My My My My Corona

* How Much Worse the Coronavirus Could Get, in Charts. U.S. Hospitals Prepare for Coronavirus, With the Worst Still to Come. The Coronavirus Outbreak Is About To Put Hospital Capacity To A Severe Test. Here’s the Biggest Thing to Worry About With Coronavirus. The Extraordinary Decisions Facing Italian Doctors. Listen to me. The problem is your imagination. Stop using dystopia as your compass. Stop using metaphors. You have to live through this. Terrified Doctors Sound Alarm on Coronavirus. 40 coronavirus deaths in US as Disney parks to close, March Madness canceled. The Dos and Don’ts of ‘Social Distancing.’ This Is Not a Snow Day. Our new life of isolation. Cancel Everything. The coronavirus crisis will pass, but life may never be ‘normal’ again. Italy: Don’t Do What We Did. ‘It’s Just Everywhere Already’: How Delays in Testing Set Back the U.S. Coronavirus Response.

* Let’s Get Serious About Fighting the Corona Depression. Coronavirus Calls for an Emergency Rent Freeze and Eviction Moratorium. “We’re Not Going to Work Through Coronavirus.” The Dismantled State Takes on a Pandemic. That’ll solve it. Coronavirus Matters, The Stock Market Doesn’t, and Thinking It Does May Literally Kill Us. Coronavirus will bankrupt more people than it kills — and that’s the real global emergency. The Coronavirus Puts the Class War Into Stark Relief. Even Greg Mankiw thinks we need a UBI to get through this. Alone against the virus. In a Plague Year.

This is the most serious crisis the world has faced since 1945 and it is entirely unprepared. Our economic systems simply cannot function with an extended period of social distancing. Huge segments of the economy won’t last the next two weeks if we don’t start thinking fast.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 13, 2020

I really haven’t heard anyone talk seriously about what is going to a gig-economy, hourly-wage country when huge segments of ordinary life just shut down completely for who knows how long.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 10, 2020

Rent is due in 17 days. Do you think workers in the industries being impacted by this are getting paid enough for rent between now and then? What about May rent, 47 days from now, when we might still be doing this?

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 14, 2020

I was 21 in 2001. I’m 40 now. Global politics has been in a catastrophic, ever-worsening death spiral more or less the entirety of my adult life. It’s a little hard to come to terms with.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 9, 2020

* Coronavirus is mysteriously sparing kids and killing the elderly. Understanding why may help defeat the virus. Why Covid-19 is so dangerous for older adults. We Simply Do Not Understand Why. ‘If I’m Going to Get Sick and Die, I Might as Well Do It at Disney World.’ Are the olds okay?

* Everything You Need to Know About Coronavirus Vaccines. The News Isn’t Great.

* The Coronavirus Is Upending Higher Ed. Here Are the Latest Developments. As the Coronavirus Scrambles Colleges’ Finances, Leaders Hope for the Best and Plan for the Worst. Academe’s Coronavirus Shock Doctrine. What about the health of staff members? What about international student visas? Help! I have to suddenly teach online! What should I do? And the link every academic has already seen: Please do a bad job of putting your courses online.

Coronavirus presents college administrations with no easy options, but it can’t be good for the brand to evict the people going into catastrophic debt for an education with one week’s notice and a promise of a slapped together email chain in lieu of the classes they paid for.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 10, 2020

not to beat this dead horse but it seems like every elite college in the country has simultaneously decided that eviction law, the ADA, accreditation, visa law, and ordinary common sense no longer apply https://t.co/6rDn8EumUi

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 11, 2020

In the fall, when all this is hopefully over, universities need to really examine how piss poor their emergency plans are, how those piss poor plans disproportionally harm low-income and international students and how badly they communicate and execute those plans.

— roxane gay (@rgay) March 11, 2020

Telling your students “leave campus today and take your laptop” is not a plan!

— roxane gay (@rgay) March 11, 2020

this is a whole education in how the university works https://t.co/2HLliBedOT

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 11, 2020

Side note: an institution summarily evicting its students and then having them shot in the street when they get upset about it is about as pure a distillation of the relationship between the neoliberal university and its students as one is likely to find

— Alex Young (@Alex_T_Young) March 11, 2020

* Coronavirus Is The Nightmare Situation People Worried About When Trump Won. A Seattle lab uncovered Washington’s coronavirus outbreak only after defying federal regulators. A Map Of The Coronavirus Exposures In Trump’s Orbit In Just Two Weeks. The Trump Presidency Is Over.

* Prisons and jails are vulnerable to COVID-19 outbreaks. New York Prison Labor Makes Hand Sanitizer, Prepares to Dig Graves if Coronvirus Worsens. COVID-19 is shining a bright and extremely unflattering light on the condition of the social safety net in America.

* South Korea sect leader to face probe over deaths.

* A COVID-19 Homeschooling Curriculum.

* The ebook of Priscilla Wald’s Contagious is now free at Duke University Press.

* 12 Monkeys Is the Apocalypse Movie We Need Right Now. Teach the controversy, I say.

I have such a different reading on this moment. I’ve always seen the scientist as being there to insure the virus spreads as scheduled, to preserve the power they have gained in the ruins https://t.co/JOk5qK8tiV

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 14, 2020

* Lightspeed Magazine has “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain” for all your apocalyptic needs.

* http://sfra.org/Coronavirus-News.

* Probably the single biggest problem I have.

Let’s see what else is in the news.

* William Gibson on the apocalypse: It’s been happening for at least 100 years. Several Global Tipping Points May Have Arrived.

* Tips for the Depressed.

* What about this? I’ve been asked to be a co-editor with Nisi Shawl on the first volume of the Library of America’s edition of Octavia E. Butler’s works.

* CFP: A Critical Companion to Terry Gilliam. CFP: Science Fictions, guest ed. Takayuki Tatsumi.

* The Democrats’ Cult of Pragmatism. The People Who See Bernie Sanders as Their Only Hope. Joe Biden’s secret governing plan. Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020 – and it won’t end well this time either. The other swing voter. Our First Hundred Days Could Be A Nightmare.

tired: Bernie hasn’t been vetted! Trump will eat him alive!

wired: It is inappropriate to discuss Biden’s positions, record, or fitness for the presidency, and how dare you

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) March 8, 2020

* Hundreds Of Staff At The Guardian Have Signed A Letter To The Editor Criticising Its “Transphobic Content.”

* Abigail Nussbaum reviews The Testaments.

* Captain Pike Star Trek Spinoff Series Reportedly in Development. Star Trek: Picard offers some answers on its worst episode yet. I don’t think things are quite this dire but the series is running out of time to right itself.

* Watchmen watch: Nothing ever ends.

* The circle of academic life.

* Pig starts farm fire by excreting pedometer.

* Bring on LEGO Super Mario.

* Autism therapy: His Reality Is a Mock Village Where Everybody Knows Him.

* A sad coda to an amazing story in the history of science: Nancy Wexler has confirmed that she has Huntington’s disease.

* Tough week for Alex Jones.

* And probably your word of the century: disinfotainment.

Thursday Night Links!

* CFP: Essays on SyFy Channel Original Films.

* How Milwaukee became so segregated and why it matters when it comes to crime. Busing for Integration Worked in Milwaukee—Until It Didn’t. It’s not just Joe Biden—the Democratic Party has backed away from its commitment to fighting segregation in the public schools.

* Wisconsin could decide 2020. Inside the new Democratic plan to win it back.

* Bernie Sanders’s Campaign Is Different.

* Not much hope for the University of Alaska. Enter: the accreditors!

* The 10 factors that put small private colleges and universities at risk of closure.

* Odds Are, Your Doctorate Will Not Prepare You for a Profession Outside Academe.

* Now they say the individual mandate, which they always said was unconstitutional, is the only thing that made Obamacare constitutional.

I've seen this movie before with the last challenge to ACA on the funding of the exchanges. Most people agreed in the beginning it was a ridiculous suit, but somehow, weirdly, GOP-appointed judges just kept ruling in favor of the plaintiffs till it made it to the Supreme Court! https://t.co/zhONJnwMEs

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 9, 2019

* These Are The People Struggling The Most To Pay Back Student Loans.

* ICE Just Quietly Opened Three New Detention Centers, Flouting Congress’ Limits. Migrant kids in overcrowded Arizona border station allege sex assault, retaliation from U.S. agents. This gay teen lost his asylum appeal & will be sent back to Iran where ‘they will execute me.’ I’m with her. Trump’s mass arrests are set to begin. Chicago gets it right.

* “A nasty, brutal fight”: what a US-Iran war would look like.

* Trump backs down on rigging the Census directly, possibly for good.

“The structure of the Constitution enshrines white minority rule” lots of room to spare https://t.co/EJJkPR6hDo

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 10, 2019

* Jeffrey Epstein’s Fortune May Be More Illusion Than Fact. This is exactly how I think Jeffrey Epstein made his money. When Epstein ordered a 53-pound shredder. I was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein; here’s what I know. NYPD let convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein skip judge-ordered check-ins. 28 Women Reportedly Sent to Mar-a-Lago in 1992 for VIP Party of Two—Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. In Patriarchy No One Can Hear You Scream: Rebecca Solnit on Jeffrey Epstein and the Silencing Machine. The Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Like Nothing I’ve Seen Before.

I am Team We’re Gonna Find Out Epstein’s Quote Unquote Hedge Fund Was a Ponzi Scheme Buttressed By Blackmail.

— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) July 10, 2019

self-confessed sexual predator is the president and all anyone does is joke about it, probably part of his thinking https://t.co/1mIKHX3x92

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 9, 2019

* The depravity is bipartisan.

* The numbers are in: SF homeless population rose 30% since 2017.

* Escape From New York 38 years later.

* Scenes from the class struggle in journalism.

* The California Bill Challenging NCAA Amateurism Just Cleared Another Hurdle. Here’s How It Got Started.

* “I Did Not Die. I Did Not Go to Heaven.” Gasp!

* Red flag wildfire warning issued for much of Alaska; smoke chokes Fairbanks. New Orleans Braces for a One-Two Weather Punch. Enormous Antarctic glacier on brink of collapse could raise sea levels by half a metre alone, scientists warn. These are Canada’s worst-case scenarios. Between the Devil and the Green New Deal. Environmentalism’s Next Frontier: Giving Nature Legal Rights. The New York Times is ready. What could possibly go wrong?

This is downtown New Orleans right now…and the soon-to-be #HurricaneBarry hasn't even hit yet.

Our thoughts are with everyone in the path of the storm.

Climate change is an emergency. It's time our leaders start acting like it. https://t.co/nNxxVLNnAD

— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) July 11, 2019

* I didn’t have “the World Wildlife Fund operating a lawless paramilitary force” on my dystopia watch-list, but of course I should have.

* ‘These kids are ticking time bombs’: The threat of youth basketball.

* Hope you enjoyed this look at Ron’s future!

* Google as a landlord? A looming feudal nightmare.

* What Will Life on Mars Be Like?

* DRAGONLANCE FOREVER

* #dataspositronicbrainisinthedog

* RIP, Rip Torn.

* And while The Lion King remake has been getting absolutely brutal reviews, few can touch Dan’s brutal takedown of the original.

I mean I’ve said it all before https://t.co/HrRRiTtKVu

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 10, 2019

Monday Morning

* In local news: Dangerous Levels of ‘Erin Brockovich’ Chemical Found in Local Drinking Water.

* Great little Wisconsin story about the hotel NFL teams stay at when they play the Packers.

* A brief history of Tetris.

* To understand Charlotte’s rage, you have to understand its roads. A Homegirl Reflecting on Charlotte Uprising.

* Homeless and in graduate school.

* The survey that Williams was part of, the Milwaukee Area Renters Study (MARS), may be the first rigorous, detailed look at eviction in a major city. Interviewers like Williams spoke to about 1,100 Milwaukee-area tenants between 2009 and 2011, asking them a battery of questions on their housing history. The survey has already fundamentally changed researchers’ understanding of eviction, revealing the problem to be far larger than previously understood. 

* The rise and rise of tabletop gaming.

* It’s genuinely disturbing how easy it is to make a 269-269 electoral map, and how plausible that outcome seems.

* Here’s Everything Donald Trump Has Promised to Do on His First Day as President. Seven Days of Donald Trump’s Lies. Scope of Trump’s falsehoods unprecedented for a modern presidential candidate. Donald Trump’s Week of Misrepresentations, Exaggerations and Half-Truths. The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally. Bruce vs. Trump. Trump’s jet vs. the taxpayers. Intel Officials Investigating Trump Advisor’s Ties To Putin Allies. Virtual media blackout on emerging Trump campaign scandal with Russia. Pregaming the debate. And again. And again. And again.

“Trump looked like a president tonight” will be the media’s mantra tomorrow night barring anything short of a stroke on stage.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) September 26, 2016

* Obama legacy project, take one.

* Know your 1%.

* From the right: “Against democracy.”

* Roughly speaking, a white voter will lean left if she is “more college than church” and will lean right if she is “more church than college.”

* Democrats don’t actually want to win, exhibit 37,000.

* If you want a vision of the future:

 The Democrats have become the party, not of some specific ideological agenda, but of the traditional system as such. One of Obama’s major goals has been to rehabilitate the Republicans and force them to act as a worthy opponent rather than an implacable foe. This approach was naive and in many ways dangerous, as shown most vividly when Obama tried to “leverage” the Republicans’ unprecedented brinksmanship on the debt ceiling to engineer a “grand bargain” on the deficit, but it fits with the view that the system only works if there are two worthy opponents locked in an eternal struggle with no final victories. We can see something similar in Clinton’s controversial decision to treat Trump as an outlier rather than letting him tar the Republican brand as such. It works to her political disadvantage — showing that her centrist opportunism is weirdly principled in its own way — but from within her worldview, the most important thing is to restore the traditional balance of forces.

The situation we are in shows the intrinsic instability of party democracy. An eternal struggle between worthy opponents is not possible in practice. Eventually, one of the two teams is going to decide that they want to win in the strong sense, to defeat the opponent once and for all. And if that desire cannot be achieved immediately, it will inevitably lead to a long period where the old enemy is treated as a foe — as intrinsically evil and illegitimate. Within the American system, with its baroque structure of constraints and veto points, that will lead to a period where government is barely functional, because the natural tendency will be for the radicalized party to refuse to go along with the system until they have full control over it.

* Clinton’s policy team.

* This would be a better story if they were going to dive in to how creepy this would be: Geordi La Forge Has a Ship Full of Datas in This First Look at Star Trek: Waypoint.

* Tonight in Jungeland: Chris Christie’s Chances For Impeachment Just Went Way Up.

* On the Popular Acceptance of Inequality Due to Brute Luck.

* Scientists have found a better version of the Dyson Sphere. Meet the Dyson Swarm, a vast mega-structure comprised of a plethora of solar panels.

* Mars! Still! Again!

* The circle of lfe.

* Police enlist young offenders as confidential informants. But the work is high-risk, largely unregulated, and sometimes fatal.

* A walking tour of New York’s surveillance network.

* The Stolen War: How corruption and fraud created a failed state in Iraq—and led directly to the rise of ISIS.

* The Fallacies Of Neoliberal Protest.

* Please be true, please be true: Arrival Is a Scifi Masterpiece You Won’t Stop Thinking About.

* “The Battle of Algiers” at 50: From 1960s Radicalism to the Classrooms of West Point.

* Professor Donald W. Schaffner, a food microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said a two-year study he led concluded that no matter how fast you pick up food that falls on the floor, you will pick up bacteria with it. Challenge accepted.

* Cats sailed with Vikings to conquer the world, genetic study reveals. Trade between China and Rome in the ancient world, as tokened by a pair of corpses found in a London cemetery. (On that second one others say not so fast.)

* “…Adding to the tragedy, is that this disaster went almost completely unnoticed by the public as later that day another, more “newsworthy” tragedy would befall the nation when beloved President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. The Staten Island Ferry Disaster Museum hopes to correct this oversight by preserving the memory of those lost in this tragedy and educating the public about the truth behind the only known giant octopus-ferry attack in the tri-state area.”

* Breaking Bad at a Bronx charter.

* The Three-Body Problem in, well, China.

* A Law Professor Explains Why You Should Never Talk to Police.

* A History of Native Americans Protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

* The book in question is The Total Rush – or, to use its superior English title, Blitzed – which reveals the astonishing and hitherto largely untold story of the Third Reich’s relationship with drugs, including cocaine, heroin, morphine and, above all, methamphetamines (aka crystal meth), and of their effect not only on Hitler’s final days – the Führer, by Ohler’s account, was an absolute junkie with ruined veins by the time he retreated to the last of his bunkers – but on the Wehrmacht’s successful invasion of France in 1940. Published in Germany last year, where it became a bestseller, it has since been translated into 18 languages, a fact that delights Ohler, but also amazes him.

* A brief history of gang violence in Chicago.

* This is what word processing machines, word processing software, and word processing as an office management strategy all have common: they are techniques for providing the essential labor required to produce texts while also concealing that labor, thereby generating the impression that the command to produce a document can itself produce documents.

* Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest is a start, but what if pro athletes refused to play? Students Are Pulling a Kaepernick All Over America — and Being Threatened for It.

* And if you want a vision of the future: They’re gonna be submerging this dude in water and taking photos every 5 years until he dies.

They're gonna be submerging this dude in water and taking photos every 5 years until he dies https://t.co/Ms9H5T61Te

— Eric Harvey (@ericdharvey) September 24, 2016

Easter Thursday and the Living’s Easy Links

* BREAKING: The NCAA has approved unlimited snacks. Can we please stop all this silly union talk now?

* Unintentional metaphor watch: In other words, for every year Citicorp Center was standing, there was about a 1-in-16 chance that it would collapse.

* Extremism and the college classroom.

* Unpaid Interns Gain the Right to Sue. What a country!

* Women, confidence, and institutional sexism.

* “I’m sorry, that sounds horrible,” he continued. “I would have put my own wife or daughters there, and I would have been screaming bloody murder to watch them die. I would gone next, I would have been the next one to be killed. I’m not afraid to die here. I’m willing to die here.”

* Accreditors ask City College to voluntarily terminate its own accreditation. Tempting, but….

* How to Spot Bad Science.

* Rare Video Of People Actually Riding Action Park’s Infamous Water Slide.

* A People’s History of AIM.

* A new study which statistically analyzed temperature data over the pre-industrial period and the industrial period has rejected the hypothesis that global warming is due to natural variability at confidence levels greater than 99%.

* North Dakota Finds Itself Unprepared To Handle The Radioactive Burden Of Its Fracking Boom.

* Informed awareness is the worst, part one: A Mrs. Doubtfire sequel is in the works. Because you demanded it!

* Informed awareness is the worst, part two: Why are they even calling this show 12 Monkeys?

* Police Unit That Spied on Muslims Is Disbanded After Impressive Zero Prosecution, Zero Conviction Record.

* Democracy is a shell game: Cities in Oklahoma are prohibited from establishing mandatory minimum wage or vacation and sick-day requirements under a bill that has been signed into law by Gov. Mary Fallin.

* Kermit Frog, Superstar.

* When Google Tried to Build a Space Elevator.

* The Whale Poop Hypothesis.

* Aaron Sorkin’s The Foodroom.

* The Secret “Ronbledore” Pages of Harry Potter Revealed By Court Order. I always knew.

* 1648: The first emoticon.

* What’s on Captain America’s to-do list in other countries that aren’t America.

* And your periodic reminder that child poverty is a policy choice. Maybe it’s time we just turn things over to the rats.

All the Links of the Week in One Convenient Location

* Ending the World the Human Way: Why can no one talk about climate change?

* You’ve seen it linked everywhere, but not here! Woody Allen’s Good Name. Don’t Listen to Woody Allen’s Biggest Defender. ​The Internet Digs Up Woody Allen’s Creepy Child-Loving Past. Woody Allen, My Pen Pal.

* Basically nobody wanted to live in a world where Bill Cosby was a sexual predator. It was too much to handle.

* Last days of a model.

* The Boston Globe: The Invisible Professor. Part-Time Professors Demand Higher Pay; Will Colleges Listen? 111 Colleges Are Accused of Violating Law by Requiring Student-Aid Forms.

* Another university makes the queen sacrifice.

* Privilege and the Ph.D. The Tenure Code. 1,600 letters of recommendation.

* Fifty-Five Bodies, and Zero Trials, at the Florida School for Boys.

* Even the liberal Kevin Drum thinks former senator, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has no accomplishments to run of president on, unlike (say) Obama when he ran for president, or George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton, or Mitt Romney, or….

* “The entire system is a joke. There is absolutely no living, breathing person with any kind of intellect who believes that a grand jury could consider and vote on 10 complex issues in the period of time that they use to deliberate on hundreds,” Joe Cheshire, a Raleigh attorney who handles criminal cases across North Carolina, told The Charlotte Observer.

* And all perfectly legal: Missouri Executes Man While His Appeal Was Still Pending Before Supreme Court.

* Cop Who Allegedly Said ‘We Don’t Have Time For This’ Before Shooting Schizophrenic Teen Dead Has Been Indicted.

* Who Killed the Jeff Davis 8?

* Broken clock watch: Antonin Scalia is… making sense?

* Wisconsin Teacher Fired for… Receiving Emails from His Sister.

* Cook, an Edinburg marksman, was target shooting toward the school from about a mile away when he struck the boys Dec. 12, 2011. The gunshots left Nicholas “Nicko” Tijerina, then 13, paralyzed and Edson Amaro, then 14, with serious internal organ damage.

* From the archives: In praise of Joanne Rowling’s Hermione Granger series. Harry Potter novels renamed.

* I think I’ve done this one before, too, but what the hell: Lynda Barry’s Course Syllabus.

* If It Happened There: The Super Bowl.

* Unloved Films, Part III: “The Hudsucker Proxy.”

* Daily Life in the Slave Quarters.

* A Local Teen’s Documentary on Slavery Premieres Friday in Detroit.

* How the Myth of the ‘Negro Cocaine Fiend’ Helped Shape American Drug Policy.

* Faculty set strike date at UIC.

* Closing SodaStream’s West Bank Factories Would Hurt Palestinians, but That’s Not the Point.

* ACLU lawsuit challenges Wisconsin same-sex marriage ban. Lawsuit claims Apple infringing on University of Wisconsin patent. Water Levels of the Great Lakes Are Declining.

* CVS Will Stop Selling Tobacco Products by October. I can’t believe it’s taken this long; it’s shocked me that pharmacies sold cigarettes ever since I worked in one way back in high school.

* Rest in peace, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

* Brooklyn chess star battles the pressure of expectations.

* A Mystery Illness Is Causing Starfish to Rip Themselves Into Pieces.

* What would happen if a cue ball struck a rack of 15 perfectly round, frictionless billiard balls, exactly head-on?

* Gasp! Marx Was Right!

* Gasp! Tar Sands Oil Development Is More Toxic Than Previously Thought, Study Finds.

* Gasp! Administrator Hiring Drove 28% Boom in Higher-Ed Work Force, Report Says.

* 12 Post-Potter Revelations J.K. Rowling Has Shared.

* On “Imported from Detroit.”

* The Fall of East Cleveland.

* California Considers Raising Its Minimum Wage To The Highest In The Country.

* CNN: The Worst.

* What They’re Saying About The Grand Budapest Hotel.

* Some great beach art.

* Now hanging on the wall of my office: The Life of Thought.

* It’s very important to McDonald’s that you know McNuggets are acceptably gross.

* Science Fiction as a Childhood Coping Mechanism.

* And the future truly is weird: Woman Gives Birth To Children, Discovers Her Twin Is Actually The Biological Mother, But She Is Technically Her Own Twin.