Last Weekend Before Classes Links!

* CFP: Granfalloon: A Kurt Vonnegut Gathering. MLA 2019 CFP: Stephen King at 45. Call for applications: The S. T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship.

* A special issue of Palimpsest on The Life and Work of Octavia E. Butler.

* Staging Octavia Butler in Abu Dhabi. Parable of the Butler as an opera.

* Syllabus: Good Grief: Humor and Tragedy in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature.

* There has not in living memory been a better time to be a fascist. We live in a utopia: it just isn’t ours.

* American kids are 70 percent more likely to die before adulthood than kids in other rich countries.

* Very nice long read in the Guardian on what depression is and isn’t.

* Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back, With a Vengeance.

* Black Mirror did this one already: Future biotechnology could be used to trick a prisoner’s mind into thinking they have served a 1,000 year sentence, a group of scientists have claimed.

* The 90s, World War II, and the War on Terror. Great little bit of cultural analysis in comic form, derived from a Chris Hayes essay from 2006.

* Tiny books of the resistance.

* Can the humanities be defended? Well, it depends.

* The best way to remember 2017 will surely be through the stories it told about what might come after.

* The Fierce Urgency of “How.”

* Trump’s offshore drilling plan defies ‘wishes of every coastal state, city and county.’ Insurance after climate change. Welcome to West Port Arthur, Texas, Ground Zero in the Fight for Climate Justice. Climate change and the global south. A Radical New Scheme to Prevent Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise.

* UBI already exists for the 1%. A Simple Fix for Our Massive Inequality Problem.

* 5 things to know about Puerto Rico 100 days after Hurricane Maria.

* But the most notable difference in the table is political: no public institution with a Democratic governor chose Vance; only one public institution with a Republican governor chose Coates (the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga). Hillbilly Elegy is the kind of book you want parents and politicians to know students are reading to persuade white, Midwestern Republicans to feel good about releasing funds to support higher education. If you are running a flagship state university campus like the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and your Republican governor and legislature have come after funding and tenure, you are more than happy to choose Vance’s book.

* The woman behind the “Shitty Men in Media” list. How I Learned to Look Believable. Why Dan Harmon’s sexual-misconduct confession is actually worth listening to.

* “Every single neighbor I’ve had has died of cancer.” This Town Is So Toxic, They Want It Wiped off the Map.

* This is not to garner pity for sad trannies like me. We have enough roses by our beds. It is rather to say, minimally, that trans women want things too. The deposits of our desire run as deep and fine as any. The richness of our want is staggering. Perhaps this is why coming out can feel like crushing, why a first dress can feel like a first kiss, why dysphoria can feel like heartbreak. The other name for disappointment, after all, is love. On Liking Women.

* Justice Department Announces Court Order Revoking Naturalized Citizenship, Citing Fingerprint Issue. Washington state AG sues Motel 6 over giving ICE info on 9,000 guests. 200,000 Salvadorans may be forced to leave the U.S. as Trump ends immigration protection. Trump may deport thousands of Indian H-1B visa holders as they wait for green cards. To fulfill Trump’s vision on immigration, sheriffs are trampling over constitutional principles. The head of ICE is calling for mayors and local city councilmen to be arrested. Private Prison Continues to Send ICE Detainees to Solitary Confinement for Refusing Voluntary Labor. ICE to move forward with deportation of paraplegic boy’s caregiver. When Deportation Is a Death Sentence. Trump Puts the Purpose of His Presidency Into Words. And of course.

* The university after Trump.

* This is how nuclear war with North Korea would unfold.

* If the President Is Uniquely Dangerous, Treat Him That Way.

* Child protective services and artificial intelligence.

* The Dogecoin century.

* The end of computer security. An amazing coincidence.

* How students pay for graduate school.

* Bringing back indentured servitude. Let’s let kids mortgage their social security while they’re at it.

* We Finally Know Why People Are Left- Or Right-Handed.

* The case for (and against) the tiger living on LSU’s campus.

* College football has the money to pay players. The College Football Playoff proves it.

* North Carolina gerrymander ruled illegal, again.

* Living with Slenderman.

* You Won’t Live to See the Final Blade Runner Movie.

* #MeToo, Inc.

* Uh Oh—CRISPR Might Not Work in Most People.

* The law, in its majestic equality.

* Roads to nowhere.

* Police departments nationwide agree: guns officially have more rights than people.

* Solo, oh no. Star Wars fatigue is real. Why So Many Men Hate The Last Jedi But Can’t Agree on Why. The Last Jedi and fandom. The best anti-Last-Jedi piece I’ve seen. Poe Dameron apologetics.

* Teaching the controversy the Duke way.

* Marxism and Nintendo? I love my Switch, so anything that keeps me from not feeling too bad about owning it… Nintendo’s Resurgence Was the Best Tech Story of 2017. More at MetaFilter.

* Airline travel has become so safe even I’m barely afraid of it anymore.

* Southwest Flips on Big Three Airlines in Cartel Case.

* Boomeranging the boomerang effect.

* Web comic of the month: “Three Jumps.”

* The Handmaid’s Tale after Margaret Atwood.

* Fox (TV) after Disney.

* Flight of the Conchords forever.

* The coping economy.

* Stop speculating about Trump’s mental health.

* Segregation today.

* The end of the Mickey Mouse Copyright Era? We’ll see.

* Hamilton in London. Hamilton in Milwaukee. Next up: Saga, the Musical?

* As for the bots themselves, #R2DoubleD and #TripleCPU are indeed a very cool sight to behold but (in my opinion) don’t come close to anything ever approaching “arousing.”

* Carrie Fisher’s private philosophy coach.

* google Uno truth

* Updated rules for Settlers of Catan.

* Choose Your Own Adventure, in graph form. Interactive map of every Quantum Leap time jump.

* What happens to the mind under anesthesia?

* Know your airport codes.

* The rise of the machines.

* In fact, it’s cold as hell.

* And you’ve already seen it, but just for the record. Almost been one year. Trump Has Created Dangers We Haven’t Even Imagined Yet. There’s no way out.

Some More Wednesday Links

* Science proves men are stupid around women.

* 10 “Occupy” Candidates Running for Congress. Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin is singled out for praise as the likely new senator from our upcoming new home.

* Personally, of course, I belong to the Optimism! party.

* Salon on “the new oil reality.”

* Apple Is Now Larger Than The Entire American Retail Sector.

* One in Seven Americans Thinks the Affordable Care Act Has Already Been Overturned. I mean really.

* “This desperation starts once you realize how much you’ve lost, and then you feel like you can’t stop because you’ve got to win it back,” she told me. “Sometimes I’d start feeling jumpy, like I couldn’t think straight, and I’d know that if I pretended I might take another trip soon, it would calm me down. Then they would call and I’d say yes because it was so easy to give in. I really believed I might win it back. I’d won before. If you couldn’t win, then gambling wouldn’t be legal, right?”

* Barack Obama is currently leading Mitt Romney in the polls by anything between 12 and -2. Can’t argue with facts.

* And from New York Magazine, dateline 1970: “Mugging as a Way of Life.”

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Obama Opens More of Arctic to Offshore Drilling.

Friday Links

* Terrible news: Almost no new jobs this month, bringing unemployment to 9.2%. Benen: Wake up, Washington, jobs landscape is deteriorating. Drum: We are ruled by charlatans and cowards. Our economy is in the tank, we know what to do about it, and we’re just not going to do it. The charlatans prefer instead to stand by and let people suffer because that’s politically useful, while the cowards let them get away with it because it’s politically risky to fight back.

* One important factor in the jobs disaster: CHART: Over 500,000 Government Jobs Lost Since Obama’s Inauguration.

* TSA agent caught stuffing traveler’s iPod down his pants. Apparently this guy stole $50,000 worth of consumer electronics before he was finally caught.

* Some good news at least: Governor Perdue has vetoed offshore drilling and executive-orders offshore wind instead.

* The last space shuttle has launched. China, your move.

* And your flowchart of the day: What Would Don Draper Do?

¡Viva Perdue!

Good news for North Carolinians: today Governor Bev Perdue vetoed both pieces of terrible environmental legislation on her desk, among other things blocking offshore drilling and hydrofracking in the state.

The Cream Has Sat Out Too Long

* Circumstances when whipping it should be considered.

* I can’t believe there are actually people who think drilling for oil in Lake Michigan would be a good idea.

* Lloyd’s of London says get ready for Peak Oil.

* What caffeine actually does to your brain. One of my bigger regrets about the tail end of my miserable spring semester is letting caffeine back into my life after a two-year banishment. I’m still drinking it here in Ireland because it’s plentiful and delicious with cane-sugary goodness, but once I get back I may have to return to full-on prohibition.

* And I was excited by reports that the Higgs boson had been found, but now apparently it hasn’t.

But I Haven’t Left Yet

* Lebron has hurt everyone, but especially the weak heart of my beloved Cleveland. Nate Silver tries to put a number on the damage he’s done to his reputation playing Hamlet.

* A federal judge has unexpectedly struck down the parts of the Defense of Marriage Act that define marriage as being between a man and a woman. There’s more at MeFi, including a link to a post from Jack Balkin that suggests this could actually be a kind of right-wing Trojan Horse designed to undermine the juridical basis for New Deal government.

* Worst lemon-to-lemonade analogy ever.

* Science proves I was right all along when I said my high school started too early in the morning.

* Žižek blogs about BP. You know what’s coming.

The lesson is simply that, while market mechanisms may work up to a certain level to contain ecological damage, serious large-scale ecological catastrophies are simply out of their reach – any pseudo-scientific statistic talk about “sustainable risks” is ridiculous here. More than two decades ago, a paparazzo caught Senator Ted Kennedy (well known for his opposition to the off-shore drilling in search of oil) in the midst of the sexual act on a lone boat off Louisiana shore; during a Senate debate a couple of days later, a Republican Senator dryly remarked: “It seems that Senator Kennedy now changed his position on off-shore drilling…” So maybe, we should return to Senator Kennedy’s position: the only acceptable off-shore drilling is the one he was engaged in.

More Žižek here.

* Of all sad words of mouth or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been”: 55% Of Likely Voters Think Obama’s A Socialist.

Links

* Lynn Parramore says Deepwater Horizon needs its Steinbeck.

* Hard to believe: Judge who ruled against offshore drilling moratorium invests in oil industry.

* Elaine Marshall is your Democratic candidate for Senate.

* Shane “Primer” Carruth may finally make another movie.

* A quick look inside Harry Potter’s Wizarding World at Universal Studios.

* Nick Bostrom on the Fermi paradox.

* Toy Story as Lost.

* And a space shuttle launch, as seen by a skydiver. Via GeekPress.

Friday Night Everything

* No holiday for death: Rest in peace, José Saramago.

* Univ. of Puerto Rico Students Declare Victory in 2-Month Strike.

* President Maddow. We can dream. She’d do a lot better than the other guys.

* The Obama Plot for a Carbon Tax? We can dream. Related: Fix Global Warming for 40 cents a day (though Benen reminds us not to get your hopes up).

* Everyone seems to have forgotten about coal ash.

* Sometimes the bad guys accidentally tell the truth.

* Every country is number one at something.

* Quit your job: Civ V trailer.

* Look for Toy Story 3 1/2 in front of Cars 2 later this fall.

* Smurfs 3-D, thy name is abomination.

* Don’t know whether to be happy or terrified about the forthcoming adaptation of Cloud Atlas.

* Ban the best friend! Via MeFi.

* The headline reads, “Life in New Jersey Now More Dissatisfying Than Ever.”

* Destroying capitalism one World Cup at a time.

* And today’s dose of liberal guilt, in essay and infographic forms.

Procrastination Is Important

* Finally, a job for which I am qualified: Chinese companies are temporarily hiring white men to pose as fake businessmen.

* You had me at “International Planet of the Apes comic covers.”

* You had me at anti-BP art.

* Given that GDP is an abstract metric with little relationship to the happiness of unhappiness of actual people, it’s no surprise to find that the BP oil spill will likely boost U.S. GDP.

* Science! Scientists are to map Ozzy Osbourne’s genetic code in a bid to find out how he is still alive after decades of drug and alcohol abuse. Via Facebook.

* Where Americans are moving.

* And a book I will inevitably buy: The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson.

Hastily Composed Monday Night Links

* Imagine BP’s Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil disaster happening every single year, with little or no public outcry, no media coverage, and all but silence from government and the companies involved. Welcome to Nigeria.

* Environmentalism can’t succeed until it confronts the destructive nature of modern work.

* The fifty most queried words at nytimes.com. Via Steve, and MeFi.

* Reenactments of the Robert Green “Hand of Clod” goal from the England-U.S. game.

* Tales of Future Past is your retrofuture warehouse. Via Gravity Lens.

* How to destroy a black hole. Also via Gravity Lens.

* And some science fiction names for your baby. Also also.

Friday!

* Rubber is yet another movie about a tire that kills humans using telepathic powers after witnessing his family and friends burn in a tire fire at the hands of a human. Via (who else?) Vu.

* Kottke links to audio of David Foster Wallace’s memorable “This Is Water” commencement speech.

* Forgive the unhappy juxtaposition: Seed considers whether intelligent people are more likely to commit suicide.

* And the Big Picture returns to the Gulf with more devastating photographs.

No More 11-Dimensional Chess

Obama loses Jon Stewart. A quirk of our system of adversarial political reporting is that the strongest arguments against Obama’s handling of the oil spill are relegated to boutique outlets like Rolling Stone; because Republicans are unable to argue that Obama’s should have done a better job cleaning up after their Caligulan corruption, it is not discussed. I’m glad to see Stewart let loose like this; maybe someone else in the media will notice.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

* “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen.”

* Glenn Greenwald has a must-read piece on actually existing media bias.

* Good news / bad news: Democratic Party leaders in Arkansas think Blanche Lincoln will lose tonight. Richard Burr way ahead of the competition in NC.

* Fifty weird U.S. laws.

Alaska
Whispering in someone’s ear while he’s moose hunting is prohibited.

Well lock me up. Via Boing Boing.

* Also via Boing Boing: Science proves children of lesbians are better at everything. Finally another use for my beloved “lesbocracy” tag.

* TNR has a soccer blog.

* And David Foster Wallace has an undergraduate thesis that’s about to be published: “Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will.” Look for it this December, or don’t, it’s your choice…

‘The Texaco Scenario’

How to bankrupt BP.