Posts Tagged ‘Pizzagate’
Thursday Morning Links!
There is not a single part of me that doubts that ALF could be a viable contender in the next Presidential election. I’m not saying he’d win…but I do think it’d be close.
— billy eichner (@billyeichner) August 1, 2018
* CFP: Speculative Fiction, Pedagogy, and Social Change. CFP: Teaching 9/11 and Its Aftermaths. CFP: Crafting the Long Tomorrow: New Conversations & Productive Catalysts Across Science and Humanities Boundaries as the Global Emergency Worsens. CFP: Episodes VII, VIII, IX.
* The ‘feel-good’ horror of late-stage capitalism.
What if the problem isn't stimulants but the mandate for productivity
What if the problem isn't benzos but the mandate to stay calm in actual chaos
What if the problem isn't opioids but the mandate to work like a machine that can't suffer to keep you and your loved ones alive— Alana Massey (@AlanaMassey) August 1, 2018
* Unreal.
* Twilight of the omniversity.
* All about QAnon, if you’re just catching up to the latest nonsense.
If you call Qanon people crazy it just hardens their stance. Let's open our intellectual debate to the iconoclasts who believe Democrats, Tom Hanks, and US intel agencies are engaged in a worldwide pedophilic conspiracy to take down Trump. (cc: op-ed page editors.)
— George Zornick (@gzornick) August 1, 2018
* Alex Jones, Pursued Over Infowars Falsehoods, Faces a Legal Crossroads. Man, I hope he loses everything.
* Plymouth State University said Wednesday that a retired professor who defended a convicted child rapist in a letter to the court will not be rehired as an adjunct instructor or “in any other capacity.” Two other faculty members who defended the Plymouth State graduate and high school guidance counselor convicted of sexually assaulting a student will complete sexual harassment training prior to their return to campus and will work closely with other professors upon their return, the university also said.
* “The UNC Board of Governors respects each of the varying opinions within the university community concerning this matter. However, after consulting with legal counsel, neither UNC Chapel Hill nor the UNC System have the legal authority to unilaterally relocate the Silent Sam statue,” the board wrote in a statement. “Thus, the board has no plans to take any action regarding the monument at this time, and we will await any guidance that the North Carolina Historical Commission may offer.”
* But in order to turn a story about the U.S. politics of climate change into a story about the entirety of the human species, Rich has to make a strange argument. He has to dispatch with the two most powerful and prominent enemies of a climate policy in the United States: the fossil-fuel industry and the Republican Party.
* A reminder: Just 90 companies are accountable for more than 60 percent of greenhouse gases.
The idea that ‘people,’ as in the entire human species, are failing to act on climate change is based on the assumption that decisions affecting it are democratically made, which is verifiably false.
— syd🌹🌱 (@SydneyAzari) August 1, 2018
It’s not so much the heat or humidity as it is the existential dread that comes from realizing that catastrophic climate change will lead to the collapse of human civilization.
— Doug Gordon (@BrooklynSpoke) August 1, 2018
* How the Carr Fire became one of the most destructive fires in California history.
* Europe facing its hottest day ever.
* Here’s a different question one could ask: Could it be that reporters like Chait, who are obsessed with finding the next Watergate and tend to err on the side of military intervention, aren’t exercising enough skepticism?
* Months later I not only considered my own future, but the far-reaching political implications of these cases: Why did the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia find it appropriate to hang virtual life sentences over the heads of 214 people after an indiscriminate mass arrest? How could they have so shamelessly gleaned evidence from far-right groups like Project Veritas, a discredited organization known for making deceptive gotcha videos, as well as the paramilitary group the Oath Keepers, and still felt they had a legitimate case? Where was the motivation—the conspiracy—to pursue these cases coming from?
* Immigration crackdown: U.S. soldier honored for service could be heading for ICE custody.
* ‘Like a kidnapping’: ICE snatches 25-year Minnesota resident from his family in harrowing video.
* Another migrant child molested at a DHS facility. And a WaPo story about the migrant child who died shortly after their release from an unsafe, unhygienic detention center.
* Source close to Ivanka Trump confirms no one so beautiful could be evil.
A “Purge”-like holiday where one day a year American women are allowed to break their NDAs without getting sued.
— Moira Donegan (@MoiraDonegan) August 1, 2018
* From the archives: What Is Socialist Feminism?
* Can’t anyone in Congress have a normal hobby?
* Inside the first database that tracks America’s criminal cops.
* Breaking: leftist politics are very popular. Still / again / always.
* The art of the murder mystery.
* Meet the Anarchists Making Their Own Medicine.
* Maybe it’s possible to have too much money.
* Nobody powerful ever makes a mistake, MCU edition.
Worth considering: basically nobody responsible for the financial crisis, Iraq War or 9/11 intel/security failures was held accountable or faced serious career consequences. In fact, many of them got richer, became more powerful & accrued more social status. This seems important.
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) August 2, 2018
* Something is happening in America.
Yowza. https://t.co/XRBunwsQZ7 pic.twitter.com/6EiiZkqbqa
— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) August 1, 2018
* At some point in the process, all four of these nominees—Haynsworth, Carswell, Bork, and Ginsburg—seemed like shoo-ins for confirmation, much as Kavanaugh does today. And yet they were all defeated. And the Justices who took their places were closer to the judicial and political mainstream.
* Parents Are Paying Fortnite Coaches So Their Gamer Kids Can Level Up.
* Pope declares death penalty inadmissible, changing Church’s stance.
* …in the U.S., water park rides are not tightly regulated. Although the federal government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission has the authority to set safety standards for such products as baby cribs and bicycles, it has no authority to regulate water parks. That responsibility lies entirely with the states. Some states have agencies that inspect water parks; others rely on the parks’ own insurance companies to do inspections. Texas law, for instance, says that a park must obtain a $1 million liability policy for each of its rides and must have all rides inspected once a year by an inspector hired by the insurance company. But there is nothing in the law that requires the inspector to have any particular certifications. Nor does the law require an inspector to evaluate the safety of such factors as the ride’s speed or the geometric angle of its slide path. According to Texas Department of Insurance spokesman Jerry Hagins, the inspector is charged only with making sure that the ride is in sound condition and meets the “manufacturer’s specifications.” In other words, a water park is allowed to police itself.
* Can Mars even be terraformed?
* Yikes.
* The Songs We Banned From Our Weddings. The answer to a wedding soundtrack is always just all Motown, I think.
* Film Crit Hulk considers Nanette.
* Once upon a time, the house on Red Bark Lane wasn’t just another address in a sprawling suburban development: It was originally built as a nearly exact three-dimensional replica of 742 Evergreen Terrace, the Springfield residence of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson. Working on a short schedule, architects and builders de-fictionalized the home featured in The Simpsons for a 1997 giveaway that was intended to leave one lucky fan with the ultimate in cartoon memorabilia. No detailwas spared, from a food dish for their cat, Snowball II, to Duff beer cans in the fridge.
But controversy soon erupted in this faux-Springfield mock-up. The homeowner’s association wasn’t keen on having a cartoon house that broke conformity requirements by being painted solar yellow. The sweepstakes winner rejected it outright. And the current owner had to learn to live with the property being a source of perpetual curiosity for fans of the show who brazenly turn her doorknobs and peer through her windows at all hours of the day and night. As it turns out, the reality of living in a fantasy can get a little complicated.
Written by gerrycanavan
August 2, 2018 at 9:40 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #J20, 9/11, academia, Al Franken, Alex Jones, ALF, America, anarchism, apocalypse, Barbara Ehrenreich, Boots Riley, Brett Kavanaugh, California, capitalism, catfishing, Catholicism, CBP, censorship, CFPs, class struggle, climate change, communism, Congress, conspiracy theories, coups, death penalty, democracy, deportation, Disney, Donald Trump, ecology, Europe, evil, feminism, Fortnite, fossil fuels, free speech, games, general election 2020, Guardians of the Galaxy, homeland security, How the University Works, ice, immigration, Infowars, Ivanka Trump, Japan, kids today, leftism, lies and lying liars, Mars, MCU, medicine, mental health, misogyny, monuments, Motown, murder, music, mysteries, Nanette, NDAs, neoliberalism, Pizzagate, Plymouth State, police, police corruption, politics, polls, QAnon, rape, rape culture, Republicans, revolution, rich people, Russia, science fiction, sexism, sharks, socialist feminism, Sorry to Bother You, South Korea, Supreme Court, terraforming, the Confederacy, the Pope, the Purge, The Simpsons, true crime, UNC, water parks, weddings, wildfires, women
Monday Morning Links (The Kind You Don’t Take Home to Mama)
Well, I’ve been on the new Star Tours, and I regret to inform you I have some pretty serious concerns about its canonicity 1/89
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 9, 2018
* CFP: The Evolution of Evil in Fantasy and Science Fiction, Academia Lunare.
* But the other thing that strikes me – we were talking early on about the history of modernity as connected in a structural way to the history of slavery, of capitalism, to histories of ordering and wasting – when I read that long history, a striking thing is capitalism’s impulse to abolish limits. From a capitalist’s standpoint, there are simply no limits. In regard to almost anything and everything, limitlessness is the law. Another striking thing is that capitalism aims to abolish some of the key dualisms without which the very idea of society as we understand it would have been unimaginable. To some extent, capitalism is the only religion without taboos humans have ever invented.
* The way it works is that, once the first settlers on a new planet demonstrate that they won’t die horribly from allergies, pathogens, or getting buried under the excrement of herds of titanosaurs, they then spread out to build mining settlements all over the planet, high-grade all the most accessible mineral deposits, drill for oil, and grow the infrastructure needed to build starships. With starhips built and trade links established, they grow into a mature colony over the course of a few centuries, all the while founding as many daughter colonies on new planets as possible. Eventually, they run into serious pollution problems, loss of usable mineral deposits, changing climate (both natural through the equivalent of Milankovich cycles, and anthropogenic), and a biosphere that coevolves to exploit the colony, because that’s just what life does (think pesticide resistant bugs, coyotes, superweeds…). At that point, the colony starts to fall apart. Interstellar trade shifts away from it (after all, whatever’s causing them to collapse them might be contagious). Ultimately the survivors hang on to become a truly resilient indigenous population in a backwater world–or all die horribly as their critical infrastructure fails. Their fate doesn’t matter to our interstellar civilization, because it has literally already moved on to new frontiers, boldly going where no man has gone before. So long as they can find new worlds to conquer, they can go on forever.
* Hard to argue with this reading of Harry Potter, honestly.
Wizards in Harry Potter fought a war over whether they should be genteel and cultured about racism but vulgar about everything else or vulgar about racism and genteel and cultured about everything else.
— Alexandra Erin (@alexandraerin) July 9, 2018
The figureheads of the war (Harry Potter and Voldemort) were mostly divorced from the larger cultural context of the sides they inspired or led. Their motivations were personal: Harry wanted revenge and to protect people he knew personally, Voldemort wanted power to live forever.
— Alexandra Erin (@alexandraerin) July 9, 2018
* “Eco-Philosopher Fails Hurricane Test, Crawls Under Rock.”
* A mere couple of hours away till the end of America, get excited.
* Still, God help me, I can’t get enough of this stuff: What if Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987?
* Madeleine Albright: ‘The things that are happening are genuinely, seriously bad.’ Yeah, that’s what I keep saying!
* America is catastrophically incapable of holding its elites responsible for their crimes, and that’s supposed to be the good news.
* Meanwhile, the Trump Foundation was a comically illegal slush fund and it just doesn’t matter.
* A Mexican couple was turned over for deportation this week when they tried to visit a New York military base to celebrate the Fourth of July with their son-in-law, who is an army officer. They had lived in Brooklyn for decades. More here.
The couple’s son-in-law is a sergeant in the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division. According to the family, the Department of Defense won’t let him intervene in the case.
“Most worrying is the fact that both parents have recently undergone surgery and need medication,” the report said. “The Silvas say they have gotten calls from their mother, who said she was denied her medication. They say they have not heard from their father.”
This is a different army base in Brooklyn than the one that called ICE on a pizza delivery guy a few weeks ago.
* Trump admin won’t reunite all migrant families, will place some kids in foster care.
* Illinois governor profits off ICE detention center contracts.
1. 3K children were separated from their parents which is a humanitarian catastrophe
2. Trump signed a document in the Oval Office designed to communicate that family separation was “over”
3. 3K kids remain separated
4. There’s no indication of any real plan for reunification
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 9, 2018
1. You really want to know what grinds me gears about a good portion of "the resistance?" We are literally going through the early stages of ethnic cleansing, yet people are urging that we play chess against an opponent that has flipped the board over & set the house on fire.
— ✊🏿Black Aziz aNANsi✊🏿 (@Freeyourmindkid) July 7, 2018
Hard to imagine a greater blasphemy against Jesus than the living example of Christians in 2018, to be honest.
— Julius Goat (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) July 8, 2018
* Not for nothing. Of course you’ve heard me sing this song before.
My plan is to accept a cushy job at a university in New Zealand about six months before the killings start, if you’re wondering
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 8, 2018
hmm 🤔 https://t.co/3l7cFabX7p
— MF (@MF_return) July 8, 2018
* Notes from the Ocasio-Cortez campaign.
* Even “being drunk” is culturally specific.
* Introducing the Marvel Curriculum: A look at film history via the MCU.
* What if HBO, but super, super creepy?
please, i want to die now https://t.co/WPKj1ew1RC pic.twitter.com/TPEWNF0bEG
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) July 9, 2018
* How Much Does Being a Legacy Help Your College Admissions Odds?
* Elon Musk’s submarine is nonsense. Meanwhile.
* Brexit vs. Gibraltar. Brexit vs. Britain. Brexit vs. the Tories. Brexit vs. Brexit.
* I happened to listen to NPR for a few hours this morning, and I heard three stories that are very much connected to climate change without anyone on the radio mentioning climate change even once.
This week in climate change:
-Quebec: heatwave kills 54
-Algeria: 124.3 degrees F as hottest temps ever recorded scorch Africa.
-Japan: “unprecedented” rain kills dozens
-California: LA notches all-time-high temp, wildfires kill 1 and force 1000s to evacuate.— Alexander Kaufman (@AlexCKaufman) July 7, 2018
Still astounded by the people arguing that the Puerto Rican government has a moral responsibility to funnel all of its money to bondholders rather than making basic services work as hurricane season begins
— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) July 8, 2018
Tired: Humans are killing the planet
Wired: literally like ninety specific people are killing the planet and we literally know their names— Bigger Laius Theory (@the_bird_roads) July 8, 2018
* U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials.
* Like Pizzagate but it actually happened.
* 150 Cheers for the 14th Amendment.
* Killing all the whales and turtles to own the libs.
1/7: We are now in a transitional moment: as was the case internally for people in the Soviet system c.1980, most people in the West who today are involved in or thinking about the int’l system realize that the warm & fuzzy things that are said about this crumbling system are BS.
— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) July 8, 2018
a more just social order is not only possible it’s near, reactionary fascism is just that – a reaction.. to the rest of us, don’t let them steal the future
— Ayesha A. Siddiqi (@AyeshaASiddiqi) July 8, 2018
Whenever I get irritated with young people for incomprehensible weirdness like calling crispy duck pizza racist or watching videos of people playing computer games, I feel it's important to remember that old people voted to burn down the economy and put babies in prison.
— John B (@johnb78) July 8, 2018
* Actually existing media bias watch: 1, 2.
* Siri: show me fragile masculinity.
* And the headline reads: “Fake sultan was scamming a Miami billionaire. Then he ate pork.”
Siri: show me fragile masculinity pic.twitter.com/XVtCDKSW5D
— Nun Ya (@Ishfery) July 8, 2018
Written by gerrycanavan
July 9, 2018 at 12:07 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #TheResistance, 14th Amendment, a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, Achille Mbembe, actually existing media bias, alcohol, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, America, apocalypse, books, border patrol, breastfeeding, Brexit, Brooklyn, Bruce Rauner, cable news, California, capitalism, censorship, CFPs, charity, Charles Stross, China, Christianity, class struggle, climate change, college, concentration camps, deportation, Donald Trump, drunkenness, ecology, elites, Elon Musk, endangered species, ethnic cleansing, evil, fantasy, fascism, film, fragility, galactic empires, Gibraltar, Great Britain, grifts, Harry Potter, HBO, How the University Works, hurricanes, ice, Illinois, journalism, kids today, legacy admissions, lies and lying liars, Madeleine Albright, Marvel, masculinity, math, MCU, Mexico, Miami, MSNBC, New York Times, New Zealand, outer space, parenting, philosophy, pizza, Pizzagate, politics, Putin, racism, rape, rape culture, Russia, science fiction, Soviet Union, Supreme Court, surveillance society, taxes, Thailand, the courts, the law, Tim Morton, trade war, true crime, Trump Foundation, turtles, United Kingdom, USSR, whales, zero
Monday Morning Links!
Gorblex-12’s log, day 5875. We have now replaced 95% of human society with cartoonish nonsense, and literally none of them have noticed.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) December 4, 2016
* A personal announcement: I’ll be the Vice President of the Science Fiction Research Association for the next three years. Thanks for the vote of confidence!
* CFP: “Purple Reign: An interdisciplinary conference on the life and legacy of Prince.”
* Huge, if true: Reading Literature Won’t Give You Superpowers. And meanwhile: What’s Wrong With Literary Studies? Some scholars think the field has become cynical and paranoid. Only some?
* Use Data to Make a Strong Case for the Humanities.
* They did it: Army Corps of Engineers Statement Regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline. More from Vox.
Entire #DAPL project has to be killed to avoid h2o contamination of Missouri and Mississippi rivers. pic.twitter.com/T3qo97ee6B
— Katherine Franke (@ProfKFranke) December 4, 2016
* Is there any branch of literature so insecure, so uncertain of its own status, as science fiction?
* Inside the world of Chinese science fiction, with “Three Body Problem” translator Ken Liu.
* Marquette in the ne– oh come on.
* Dan Harmon’s story circle at YouTube.
* Trouble in the Heartland: Listening to Springsteen in Wisconsin in 1979.
* Well, that seems fine: GOP rep: Trump has ‘extra-constitutional’ view of presidency. Donald Trump risks China rift with Taiwan call. BREAKING: US President-elect Trump told Rodrigo Duterte that Philippines was conducting its drug war “the right way.” That’s bad. Trump’s education pick says reform can ‘advance God’s Kingdom.’ What the Nazis were doing was not describing what was true, but what would have to be true to justify what they planned to do next. A People’s History of the Third Reich: How Great Man theory allows us to abdicate collective responsibility. Facts are stupid things: Here’s Where Donald Trump Gets His News. Trump and the coming failed state. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Now Is The Time To Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About. Another visit from the goon squad. Trump and the Bush Legacy.
TFW you're aboard a 747 and the pilot has never flown any kind of plane before and he feels *great* about this.
— Fritz Bogott (@fritzbogott) December 4, 2016
It’s hard to imagine a way that Trump could signal “I’m very dangerous, do not give me any power” more than he has. https://t.co/6LCL4uhGo3
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) December 2, 2016
when your day's going ok for five minutes then you remember all over that trump's about to be president pic.twitter.com/fE6hcIq6Ed
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) December 4, 2016
* New SPLC reports reveal alarming pattern of hate incidents and bullying across country since election. Note the category just labeled “Trump — general.”
* Identity politics and the alt-right.
* Premised on the possibilities of political struggle, here was the Douglass Option: “a party in the Southern States among the poor.”
* Seems like this guy is Trump’s very worst pick, clearing a very tough field:
During a tense gathering of senior officials at an off-site retreat, he gave the assembled group a taste of his leadership philosophy, according to one person who attended the meeting and insisted on anonymity to discuss classified matters. Mr. Flynn said that the first thing everyone needed to know was that he was always right. His staff would know they were right, he said, when their views melded to his. The room fell silent, as employees processed the lecture from their new boss.
Flynn also helped promulgate the “Pizzagate” hoax that nearly led to a mass shooting today.
if you die in an Internet conspiracy theory, you die in real life
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) December 5, 2016
* Google, democracy and the truth about internet search.
* Steve Bannon, on the other hand, is winning me over.
* It’s true that racism is a powerful and durable force in our politics. But it is also true that Donald Trump is an incompetent clown who ran an amateurish campaign rife with mistakes. The Democrats should have won this election in a landslide. They did not, and there is no nobility or reassurance for them in a narrow loss in the electoral college or a win in the popular vote. And continuing to insist that a Donald Trump win was either some kind of strange fluke or completely inevitable is a recipe for repeated defeat.
* When the Democrats didn’t like monopolies. On not going high when they go low.
* Can the good parts of Obamacare survive Trump?
* Friedman just got finished telling us that a black elephant is half black swan, and half elephant in the room that will inevitably become a black swan. But now that half-swan, half swan-within-an-elephant is being contrasted with a black swan: in the near future, things that are really black elephants will be misidentified as black swans.
* Understanding survivorship bias.
* Podcast idea of the week: Like Random Trek, but for Rod Serling.
* Which Famous Actor Hustled Chess Games in New York City?
* What does elephant taste like?
* Here’s Why You Should Be Watching Netflix’s Brazilian Sci-Fi Series 3%. And on the SF kick: Aaron Bady explains Westworld.
* …there is no reason to assume Uber’s obliteration of local competition across the planet will create a sustainable business in the long term. Costs are costs, even if you’re a monopoly. As long as people have cheaper alternatives (public transport, legs), they will defect if the break-even price is higher than their inconvenience tolerance threshold.
* Trump could face the ‘biggest trial of the century’ — over climate change. But really, show’s over, folks.
* The trans brain and gender dysphoria.
* This is brilliant and I’m shocked it took the good guys this long to figure it out.
* Kazuo Ishiguro on the coming race of super clones. Never Let Me Go 2: The Revenge.
* Every villain is the hero of their own story.
* And this is pretty much my actual teaching philosophy.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 5, 2016 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #NoDAPL, 3%, academia, actually existing media bias, America, America is already great, animals, astronauts, Barack Obama, Black Bolt, black elephants, black swans, Book of Genesis, Brazil, Bush, CFPs, chess, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, China, Chinese science fiction, Christmas, class struggle, climate change, clones, cloning, cognitive bias, conspiracy theories, cynicism, Dan Harmon, data, Democrats, Department of Education, Donald Trump, eating meat, ecology, Electoral College, elephants, empathy, Ernest P. Worrell, European Union, every villain is the hero of their own story, Fidel Castro, Frederick Douglass, general election 2016, George Lucas, Great Man Theory, guns, hate crimes, health care, How the University Works, Humphrey Bogart, identity politics, immigration, Italy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ken Liu, literary studies, literature, Marquette, mass shootings, Michael Flynn, monopolies, music, my scholarly empire, my teaching philosophy, Nazis, Never Let Me Go, news, North Carolina, obituary, our brains work in interesting ways, over-educated literary theory PhDs, paranoia, pipelines, Pizzagate, podcasts, police, politics, Prince, protest, race, racism, Random Serling, Random Trek, religion, resistance, Rogue One, Saladin Ahmed, scams, science fiction, Seinfeld, SFRA, socialism, Southern Poverty Law Center, Springsteen, Star Wars, Steve Bannon, story circle, superpowers, Supreme Court, survivorship bias, Tawain, the alt-right, the humanities, the Internet, the Philippines, the presidency, The Three-Body Problem, Thomas Friedman, trans* issues, true crime, Uber, War on Christmas, war on drugs, Westward, when they go low we go high, Wisconsin