Please Enjoy Weekend Links!

* Get your abstracts in! CFP: Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling. And a CFP for a special issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies on “The Intersections of Disability and Science Fiction.”

* The schedule of classes for Marquette English is up at Spring 2017. I’ll be on research leave, if you’re wondering why I’m not listed…

* Best Tumblr in forever: Sad Chairs of Academia.

* How to Live Less Anxiously in Academe.

* How Skin-Deep Judgments of Professors Might Influence Student Success.

* “There are many things I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.”

* The extent to which Trump is floating absolute gibberish cannot be undersold. Even Costanza is superseded in his time. Once more with feeling: On Bullshit.

* What did Trump lie about at the debate, mondo-hugeo chart edition. Donald Trump’s first presidential debate confirmed he has no idea what he’s talking about. Prince Georging, Meflection, and Gobbing: A brief guide to Trump’s rhetorical tricks. A Trump Glossary. You’ll get ’em next time, buddy. What It’s Like to Be a Female Reporter Covering Donald Trump. This May Be The Most Horrible Thing That Donald Trump Believes. When Trump said that not paying taxes ‘makes me smart,’ undecided voters in N.C. gasped. How Donald Trump Set Off a Civil War Within the Right-Wing Media. How to bait Donald Trump. Gray’s. Sports. Almanac. How to evade your taxes the Trump way. More. Even more! Trump Foundation lacks the certification required for charities that solicit money. Cuba! I sold Trump $100,000 worth of pianos. Then he stiffed me. Donald Trump and the truth about race and real estate in America. America is already great. There’s still heroes in the world. And then there’s what happened just this morning.

this might be the most undignified thing a politician has ever done to themselves with a phone and i'm including anthony weiner in this

— Felix Gilman (@felixgilman) September 30, 2016

 

The scariest thing about Trump isn't even Trump himself but how quickly elite Republicans fell into line. What wouldn't they support?

— Jon Schwarz (@tinyrevolution) May 27, 2016

 

* The most American-democracy thing that’s ever happened: But Republicans said the White House didn’t make a forceful case, putting themselves in the awkward position of blaming the president for a bill they enacted into law over Obama’s veto.

* Beyond Clinton or Trump: Nuclear Weapons and Democracy.

* Wisconsin Is Systematically Failing to Provide the Photo IDs Required to Vote in November. What a shocking and unexpected consequence of these well-intentioned, commonsense laws.

* Note: The original headline for this piece was “George W. Bush is Not Your Cuddly Grandpa. George W. Bush can rot in hell.”

* Five questions we need to answer before colonizing Mars. Elon Musk’s spectacular plan to colonise Mars lacks substance. Fun and exciting, not boring and cramped! Is Elon Musk’s Crazy Mars Plan Even Legal?

* What could possibly go wrong? UVM Medical College to Eliminate Lectures.

* No Punishment for ‘Run Them Down’ Tweet.

* Baltimore vs. Marilyn Mosby.

* Why New Jersey’s Trains Aren’t Safer.

* Nicholson Baker goes to school. Reader, I bought it.

* In Praise of Bob Ross.

* Has Pope Francis Failed?

* Another review of Alice Kaplan’s book on The Stranger.

* “Liberalism is working”: Teen accused of stealing 65-cent carton of milk at middle school to face trial.

* Measles are gone from the Americas.

* Silicon Valley’s rhetoric of magical innovation relies on a hidden abode of rare earth mining and hydro-cooled server farms.

* On Premier League Fantasy Football.

* How ‘Daycare’ Became ‘School.’

* The 25 Best Superpowers in the Superpowers Wiki.

*Wonder Woman Writer Greg Rucka Says Diana Has ‘Obviously’ Had Relationships With Women. She was on an island of only women for millennia! So yeah.

* One effect of superhero culture: a proliferation of fan events where Marvel movie heroes and ‘Walking Dead’ stars walk away with six figures (more than most get paid for their real jobs) for a weekend’s work.

* The world passes 400ppm carbon dioxide threshold. Permanently.

* And yet, looking back at The Jetsons intro sequence today, I wonder where the icecaps are in that little illustration of earth. Is some land missing from Central America? Has the North gained land mass? Such questions become more troubling in the context of current concerns about global warming and, once asked, open the floodgates for similar observations. In the intro sequence, flying cars convey the Jetsons and other families from their floating bungalow to other floating buildings like The Little Dipper School, Orbit High School, Shopping Centre, and Spacely Space Rockets Inc. What was once a cute innovation—why not live in floating cities?—becomes troubled by its energy costs and its purpose. Why do the Jetsons and other families live in orbit? What has happened below to force them into the skies?

* Today in on-the-nose metaphors: NASA Is Sinking Into the Ocean.

* Every society gets the post-apocalypse it deserves.

* Big as horror movie.

* There were no casualties in the landslide which occurred earlier this month, but the facility’s new rock climbing facility was completely wiped out. Yes, I suppose they would be.

* Codex Silenda, A Handcrafted Puzzle Book With Pages That Must Be Solved to Unlock the Next One.

* The ADA at Disney.

* Cheating in school as communism.

* Today in neoliberal consumerism: Want to Make Ethical Purchases? Stop Buying Illegal Drugs.

* The Dark, Gritty Tick goes to series. Spoon! But like a dirty, chipped spoon, a spoon that really reflects the darkness of our society and our souls.

* Emulator lets you turn NES games 3D.

* U.S. owes black people reparations for a history of ‘racial terrorism,’ says U.N. panel.

* Striking Prisoners Say Their Guards Have Joined In.

* The Longreads Reading List on Utopias.

* Die a hero, or… Has Whedon Changed, Or Have We Done Changed?

* It’s Official: The Boomerang Kids Won’t Leave. I wonder how many are actually caring for or financially supporting un-, under-, and unable-to-be-employed parents and siblings.

* Let’s Stop Talking About Stranger Things Season Two Before We Ruin It. Friends, I have some terrible news.

* Leave the hot moms alone.

* There’s bad luck, and then there’s: Man Bitten On Penis By Spider For The Second Time This Year.

* Today in terrible ideas I could not denounce more strongly: Is it time for Star Trek: The Next Generation to go Kelvin?

* And at least the kids get it.

amazing: two survive a wreck and got the attention of the navy by spelling out an unignorable sign with palm leaves pic.twitter.com/h2hdmvLC44

— Sebastiaan de With (@sdw) April 21, 2016

Tuesday Links! Too Many of Them! Send Help!

* Don’t forget! Just two weeks until the “Global Weirding” deadline!

* And tomorrow night in Missouri! Marquette Professor to Present ‘After Humanity: Science Fiction After Extinction.’

* CFP: Radical Future and Accelerationism.

* Evergreen headlines: The Shrinking Ph.D. Job Market.

* Last year’s Pioneer Award winner: “Improbability Drives: The Energy of SF.”

* The Anthropological Unconscious, or How Not to Talk About African Fiction.

* AfroSF Now: A Snapshot, Seven Novels and a Film.

* Africa Has Always Been Sci-Fi.

* Cost Control Is a Progressive Value.

* Grade Inflation, Forever and Ever Amen.

* Dueling letters: President Lovell. Professor McAdams.

* Cheating Incidents Blemish NCAA’s Marquee Event.

* Honors Colleges Promise Prestige, But They Don’t All Deliver.

* The Humanities in the Anthropocene.

* Extinction: A Radical History.

* Art in the Age of Economic Inequality.

* Manifesto of a Future University.

* 30 Cities Where America’s Poor Are Concentrated. You know where this is going.

* It’s Probably First Ballot Or Bust For Donald Trump At The GOP Convention. And a bit on the nose, don’t you think? Jeffrey Dahmer’s House Is Up for Rent During the Republican National Convention.

* More politics watch! The Democrats Are Flawlessly Executing a 10-Point Plan to Lose the 2016 Presidential Election. Sanders +2.6! Trump -4.1! Go vote Wisconsin!

* It’s Really Hard To Get Bernie Sanders 988 More Delegates.

* My analysis of the latest federal data shows that, on average, these families’ income — including tax credits and all sources of welfare — is about $9,000 below the poverty line. That means ensuring no children grow up in poor households would cost $57 billion a year. (To put that in perspective, that’s how much money we’d get if Apple brought back the $200 billion it has stashed overseas, and paid just 29 percent tax on it – it’s a big problem, but it’s small compared to the wealth of our society.)

* Students begin sit-in at Allen Building, demand resignation of Executive Vice President Tallman Trask.

* Unionizing Pays Big Dividend for Professors at Regional Public Universities. What Tenured and Tenure-Track Professors at 4-Year Colleges Made in 2015-16.

* The villain gap: Why Soviet movies rarely had American bad guys. Risk time in the gulag by reading about Soviet-era underground media. Cold War board games explore the conflict’s history, spycraft, and humor. Soviet sci-fi: The future that never came.

* This Genius Twitter Feed Is Turning Classic Kids’ Books Into Nightmares.

* Superman And The Damage Done: A requiem for an American icon. An oral history of Superman. A Brief History of Dick: Unpacking the gay subtext of Robin, the Boy Wonder. Death to All Superheroes. Yes, chum, there’s more links below the picture.

* The Antonin Scalia School of Law, or…

Koch donation leads George Mason to rename its law school the Antonin Scalia School of Law. That's right: ASS Law. https://t.co/7vtmEusF5s

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) March 31, 2016

* Retirees Are Handing Wall Street Billions For No Good Reason.

* All politics is local: I grew up being compared to my overachieving cousin. Now he’s a Supreme Court nominee.

* Laughter doesn’t scale.

* Imagine living in a cell that’s smaller than a parking space — with a homicidal roommate.

* Up to half of people killed by US police are disabled.

* “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

* The Panama Papers: how the world’s rich and famous hide their money offshore.

* Study Confirms World’s Coastal Cities Unsavable If We Don’t Slash Carbon Pollution. But I say that’s not thinking big enough! 12 Ways Humanity Could Destroy The Entire Solar System.

* This Is How We Could Hide Our Planet From Bloodthirsty Aliens.

* Dibs on the screenplay: Japan’s Lost Black Hole Satellite Just Reappeared and Nobody Knows What Happened to It. 

* Researchers Just Discovered a New State of Matter.

* Hot take watch: Aaron Burr, Not So Bad? I wish I knew the Hamilton soundtrack well enough to make a proper joke here.

* Statistical Analysis Has Revealed Game of Thrones‘ True ‘Main’ Character.

* Data suggests a mere 94% of Tor data is malicious.

* It is now 100 years since the war on drugs began in the United States and was then gradually imposed on the rest of the world.

* Indigenous video games you should download.

* Scientists bemoan SeaWorld decision to stop breeding orcas.

* Researchers who have recently ventured into this region say the once-vibrant ecosystem is now a ghastly tableau, filled with pale-white corals that are at risk of dying off.

* Dark, gritty ad absurdum: The Tick in 2016.

* Durham and gentrification.

* Trumpism in everything, Wal-Mart edition.

* NFL Sends Threatening Letter To New York Times, Demands Retraction Of Concussion Investigation.

* The Ultimate List of Weapons Astronauts Have Carried Into Orbit.

* Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly. The end of Florida. These Maps Show What Washington Will Look Like When Antarctica Melts.

* Ambiguous utopias: In Pod-Based Community Living, Rent Is Cheap, But Sex Is Banned.

* Can an outsider become Amish?

* The strange case of Jennifer Null.

* Whatever happened to utopian architecture?

* Miracles and wonders: Treating Huntington’s With Gene Knockout Might Be Safe For Adults.

* Terry Gilliam tempts fate, again.

* The best Star Wars character you’ve never heard of.

* And the arc of history is long, but the MLA has changed its style guide again.