Posts Tagged ‘purges’
Christmas Hangover Links!
* An excerpt from the conversation between Tim Morton and Jeff VanderMeer from my and Andy Hageman’s issue of Paradoxa is up at LARB. You can read our introduction too! The issue has been printed and will be on its way to subscribers (and available for purchase) soon.
* acting as if nothing terrible has happened
is a failed strategy you yell and this docility
has ruined and crushed us and afraid as I am
I cannot hold your vehemence against you
at this political moment as I watch you dig
your fingers into the rubble you’re sitting on
and you say maybe it’s impossible to believe
in politeness or civilization anymore…
* Ken Liu’s “Paper Menagerie” is the first story to hit the Hugo / Nebula / World Fantasy Award trifecta. Read it!
* The Christmas archives: Home Alone! Die Hard!
* Being a parent really is a second childhood: I’m even terrified of nuclear war again. “A tense new battle over nuclear arms erupts between Donald Trump and his staff.” Tweeting our way to Armageddon.
* How to Be a Guy: What I Learned My First Year Living as a Guy (at Age 34).
* Carrie Fischer is apparently in stable condition, but George Michael is gone.
* Ted Chiang talks adapting Arrival.
* Blade Runner 2 (“Blade Runnest“) and the Koreanization of the future.
* #TheResistance: American Mustache Institute takes a stand against Donald Trump’s anti-facial hair bias. John Bolton Vows Not to Shave Moustache.
* Today’s purge: Donald Trump is demanding the names of federal employees working to curb violent extremism.
* Trump to inherit more than 100 court vacancies, plans to reshape judiciary. Trump to dissolve Trump Foundation, having moved on to bigger grifts. And why not dissolve the UN while he’s at it?
* Reading Fake News, Pakistani Minister Directs Nuclear Threat at Israel.
* Neo-Nazi March Planned for Whitefish, Montana.
* The GOP Theocracy: Xmas vs Hanukkah Statements. And don’t worry: RNC: The ‘new King’ is not Trump.
* Looking back: The collapse of the Obama coalition. What could explain it? More data that couldn’t possibly explain it. Having presided over the catastrophic collapse of his party and the possible end of American democracy, Obama gives himself high marks. Why Did Planned Parenthood Supporters Vote Trump?
* 2016 wasn’t actually bad, he explained. I’ll give it one point, for this.
* We can end the war on milk in our time.
* Prime Minister Dreamboat can’t wait to Keystone XL again.
*A consummate bullshit artist, Bucky Fuller’s career was built on failure, if not outright fraud. With few of his ideas achieving commercial success, he amounted to nothing more than a hand-waving proponent of outlandish notions. Worse still, he was an aggressive manager of his own profile and patents, an authoritarian technocrat who sought not students but compliant disciples to disseminate his muddled messages. The lynchpin of this view: even the geodesic dome, Fuller’s greatest “success,” rested on a concept borrowed (to be charitable) from an aspiring student sculptor. Buckminster Fuller in the 21st Century.
* John Williams Hasn’t Seen a Single Star Wars Movie.
* Don’t make the joke, don’t make the joke: Sex robots will ‘come a lot sooner than you think’, scientist claims.
* Elsewhere in the rise of the machines.
* A&E Cancels KKK Docuseries Following Criticism. That whole network needs a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
* BREAKING: All pro sports are bad.
* Actually, my speciality is evil ethics.
* Gasp! Colleges Respond to Racist Incidents as if Their Chief Worry Is Bad PR, Studies Find.
* They did it: They found the worst Star Wars take.
* The arc of history is long, but it can kick over its own head.
* Meanwhile, in Japan: Can the Emperor abdicate?
* And wherever we are on the political spectrum: let’s give the giant meteor a chance.
Really Almost Christmas Now Links
* 46 shots that were cut from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. There Was Almost a Jedi in Rogue One. What Rogue One Teaches Us About the Rebel Alliance’s Military Chops.
* How a Pen and Paper RPG Brought ‘Star Wars’ Back From the Dead.
The Xenofeminist Manifesto, published by the feminist collective Laboria Cuboniks lays out a new framework for technology’s role in social progress. “Why is there so little explicit, organized effort to repurpose technologies for progressive gender political ends?” the authors ask. “The real emancipatory potential of technology remains unrealized… the ultimate task lies in engineering technologies to combat unequal access to reproductive and pharmacological tools, environmental cataclysm, economic instability, as well as dangerous forms of unpaid/underpaid labor.” This reframing of technology requires a politics that does not shy away from scale and complexity.
* The Strange History of Talossa, a Bedroom That Was Also a Country. Milwaukee’s own!
* Indeed, North Carolina does so poorly on the measures of legal framework and voter registration, that on those indicators we rank alongside Iran and Venezuela. When it comes to the integrity of the voting district boundaries no country has ever received as low a score as the 7/100 North Carolina received. North Carolina is not only the worst state in the USA for unfair districting but the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project.
* “Even if we darken the sky with hundreds or thousands of satellites and interceptors, there’s no way to ensure against a dedicated attack,” Montague said in an interview. “So it’s an opportunity to waste a prodigious amount of money.” This is fine. The Slim Pickins Trump Doctrine. In 1987, he set out to solve the world’s biggest problem. How World War III became possible.
* Today’s purge: feminists in the State Department. Yesterday’s, of course, was professors teaching courses on whiteness at UW.
* [fingers crossed] please don’t be an academic, please don’t be an academic — aw damnit
* Must-read article from 1983: Tuition Hikes in Store at Some State Universities.
* Supercharging the school-to-prison pipeline in Missouri.
* Huge, if true: The CIA Is Not Your Friend.
* In a time without heroes, they were: The Rockettes (2021).
* The law, in its majestic equality… Appeals court vacates ‘unconscionable’ life sentence for New Orleans man over theft of $15 from ‘bait vehicle.’
* The financial system as hostile AI. What can I say? Great minds think alike!
* And friends, I’m here to tell you, it only gets worse from here.
Gerry Canavan 