straws | Gerry Canavan

* In effect, more than a third of all cinema tickets bought in North America are for a Disney movie.

* UAA students, staff respond to impending, unprecedented budget cuts.

* “It’s not enough to accept that a PhD doesn’t easily lead to a non-academic job. You have to accept that it directly harms people’s ability to get a non-academic job.”

* Acosta goes.

* ‘Mother Is Not Going to Like This’: The 48 Hours That Almost Brought Down Trump. New disclosures about lewd Trump video reveal his mastery of the GOP.

* Pelosi shrugs.

* Really, are the liberals okay?

I knew it would happen and said it would in November 2016 but even so it is wild to watch the Democrats become consumed entirely by disgust for their left flank while Trump and Trumpism take over the country.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 12, 2019

* A “cheerful white woman” who voted for Trump loses her birth certificate, can’t get a passport, gets stuck in expensive and frightening citizenship limbo. Concludes “I don’t think anyone should be treated like that, period.” Plans to vote for Trump again. What a journey.

* No one in the business community is helping ICE separate families and put kids in concentration camps: A thread.

* ICE Told Agents ‘Happy Hunting!’ as They Prepped for Raid.

* Mother Whose Toddler Died After Leaving ICE Custody Tells Harrowing Story To Congress.

* On the brink of being homeless in a sanctuary city.

* Immigrants in U.S. Illegally Are Hiding Out, Staying Home From Work Amid Looming ICE Raids. Immigration law firm worker says silent raids in SoCal have already begun.

* When news broke that thousands of current and former Border Patrol agents were members of a secret Facebook group filled with racist, vulgar, and sexist content, Carla Provost, chief of the agency, was quick to respond. “These posts are completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see — and expect — from our agents day in and day out,” Provost said in a statement. “Any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.” About that…

* Cop lies. Cop lies. Cop lies.

* Pleading guilty just to go home.

* Today in the richest country in human history.

* In the time of Stranger Things, this seems like a gimme: Paper Girls Ordered to Series By Amazon Studios.

* And speaking of which: The Real Monsters in Stranger Things Are Adults. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Ender’s Game — hard to think of a classic SFF text where this isn’t the case. Why Stranger Things‘ nostalgia isn’t quite as magical in season 3.

* Indeed, the only thing the domestic outrage over the Iraq War seemed to accomplish has been a massive effort waged by the government and the corporate elite to engineer a public that doesn’t complain and doesn’t care when their government meddles or invades another country.

* Martian time-slip: How Should Space Settlers Keep Track of Time?

* What old age is really like.

* What QAnon is really like.

* The Once and Future MetaFilter.

* In a dark time, Americans stood up: Thousands of people have taken a Facebook pledge to storm Area 51 to ‘see them aliens.’

* Do you think there’s a meaning of life?

* “Fatal Accident With Metal Straw Highlights a Risk.”

* Conservationists have coined a new term—“The Fifth Season”—for the month or two of wildfires that now descends on much of the West each late summer. Red sun; yellow skies; oddly chill, acrid air. A nightmare inversion of summer. In addition to the Jemisin reference, this is also a running joke on the podcast Hello from the Magic Tavern, where the magical land of Foon has an extra season where the whole world just burst into constant flame for a few months.

sure, it seems bad that major America cities are slammed by increasingly insurmountable climate disasters year after year, but the truth is this is only the start of it

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 12, 2019