Posts Tagged ‘peanut butter and jelly sandwiches’
Supersized ICFA Weekend Links!
* Hey, ICFAites! I’m posting this too late to hype yesterday’s talk on Black Panther and Wakanda as Nation, but there’s still time to hype my Rogue One roundtable at 8:30 and the Modern Masters of Science Fiction book signing at 12:30…
* One week from today! Buffy at 20!
* I really appreciated The New Inquiry‘s most recent issue on prison abolition, including this piece on home monitoring, this one on deaf inmates, and this one on bureaucratic malice.
* Awesome IndieGoGo success story: Nimuno LEGO tape.
* Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse.
* Teach the controversy: Did the CIA really astrally project to Mars in 1984?
* Neat project I’m coming late to: Young People Read Old SFF.
* “Mr. Thursday.” By Emily St. John Mandel.
* The Gig Economy and Working Yourself to Death.
* What Happens If a Nuclear Bomb Goes Off in Manhattan? How to survive a nuclear blast.
* Other genres merely represent everyday life. Science fiction hopes to change it.
* New Zealand river granted same legal rights as human being.
* The Existential Hokiness of Rick & Morty.
* Purplish Haze: The Science Fiction Vision of Jimi Hendrix.
* “Comrade, Can You Paint My Horse?” Soviet Kids’ Books Today.
* Being Kim Stanley Robinson. After the Great Dithering.
Julia muppet
Credit: Sesame Workshop
* Sesame Street’s newest puppet is a four-year-old with autism.
* Disabled Americans: Stop Murdering Us.
* “Let’s talk about the weird psychosexual energy in Beauty and the Beast.”
* “Humpback whales are organizing in huge numbers, and no one knows why.”
* Animal rights lawyer says zoos are solitary confinement for animals. No animals have all the attributes of human minds; but almost all the attributes of human minds are found in some animal or other. The beginning of the end of meat. Scientists are messing around with 3-D printed cheese.
* Great news: Authorities believe they’ve captured the individual responsible for most of the JCC bomb threats. The Slip-Up That Caught the Jewish Center Bomb Caller.
* With a 10-day supply of opioids, 1 in 5 become long-term users. Drugs are killing so many people in Ohio that cold-storage trailers are being used as morgues.
* With Trump Poised to Change the Legal Landscape, the Clock May Be Ticking on Graduate Unions. The shamelessness with which college administrations have courted this outcome is amazing, even by college administration standards.
* How One Family Is Beating the NCAA at Its Own Game.
* Here’s the Important Stuff That Happens in Iron Fist So You Don’t Have to Watch It. Netflix and Marvel’s Iron Fist is an ill-conceived, poorly written disaster. The Iron Fist TV Series Is Marvel and Netflix’s First Big Failure. Five Comments on Iron Fist.
* Paranoia in the Trump White House. Trumpism and academia. Trump’s Cuts. A day in the life of a poor American under Trump’s proposed budget. North Korea. The Incredible Cruelty of Trumpcare. Trumpcare goes down. Democrats Will Filibuster Neil Grouch’s Nomination. What to ask about Russian hacking. New York Attorney General Steps Up Scrutiny of White House. Why they voted Trump. r/Donald. It’s a better time to be doing any kind of leftist politics than it was a decade ago. Well, we’ll see…
* It’s hard in all this mess to pay attention to the little things, but man.
* My fascism will be big, beautiful, and sustainable, or it will be bullshit.
* Overall, Obama’s performance in office looks like most American presidencies since Reagan, not altering all that much at home while pressing ahead with imperial tasks abroad—in effect, a largely conventional stewardship of neo-liberal capitalism and military-diplomatic expansionism. No new direction for either society or empire emerged under him. Obama’s rule was in this sense essentially stand-pat: business as usual. On another plane, however, his tenure was innovative. For he is the first celebrity President—that is, a politician whose very appearance was a sensation, from the earliest days of his quest for the Democratic nomination onwards: to be other than purely white, as well as good-looking and mellifluous, sufficed for that. Catapulted into the White House on colour charisma and economic crisis, and commanding the first congressional supermajority since Carter, Obama in office continued to be an accomplished vote-winner and champion money-raiser. But celebrity is not leadership, and is not transferrable. The personality it projects allows no diffusion. Of its nature, it requires a certain isolation. Obama, relishing his aura and aware of the risks of diluting it, made little attempt to mobilize the populace who cast their ballots for him, and reserved the largesse showered on him by big money for further acclamation at the polls. What mattered was his personal popularity. His party hardly counted, and his policies had little political carry-through.
* What If Students Only Went to School Four Days a Week?
* Body cameras and the nightmare state.
* When corporations colonize academia.
* White, Irish, and undocumented in America.
* Children as young as 3 detained 500 days — and counting — in disgraceful immigrant prisons. Rape Victims Aren’t Seeking Help For Fear Of Deportation, Police Say. Banking on Deportation. There was an Africa trade meeting with no Africans because all their visas got denied.
* Sheriff David Clarke’s jail forced a woman to give birth while in shackles. The newborn died.
* The long now: A Computer-Generated Coliseum that Will Disintegrate for 1,000 Years.
* Scientists Brace for a Lost Generation in American Research.
* A special issue of Orbit devoted to David Foster Wallace.
* Functional illiteracy in Detroit.
* Why Does Mt. Rushmore Exist?
* Everybody in the NBA is obsessed with PB&J sandwiches.
* Missing Richard Simmons turned out super gross. Don’t listen.
* Congress Moves to Strike Internet Privacy Rules From Obama Era.
* I’ve been really interested in this: A major study finding that voter ID laws hurt minorities isn’t standing up well under scrutiny. A follow-up study suggests voter ID laws may not have a big effect on elections.
* Are we raising racists? Pay attention to what your kids watch on their screens.
* Tomb of Santa uncovered in Siberia.
* Educational attainment in America.
* The Peter Parker/Mary Jane Watson Marriage Will Never Ever Return “Up To Infinity” Says Dan Slott.
* Or a tweet. Probably a tweet.
* A Tale Which Must Never Be Told: A New Biography of George Herriman.
* Trans, Disabled, And Tired Of Fighting To Get Into Bathrooms.
* Appliances used to last decades.
* A year in Eden: Remaining cast of TV show finally leave their remote Highland home.
Now the remaining cast of a TV show have finally left their remote home – to virtual anonymity.
Instead of being crowned reality TV celebrities and fought over by agents, the 10 who made it through the 12 months have learned that only four episodes have been shown – the last seven months ago.
* Mr. Rogers vs. the Ku Klux Klan.
* Andy Daly reviews Review.
* CFP: Chuck Berry in the Anthropocene.
* SNL quick change, Jeff Sessions to mermaid.
* I still believe in a place called Duckburg.
* No.
* Action Lad and the Living Sword!
* And the arc of history is long, but there’s an Attack from Mars pinball machine remake coming later this year.
Wednesday Night Links
* Breaking Bad aficionados will enjoy Bryan Cranston’s recent appearances on the Nerdist and WTF with Marc Meron, the latter of which has the (new-to-me) tidbit that Jesse was slotted to be killed off in the first few episodes; he was saved from death by the awesomeness of Aaron Paul.
* Wisconsin wants to mess with the Electoral College, too. You’ll be shocked to learn the Koch brothers are involved.
* So the U.S. government doesn’t actually have “hard evidence” Iran tried to murder the Saudi ambassador. I feel like I’ve seen this movie before.
* TPM and @fivethirtyeight (1, 2, 3) have been talking today about the fact that Romney (while unquestionably “inevitable”) has clearly hit his support ceiling in the Republican primary. The Anti-Romney has shifted through several alternatives, but the support never settles on Romney; it just keeps casting about for some new savior, Bachmann, Perry, Christie, and currently Herman Cain. It’s just more fodder for my “Draft Jeb” conspiracy theory…
* Beka Economopolis on Occupy Wall Street: We must draw a line, disavow the Democrats explicitly, make our messaging a little uncomfortable. Yes, perhaps, split the support, lest we not be co-opted. This will be painful, internally, as it won’t always achieve comfortable consensus. But to hold this space and expand the realm of possibility, we have to go farther than others are ready to go.
* Matt Taibbi on Occupy Wall Street.
* The Big Picture blog on Occupy Everywhere.
* Kevin Drum and Paul Waldman on the GOP’s astounding Medicare reality distortion field.
1. Health care in general, and Medicare in particular, are bankrupting our country.
2. But government should never try to figure out which treatments are effective.
3. Medicare should pay for any treatment anyone wants, regardless of whether it works or what it costs.
4. If an insurance company refuses to pay for a procedure, that’s their right as actors in the free market; if Medicare refuses to pay for a procedure, that’s Washington bureaucrats trying to kill you.
5. We need to cut Medicare benefits, because don’t forget it’s bankrupting our country.
* The fiends! In an effort to promote healthful eating and, it has been suggested, to protect traditional Gallic cuisine, the French government has banned school and college cafeterias nationwide from offering ketchup with any food but — of all things — French fries.
* Australia has passed a carbon tax.
* Imagine there’s no peanut butter.
* And Polling Shows North Carolina Faces Uphill Battle To Defeat Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment. Honestly, how are we even still arguing about this?
Links From Yesterday
* Things every decent person wishes were true: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1988.
* Doing my part: “Stop Global Warming: Eat Peanut Butter and Jelly.”
* The most profitable team in professional sports hasn’t played a game since 1976. Via MeFi.
* Even if you want to, you can’t impeach the Pope. Related: The Catholic Church hierarchy knew about the child abuse crisis in the priesthood as far back as 1952.
* Simon Lazarus’s “Is Health Care Reform Constitutional?” piece: The Trumped-Up Constitutional Case To Trump Health Care Reform.
* And nj.com highlights Literary New Jersey.
PB & Apocalypse
Peanut butter apocalypse: FDA urges people to avoid peanut-butter products. Peanut butter sold in jars “appears to be safe.” More links at MeFi. If this extended to peanut butter in jars it would cut my diet in half…
Change I Can Believe In
Change I can believe in: Ezra Klein brings word of the PB&J Campaign. Sounds delicious.
Gerry Canavan 