Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘psychopaths

Closing All My Tabs Before the Nuclear War Links

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* Welp. Here we go. To Launch a Nuclear Strike, Donald Trump Would Follow These Steps. Could Trump help unleash nuclear catastrophe with a single tweet? As one Republican Hill staffer said to me, “if we get Gorsuch and avoid a nuclear war, a lot of us will count this as a win.” Does Donald Trump Believe Nuclear War Is Inevitable? In North Korea, ‘Surgical Strike’ Could Spin Into ‘Worst Kind of Fighting.’

* Meanwhile, in the war that stopped being fun.

* President Trump has sent private messages to Russia special counsel Robert Mueller. How Will The Mueller Grand Jury Handle Classified Information?

* thisisfine.jpg

* Unlearning the myth of American innocence.

♫ Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high… ♫

The modern suburb in America began as a means of providing abundant and comfortable housing to white Americans and has now evolved into a carefully tuned media surround — replete with ubiquitous screens running alarmist commercial media — that seeks to sustain that apartheid at any cost. But just as the media elevated a man to the presidency only to have him turn around and name it the “enemy of the people,” the built environment of suburbs is riven with contradictions that will ultimately be its undoing.

* It’s so strange to me that anyone talks about anything in The Handmaid’s Tale *but* the epilogue. That’s the whole thing.

* Say it again: The Problem Is Capital.

* Worrying development for academic freedom.

The JCC Bomb-Threat Suspect Had a Client.

Basic Needs Security and the Syllabus.

Can You Distinguish These Real British Places From Fake Ones an AI Made Up?

Automated accounts are being programmed to spread fake news, according to the first systematic study of the way online misinformation spreads.

* Ideology at its very, very purest.

* I’ve said this about movies like Pacific Rim, and I think it’s absolutely the fantasy at the heart of Game of Thrones as well: The ultimate enemy of all humanity is coming—climate change—and we will stop it by dropping a nuclear bomb on it.

* Maybe the media should stop doing free promotion for all the worst creeps in the world.

“Respondent did not realize that advertising a ‘women’s-only’ screening was a violation of discrimination laws,” the theater wrote to the city. “Respondent has a very strict non-discrimination policy in place, but this policy did NOT include a specific prohibition against advertising.”

* Another streaming service you’ll have to subscribe to. What does this mean for the Daredevilverse?

This head-spinning optical illusion will melt your brain.

* American Chess Is Great Again.

* Finally, the movie you can barely remember has four sequels you’ve find incredibly stupid…

A Few for Tuesday!

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Imagining a Black Wonder Woman. What does Wonder Woman actually represent?

* When your child is a psychopath.

Perhaps you are inclined to tell yourself stories about Trump’s huge loss in the popular vote, how but for a few thousand ballots here or there and the quirks of the Electoral College, he would not be President. But you’d be wrong. Even if he lost, that he could get so close exposed the ruin of our political parish. From day one of the election campaign — that Mussolini on-an-escalator gesticulating incoherently about Mexican rapists — Trump ought to have been booed off the stage 20 times over. The list of should-have-been disqualifying moments is too long and too familiar to rehearse, but some of the highest crimes still linger: mocking heroes, banning Muslims, gleefully consorting with white-supremacists and anti-Semites (you name them, he retweeted them), more generally parading dangerous ignorance (about things like nuclear weapons) as if it was a virtue, showering praise on murderous authoritarian enemies of America, and conducting his affairs more broadly as if he was an incurious, spoiled game-show host surrounded by sycophants — this is the man that has been chosen by the people to lead us.

“Trump is so deeply insecure that not even becoming president of the United States quenched his need to make others feel small to build himself up,” said Tim Miller, a former spokesman for an anti-Trump super PAC. “Choosing to work for him necessitates a willingness to be demeaned in order to assuage his desire to feel like a big, important person.” The loneliness of Donald Trump.

Tourism to the U.S. Has Been in Decline Since Trump Took Office.

* Trump and white nationalism.

Congress expands Russia investigation to include Trump’s personal attorney.

Cities join call for impeachment.

* Meanwhile, Cuba is bad again. Why? Who knows!

Cleveland cop who killed Tamir Rice has been fired… for lying on his job application.

*  “I just kept telling him, ‘You’re not alone. We’re here,” Macy said. “What you did was total kindness. You’re such a beautiful man. I’m sorry the world is so cruel.’

* What if the problem is… capitalism? Aviation is hell because airline exec pay is solely based on quarterly profits.

* We don’t deserve the Internet.

* No 👏 one 👏 wants 👏 this 👏: Rainn Wilson’s Harry Mudd will appear in multiple Star Trek: Discovery episodes.

What to Remember Before Watching ‘House of Cards’ Season 5.

* This, on the other hand, every decent person wants.

* “Mexicans who served in US Army with the promise of becoming citizens but ended up being deported, protest on Memorial Day in Ciudad Juarez.”

In the two minutes it took you to read this article, more than 60,000 pounds of plastic were dumped into our oceans — a fair share of it from California.

How board games conquered Kickstarter.

* This all seems in order.

This Dog Sits on Seven Editorial Boards.

This is Buddhism sliced up and commodified.

* She gets it. Fair play. If you want a vision of the future. The Jetsons had our number.

* And @MikeOrganisciak just did 100 comics in 100 days, nearly all good. Check them out!

Sunday Afternoon

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* ICYMI: Dr. Seuss Explains Assessment, Metrics, Administrative Blight, and Pretty Much Every Aspect of the Contemporary Education System.

* This is, I think, literally the first time I have ever heard of university budget cuts impacting administration. Meanwhile.

* Meanwhile meanwhile, Congress talks adjuncts and adjunctification. I’m sure they’ll come up with a good solution soon.

Tressie McMillan Cottom on race and adjunctification.

* Yo novel so staid and conventional, it’s taught at over 50 MFA programs.

* Submitted for your approval: An OCR of the MLA JIL list, 1965-2012.

* For some reason I’m seeing a ton of links to Bousquet’s “Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers” this weekend.

*  Bérubé’s last post on MLA 2014.

Harvard, MIT Online Courses Dropped by 95% of Registrants.

Inside a for-profit college nightmare.

* Inside the “longform backlash.”

How Student Activists at Duke Transformed a $6 Billion Endowment.

* “Income inequality” has proved a very successful framing for Democrats discussing a massive social problem, so of course the Obama White House is rolling out a much worse one.

* Pope Francis Is Drafting An Encyclical On The Environment.

cold* xkcd explains climate.

* Demographics is destiny: Latinos overwhelmingly want action on climate change.

* How nonviolent was the civil rights movement?

It’s 1968, and Esquire is interviewing James Baldwin.

* Chris Christie says no to dashboard cameras.

* The coming Common Core meltdown.

* The headline reads, “Chinese restaurant owner told to pull down two gigantic 50ft naked Buddhas from establishment’s roof.”

Highly Educated, Highly Indebted: The Lives of Today’s 27-Year-Olds, In Charts.

* America’s nuclear corps are a mess. Dr. Strangelove was a documentary.

A journey to the end of the world (of Minecraft).

* Science has finally proved that sex reverses cognitive decline in rats.

This World Map Shows The Enormity Of America’s Prison Problem.

* The New York Times has the tragic story of a man with a million dollars in his retirement account struggling to scrape by on just $31,500 a month. Truly, there but for the grace of God go we.

Bucking trend, Wisconsin union membership grows.

* Fox to strand reality show contestants on an island for an entire year.

Woody Guthrie’s daughter wants to preserve Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.

* The “okay, fine, let’s abolish all marriages” response to marriage equality is so strange to me. I know things like this happened during the civil rights movement — and one might argue that precisely the same thing has been happening in slow-motion to public education over the last few decades — but it still seems like such a strange, uniquely twenty-first-century temper tantrum.

* Behold, the 90s! The Most Impressive Costumes from Star Trek: TNG’s First 3 Seasons.

Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath.

We Didn’t Eat the Marshmallow. The Marshmallow Ate Us.

* And Stephen Hawking wants to destroy all your silly, silly dreams.

All the Friday Night Links!

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* We are ruled by fools: The amount of airtime granted to climate change on both the Sunday shows and the nightly news was up, too — to a total of 27 minutes, and an hour and 42 minutes, respectively, for the entire year.

* So long and thanks for all the fish: Freedom Industries has declared bankruptcy.

“Why Is The Rest Of The Country Fixated On A New Jersey Traffic Jam And We Have No Clean Water?”

Fracking Chemicals In North Carolina Will Remain Secret, Industry-Funded Commission Rules.

Judge Rules Detroit Is Trying To Give Banks ‘Too Much Money.’

Remember that most of the “steps” any insurance company or pharmacy makes you go through are pretty much nothing but hoops, in the purest sense of the word. These are obstacles being placed in your path in hopes that you will become discouraged and give up—and they won’t have to pay for your medication or treatment. Show them that you are not going away.

* The headline reads, “Six Years After Chemical Ban, Fewer Female Snails Are Growing Penises.”

* TFA isn’t working.

Every Scary, Weird Thing We Know the NSA Can Do.

The Most Dangerous Sentence In U.S. History.

Total Disaster as Springsteen Tries to Sell Recordings of Live Shows.

* The rule of law still has a few bugs in it.

* Star Wars retcons we can get behind.

* Someone stop J.J. Abrams before he kills again.

* BREAKING MUST CREDIT CANAVAN’S RAZOR: The point of the STEM push is to lower STEM wages, not help people get jobs that don’t exist.

* BREAKING: Comedians are psychopaths psychotics. See comments.

* Johnson’s No More Formaldehyde Baby Shampoo.

Even half of Utah supports marriage equality.

* Turns out California wrote their don’t-use-Google-Glass-while-driving law in a way that’s seemingly impossible to enforce.

The Myth Of The Absent Black Father.

UNC Stops Professor Mary Willingham From Researching Athletes’ Low Reading Levels.

* Rob Nixon is giving a talk at UWM’s Century for 21st Century Studies next Friday.

* Wisconsin may eliminate ban on 7-day work weeks. Workers will be allowed to “volunteer” for extra work.

This medieval manuscript curses the cat who peed on it.

* This transphobic publication hounded a woman to suicide. You’ll never guess what happened next.

Pope Benedict Defrocked 400 Priests For Molesting Kids.

We Would Have Eliminated Poverty Entirely by Now if Inequality Hadn’t Skyrocketed.

They almost put Disney World in Saint Louis.

* And Lex Luthor: Hero!

Sunday Morning Links

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* What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop? I love everything Randall has been doing on What If?, but I’m especially fond of What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now – only rotated by an angle of 90 degrees?

* Say “digital humanities” one more goddamn time.

To be blunt, I want to give grad students permission to intelligently bullshit their way through questions about DH just as they would any other question.

Salman Rushdie vs. science fiction.

* Research demonstrates the word “illegals” is dehumanizing.

The term “illegal immigrants” was used in the study specifically to “test the extent to which respondents would use or avoid the phrase.” Study participants were exposed to negative and positive media frames and messages in the news on TV, radio and print as well as in entertainment media. According to the study, non-Latinos no matter what the media format, think that Latinos and “illegal immigrants” are one and the same. There was a higher percentage of people who agreed that Latinos are “illegal immigrants” when exposed to negative frames, but even when exposed to good messages, people still held on to that view. Additionally “over 30 percent of respondents believed a majority of Latinos (50 percent or greater) were undocumented. And in terms of how language matters, “while 49 percent of respondents offer ‘cold’ rating of undocumented, 58 percent rate “illegal aliens” coldly.

* Inside Paul Allen’s Quest To Reverse Engineer The Brain.

* Life as the wife of a Ponzi schemer.

Why The Jetsons Still Matters.

* Do You Have a Poor Sense of Smell? Congrats, You Are a Psychopath.

* And I did my part: Long Term Grade Inflation by Institution.

Saturday Night!

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You Can’t Argue with Science

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The Self-Attribution Fallacy

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Written by gerrycanavan

November 8, 2011 at 9:45 am

The Stockbrokers Behaved as though Their Neighbor Had the Same Car, ‘And They Took After It With a Baseball Bat So They Could Look Better Themselves’

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“Naturally one can’t characterize the traders as deranged,” Noll told SPIEGEL. “But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test.”

The headline reads: “Share Traders More Reckless Than Psychopaths, Study Shows.”

Written by gerrycanavan

October 3, 2011 at 11:29 am

Is a Psychopath Attacking Twitter and Facebook?

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Is a psychopath attacking Twitter and Facebook?

UPDATE: Annother take from CNET claims the attacks were directed against a single account, a pro-Georgian blogger using the name Cyxymu.

Written by gerrycanavan

August 7, 2009 at 2:42 am

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