Triplets | Gerry Canavan

* Channeling the anti-Trump #Resistance, a slew of recent books seeks to reduce democracy to a defense of political “norms.” But overcoming today’s crisis will take more political imagination.

* Three Identical Strangers, a dark documentary about identical triplets who were separated-at-birth. Amazing story. I wish I’d waited for the movie before Googling it.

* How a tiny protest at the U. of Nebraska turned into a proxy war for the future of campus politics.

* Sexism and academia.

* Just in time for my summer syllabi: Junot Diaz #MeToo Accusations Surface. No Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018.

* Michigan State. Michigan State. Michigan Goddamn State. SIU. Columbia. University of Illinois at Chicago. George Mason. UNC. And in some rare good news: Oregon.

* There is no campus free speech crisis: a look at the evidence.

* “The root cause of the F.B.I. investigation are the N.C.A.A. rules limiting — actually, prohibiting — compensation for players,” he said. “And none of the recommendations speak to them — none of them.”

* What does a non-academic job search look like for a rhet/comp PhD student? I put compiled some numbers to illustrate my experience over the last 3 months.

* What Jack Kirby proposed for the plaques on the Pioneer space probes.

* Infiltration into left-wing groups is just the sharp edge of an entire armory of political policing.

* Chicago’s drinking water is full of lead, report says. Newark Water Tests Show High Lead Levels, Prompting Threat of Lawsuit.

* Vaccine refusal is contagious — and there’s no cure.

* What’s Wrong With Growing Blobs of Brain Tissue?

* One of the most worrisome predictions about climate change may be coming true.

* The arc of history is long, but Somehow, Jaxxon the Ridiculous Green Space Rabbit Has Made It to the New Star Wars Canon.

* How a Genealogy Site Led to the Front Door of the Golden State Killer Suspect.

* New Documents Reveal How ICE Mines Local Police Databases Across the Country.

* ICE held an American man in custody for 1,273 days. He’s not the only one who had to prove his citizenship.

* Is the US Border Patrol Committing Crimes Against Humanity?

5. But these theories do not have any explanatory power regarding why the vote broke down the way it did demographically. Only one broad demographic seemed to be receptive to the kind of campaign that Trump ran on: white people. https://t.co/sdoOzrSVTL pic.twitter.com/UHEM9e3A0W

— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) April 26, 2018

* Chisholm concluded there was “no basis to conclusively link” the death of Trammell, which occurred in May, to the officers’ actions.

* LEGO crime boss busted in Portland. No jury in the world would convict him.

* Escapism and Springsteen.

* Happiness begins at 50.

* AI as alchemy.

* $5,751.

* Lessons From Rust-Belt Cities That Kept Their Sheen.

* The Mighty Thor’s conclusion signals the end of a Marvel Comics era. What an odd comic this was. And meanwhile: This is the Dark Side of the Rainbow of our time.

* Enjoy a tarantula burger in Durham, North Carolina.

* Six Animal Rights Activists Charged With Felonies for Investigation and Rescue That Led to Punishment of a Utah Turkey Farm.

* In New Jersey, the top lobbying spenders are from the following industries: energy, healthcare, insurance, and… balloons.

* A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It.

* eFterlife. Batmen and Robins. Natural selection. Good grief.

* ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Interactive Movie in the Works at Fox.

* Two years old, but who cares: “It smelled like death”: An oral history of the Double Dare obstacle course.

* And sure, let’s make ice-nine, at this point why not.

Written by gerrycanavan

May 5, 2018 at 10:00 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

Tagged with #TheReistance, academia, Afrofuturism, afterlife, alt-ac, America, animal rights, artificial intelligence, Avengers, Batman, Black Panther, brains, canonicity, Carrie Fisher, Cat's Cradle, CFPs, Chewbacca, Chicago, class struggle, climate change, college sports, Columbia, comics, deportation, disability studies, DNA, documentary, Donald Trump, Double Dare, Durham, dystopia, ecocriticism, escapism, fantasy, Fred Moten, free speech, George Mason University, good grief, Han Solo, happiness, health care, How the University Works, ice, ice-nine, immigration, Infinity War, Jack Kirby, Jaimee, Janelle Monae, Jaxxon the Space Rabbit, Junot Díaz, kids today, lead, LEGO, lobbying, lynching, mad science, Marquette, Marquette Literary Review, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU, Michigan State, Milwaukee, misogyny, museums, my media empire, natural selection, NCAA, Nebraska, neoliberalism, New Jersey, Newark, Nickelodeon, Nobel Prize, North Carolina, over-educated literary theory PhDs, Peanuts, pedagogy, Pioneer 10, poetry, police state, police violence, politics, Portland, race, racism, rhetoric and composition, Robin, Rust Belt, Satanism, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, second seasons, sexism, SFRA, Snoopy, Southern Illinois University, Springsteen, Star Wars, surveillance society, tarantula burgers, teaching, teaching evaluations, The Handmaid's Tale, the Midwest, there's just one story and we tell it over and over, Thor, Triplets, true crime, twins, UNC, University of Illinois at Chicago, university of Nebraska, University of Oregon, vaccines, vegetarianism, Vonnegut, Wakanda, Wakandacon, water, Westworld, whiteness, writing

Friday Night Links

with one comment

* So the Romney campaign is imploding earlier than scheduled. Mitt Romney’s unnecessary lie. MeFi. Josh Marshall says we’ll know the story’s really turned when the former chair of the McCain campaign says release the tax records.

* The grammar news is that Dr. Elaine Stotko, from the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University, and her student, Margaret Troyer, have discovered that school children in Baltimore are using the slang word yo as a gender-neutral singular pronoun.

* Dan Harmon talks to Marc Maron on Attack of the Show about what the hell happened.

* In Hell, “We Shall Be Free”: On Breaking Bad.

At the heart of the social critique is a question of responsibility for “evil” and where to locate it (even though, of course, none of the series refer to “God” or any religious tradition at all). In The Wire, the responsibility lies with the “game” — the logic of the streets, the logic of politics, the “social facts” that weave an all-encompassing, interconnected web. The Sopranos suggests that the locus of responsibility lies in the unconscious of Tony Soprano; its explanation of “evil” is at heart Freudian. Mad Menlargely evades this question; its driving philosophy has little to do with “moralistic” questions of human responsibility but rather the individual’s abiding unhappiness, and how modern capitalism intensifies it. (That a group of libertarians recently threw a “Mad Men” themed party, unironically championing Don Draper as a hero of better times when corporations weren’t “ashamed” of themselves, only underscores the slippery-ness of Mad Men, the manipulability of its message. That, or these particular libertarians don’t know how to read.)

Within this quartet, Breaking Bad is most similar to The Wire, and indeed is its twin and mirror image. While The Wire explored how the drug trade decimated black urban America, Breaking Bad looks at how drugs infiltrate the other half: suburban white America. A unifying, coherent philosophy is possessed by each, and both execute it propulsively and faithfully. David Simon likened The Wire to a Greek tragedy, by which he meant that sociology is an omnipotent, merciless god that twirls with the fate of mortals. In Breaking Bad the villain is not sociology, but a human being; what destroys the mortals is not a system, but a fellow mortal. This is a human-centered vision of the origin of evil. It is Old Testament at its core.