Week-Old Links at Two-Weeks-Old-Link Prices

* The San Bernardino mystery. Disband MSNBC. The story of the first mass murder in U.S. history. From the archives: The Making of a Rampage Murderer: What the Brutal Life of Oakland Shooter One L. Goh Says About America. So There’s Just Been a Mass Shooting. The Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook. Your tweets are not helping.

* YOU CAN’T KNOW THAT

* The story, called “The Princess Steel,” was discovered by scholars Adrienne Brown and Britt Rusert, who write about it in the new issue of the Modern Language Association journal. We May Have Just Found W.E.B. Du Bois’ Earliest Science Fiction Story.

* The CIA’s WWII Guide to Creating Organizational Dysfunction Perfectly Describes Your Toxic Workplace.

* Crank watch: What No One Is Telling You About Mark Zuckerberg Donating 99% Of His Fortune To “Charity.” The Philanthropy Hustle.

* Tickets go on sale Friday, Dec. 11.

* Elsewhere on the local beat: The Transformation of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

* I teach practical, marketable skills that will serve my students their entire lives.

* Jury duty.

* Four tough things universities should do to rein in costs. Four tough things columnists should do before writing about universities.

* Are most academic papers really worthless? Don’t trust this worthless statistic.

* College athletic departments are paying themselves to lose money.

* The future is a nightmare, and Purdue is ready.

* Self-driving cars will be the worst. Hopefully this particular problem is mostly solved by the elimination of private car ownership altogether.

* The hunt for Vulcan.

* Catholic University Declares 1st Amendment Right To Ignore Catholicism.

* Sports Corner: Stephen Curry Is The Revolution.

* Meanwhile it is stunning to have my prejudices confirmed so wholly: New Study Finds ‘Surprising’ Correlation Between Degenerative Brain Disease And Amateur Athletics.

* Cruel Optimism and the NFL, or, Life in the Factory of Sadness.

* Let us be precise: Donald Trump Is Not a Liar.

* Leaked Documents Show Alabama Police Department Planted Drugs On Black Men For Years. Meanwhile, in Chicago. UPDATE: There may be less to that Alabama story than meets the eye.

* Spoiler Alerts: Three Books on Trash.

* The 24 Most Embarrassing Dungeons & Dragons Character Classes.

* Assuming a round figure of two and a half billion years of beak-sharpening, and assuming (a BIG assumption, to be sure) about three days per iteration of the Doctor, you can figure, based on a solar year of 365.25 days, that there have been approximately three hundred and four billion, three hundred and seventy-five million and twelve Doctors.

* And speaking of the Doctor: I’m not even sure who #2 would be.

* Behold the Jessica Jones backlash.

* Study suggests Type 2 diabetes can be cured by weight loss — specifically the loss of half a gram of fat from the pancreas.

* What they give with one hand they take with the other: Research Points To Mental Health Risks Associated With Meatless Diet.

* This is neat: The Third Amendment to the Constitution — the one that bans the quartering of soldiers in homes without the owner’s consent — is sort of the Pete Best of the early American legislative experiment. While the other amendments have had all sorts of play at the highest levels of legal rulings, there has never been a Supreme Court decision primarily based on the Third Amendment. Clearly the Founders had a goal, wrote it down, and we haven’t had too many questions about the matter since. Nice work, Founders. Anyway, there’s an idea bubbling among legal theorists to use the Third Amendment to counteract domestic spying from the NSA — a branch of the Department of Defense — and while it may not be 100 percent there, it’s interesting.

* Our bad: U.S. Holds Yemeni Man at Guantanamo Bay for 13 Years in Case of Mistaken Identity.

* Starting work before 10am isn’t just soul crushing, this scientist says it’s equivalent to torture.

* Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty.

* Rape in the porn industry.

* Of One and the Other: Humans and Animals.

* Know your branches of economics.

* State sues prisoners to pay for their room, board.

* “This is the best declining mall review I’ve ever read.”

* Teach the controversy: Will Our Descendants Survive the Destruction of the Universe?

* Magnifique! In Photos: Anarchists Clash With Riot Police During Climate Summit Protest in Paris.

* When the Onion goes dark, there’s still no one better: Frustrated Gunman Can’t Believe How Far He Has To Drive To Find Nearest Planned Parenthood Clinic.

* Female-Authors-Only Philosophy of Science Syllabus.

* There’s no such thing as a male or female brain, study finds.

* Florida Woman’s Car Turned Her in for a Hit-and-Run.

* Mom Who Overslept While Son Walked to School Could Get 10 Years in Prison.

* General election watch: Democrats are fiercely committed to the proposition of nominating a perhaps fatally compromised candidate whom basically no one likes. And from Amber A’Lee Frost: My Kind of Misogyny. Wheeeeeeeeee!

* Philosophy Corner: Is there a principled difference between having a gun and just having a button that when pressed kills the person standing in front of you?

* Abolish TIAA-CREF.

* Was Star Wars’ Empire on the brink of financial ruin?

* This company believes it can resurrect humans in the next 30 years.

* Kill the Santa Claus in your head.

* From Climate Crisis to Solar Communism. World’s Most Vulnerable Islands Are Hoping Paris Will Bring an Impossible Climate Miracle. India Holds the Planet’s Fate in Its Hands. That’s Great News.

* Def Sec Carter To Open All Combat Jobs To Women In Historic Change.

* How to Be an Anticapitalist Today.

* Soviet erotic alphabet picture book, 1931.

* Yes, I did write a fixfic based on the “Wait—all the stories are true?” line from the new Star Wars trailer. I’m not sorry.

* There but for the grace of God go we: Man arrested with 51 turtles in his pants.

* And of course you had me at Rare 40-Year-Old Star Trek Comics Are Finally Being Released In the U.S.

Thursday Links!

* In case you missed it yesterday: “Universities, Mismanagement, and Permanent Crisis.”

* Chomsky: How America’s Great University System Is Being Destroyed.

* “Faculty and Students Are Walking Out Today for Catholic Identity.”

* CFP: Porn Studies Special Issue: Porn and Labour.

* Igbinedion’s production company Igodo Films recently shared Oya: Rise of The Orishas in full online. They also revealed that the Oya project has been adapted for the silver screen with principal photography on the feature-length film version scheduled to begin later this year in Brazil. The London-based filmmaker shared in a recentinterview that he made the short film in order to prove that there is a market for sci-fi films revolving around African characters and storylines. In this regard, Oya joins Ethiopian post-apocalyptic flick Crumbs in forging a path for future film projects from the continent within the realm of speculative fiction. In addition to the full-length project, Oya‘s creators have also confirmed plans for a comic book adaptation of the film, which is currently available for pre-order.

* Neil Gaiman reviews Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant. Sounds bizarre and great.

* Study: Killers are less likely to be executed if their victims are black. What could explain it?

* First full body transplant is two years away, surgeon claims.

* London, the city that privatised itself to death.

* Once-homeless Baylor player ineligible, allegedly for accepting a place to live.

* How Facebook is changing the ways we feel.

* The creators of that (great!) Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fan film might be in trouble.

* Meanwhile everything old is new again: Duck Tales, Inspector Gadget, even Danger Mouse.

* The day we all feared is upon us.

* It’s important that the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots succeed, either at achieving an outright ban or at sparking debate resulting in some other sensible and effective regulation. This is vital not just to prevent fully autonomous weapons from causing harm; an effective movement will also show us how to proactively ban other future military technology.

* Meet Your Republican 2016 Front-Runner.

* Canada, petrostate.

* Thousands of oil refinery workers are striking for safer working conditions. Their fight is central to the struggle against climate change.

* Choose Your Own Adventure: So You’ve Accidentally Gotten Pregnant in South Dakota.

* And xkcd maps the future and the past.

Wednesday Links!

* CFP: World Science Fiction Studies.

* We apply because it is absurd: The academic job market: A Kierkegaardian perspective. Also good from Adam: Some reservations about non-violent resistance. To what are “contrarians” contrary?

* 100 Years of Sun Ra.

* Can a Pope Help Sustain Humanity and Ecology?

* How The “Trigger Warning” Took Over The Internet.

* There’s an old joke about economists: A mathematician, a statistician and an economist apply for a job. The interviewer asks, “What’s two plus two?” The mathematician says, “Four.” The statistician thinks for a second and says, “On average, four.” And the economist gets up, closes the door, turns to the interviewer and says, “What do you want it to be?”

* BREAKING: The U.S. Constitution Is Impossible to Amend. This is why we need to start over.

* BREAKING: New Report Finds Climate Change Already Having Broad Impact. This is why we need to start over.

* The end of Florida.

* “Check your privilege!” is a speech-act that intends the maintenance of anti-racist, anti-misogynist, anti-capitalist groups against the persistent threat of auto-corruption. One only says “Check your privilege!” to comrades, to those with whom you co-incline. It’s a locution that keeps political lines of communication clear from all of the fucked-up shit we bring, and can’t not bring, to our collectivities. … A simple way of putting this: One checks the privileges of one’s friends. One destroys those of one’s enemies. One does the former in the service of the latter.

* Charter Schools Gone Wild: Study Finds Widespread Fraud, Mismanagement and Waste.

* Los Angeles now spending more on Wall Street fees than on maintaining roads.

* The Silencing Of Cecily McMillan.

* Advocates Respond to White House Report on College Sexual Assault.

* Universities and researchers all over the world have a problem with Microsoft. It’s not just that the company forces expensive and dated software on customers. Using products like Microsoft’s email service Outlook is potentially in breach of the ethical contracts researchers sign when they promise to safeguard the privacy of their subjects.

* The nursery and the sitting room are part of a Mehrgenerationenhaus, literally a “multigeneration house”, which is a kindergarten, a social centre for the elderly and somewhere young families can drop in for coffee and advice. In theory, the sitting room is reserved for the over-60s, but in the practice the door to the kids’ area rarely stays closed for long.

* “With Porn Studies, there is no such ambiguity about the sheer world-making power of pornography.”

* Re-headlining the news.

* I just can’t accept that a movie starring a 72-year-old Harrison Ford is going to be called “The Ancient Fear.”

* If the Center for Teaching and Learning were supported by a Center for Teaching and Learning, then all stakeholders could join the circle of excellence.

* Obama’s pretending he cares about climate again. Vox is straight-up advocating that America invade Iran I guess.

* W. Kamau Bell and Tressie McMillan Cottom discuss Leslie Jones, blackness, and Saturday Night Live.

* Great moments in poorly thought-out pedagogy.

* Amherst College Officially Bans All Fraternities And Sororities — though friends of Facebook familiar with the place tell me that it’s not as big a deal as it sounds.

* Gasp! Conservative Money Front Is Behind Princeton’s “White Privilege” Guy.

* Teen Pregnancies Are Plunging Because Young People Are Making Responsible Sexual Decisions.

* Science reporting is abysmal, sexual difference edition.

* Disruptive innovation, Soylent Green edition.

* Abolish prom.

* A college degree is worth $831,000.

* And the future is finally here: Grilled Cheese Delivered By Parachute, Coming Soon to NYC.

Sunday Reading at 10,000 Feet

* Someone put Istvan Csicsery-Ronay’s keynote from ICFA this weekend on YouTube. The “Empire” ad Istvan plays from Computer Associates is amazing.

* Highest-ranking administrator at Marquette abruptly resigns.

* No! No! I won’t believe it! It’s impossible! Bottom line shows humanities really do make money.

* The other college debt. Revenue at Any Cost: Institutional Debt and the Crisis of U.S. Higher Education. And from the archives: “The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses.”

* The first issue of Porn Studies is available online.

* Re-Imagining the Place and Time of Communism Today: Between Hardt’s “New Love” and Jameson’s “Citizen Army.”

* Kim Stanley Robinson will be in Madison the first week in April for “Imagining Possible Worlds.”

* Hobbit hole playlet, a steal at a mere $3000.

* Marching on: marriage equality in Michigan.

* Police officers in Hawaii are lobbying lawmakers not to repeal a statute that allows them to …. wait for it … have sex with prostitutes during the course of legitimate investigations. Repeating my joke from Twitter, “legitimate” in that sentence is working so far it should be allowed to have sex with prostitutes while on duty…

* Race, cash, and the drug war in Florida.

* Black Preschoolers Face An Epidemic Of Suspensions.

* Autopsy shows Texas cop fired fatal shot from close range into sarcastic student’s back. The officer is currently on administrative leave.

* It should be no surprise that when law enforcement agencies investigate themselves, they find no wrongdoing—especially since a study of the FBI’s internal investigations found that they cleared themselves of wrongdoing in 150 out of 150 fatal shootings. With that track record, the public can’t be confident in the integrity of an investigation with this predictable outcome.

* Duke Energy Caught Intentionally Dumping 61 Million Gallons Of Coal Waste Into North Carolina Water.

* The comforts of dystopia.

* HBO In Talks with Lisa Kudrow to Bring ‘The Comeback’ Back for Season Two. I want to see that.

* I’m addicted to my job.

* CNN, still the absolute worst of all time.

* Ideology at its purest? Why not just believe the things bisexuals say about themselves?

* The Town That Turned Poverty Into a Prison Sentence.

* My dementia.

* “Plot idea: 97% of the world’s scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.”

* And killjoy scientists strike again.