Posts Tagged ‘moderation’
Feeling a Little Coronavirusty — Links
* This Twitter thread on the Imperial College modeling calling for 18 months or more of suppressive action was some of the most bracing reading on coronavirus I’ve seen yet. (This Buzzfeed article has a summary if that’s more your speed.) We are living through a nightmare. We’re not going back to normal. (UDPATE: Here’s a critique of the Imperial College study that got a lot of people spooked, including me, arguing that a few weeks of lockdown plus contact tracing and monitoring *can* prevent reemergence of the outbreak.)
* How long will social distancing for coronavirus have to last? Deciphering the pandemic: a guide to understanding the coronavirus numbers. How the US stacks up to other countries in confirmed coronavirus cases. The Single Most Important Lesson From the 1918 Influenza.
* 18% have lost jobs or hours in the last month. You Should Be Absolutely Terrified About the Economy. A Frantic Few Days for Restaurants Is Only the Beginning. Baseball Shutdown Sends Minor Leaguers Into Uncertain Future. The World of Books Braces for a Newly Ominous Future. Amazon’s Supply Chain Is Breaking and Small Businesses Are Screwed. There’s no one to pick the fruit. As Coronavirus Deepens Inequality, Inequality Worsens Its Spread. It Has All Gone to Hell. Coronavirus is an indictment of our way of life. America is a sham. Big Pharma is ready.
Unemployment claims filed in Ohio:
Last Sunday: 536
This Sunday: 11,995
Monday: 36,645For tens of thousands of Ohioans the economic crisis is already here. We should have already voted on the House-passed bill.https://t.co/xCAUPzhgGW
— Sherrod Brown (@SenSherrodBrown) March 18, 2020
* To stop a coronavirus quarantine recession, economists say send everyone cash—now. Romney! Dem Senators! Bernie Sanders Proposal for $2 Trillion Coronavirus Emergency Plan Includes $2,000 Direct Monthly Payments to Every American. He’ll just have to beat the Democrats to do it.
I was trying to figure out why this point wasn’t absolutely obvious to people but finally realized the point of the utterance is “blah blah blah blah I don’t need a check” https://t.co/K6gk4kg7Wq
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 17, 2020
Haunted by family legends of great-grandparents who lost the stock to save the house, which they then lost anyway, or maybe it was the other way around, the point is they lost everything
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 16, 2020
We can only exist where capitalism is not. And this crisis is opening up such spaces. The question is whether it becomes a way to get back to "normal," or whether it wakes us up that "normal" wants us dead.
— Adam Kotsko (@adamkotsko) March 16, 2020
banal point but it’s moments like this you realize our entire society is based on one premise: spend or die
— Quinn Slobodian (@zeithistoriker) March 16, 2020
* First confirmed patient in R.I. talks about surviving coronavirus. A Frontline Physician Speaks Out on the Coronavirus.
* Evers orders bars, restaurants closed; schools closed indefinitely. Vegas shuts down. Then: Spring breakers pack Florida beach despite coronavirus pandemic. Now: $6 flights to Fort Lauderdale.
* New York Is Now the Epicenter of the Coronavirus Crisis in the U.S. New York Will Be The Next Italy, But Doesn’t Have to Be.
Jerry's girlfriend demands to know if they're at "quarantine level"; George and Elaine pretend to date to get around the Uber pool ban; Kramer pretends to be an epidemiologist on twitter and gets retweeted by the President etc etc https://t.co/ZyHk2W1lWI
— Eric Lach (@ericlach) March 17, 2020
* They Went Off the Grid. They Came Back to the Coronavirus.
* COVID-19 and Collective Childcare.
* Before Trump’s inauguration, a warning: ‘The worst influenza pandemic since 1918.’ How Trump snapped out of coronavirus delusion mode. The Mar-a-Lago hot zone. Priorities. With masks at the ready, ICE agents make arrests on first day of California coronavirus lockdown.
* Some good news: Ventilator Maker: We Can Ramp Up Production Five-Fold. Coronavirus vaccine test opens with 1st doses. New cases and deaths in Italy may have reached their plateau.
* Isis issues coronavirus travel advice: terrorists should avoid Europe.
* Student advocates say coronavirus-related directives to move off campus threaten to reinforce existing inequalities and put disproportionate burdens on low-income and international students, among others. Why not simply make your online courses as human as possible? Coronavirus and the ruptured narrative of campus life.
* Social media giants warn of AI moderation errors as coronavirus empties offices. Coronavirus Is Changing Podcasting, Fast.
* Now is the time to overreact.
* …a properly dialectical critique does not criticise the reality of capitalism for failing to live up to its ideals; it criticises the ideals of capitalism for their, more or less hidden, reflection of that reality. What a dialectical critique shows is that better things aren’t possible, if we index possibilities to what appears possible according to the world as it is. But what it also shows is that better things are not only necessary, but real: a better world does not exist in the thwarted ideals of the present, but in the real processes that might abolish that present.
* Planet Plastic: How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades. The Mad Men of Climate Denial. Coronavirus Lockdown May Save More Lives By Preventing Pollution Than By Preventing Infection. Welcome to the LEGOpocene.
* Chindogu are inventions that defy concise explanation. They aren’t useful. But they aren’t completely useless either. Their creator, Kenji Kawakami, describes them as “un-useless.” The Ten Tenets of Chindogu.
* The Rise of Impossibly Cute and Wholesome Games.
* Joe Biden has now essentially won the Democratic nomination. Ugh.
* Wrestlemania in a time of coronavirus.
* And Friday can’t get here fast enough. Save us, Nintendo!
Written by gerrycanavan
March 18, 2020 at 8:02 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1918, academia, America, Animal Crossing, capitalism, childcare, chindogu, class struggle, climate change, college, coronavirus, Democratic primary 2020, Donald Trump, ecology, epidemic, Facebook, games, Grand Canyon, How the University Works, inventions, ISIS, Italy, Joe Biden, kids today, Mar-a-Lago, moderation, New York, Nintendo, off the grid, pandemic, parenting, Pee Wee Herman, podcasts, politics, professional wrestling, quarantine, revolution, Second Great Depression?, Seinfeld, social distancing, social media, Spanish flu, terrorism, the economy, UBI, unemployment, vaccines, Wisconsin, worst financial crisis since the last one, Wrestlemania
Exactly the Right Number of Finely Curated, Carefully Selected Links from Around the Time My Computer Crashed Last Week to Around the Time I Got It Back This Week
* CFP: “TechnoLogics: Power and Resistance.” CFP: Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy.
* I have an essay in this new open-access book, Materialism and the Critique of Energy: “Peak Oil after Hydrofracking.” It’s a bit of a departure from my usual work but I thought it came out well… Check it out!
* Kim Stanley Robinson makes the left’s case for geoengineering. And from Peter Frase: Geoengineering for the People.
* The Buffy Not-a-Reboot: A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come.
* How author Nnedi Okorafor found her identity.
* Fascinating presentation on the SF writing market. Lots to think about here.
* Inside the World of Racist Science Fiction. What can we learn from the utopians of the past?
* Why are there so many staircases in space?
* We were halfway through 2018 when the drugs began to take hold.
* Brexit: That Sinking Feeling. This is what a no-deal Brexit actually looks like.
* Reading Your Problematic Fave: David Foster Wallace, feminism and #metoo. And a report from the 2018 David Foster Wallace Conference, partially a profile of my college classmate Ryan Edel.
* Most academic books aren’t written to be read—they’re written to be “broken.” That should change.
* How to Prepare a Diversity Statement.
* When you’re the only person in your department.
* When your students (might) record you. A good thread on the subject from Angus Johnson.
* Teaching in a red county after Trump.
* Now he tells us! Mea culpa: there *is* a crisis in the humanities.
* We now live in a country where it is seen as abnormal, or even criminal, to allow children to be away from direct adult supervision, even for a second. Motherhood in the Age of Fear.
* Nintendo announces Labo Kit #3.
* Astounding finalist images for Astronomy Photographer of the Year.
* How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions.
* Where the Super-Rich Go to Buy Their Second Passport.
* Time to Take Sexism in Post-Secondary Education Seriously.
* So much of our culture has been shaped by predators.
* Federal judge allows emoluments case against Trump to proceed. Trump’s ‘emoluments’ battle: How a scholar’s search of 200 years of dictionaries helped win a historic ruling.
* These Three Immigrant Families Were Just Reunited After Months Apart. Here Are Their Stories. A Migrant Boy Rejoins His Mother, but He’s Not the Same. A 6-Year-Old Girl Was Sexually Abused in an Immigrant-Detention Center. A child has died following her stay at an ICE Detention Center, as a result of possible negligent care and a respiratory illness she contracted from one of the other children. Immigrant Youth Shelters: “If You’re a Predator, It’s a Gold Mine.” Deportations take unique toll on blended American families. Hundreds of separated parents potentially deported. Deleted families. ICE agents pressured parents to be deported with their children — then separated them again when they refused. Suicide in ICE Custody. ‘Like I am trash’: Migrant children reveal stories of detention, separation. ICE snatches 25-year Minnesota resident from his family in harrowing video. A Father and Son Were Finally Reunited. Later that Day, the Government Ripped Them Apart Again. ‘Why Did You Leave Me?’ The Migrant Children Left Behind as Parents Are Deported. They were warned. It’s happening here. Don’t doubt it for a second. The Number Of Parents Who Were Deported Without Their Children Keeps Growing. Separated Parents Were “Totally Unaware” They Had Waived Their Right To Be Reunified With Their Children. Baby took first steps, spoke first words while in US custody: report. Florida Cops Ship 24-Year-Old Mom to ICE After She Paid Traffic Ticket. This Immigrant Returned To Her Dangerous Home Country — Where She’d Been Raped — After Having A Miscarriage In A US Detention Center. A mother and her son turned up for a domestic-violence case. Then ICE arrested them. A Philadelphia immigration judge was removed from a high-profile case and replaced with a judge who would order the man in the case immediately deported, a move that smacks of judicial interference by the Trump administration, according to a letter signed by a group of retired judges this week. From Crib To Court: Trump Administration Summons Immigrant Infants. Activist judges up to their old tricks. ICE Raids in New York. Philadelphia won’t share information with ICE in big win for activists. Pizza Delivery Man Pablo Villavicencio Freed From Immigration Detention. Protests and petitions call on universities to end their contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A male US officer falsely told a 10-year-old she could see her mother for an hour at 6:00p. The child was held in a windowless, constantly lit facility where she couldn’t determine the time of day. When she asked the officer for the time, he said he wasn’t permitted to tell her. https://t.co/ufNCH1rpfr
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) July 19, 2018
17 y/o girl, separated from her mom, on a 2 y/o girl being held in the same "cage": "When I came back the little girl was crying and needed a new diaper. No one was helping her. The guards treat her like any other older kid. They call her name and expect her to get in line." pic.twitter.com/g0IpAyM5xP
— Emma Platoff (@emmaplatoff) July 19, 2018
* Swedish student stops deportation of Afghan man with protest streamed on Facebook.
* The Trump administration is bullying trans kids, and it’s up to us to stop it. Transgender women say the US government is revoking their passports. Documenting the Trans Generation: Kids, Families and the Fight for Rights.
* Q is a massively successful, deranged conspiracy/entertainment brand/game with roots in prior vile conspiracies like Pizza- and Gamergate. And many Trump supporters LOVE it. Flashback: What Is QAnon? The Craziest Theory of the Trump Era, Explained.
* I’m stuck in Guantanamo. The world has forgotten me.
* They still haven’t fixed the water in Flint.
* Scenes from the class war in New York City, NYDN edition.
* MSNBC has done 455 Stormy Daniels segments in the last year — but none on U.S. war in Yemen.
* Brett Kavanaugh’s Legal Opinions Show He’d Give Donald Trump Unprecedented New Powers. Brett Kavanaugh Thinks Undocumented Workers Aren’t Really Employees Under The Law.
* Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
* Undaunted Democratic Centrists Ready to Fight Trump and Bernie at Same Time.
* The Expressive Function of the Russia Freakout.
* Gasp! Portugal Dared to Cast Aside Austerity. It’s Having a Major Revival.
* Unidentifiable fossils: palaeontological problematica.
* The world’s first trillionaire may be an asteroid miner.
* Science fiction design after cyberpunk.
In all these cases we see a de-saturated view of the world, no longer neon on black, just a pall gray. Gone is the “Coolness” of Cyberpunk, now replaced by the “coolness” of a color palate that ranges from a flat blue to an olive drab with only slightly less than 50 shades of gray in between.
* The Architecture of Evil: Dystopian Megacorps in Speculative Fiction Films.
* Sure, 1,000,000% inflation sounds bad.
* Why ‘Sorry to Bother You’ Is 2018’s Sharpest Political Satire. “Crazy” Anticapitalism.
* In 2016, China imported two-thirds of the world’s plastic waste. So when China stopped buying the world’s discarded plastics, it threw markets into turmoil. Meanwhile: The Dirty Truth Is Your Recycling May Actually Go to Landfills.
* The Hidden Environmental Cost of Amazon Prime’s Free, Fast Shipping.
* The Carr Fire Is Officially One of the 10 Worst Wildfires in California History. California is burning (again). The common thread in California’s wildfires: heat like the state has never seen. If you want a vision of the future. If you want a vision of the future. If you want a vision of the future. How Did the End of the World Become Old News? It’s a big problem.
* Climate change is supercharging a hot and dangerous summer. Arctic Circle wildfires rage on as blistering heat takes hold of northern Europe. Crop failure and bankruptcy threaten farmers as drought grips Europe. Scandinavia Is on Fire. In Greece, Wildfires Kill Dozens, Driving Some Into the Sea. Dozens Dead in Japan. Climate change means bigger Arctic spiders — but don’t worry, that could be a good thing.
* I suppose there’s just no one to blame.
If you only learn one thing about climate change from all these northern hemisphere extreme heat incidents:
2C of warming doesn’t mean “like now, but 2C warmer”.
— Kate Mackenzie (@kmac) July 27, 2018
In fact this one is better as (c) shows change in variance. pic.twitter.com/qn8FT0fIDy
— Kate Mackenzie (@kmac) July 28, 2018
Capitalism has existed for less than 1% of recorded history and we might literally destroy the planet under it, but it's the only system that "works" and we have to keep doing it forever
— Shuja Haider (@shujaxhaider) July 30, 2018
* Cows, trees, corn, and golf – how America uses its land.
* In America, land votes. More election maps! Emails show Michigan GOP bragged about cramming ‘Dem garbage’ into gerrymandered districts. Why the argument for democracy is now working for socialists rather than against them.
* “Cooking Them to Death”: The Lethal Toll of Hot Prisons.
* We’re Living a Constitutional Crisis. And despite this, there’s no way out.
* Libertarianism and white supremacy.
* “I’m No Donna Reed”: Postfeminist Rhetoric in Christian At-Home Daughterhood Texts.
* It’s hard realizing that you’re the bad guy, because then you have to do something about it. That’s why the most aggressive players on the gory stage of political melodrama act in such bad faith, hanging on to their own sense of persecution, mouthing the plagiarized playbook of an oppression they don’t comprehend because they don’t care to. These people have a way of fumbling through their self-set roles till the bloody final act, but if we can flip the script, we might yet stop the show.
* Uber and Lyft Are Overwhelming Urban Streets, and Cities Need to Act Fast. Pave Over the Subway? Cities Face Tough Bets on Driverless Cars. Yes, the scooters are fun, but.
* Mortgage, Groupon and card debt: how the bottom half bolsters U.S. economy.
* EPA staff worried about toxic chemical exposure — for Pruitt.
* NJ governor bought a women’s soccer team to inspire his daughter, but ran it into the ground.
* There’s a New Scholarly Take on Mizzou’s Race Crisis, and Its Former Leaders Don’t Fare Well.
* A case involving professors at Plymouth State U raises questions about when it’s OK to speak up for colleagues or students accused of sexual misconduct, if ever. In this case, professors defended former student who admitted to sexually assaulting a 14-year-old. The description honestly doesn’t do it justice; these letters of support are completely eye-popping under the circumstances.
* Number of patients suing USC over sex abuse claims tops 300 as faculty push for Nikias’ exit.
* Ex-Trump staffers should not get plum jobs at elite universities.
* Is Elizabeth Warren Running for President?
* How a Swiss Army Knife is made.
* The latest in the stadium scam.
* What would motivate a company to give away 52,000 tablet computers for free? Can you crack this case, gumshoe?
* A new report finds that big companies could have given their workers thousands of dollars’ worth of raises with the money they spent on their own shares. Are Stock Buybacks Starving the Economy?
* Let the computers be the doctors, they said.
* You don’t know me, computer!
* They’re real good at memes though.
* The anarchist roots of writing.
* Today in Sheriff Clarke news.
* Truly the Devil can quote Scripture for his purposes.
* She Gave Millions to Artists Without Credit. Until Now.
* The Bayeux Tapestry with knobs on: what do the tapestry’s 93 penises tell us?
* Game Studio With No Bosses Pays Everyone The Same.
* Conservative Think Tank Says Medicare For All Would Save $2 Trillion.
* Angelo Secchi, the Jesuit father of astrophysics.
* Wariness and wonder at a conference devoted to “Ancient Aliens.”
* Conversation is impossible if one side refuses to acknowledge the basic premise that facts are facts. This is why engaging deniers in such an effort means having already lost. And it is why AskHistorians, where I am one of the volunteer moderators, takes a strict stance on Holocaust denial: We ban it immediately.
* Locke & Key Has Been Ordered To Series. Flight of the Conchords is coming back. Disney’s Next Heroine Will Be an African Princess. Carrie Fisher Will Appear in Star Wars: Episode IX Via Unused Footage. Shazam looks 90s-cable-level bad, though maybe I’ve just been persuaded that the character is irredeemable. In the First Trailer for Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, the U.S.S. Enterprise Boldly Arrives. And they’re making a Parable of the Sower graphic adaptation.
* Inside J.R.R. Tolkien’s Notebooks, a Glimpse of the Master Philologist at Work.
* Uneven, but finding its voice: @moviegoofs.
Spartacus (1960)
Plot holeIn the scene where the Romans try to locate the rebel leader Spartacus in the captured slave army, most of the other slaves also identify themselves as being named "Spartacus". The movie never explains this coincidence.
— movie_goofs (@movie_goofs) July 30, 2018
* A People’s History of the Greatest Music Video of All Time, Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough.
* The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News.
* When factchecking backfires.
* History in an Age of Fake News.
* When a stranger decides to destroy your life.
* We must not just ask what a contemporary slave rebellion would look like—we must be on its side.
* A biological intelligence, a machine intelligence, and a god intelligence walk into a bar. Ethics and the self-driving car. Heaven. Can I interest you in a happy ending? From hell’s heart I stab at thee.
* We’ll probably never know what really makes people happy.
* Every Circle In This Image Is The Same Color And It’s Breaking Our Brains.
* Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor. He was everything he was on TV and more.
* Dungeons & Dragons is having its best year ever, Hasbro CEO says.
* Great thread about New York City’s grid layout, with a great punchline.
* And the guy who slated classic Star Trek takes was unfazed by the whole thing. It’s a living…
Written by gerrycanavan
August 1, 2018 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #MeToo, 2018, a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, abolition, abortion, academia, academic jobs, actually existing media bias, Afghanistan, Afrofuturism, air travel, Amazon, Amazon Prime, America, anarchy, ancient aliens, apocalypse, architecture, art, artificial intelligence, asteroid mining, asteroids, astrology, astronomy, astrophysics, austerity, Bayeux Tapestry, Beach Boys, Bernie Sanders, Bigfoot, Bird, Black Panther, Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, books, Brett Kavanaugh, Brexit, Buffy, bullshit, California, capitalism, Carrie Fisher, cars, Case Western, cats, centrism, CFPs, Charles Stross, child abuse, China, Chuck Schumer, class struggle, climate change, communism, conspiracy theories, corruption, crisis, cyberpunk, David Foster Wallace, debt, democracy, Democrats, denialism, deportation, design, disability, Disney, diversity, doctors, Donald Trump, driving, Dungeons and Dragons, dystopia, ecology, Elizabeth Warren, emoluments, EPA, Episode 9, ethics, Europe, evangelical Christianity, Facebook, fact-checking, fake news, Far Side, film, Flight of the Conchords, Flint, fossils, four-day work week, fracking, futurity, games, geoengineering, gerrymandering, ghosts, Goonies, Goonies never say die, Greece, Groupon, Guantánamo, Guardians of the Galaxy, hacking, happiness, happy endings, Heaven, history, How the University Works, Hugo awards, hydrofracking, ice, immigration, Infinite Jest, inflation, infrastructure, James Gunn, Japan, Jesuits, Joss Whedon, journamalism, justice, kids today, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kokomo, labor, leftism, libertarianism, Locke and Key, Lyft, machine learning, maps, mass transportation, McDonald's, Medicare, medicine, memes, Michigan, misogyny, Mizzou, Moby-Dick, moderation, Monopoly, moral panic, mortgage, motherhood, Mr. Rogers, MSNBC, music, my scholarly empire, New Jersey, New York, New York Daily News, New Zealand, Nintendo, Nintendo Labo, Nintendo Switch, Nnedi Okorafor, Octavia Butler, oil companies, optical illusions, Orwell, our brains don't work, outer space, paleontology, Parable of the Sower, parenting, passports, Peak Oil, pedagogy, Peter Jackson, philanthropy, philosophy, plastic, Plymouth State, politics, Portugal, postfeminism, princesses, prison-industrial complex, prisons, QAnon, race, race culture, racism, rape, recycling, rich people, Roe v. Wade, Russia, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, satire, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, scams, Scandinavia, science fiction, scooters, security state, self-driving cars, sex, sexism, Shazam, Sheriff Clarke, Shuri, slave revolts, slaves, soccer, socialism, Sorry to Bother You, spiders, sports, stadiums, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, Stormy Daniels, Supreme Court, surveillance society, survivalism, Sweden, Swiss army knives, Talking Heads, teaching, the Arctic, the Constitution, the courts, the Devil, the discourse, the economy, The Hobbit, the Holocaust, the humanities, the law, the Left, the stock market, Tolkien, Topher Grace, trans* issues, trillionaires, trolls, Tronc, Uber, USC, Utopia, Venezuela, victimization, voting, vulture capitalism, water, white supremacy, wildfires, wiretapping, women, work, Worldcon, writing
Christmas Leftovers Links
* Listen, when Chris Ware tells you to buy a book, you buy it.
* For a small group of comedy writers, however, their yearly viewing couldn’t be further from Bedford Falls. Instead, they gather ’round a never-aired 1996 Comedy Central special: Escape From It’s A Wonderful Life.
smh if you don’t realize that George Bailey died in that river and the happy ending is just his sad delusion as he drowns
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) December 26, 2014
* Caganer — the strangest, most scatological part of Catalan nativity scenes — explained.
* Jacobin remembers the Christmas truce, one hundred years old yesterday.
* Let 2015 be Year One of the post-carbon future. 4 Legal Battles This Year That Were All About Climate Change. Sewage in the streets of Miami. Could flooding finally wake Americans up to the climate crisis? Irreversible But Not Unstoppable: The Ghost Of Climate Change Yet To Come.
a dark, gritty CHRISTMAS CAROL reboot where Scrooge refuses to repent and then civilization is destroyed through excess carbon emissions
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) December 25, 2014
* The crazy history of Star Wars.
* The Class Struggle in the North Pole.
* Elsewhere on the local beat: A Milwaukee doctor says he has the answer to concussions.
* And, sadly: Milwaukee’s poet laureate passes away.
* Among recent graduates ages 22 to 27, the jobless rate for blacks last year was 12.4 percent versus 4.9 percent for whites, said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
* I missed this one in August: Tobias Wolff on the heart of whiteness.
* Subway sandwiches and the halo effect.
* 90-Year-Old Vet Arrested For Feeding Homeless Will Hand Out Christmas Eve Dinner.
* I can’t believe they made a movie out of Bill, The Galactic Hero. I can’t wait to see it.
* A look inside 8chan, the worst place on the Internet: “The Mods Are Always Asleep.”
* There’s magical thinking, and then there’s “Believing in Santa Claus could help your kids develop a cure for cancer.”
* Behold, the baby in the sun from Teletubbies.
* This was a nice, short, readable explanation of how all the statistical analysis in The Bell Curve was bullshit.
* 10 Story Decisions Scifi And Fantasy Writers Ended Up Regretting. Tough list to get down to just ten!
* In the 1950s, Egypt and Britain played an old version of tit-for-tat. Egypt took the Suez Canal. The British decided to pay them back by stealing the river Nile itself. Yes, the whole Nile.
* A very J.R.R. Tolkien Christmas.
* Parents Are Moving To The Same Towns Where Their Kids Go To College. When my kids go to college, I’m enrolling in their freshman classes. I don’t want to miss a moment.
* New York City Sends $30 Million a Year to School With History of Giving Kids Electric Shocks.
* Pope Francis: ‘One in 50’ Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals is a paedophile.
* Pious Anxiety: Flannery O’Connor’s Prayer Journal.
* On Facebook and Algorithmic Cruelty.
* The Marvel Movie Universe, In Completely Chronological Order.
* The melancholy of all things done” is the way Buzz once described his complete mental breakdown after returning from the moon. Booze. A couple of divorces. A psych ward. Broke. At one point he was selling cars. Buzz Aldrin and the dark side of the Moon.
* Of course you had me at “There’s a serious proposal to send astronauts to a floating cloud city in Venus’s atmosphere before heading to Mars.”
* A public service announcement: Black Mirror: White Christmas was fantastic. Find a way to watch it!
My idea of a Christmas miracle is my in-laws having Direct TV so I can watch BLACK MIRROR tonight.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) December 25, 2014
* And if you squint just right it looks like the world isn’t ending. Happy Holidays indeed!
Written by gerrycanavan
December 26, 2014 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1914, 2015, 8chan, algorithms, babies, Bill the Galactic Hero, Black Mirror, books, Buzz Aldrin, Caganer, cancer, Catalan, Catholicism, child pornography, Chris Ware, Christmas, class struggle, climate change, coastal flooding, college, comedy, comics, concussions, Cthulhu, Department of Justice, Dontre Hamilton, ecology, education, Egypt, Facebook, fantasy, fast food, film, First Amendment, Flannery O'Connor, food, futurity, George Lucas, graphic novels, guns, Harry Harrison, helmets, Here, homelessness, inventions, It's a Wonderful Life, it's not all bad news, kids today, let's just start over, magical thinking, Mars, Marvel, Miami, Milwaukee, moderation, NASA, Neil Armstrong, Neil Gaiman, New York, optimism, outer space, parenting, pedagogy, pedophilia, poetry, police, police brutality, police state, police violence, politics, race, racism, raw sewage, religion, Richard McGuire, Santa, Santa Claus, schools, science fiction, sea level rise, Star Wars, statistics, Subway, Suez Canal, Teletubbies, television, The Bell Curve, the Christmas truce, the Constitution, the courts, the Internet, the law, the Moon, the Nile, the Pope, Tobias Wolff, Tolkien, unemployment, United Kingdom, Venus, war huh good god y'all what is it good for? absolutely nothing say it again, white privilege, whiteness, Wisconsin, writing, WWI
Friday Night in Arlington
* Travel the galaxy from the privacy of your couch with these retro Star Wars travel posters. (Thanks, Fiona!)
* Rally for Sanity Watch: Liberal and left activist groups will be out in force trying to swell their ranks. I wonder how they’ll feel after Stewart says they’re half the “problem.”
* Rally for Insanity Watch: 1, 2, 3.
* Here come the Dollhouse comics.
* Between a solid science fiction and crackpot that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the science fiction.
* Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach will co-produce “a screwball comedy about an escort, a theatre director and a private detective.” Something called Moonrise Kingdom is said to be Wes’s next directorial project. I’m already excited.
Written by gerrycanavan
October 29, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with activism, books, comics, Daily Show, Dollhouse, film, gay rights, Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, Joss Whedon, Keith Olbermann, moderation, Moonrise Kingdom, Noah Baumbach, politics, Rally to Restore Sanity, science fiction, Star Wars, Tea Party, the audacity of centrism, Tom Tomorrow, Wes Anderson