Monday Morning Links!

• The latest Grad School Achebe not-so-mini-episode is up! This one is about two of Achebe’s short stories, “Marriage Is A Private Affair” and “Dead Man’s Path.” It was one of our best conversations yet, on some of the slightest literary territory we’ve yet staked out…
• More good podcast news: the Ranged Touch Homestuck podcast is a reality.
• ICYMI: I’ll be doing a lecture and seminar series as a virtual scholar-in-residence @TheRosenbach this fall on four of Octavia Butler’s novels. Here are the details! We’re reading Kindred, Wild Seed, Dawn, and Parable of the Sower…
• CFP: LGBTQIA+ Fantastika Graphics: A Digital Symposium November 20th, 2021.
• An assistant professor position in transgender studies at UC Davis.
• The results of Marquette AAUP’s financial analysis of the university is also out: Independent Analysis Reveals That Marquette University Finances Are Solid — Faculty Demand Greater Role in Financial Decisions and an End to Layoffs.
• A long-delayed interview with me for the Schmitt Fellowship “Leadership” project is up now with lengthy disclaimer indicating that I speak for no one but myself (which is true!).
• Cornell helpfully announces its intention to violate the ADA.

This is straight-up illegal and somebody in the office of the general counsel at Cornell should know it. https://t.co/M0D1PIWzmq

— Michael Bérubé (@MichaelBerube1) August 13, 2021

• Why Mass Effect is some of the best sci-fi ever made.
• Blood, gore and a healthy dose of catharsis: why horror can be good for us. The H Word: Post-Human Horror.
• John Carpenter Interview: “I’m not the biggest fan of talking about my films – but let’s do it.”
• Inside the Nichelle Nichols conservativorship battle.
• ‘Welcome To Cleveland’ rooftop still baffling Milwaukee passengers decades later.
• ‘Mind blowing’: Grizzly bear DNA maps onto Indigenous language families.
• Unnerving gender hypothetical corner.

this is *wild,* the sort of thing i would make up as an "unnerving gender hypothetical" that turns out to have once been routine medical practice: putting cis girls on hrt to keep them from getting "too tall"
https://t.co/Mn2f5uYKBC

— Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li (@perdricof) August 14, 2021

• Milwaukee took a big hit in the new census numbers. The question is whether they’re accurate.
• ‘Be Paranoid’: Professors Who Teach About Race Approach the Fall With Anxiety.
• Higher Ed Has a Credibility Problem.
• July was world’s hottest month ever recorded, US scientists confirm. It’s now or never. “How long can a fish hold its breath?”
• Andrew Cuomo: A Life. Time’s Up to re-evaluate conflict-of-interest policy in wake of Cuomo scandal.
• Why California is beating Florida and Texas on the Delta variant (so far). Inside America’s Covid-reporting breakdown. In the West, a Connection Between Covid and Wildfires. Delta Variant Raises Questions as Campuses Start Semester. Hey, Is Delta Bad for Kids? Yes and no. Why Parents Shouldn’t Hunker Down and Wait for a “Return to Normal”. COVID School Year Three. Covid Vaccines for Kids Can’t Wait.

Each day the question is how can this possibly get worse. Worster. Worstest. And it does.
New records set daily, cases >25,000, hospitalizations >16,000, 31.9% test positivity, increasing deaths pic.twitter.com/V70wrA0x9z

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 14, 2021

• I Can’t Stop Thinking About the First Chapter of This Climate Change Novel: A conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson about The Ministry for the Future and this summer’s extreme heat.
• How a Board Game About Birds Became a Surprise Blockbuster.
• And ladies and gentleman: the Graveyard of Empires.

Thursday Forever

* Thursday at C21: Christopher Newfield, “The Humanities in the Post-Capitalist University.” Then, this weekend, elsewhere at UWM: After Capitalism.

* I have a short piece on “WALL-E and Utopia,” pulled from the Green Planets intro, up today for In Media Res’s Pixar week. I also owe SF Signal a post that should go up … eventually that’s also in conversation with the Green Planets stuff (though not cribbed quite so directly).

* The humanities and citation.

* White House petition: abolish the capitalist mode of production.

* More acutely, when you consider the math that McKibben, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) all lay out, you must confront the fact that the climate justice movement is demanding that an existing set of political and economic interests be forced to say goodbye to trillions of dollars of wealth. It is impossible to point to any precedent other than abolition. Great piece from Chris Hayes.

* College towns and income inequality.

* But, clearly, if we can afford such a massive increase in professional staff, as well as such an increase in executives whose salaries have been escalating very dramatically, the sharp decrease in the percentage of all instructional faculty who are tenured or on tenure tracks is a matter of a dramatic shift in priorities—in the conception of the university.

* Gasp! At Elite Colleges, Legacy Status May Count More Than Was Previously Thought.

* On the disinvestment/reinvestment cycle. Returns to university endowments 1980-2010. The Soul of Student Debt. Against anonymous student evaluation.

* Vice interviews Matt Taibbi on his new book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.

* Understanding Wonder Woman, at LARoB.

* When Spider-Man fought misleading sex education.

* Could Mystery Science Theater return?

* The public pension scam.

* How the Super-Rich Really Make Their Money.

* Companies used to borrow in the markets as a last resort finance investment in their business. Now it’s a front for shareholder giveaways.

* Capitalism and Nazism: Now It Can Be Told.

* The school, called Explore + Discover, will be available to children between the ages of 3 months and 2 years. Tuition is $2,791/month for kids who attend five days a week. You can also pay $1,990 for three days a week or $1,399 for two days but don’t you love your child?

* In Tuscaloosa today, nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened.

* For men, having children is a career advantage. For women, it’s a career killer. University managers believe women themselves are primarily responsible for the gender imbalance in higher education, according to research published today.

* There’s Even A Gender Gap In Children’s Allowances.

* “Faculty ignored requests from women and minorities at a higher rate than requests from White males, particularly in higher-paying disciplines and private institutions.” Reviewers will find more spelling errors in your writing if they think you’re black.

* David Foster Wallace Estate Comes Out Against the Jason Segel Biopic. Meanwhile, this insane Lifehacker piece suggests we bracket the whole “suicide” bummer and take David Foster Wallace as our lifecoach.

* Atheist lawsuit claims ‘under God’ in NJ school’s daily pledge recital harms children. I guess I’m just another survivor.

* Wired goes inside Captain Marvel fandom.

* Woman writes about something traditionally regarded as a male-orientated industry or area of interest; if she’s conveying love, she’s doing it “for attention” (so what?) or “fake” (whatever that means); if she criticizes, she’s insulting, whining, moaning, on her period; if she says anything at all, her argument or point is made invisible because her damn biology is getting in the way.

* What’s it like for the first living ex-pope in 600 years to watch from up close as the successor he enabled dismantles his legacy? 

* What That Game of Thrones Scene Says About Rape Culture. George R.R. Martin doesn’t want to talk about it.

* Aaron Sorkin Wants To Apologize To Everyone About The Newsroom.

* Does world government have a future?

* Mars or die.

* Texas Prisons Are Hot Enough to Kill You.

* #MyNYPD.

* The great Colbert rebranding begins.

* Netflix and Mitch Hurwitz Joining Forces Again.

* Nichelle Nichols Talks with Janelle Monae.

* Game of the night: solar system simulator Super Planet Crash.

* Joss Whedon’s New Film Isn’t in Theaters, But You Can Watch It Online for $5.

* Gabriel García Márquez on Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union, and creating “a government which would make the poor happy.”

* Forrest Gump, as directed by Wes Anderson.

* “The only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid is blind luck.”

* Horrific, tragic story out of Rutgers.

* Risk of New York City coastal flooding has surged by factor of 20, says study.

* The latest on the big animal personhood case in New York. Dolphins as alien intelligence.

* That Time Cleveland Released 1.5 Million Balloons and Chaos Ensued.

* CIA torture architect breaks silence to defend ‘enhanced interrogation.’ Facial recognition and the end of freedom. The end of net neutrality and the end of the Internet. Late capitalist subjectivity and the sharing economy.

* Bullied Kids at Risk for Mental Health Problems 40 Years Later.

* And/but/so the kids are all right.

President Nerd

Okay, okay, I’ll like Obama again for the next five minutes.