear tests killed far more civilians than we knew.
New research suggests that the hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons were far larger than previous estimates, with radioactive fallout responsible for 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths from 1951 to 1973.
* Obamacare and the survival test.
* How the baby boomers — not millennials — screwed America. Extreme poverty in America. World’s richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1tn this year. The U.S. without pensions. No ‘Easy Answer’ To Growing Number Of Stray Dogs In The U.S., Advocate Says. Long after Trump is gone, we’ll still be fighting him. As Wildfires Raged, Insurers Sent in Private Firefighters to Protect Homes of the Wealthy. Escaping Poverty Requires Almost 20 Years With Nearly Nothing Going Wrong. Death in an Amazon dumpster. The homeless and the coming cashless economy.
* Why Has Science Only Cured One Person of HIV?
* Same: Young American Men Are Choosing Video Games Over Work in Staggering Numbers. WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition in 2018.
* I’m starting to take this stuff personally: Poor social skills may be harmful to health.
* I mean really. Why Are Smart People Usually Ugly?
* Academics ‘face higher mental health risk’ than other professions.
* Atheism is caused by poor breath control.
* The Rise and Fall of the Racist Right.
* Every Black Mirror. Against SNL. Against Star Wars. Disney Apparently Expects ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ To Bomb. How Star Wars Was Saved in the Edit.
* When Michael Jackson Almost Bought Marvel.
* Climate Change Is Happening Faster Than Expected, and It’s More Extreme. How We Know It Was Climate Change. And just because there can never be a single moment’s peace from toxic masculinity: Men Resist Green Behavior as Unmanly.
* Can humanity make peace with its death?
* Seinfeld: The Point and Click Adventure.
* The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth.
* Private Prison Companies Are About to Cash In on Trump’s Deportation Regime.
* Marquette in the ne — oh no, this again?
Wednesday Links!
* Really good news on the Trek front: Bryan Fuller will be showrunner.
* Bernie, basking in the glow of the victory. 21 Gifts For The Bernie Sanders Supporter In Your Life. Demographics, y’all. The last time someone won New Hampshire by 20 points and didn’t win the nomination. All uphill from here. Even the neoliberal Matt Yglesias. How Hillary Clinton Gets the Coverage She Wants. Nice work if you can get it. And on the other side of the aisle: Never forget.
* Chaos at Mount St. Mary’s. “An Appalling Breach of Faith.” Sign the petition.
* Wheaton College, Larycia Hawkins to ‘Part Ways.’
* Permanent emergency at Berkeley.
* Congress Again Scrutinizes Colleges With Big Endowments.
* Keywords for the Age of Austerity 25 3/4: “Residences.”
* Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever?
* Why Twitter Is Fundamentally Broken.
* A brief history of Marquette’s Joan of Arc Chapel.
* My Encounter with the Princeton Police and Its Aftermath.
* Twilight of Michael Jackson’s Chimp, Bubbles.
* Who planted drugs in the PTA mom’s car?
* The Supreme Court Just Gave The Finger To Obama’s Plan To Slow Climate Change.
* Mark Strand: “After Our Planet.”
* A Producer Is Tweeting Descriptions of Women from Movie Scripts and It’s Hilariously Awful.
* Inaccessible: what I should have said in my review of The Witness.
* When disabled people need not apply.
* Why and How DC Keeps Screwing Up Superman.
* I still don’t know if Ta-Nehisi Coates is right about Bernie and reparations, but I’m in for as many issues of Black Panther as he wants to do.
* And speaking of: How an Ex-Slave Successfully Won a Case for Reparations in 1783.
* Sabrina Alli on Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law.
* “Cold War modernism,” then, doesn’t refer to experimental artwork produced between the end of World War II and the Reagan administration, but to “the deployment of modernist art as a weapon of Cold War propaganda by both governmental and unofficial actors as well as to the implicit and explicit understanding of modernism underpinning that deployment.” And, given the archive from which Barnhisel works, this book doesn’t provide Cold War–flavored interpretations of individual modernist works. Instead, it offers an evenhanded explanation of the changing connotation of the term “modernism” as the federal agencies and private foundations listed above sought out an antonym for (Soviet) realism. With this in mind — the afterlife of modernism, instead of its genealogy — the Cold War modernists of the title do not seem to be the painters, sculptors, poets, and novelists who produced the original works, but instead the “governmental and unofficial actors” who produced the federally subsidized midcentury reinterpretation of both individual works and modernism in general, in the name of Cold War politics.
* Chicago’s troubled public school system on Wednesday had to slash the size of one of the biggest “junk” bond offerings the municipal market has seen in years and agree to pay interest costs rivaling Puerto Rico’s in order to lure investors into the deal.
* The controversy over J.K. Rowling’s new African wizard school, explained. Pottermania, round two.
* Jughead comes out as asexual.
* A player after my own heart: “This strategy involves the use of rules that many people don’t know about, and having the rulebook nearby will speed up the process of dealing with the numerous complaints you’ll receive during the game.”
* Wausau man arrested twice in child sex stings 3 weeks apart. Reminds me of a clip from To Catch a Predator that made the viral media rounds a few years ago.
* Cop who killed college student and 55-year-old mother sues for ‘extreme emotional trauma.’
* Winning a competition predicts dishonest behavior, or, #academicjobmarket.
* “A good start”: FBI Arrests Nearly Every Single Elected Official In A Texas Town.
* Classic whoopsies on The Hateful Eight set.
* Of course you had me at “Lord of the Rings-inspired space opera wants to connect you with African mythology.”
* Truly a Road to Damascus moment: “66-Year-Old Man Struck By Lightning While Masturbating to Bible.”
* You thought 90s nostalgia had gone too far before, but it’s definitely too far now.
* Long Seventies Conspiracy Cinema: An Introduction.
* That Dragon, Cancer and how the digital age talks about death.
* Meet the New Student Activists. A Timeline of Black Activism on Campus.
* Birds of prey spread bush fires deliberately.
* Gender in the classroom. The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job A pplicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study.
* From Annihilation to Acceptance: A Writer’s Surreal Journey.
* And let us now praise famous men: “3 siblings picking up their daily allowance of bottled water from the Fire Dept in Flint, MI.”
Wednesday Links! No Fooling.
* Keywords for the Age of Austerity 17: Brand/Branding/Rebrand.
* Jackson was paid $7.1 million in 2012, more than any other college president in the nation, and continues to be paid at that level. Just in case you don’t click through, the headline to that piece reads “Report: R.P.I. facing $1 billion in debts, liabilities.” So you know she’s worth every penny of that salary.
* But did you know the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee gets less than half the public money per student that Madison Area Technical College gets and less than a third of what goes to Milwaukee Area Technical College?
* And speaking of UWM: After Extinction, at UWM April 30-May 2.
* Meanwhile, at Duke: Response to President Brodhead and Provost Kornbluth. The original incident is described here.
* Unsettling the University, at UCR April 2-3.
* But what also became clear was that she and I have radically different visions of what constitutes the well-being of the University of Wisconsin System and how it might be preserved and protected. Through the course of our conversation it became increasingly clear to me that in the current situation in Wisconsin we find ourselves in what French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard called “a differend,” a case of conflict between parties that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgement applicable to both. In the case of a differend, the parties cannot agree on a rule or criterion by which their dispute might be decided. A differend is opposed to a litigation – a dispute which can be equitably resolved because the parties involved can agree on a rule of judgement.” Despite all parties–Regents, chancellors, faculty, staff, students, and alumni–being committed to the well-being of the University of Wisconsin System, it seems impossible to agree upon a rule of judgment or any set of criteria by which to adjudicate our different visions of what that well-being would look like.
* Dept. Names More Than 550 Colleges It Has Put Under Extra Financial Scrutiny.
* Salaita lawyers: ‘No doubt’ that UI, prof had agreement for employment.
* Over time, however, more and more departments failed to meet that standard; last year some 60 units were out of compliance, according to information gathered by the union. At Bridgewater State University, one of the worst offenders, for example, adjuncts taught more than 15 percent of courses in 16 large departments in 2014-15. Some 50 percent of classes in the English department were taught by part-time faculty, along with 40 percent in math and computer science. In philosophy, it was 63 percent of classes. Bridgewater officials did not respond to a request for comment.
* Google Maps turned your streets into Pac-Man yesterday, though I can’t imagine how anyone could have missed this news.
* The Entire History of ‘Doctor Who’ Illustrated as a Tapestry.
* 24 Rare Historical Photos That Will Leave You Speechless.
* California Snowpack Hits All-Time Low, 8 Percent Of Average.
* Ring of Snitches: How Detroit Police Slapped False Murder Convictions on Young Black Men.
* Chomsky: The Death of American Universities.
* There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
* The Trevor Noah train wreck.
* “Lutheran pastor resigns after being linked to threatening email.” That’s… something.
* Italian grandmother causes illness with cocoa expired in 1990.
* Why You Should Really Be Afraid of the Zombie Apocalypse.
* Gas Siphoning Coverup May Have Caused East Village Explosion. Jesus Christ.
* But there’s at least one unforeseen upside when all episodes are released at once: The writers don’t get the chance to self-correct in the middle of the season.
* The Long And Terrible History Of DC Comics Mistreating Batgirl.
* The Americans renewed for season four. Hooray!
* Study: Not Many Disco Songs About Daytime. But of course more work is required.
* Oh my God, Becky, look at this vigorous debate among scholars about the true origin of the straight male preference for a curvier backside.
* I can”t believe they’re bringing this thing back: The X-Files Could Have Ended With a West Wing Crossover.
* And Paul F. Tompkins picks his best episodes from a prolific podcasting career. My tragedy is I’ve heard all these. Perhaps you’ve heard he’s got a new one out today…
Wednesday Links!
* I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career…
* The first episode of Kumail Nanjani, Jonah Ray, and Emily Gordon’s new show The Meltdown is available for free on Amazon. Watch it for the last comic alone.
* The Most Shocking Result in World Cup History. A note on Brazil’s loss and David Luiz’s tears. How Does Germany’s Blowout of Brazil Compare to Those in Other Sports?
* World Cup Soccer Stats Erase The Sport’s Most Dominant Players: Women.
* Dialectics of the Trigger Warning Wars.
* In a MOOC Mystery, a Course Suddenly Vanishes.
* Jury nullification in The Nation.
* It’s Official: No One Wants to Host the Winter Olympics.
* BREAKING: There aren’t actually any moderates. In no small part this is because the band of acceptable political opinions in the US is already extremely narrow to begin with.
* Science Daily reported that researchers have discovered a means of predicting whether an individual will become a binge drinker by 16 years of age by imaging their 14-year-old brains.
* It’s a glimpse of what Britain’s chief medical officer Sally Davies calls the “apocalyptic scenario” of a post-antibiotic era, which the World Health Organisation says will be upon us this century unless something drastic is done.
* Smallpox discovered sitting in Maryland storage room.
* Kirkus has a long writeup on the life and career of Octavia Butler. I get a namecheck in the final paragraph as the premier scholarly authority on the size of the finding aid.
* Marvel Comics: The Secret History. Oh, what might have been!
17. Michael Jackson looked into buying Marvel Comics in the late ’90s because he wanted to play Spider-Man in a movie.
* And if you want to drive to South America, here are your options for crossing the Darien Gap. Good luck! You will not be ransomed.
All the Midweek Links
* The headline reads, “37 Million Bees Found Dead In Ontario.”
* As fully intended by its authors, a federal judge has blocked Walker’s abortion bill.
* Also in that’s-the-whole-point news: Undocumented Worker Alleges Wage Theft, Ends Up In Deportation Proceedings.
* Living nightmares: I Got Raped, Then My Problems Started.
* Duke University Agrees To Expel Students Who Are Found Guilty Of Sexual Assault.
* British public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows.
* State Department Admits It Doesn’t Know Keystone XL’s Exact Route.
* The 2 Supreme Court Cases That Could Put a Dagger in Organized Labor.
* Insurers Refuse To Cover Kansas Schools Where Teachers Carry Guns Because It’s Too Risky. Maybe my plan to force gun owners to carry liability insurance would have worked after all.
* Nearly 1 in 6 Americans Receives Food Stamps.
* The cause of the crash landing of a Boeing 777 in San Francisco is still unclear. But pilots say they had been worried about conditions at the West Coast airport for a while. An important flight control system had been out of service for weeks. No One’s Talking About the Flight Attendant Heroes in the SFO Crash.
* Great moments in neoliberalism: Chris Christie’s Boondoggle.
* A University’s Offer of Credit for a MOOC Gets No Takers.
* Against Oregon’s delayed tuition scheme: 1, 2. Just putting everything else aside:
1. It is not pragmatic. The two most difficult challenges it raises are how to fund its initiation and how to collect on the money loaned. Nowhere do its proponents explain where Oregon will get the estimated $9 billion needed to start the program, or how the state will ensure that graduates repay.
* CUNY Faculty Protests Hiring of David Petraeus.
* Designer Looking For People To Do Their Job Without Pay (Anywhere).
* A hundred years before Dracula, there was Carmilla.
Meeting first in their dreams, Laura and Carmilla are bound together in the original female vampire romance. What can Laura make of an ancestral portrait that resembles her mysterious new friend or the strange dreams she experiences as she is drawn ever closer to this beauty of the night?
* Holy @#$%, Michael Jackson almost starred in a Doctor Who movie. Second choice (the legend goes) was a little-known stand-up you may have heard of, Bill Cosby.
* Other Doctor Who ideas that seemingly make no sense at all: We almost got a live Doctor Who episode.
* Disaster: Donald Glover will only appear in 5 of 13 Community episodes.
* The Ender’s Game Boycott Begins. Orson Scott Card cries out for tolerance and understanding.
* Empire watch: China builds the largest building in the world, complete with internal sea shore.
* Meanwhile: Florida may have accidentally banned access to the Internet.
* A Detroit area school district has erupted in protest over the discarding of a historic book collection that is said to contain more than 10,000 black history volumes, included films, videos, and other artifacts. The blame, according to residents of Highland Park, a small city surrounded on nearly all sides by Detroit, belongs to Emergency Manager Donald Weatherspoon, who claims the collection was thrown out by mistake but that the district cannot afford to preserve it.
* Can we stop worrying about millennials yet?
* Midwestern Dad Could Be Deported For Smoking Marijuana Fifteen Years Ago.
* How the actors relaxed on the set of The Wire.
* And an important link for my particular demographic: Twelve Colorful Words That Start with Z.
More Wednesday!
* TNC: The Myth of an Affirmative-Action President.
But there’s also something else — the frame of skepticism is, as always, framed around Obama, not around Romney. No one wonders what advantages accrued to Mitt Romney, a man who spent his early life ensconced in the preserve of malignant and absolutist affirmative action that was metropolitan Detroit. Romney’s Detroit (like most of the country) prohibited black people from the best jobs, the best schools, the best neighborhoods, and the best of everything else. The exclusive Detroit Golf Club, a short walk from one of Romney’s childhood homes, didn’t integrate until 1986. No one is skeptical of Mitt Romney because of the broader systemic advantages he enjoyed, advantages erected largely to ensure that this country would ever be run by men who looked like him.
* Those who demanded state wages for housework sought two things. First, to make wifely love visible as productive work. Second, to uncover for women the leverage that workers have in their potential to strike. “To say that we want money for housework is the first step towards refusing to do it,” wrote Italian feminist Silvia Federici, “because the demand for a wage makes our work visible … both in its immediate aspect as housework and its more insidious character as femininity.” This was feminism designed not to increase individual compensation, but to reveal and create power while undoing sex roles in all realms of life.
* When Michael Jackson patented “Smooth Criminal.”
* Feeney’s Billions: on giving away $1.5 billion. I’m certain this is just part of a complex scheme to inherit $300 billion. Don’t fall for it, America.
* Another “death of football” pre-obituary.
* The GOP 2012 platform vs. higher education.
* And while Pond Life has been pretty wildly forgettable, Part 2 has a good time travel gag at least…
Awesome People Hanging Out Together
Awesome Tumblr. I meant to blog this the other day when I came across Kottke’s link to this “unexpected photos of historical figures” thread at Quora, including this alternate angle on Tiananmen Square’s Tank Man—but then I shamefully forgot. Thanks to Heather for the reminder.
