Posts Tagged ‘scams’
Sunday’d Reading!
* Presenting the International Journal of James Bond Studies.
* On graduate labor and the Yale commencement protest.
* A shadowy international mercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counterterrorism measures, collaborating closely with police in at least five states, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents provide the first detailed picture of how TigerSwan, which originated as a U.S. military and State Department contractor helping to execute the global war on terror, worked at the behest of its client Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, to respond to the indigenous-led movement that sought to stop the project.
* Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared! Jared!
* So old I can remember when Eric and Donald Jr. were going to run the business and not have a political role. (January.)
* Cool, thanks for looking into it.
* Google’s AI Is Now Creating Its Own AI.
* The Republicans Broke American Politics, and Media Elites Are Blind to It. A week that reveals how rotten today’s Republican Party is.
* The life and death of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. It’s too late, of course, the cultists will believe in it for all time.
* Horrific hate crime in Portland. Seems to be part of a disturbing trend.
* New Orleans principal loses job after wearing Nazi-associated rings in video. Glowing 2015 profile.
* Meanwhile, in Arizona. In New Jersey.
* New Jersey not doing great in my newsfeed today generally. Though this was good.
* U.S. Airstrike Killed Over 100 Civilians in Mosul, Pentagon Says. The U.S. Is Helping Allies Hide Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria.
* ‘Mostly Toddlers’ Among 31 Drowned.
* A spectre is haunting Goldman Sachs.
* Trump going to the mattresses.
* How Alleged Russian Hacker Teamed Up With Florida GOP Operative.
* Democrats doing much better, still can’t win a damn thing. The only answer is to keep offering them nothing and telling them they’re stupid, until they finally come around. Wake up, liberals: There will be no 2018 “blue wave,” no Democratic majority and no impeachment. Donald Trump Is A Big Reason The GOP Kept The Montana House Seat.
* Remember how terrible the AHCA is?
* Sheriff Clarke and some totally appropriate, not at all batshit insane behavior.
* A GoFundMe Campaign Is Not Health Insurance.
* A 31-year-old undocumented Honduran bicyclist, Marcos Antonio Huete, was hit by a car in Key West, Florida, on his way to work. The policeman’s camera shows him inquiring about the victim’s immigration status before offering medical assistance. He was later detained by the Border Patrol.
* “We want you to think Luke is bad” is an awfully large part of Last Jedi hype. I have to think that means they won’t actually do it…
* Title IX Policy shift at the University of Oregon: Faculty members at the University of Oregon will no longer be required to notify campus authorities when students confide in them that they’ve been sexually assaulted or harassed but say they don’t want the information reported.
* Wealth, I realized, is the adult version of magic: an incredibly powerful but ultimately arbitrary resource that transfers primarily through inheritance. It has some logic to it— but also enough randomness that those without can hope for a spontaneous windfall in the form of an improbably lucrative investment or a secret inheritance.
* Unexpected and interesting: Joss Whedon isn’t just finishing Justice League; he’s been working on it for a while.
* Truly, ours is the darkest timeline.
* A chance meeting with Mr. Rogers.
* If you’d bought $1,000 of Bitcoin in 2010, you’d be worth $35M.
* Uber: a cheap scam all the way down.
* Original draft of Revenge of the Sith actually treated Padme as an interesting character.
* Obituaries My Mother Wrote for Me While I Was Living in San Francisco in My Twenties.
* These birds have the right idea.
* This one cuts me. When you’re in your thirties. Call CPS. #TheResistance.
* Everything was connected, and I was fucked.
* Can someone please explain the physics of Casper?
* And N6946-BH1 is all of us right now.
Monday Morning Links
* I was delighted to find Octavia E. Butler on Locus’s 2016 Recommended Reading List. And you can vote for it as nonfiction book of the year! Make Ursula work for it.
* Eight works of science fiction that present tyrants (not all of them human).
* I’d taken England off my list of countries to flee to, but perhaps I could be coaxed.
* Madness at the National Security Council. The Spy Revolt Against Trump. ‘A Sense of Dread’ for Civil Servants Shaken by Trump Transition. How To Deal with Reichstag Fire Fears in the Age of Trump. Twilight of Mike Flynn. Meanwhile, Trump is doing international diplomacy in the public dining room at Mar-a-Lago. “We have at most a year to defend American democracy, perhaps less.” Trump’s two-year presidency. Two years. Jesus. Shitgibbon.
* One of the great achievements of free society in a stable democracy is that many people, for much of the time, need not think about politics at all. The president of a free country may dominate the news cycle many days — but he is not omnipresent — and because we live under the rule of law, we can afford to turn the news off at times. A free society means being free of those who rule over you — to do the things you care about, your passions, your pastimes, your loves — to exult in that blessed space where politics doesn’t intervene. In that sense, it seems to me, we already live in a country with markedly less freedom than we did a month ago. It’s less like living in a democracy than being a child trapped in a house where there is an abusive and unpredictable father, who will brook no reason, respect no counter-argument, admit no error, and always, always up the ante until catastrophe inevitably strikes. This is what I mean by the idea that we are living through an emergency.
* We have been shy about stating the obvious: that something is terribly and uniquely wrong with this president. His powers weaponise the problem. We can all see it. We can all feel it, too. Donald Trump is the walking, talking, hate-tweeting embodiment of the howling identity crisis afflicting the entire United States.
* Federal agents conduct immigration enforcement raids in at least six states. What it’s like to be arrested by ICE. Fear and panic. Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos’ deportation to Mexico from Arizona this week was the last chapter of a long nightmare for her family. It began in 2008 with a knock on the door by sheriff’s officers. And they finally found an undocumented immigrant who voted. For Abdulkarim Jimale, escape was the only way to survive. Trump’s immigration order means bureaucrats have to decide who’s a “real” Christian. #KnowYourRights. What Geology Has to Say About Building a 1,000-Mile Border Wall. How big a deviation is this from Obama?
* The initial estimate is here: Trump’s wall will cost more than a year of the space program that we’re also not going to have anymore.
* Asylum seekers fleeing the US into Canada. Losing Hope in U.S., Migrants Make Icy Crossing to Canada. Newcomer centre has no more room for border-crossing refugees.
* Revealed: FBI terrorism taskforce investigating Standing Rock activists.
* Shock report: Republicans are completely morally depraved. But don’t worry, the Democrats have got this.
* * Everything is about Trump now.
* Well, it’s come to this: a geoengineering plan to refreeze the Arctic Circle. We may live in a post-truth era, but nature does not. Simple equation shows how human activity is trashing the planet.
As for hedge funds and other high-cost alternatives, “the whole two-and-20 model” — in which investors typically pay 2 percent of assets under management and 20 percent of any gains — “is ridiculous,” Mr. Morris said. “The cost structure is outrageous. As they say on Wall Street, ‘Where are the customers’ yachts?’ I’m not going to play that game.”
* A US-born NASA scientist was detained at the border until he unlocked his phone.
* Hello old friends: Foreground objects in adventure game scenery.
* lol x2: Geraldo Rivera quits post after Yale removes slavery supporter’s name.
* Amazon now controls 46% of all e-commerce in the United States.
* A brief history of the gerrymander.
* Why does the United States still let 12-year-olds get married?
* How American women fell behind Japanese women in the workplace.
* A brief history of punching Nazis in Marvel Comics.
* AI and the end of the middle class.
* Rio’s Olympic Park, 6 months after games.
* Reframing Faculty Criticisms of Student Activism.
* Milwaukee offers America’s longest-lived experiment with urban-school vouchers, but their mixed legacy is not a story you’ll frequently hear from lawmakers and advocates currently championing the spread of private school–choice programs across the country.
* Double majoring will not save you. Only the great god STEM will save you. All praise STEM!
* And this is great, like everything they do: Arnie, Usidore, and Chunt play Gauntlet.
Thursday Night Links!
* My brilliant colleague Ainehi Edoro was chosen as one of the most 100 influential Africans.
* The Octavia Project. And elsewhere in the VanderMeers’ vast empire…
* CFP: Octavia E. Butler at ALA 2017.
* More fighting over tenure and post-tenure review at Wisconsin.
* Teaching the controversy: Listening While Feminist: In Defense of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
* We’re gonna need a better gerrymander: If Democrats want to solve the problem of legislative maps that are biased against them they need to pursue a strategy that is more likely to produce maps that compensate for geography.
* “It is striking to see how committed they are to allowing this train wreck to occur,” he said. “And more surprisingly, how little careful attention has been given (at the top at least) to just how vulnerable—given Bush v. Gore—the current (system for counting votes in the) electoral college is.” But wait! There’s more! Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump.
* Trump vs. conflicts of interest: Maybe the Answer Is That He Can’t Divest.
* How Many Generals Is Too Many? I think the number is worrying, but agree with Kevin that the central issue is that he has chosen an extremely popular, recently retired general for DoD. Civilian control of the military is an important value, or it used to be.
* This is bad: Trump Launches Tweet Attack on Carrier Steel Union Boss for Fact-Checking Him. (UPDATE: This is what happens when Donald Trump attacks a private citizen on Twitter.) This is bad: Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr. CEO Tapped as Labor Secretary. This is bad: Trump Considers FDA Chief Who Says People Should Use Medicines “At Their Own Risk.” This is bad: Trump to be part-time president, keep lucrative job with Celebrity Apprentice. This is bad: Does Donald Trump Believe Nuclear War Is Inevitable?
* This one though I do approve of: Chris Christie has the lowest approval rating one pollster has ever found for a state governor.
* There are no second acts in American life, they said.
* Point/Counterpoint: How Sci-Fi and Fantasy Can Save the World. What Can Artists Do to Oppose Trump? Nothing.
* That’ll solve it! Or, if you prefer, only the super-rich can save us now.
* Worst Game of Thrones spinoff ever.
* …and the portions are too small!
* The Swing-O-Matic: Change the settings to see how shifts in party preference and turnout by different demographic groups would affect the 2016 presidential election.
* We need to admit that right-wing harrassment and conspiracy theories are baked into the business model of social media at this point. And with right-wing political hegemony for the foreseeable future, it will only get worse, because the range of “acceptable opinion” will shift even further to the right. Asking nicely and filling out all the proper paperwork will not change this underlying material reality.
* The tricky part is that many expect the expert agency’s views to change shortly after January 20th, when Trump’s O.C.R. is installed. (Dear Colleagues: Never mind, we take it back.) Come January, advocates of transgender rights, who have enthusiastically supported judicial deference to O.C.R., will have reason for an extreme pivot, given that the new O.C.R. is unlikely to view “sex” as an “internal sense of gender.” It is awkward now for Grimm’s lawyers to argue zealously for the notion that the agency knows best, when only weeks from now, and in coming years, that doctrine is more likely to harm than to help transgender students.
* Inside President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal antidrug campaign in the Philippines, our photojournalist documented 57 homicide victims over 35 days. And in case you’ve forgotten.
* Located in the city’s Girangaon (Village of the Mills) neighborhood, Trump Tower Mumbai illustrates every pathology of the neoliberal turn away from comprehensive city planning.
* What happens if someone dies on Mars?
* The arc of history is long, but New Jersey Will No Longer Seek to Collect Loans from Families of Dead Students.
* Check ignition, and may God’s love be with you.
* Harvard will not be a sanctuary campus. It’s for your own good, kids!
* Disney ought to pay this former employee for the movie rights to this AMA.
* Today in news from the mysteriiiiiiiious Orient: Japan’s sex problem is so bad that people are quitting dating and marrying their friends.
* Trump propaganda game getting real.
* Chimpanzees See Butts Like We See Faces.
* The ultimate fear isn’t of the second coming of Hitler: history never repeats itself so obviously, and a sense of shame over the Nazi past remains pervasive in all corners of German life. No, the fear is that the present antidemocratic wave may prove too strong even for Germany—the only country in the history of the world that ever learned from its mistakes. From The New Yorker‘s “The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming.”
* If Black Mirror Had a Showroom.
* This might be the worst science journalism piece I’ve seen in years.
* Scientists Think the Speed of Light Has Slowed, and They’re Trying to Prove It.
* Paradox Girl Is One of the Best Time Travel Series We’ve Read All Year. I bought these tonight on this recommendation and I can confirm it’s super fun.
* And this makes me feel worse about both extinction-level events and car crashes.
Monday Morning Links!
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
Wednesday Links!
* The Department of English invites candidates holding the rank of Associate or Full Professor to apply for the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature honoring the department’s most celebrated graduate.
* Next week at Marquette: Cuban science fiction authors Yoss and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo!
* 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Symposium: A Celebration of Ursula K. Le Guin.
* Inside The Octavia Butler Archives With L.A. Writer Lynell George.
* I am writing to apply for the job–or rather “fellowship”–advertised on your website. As a restless member of the creative class, I agree that secure employment, renewable year-to-year, can be a suffocating hindrance. And besides, you specify “tons of snacks and beverages” as part of your benefit package. As a job-seeker motivated by a combination of desperation and snacks, I am an ideal candidate for this position.
* The report finds that the cost of forgoing tuition revenue from two- and four-year public institutions could run into the billions for some states: $4.96 billion in California, $3.89 billion in Texas and $2.53 billion in Michigan.
* Pence and gaslighting. Kaine’s tactical defeat. A Con Man of Epic Proportions. Donald Trump Tax Records Show He Could Have Avoided Taxes for A Mere Two Decades. The mind-blowing scale of Trump’s billion-dollar loss, in one tweet. Trump Foundation ordered to stop fundraising by N.Y. attorney general’s office. I want to believe! This seems legitimate. If Donald Trump Published an Academic Article. If you want a vision of the future.
* Bananas possible endings to the election, New Mexico edition.
* The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Visions of the Future.
* All told, however, Xiberras feels Louise could have done better. “We hoped for more followers to take notice of Louise’s behavior,” he says. “There were a few people who sensed the trap—a journalist among others, of course—but in the end, the majority just saw a pretty young girl of her time and not at all a kind of lonely girl, who is actually not at all that happy and with a serious alcohol problem.”
* Here’s a piece we can all get mad about, regardless of our pedagogical inclinations: Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong?
* The Luke Cage Syllabus. 15 Essential Luke Cage Stories.
* Teaching the controversy: The Identity of a Famous Person Is News. The outing of Elena Ferrante and the power of naming. Ars longa, vita brevis.
* Yahooooooooooo: Yahoo built email spying software for intelligence agencies, report says.
* Tracing the path of one of the world’s most in-demand minerals from deadly mines in Congo to your phone. More here.
* That’s a hell of an act! What do you call it? The Mets. Relatedly: in search of the Korean bat flip.
* Nostalgia for World Culture: A New History of Esperanto.
* Harvard loses a mere $2 billion from its endowment. My favorite part of these stories is always the comparison to passive management by an index fund.
* More running it like a sandwich: More than ever, college football programs are finding it difficult to draw and retain the young fans who grow up to be lifelong season-ticket holders. In many athletic departments, the reasons can practically be cited as catechism: high-definition televisions, DVRs, diffuse fan bases and higher ticket and parking costs.
* American University Student Government Launches Campaign in Support of Mandatory Trigger Warnings.
* Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School.
* Karl Marx, Yesterday and Today.
* The last days of Robin Williams, as told by his wife Susan Schneider Williams.
* ‘Killer Clowns’: Inside the Terrifying Hoax Sweeping America.
* No one knew then that Springsteen, like Smith, would provide a through-line for his fans as things got worse, shifted in unimaginable ways, shifted again. Springsteen has himself changed with the times, becoming more sensitive to the issues his most-adored music still raises. Born To Rundemonstrates that. The decency at the heart of his memoir is a balm. He’s not only survived a life in rock and roll; he shows how a true believer doesn’t have to get stuck within its illusions, no matter how much they also attract him. After all, to Springsteen, a worthwhile dream isn’t an illusion; it’s a form of work.
* Unusually Murderous Mammals, Typically Murderous Primates: You know, humans.
* One of the most important lessons of Ghosh’s book is that the politics of climate change must not tiptoe around the questions posed by colonial encounters. Issues of climate justice cannot be solved without first addressing questions of equitable distribution of power, historically rooted in imperialism. And therein lies Ghosh’s disagreement with those who find the source of the problem in capitalism itself (Naomi Klein, for example). For him, even if “capitalism were to be magically transformed tomorrow, the imperatives of political and military dominance would remain a significant obstacle to progress on mitigatory action.”
* Wealth of people in their 30s has ‘halved in a decade.’ Probably definitely totally unrelated: Federal student loans facilitate a pernicious profit motive in higher education.
* Patent application for a method of curing kidney stones.
* I think it’s 50/50 at this point that the Purge is a real thing before I’m dead.
* So You Want to Adapt The Tempest.
* No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously. Climate Change And The Astrobiology Of The Anthropocene.
* The secret lives of New Jerseyans.
* On our phenomenal (recent) accomplishments in space.
Weekend Links!
* Marquette announces new January session. And I’ll be teaching! A hybrid literature/creative-writing section of ENGLISH 2010 called “Crafting the Short Story.”
* Marquette’s provost has also premiered a podcast.
* Our friend Nina has a piece in the New York Times today.
* CFP: Symposium on Amazing Stories: Inspiration, Learning, and Adventure in Science Fiction.
* Me, this Saturday afternoon at the Milwaukee Public Library! 150 Years of H.G. Wells in Milwaukee.
* Perhaps, instead of being a parable of Christian salvation, the randomness of the Genius Grants is really a metaphor for our increasingly fragmented and pointless civilization. I didn’t get one either.
* But here’s someone who did! UWM theater artist Anne Basting wins MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ grant.
* Palestine, Settler Colonialism and Democratic Education at UC Berkeley.
* If we’re serious about preventing catastrophic warming, the new study shows, we can’t dig any new coal mines, drill any new fields, build any more pipelines. Not a single one. We’re done expanding the fossil fuel frontier. Our only hope is a swift, managed decline in the production of all carbon-based energy from the fields we’ve already put in production.
* But that’s not all: Climate change is ruining fall.
* 500 Million Yahoo Accounts Hacked. I’m shocked, and disappointed, and the Chinese spammers who stole my data from Yahoo three years ago are shocked and disappointed too.
* Why Trump’s Shady Foundation Practices Are A Major No-No In The Charity World.
* Trump has used his campaign to funnel a mere $8.2 million to his businesses.
* Right now, Clinton is over the line by exactly one state. As of this writing, that state — what we also call the tipping-point state — is New Hampshire. But a group of states are closely lumped together, and Pennsylvania,Colorado and Wisconsin have all taken their turn as the tipping-point state in recent weeks.
* How Trump Could Will Win the Debate.
* Exciting new translation of The Brothers Karamazov will change the way you think of the book. A few others.
* New research shows that all present-day non-Africans can trace their origins to a single wave of migrants who left Africa 72,000 years ago, and that indigenous Australians and Papuans are descended directly from the first people to inhabit the continent some 50,000 years ago. That makes them world’s longest running civilization. Some more details here.
* December 1969, the month that killed the 60s.
* Duncan Jones is finally making Mute, set in the Moon universe.
* The last days of Roger Ailes.
* Facebook overstates its advertising effectiveness by a mere 60-80%.
* Black Lives Matter Fall 2016 Syllabus.
* Bibliography on Workplace Harassment in Postsecondary Education.
* The X-Men and the Legacy of AIDS.
* And Nathan Fillion speaks the forbidden truth: Don’t Bring Firefly Back.
