Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘true facts

The Return of Sunday Reading! Just Kidding!

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* I have a short piece on resistance to automation in the forum of the new issue of ASAP/Journal. Check it out!

* I’m really stunned to see that the Tiptree Award is on the verge of being renamed. The details of the end of her and her husband’s life are definitely troubling — but decanonizing Tiptree over this single ambiguous incident at the end of her life seems to me to be of a completely different order than the Campbell or the Lovecraft renamings, where the entire body of creative output is being reevaluated.

Faith in science fiction and fantasy.

64% of Americans support labor unions but membership is at a record low.

In academia we need unions more than ever—whether one is an adjunct or tenure track. Our higher education system is being hollowed out by administrators who see institutions of learning as businesses, and are making money at students’ & workers’ expense.

How Far Does Your Tuition Dollar Go?

Marquette University

This institution spends $0.49 on instruction for every dollar it collects in tuition.

This is a Private Nonprofit Four-Year College, University, and/or Professional School and the tuition collected per full-time student or equivalent is $22,584.

How does this school stack up?

The average public institution spends $1.42 on instruction for every dollar collected in tuition.

The average private nonprofit institution spends $0.84 on instruction for every dollar collected in tuition.

The average for-profit institution spends $0.29 on instruction for every dollar collected in tuition.

* A Brief History of Academic Mysteries, Campus Thrillers, and Research Noir.

Inside the African essay factories that churn out university coursework for 115,000 cheating British students every year.

Meritocracy Is Killing High-School Sports.

Adjunct Faculty in an Adjunct Country. Beatriz Llenín Figueroa on the situation at the University of Puerto Rico.

* Syllabus: Critical Algorithm Studies.

* Dialectics of the new Popeye’s chicken sandwich. Panera is losing nearly 100% of its workers every year as fast-food turnover crisis worsens. Waffle House has an official poet laureate.

Amazon Is Looking More and More Like a Nation-State. Amazon is lying about Ring and facial recognition. Amazon’s Next-Day Delivery System Has Brought Chaos And Carnage To America’s Streets — But The World’s Biggest Retailer Has A System To Escape The Blame.

* YouTube reinstated these extremist and white nationalist channels, apologized to them.

* How 9 People Built an Illegal $5M Airbnb Empire in New York.

* The Plan to Use Fitbit Data to Stop Mass Shootings Is One of the Scariest Proposals Yet.

* “Hey, Google! Let me talk to my departed father.”

Twitter’s promise vs. Twitter’s reality.

Immigration panic: how the west fell for manufactured rage. Trump administration seeks to deport children with life-threatening illnesses.

It Is Very Bad That Our President Reportedly Lied About Trade Negotiations With China. Let’s Compare Donald Trump’s Week to the Impeachment Articles Brought Against Nixon, Clinton, and Johnson.

* There’s no FEC anymore. There’s not really an NLRB, either.

Dear America, universal health care is what real freedom looks like.

How Slavery Shaped American Capitalism.

Capitalism Is Making Us Sick: A Q&A With Emily Guendelsberger About Her New Book, On the Clock.

7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind.

Liberalism in Theory and Practice.

* The Children’s Crusade: This Colorado charter school is teaching 6th graders how to fight back against shooters.

* Well guys, I’m about to walk out the TNR office doors for the last time. But before I do, I want to share some hard truths about climate change I’ve learned in the last 2.5 yrs reporting here.

North Carolina’s Climate Change Blind Spots Make Dorian More Dangerous. Rising seas ‘could displace 280m people,’ draft UN report warns. New Miami Hurricane Hazard: Dockless Scooters as Projectiles.

* On pregnancy in the Anthropocene.

* The Climate Trail.

How to Win Wisconsin. And elsewhere on the Wisconsin beat: Wisconsin workers embedded with microchips.

* The rape charges were dropped because the victim’s credibility was “seriously, seriously questionable” and the charges could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt, said Justice Danny Chun. The agreed-upon facts are inarguably rape.

* Meanwhile, a Maryland teen has been labeled a child pornographer for sharing a video of her own sex act.

* Good news: Sacklers could hold on to most of personal fortune in proposed Purdue settlement.

* On the greatness of Peanuts (when it was good).

* In the age of the psychonauts.

* “It’s time to talk about James Mattis’s involvement with the Theranos scandal. He’s selling a book, not saving the country from Trump.”

* “Brain-reading tech is coming. The law is not ready to protect us.”

* First is third. Second is first. Third is second.

The Longest Walkable Distance on Earth.

* Here’s a thing that no one asked for but that I think we all need: the style guide alignment chart.

* Compulsory homosexuality in Ireland! Marxist-lesbianism is the state ideology!

* DeepMind Can Now Beat Us at Multiplayer Games, Too.

* Dicey Dungeons rules.

* The Slinky was invented by accident.

* Jordan Peele drops a surprise flick.

Donald was the first child ever diagnosed with autism. Identified in the annals of autism as “Case 1 … Donald T,” he is the initial subject described in a 1943 medical article that announced the discovery of a condition unlike “anything reported so far,” the complex neurological ailment now most often called an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. At the time, the condition was considered exceedingly rare, limited to Donald and 10 other children—Cases 2 through 11—also cited in that first article.

* On precocious puberty, the hell you didn’t even know was possible.

* Sing to me, muse, of the man of twists and turns…

* My five-alarm-fire Star Wars 9 and Notorious RBG predictions, for the record.

* We’re all rooting for you, sweetie.

* And science has finally found the secret to happiness.

Written by gerrycanavan

September 1, 2019 at 9:17 am

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Don’t Look a Day Over 240 Links

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* SFRA Awards 2016. Congrats all!

* Note to all sf writers: If your future doesn’t somehow address the problem of distributed harassment networks, you’re not taking the present seriously enough.

* The Student Loan Suicides. New Jersey’s Student Loan Program is ‘State-Sanctioned Loan-Sharking.’

There is money available in the digital humanities in a way that there has never been money in English departments, ever. With very limited exceptions, the idea that one could get a six-figure grant for doing something in English is just unheard of. The only types of grants people typically got — with the exception of major career-capping grants like Guggenheims — were salary replacement for a year to write a book. That was the best we could hope for. So the idea that all of a sudden there was some part of English where someone could get $300,000 to $400,000 grants was both politically striking and disturbing. It wasn’t like the leading figures in English were saying we have to have this large pot of money for DH. It was external people, especially Mellon and the NEH — under the influence of some of the big DH people, whose animus for the rest of English was palpable and explicit — who decided to do this. This has had a tremendously deforming effect.

So the problem isn’t that we can’t win reformist victories for workers. History has shown that we can. The problem is what comes after victory, and we need a theory of socialism and social democracy that prepares our movements for that phase.

* Is it better to hope or to despair? Do you want to create better art, or do you want a better world in which to create? Are you an artist or an activist? Yes.

* Life after the end of the world: California Heat Wave Spells Doom For Avocados.

* The richest, most powerful, most prosperous nation in human history.

Guy Leaves Fake Animal Facts All Over Los Angeles Zoo.

* Guns & D&D.

* Brain-drain as social justice.

* Butler and Trump (though I should say she was really thinking of Reagan, who used the same slogan).

* The greying of the homeless.

Teen who urged boyfriend to kill himself will stand trial.

A Look at the Use of Drones During the Obama Administration.

Stereogum reports five years of hard paperwork for Apple has finally paid off, and the company has obtained a patent on technology that will disable your phone’s camera when it detects a specific infrared signal. In the time it took you to read that sentence, you probably also had the three seconds of reflection time it would take a reasonable person to think, “Oh, that sounds extremely problematic.”

* 2 weeks out, and Trump’s convention is a total mess. Sad! TPM continues to pound the Trump fundraising saga. Tracing Donald Trump’s Social Media Ties to White Supremacists. The latest example.

Hillary Clinton was the force behind a little-known breakthrough in transgender rights. So why doesn’t she talk about it?

* Still one of my favorite images on the web ever: Richmond Golf Club, Temporary Rules (1940).

* You just can’t win: Closing apps to save your battery only makes things worse.

* The things you learn from Lazy Doctor Who: the original series one did an (now lost) Dalek episode without the Doctor or Companions.

New Study Busts the Myth That Knights Couldn’t Move Well in Armor.

We can either spend our time thinking and funding tentacle porn or we can spend our time thinking and funding civilization. I know what I’d pick…

Tuesday Morning Links

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* From the archives: The university is no longer primarily a site of production (of a national labor force or national culture) as it was in the 1970s and 80s, but has become primarily a site of capital investment and accumulation. The historical process through which this transformation was implemented is long and complicated, and we cannot give a detailed account of it here. Instead, we want to describe the general shape of this new model and the consequences it might have for political action in a university setting. We take as paradigmatic the case of the University of Michigan, where this model has been worked out in its most developed form and from which it is spreading across the United States, as university administrators across the country look to and emulate what they glowingly call the “Michigan model.” In this new university, instruction is secondary to ensuring the free flow of capital. Bodies in classrooms are important only to the extent that money continues to flow through the system. It is a university that in a global sense has ceased to be a university—its primary purpose is no longer education but circulation. This is the new logic of the university. If we want to fight it, we have to understand it.

Merit, Diversity and Grad Admissions.

* Big Data and Graduation Rates.

* Teaching the controversy in California, Holocaust edition.

* Another absolutely botched college investigation of a sexual assault.

* Violent Abuse of the Mentally Ill Is Routine, Widespread at Rikers Island.

* Bullshitting about Gaza.

* Malcolm Harris on redheads and playacting racist.

* Why it’s time we talked about the sex lives of humanitarians.

* Shouting About Diving, but Shrugging About Concussions. How to stop FIFA from being such a parasite. Could the World Cup Champion Beat the Best Club Team in the World? Stadiums and/as prisons. Another World Cup Is Possible.

* That’s… ominous. Parts of Yellowstone National Park closed after massive supervolcano beneath it melts roads.

* Buzzfeed has a longread about the behavior of a long-term predator in an elite California private school.

* Meanwhile, Pope Francis’s back-of-the-envelope calculation of the number of predators in the clergy is utterly horrifying.

* Demolition unearths legacy of toxic pollution at Milwaukee plant.

* Is Milwaukee the No. 1 city for tech? Not so fast.

* The July effect is real: new doctors really do make hospitals more dangerous.

* Joss Whedon has written more Buffy the Vampire Slayer. True fact!

Behind-The-Scenes Footage Of Buffy Stunts Is the Ultimate Time Suck.

On the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons.

* Against natural gas as a “transition fuel.”

* If you pretend precedent is meaningful and the rule of law is an operative concept in America, and squint real hard, here’s a way Hobby Lobby could be good news for liberals.

There is, Steve estimates, room enough on the ark for 23 people to live comfortably. And Australians are welcome. Singles, couples, families, believers. All that’s required is a $300 one way ticket from Brisbane to Luganville and a commitment that means forever.

* A bit on the nose, don’t you think? Two Fruitland Park, Fla. cops have lost their jobs after an FBI source named the two as members of the Ku Klux Klan.

* Uber and rape: Seattle Police Clear Uber Driver of Rape Charge, But Not Sexual Assault.

* When Park Middle School cheated on a high-stakes test.

* The goal of ethics is to maximize human flourishing.

* And the new Doctor Who trailer fills me with a little bit of sadness: I was really hoping the Capaldi era would be more swashbuckling than brooding. I guess I’m looking forward to Moffat moving on.

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Thursday Links

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* Research shows that if a child discloses sexual abuse, chances are very, very good that no matter how young he or she is, how angry his or her parent is at the accused, how numb or stiff he or she seems discussing it, how willing she or he is to back off from the claim at any one point, how little physical evidence there is, that child is probably telling the truth. Six Reasons Why Dylan Farrow Is Highly Credible.

* A Brief History of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee at NYU.

Wildly popular accounts like @HistoryInPics are bad for history, bad for Twitter, and bad for you.

* On Saying the Same Thing a Thousand Times.

* We have not in modern high-income, public-education, open-access societies actually managed to increase the rate of social mobility above what it was in preindustrial society.

Male, Mad and Muddleheaded: Academics in Children’s Picture Books.

* “Oppressed Majority”: Life as a Woman.

* Also at Buzzfeed (sorry): What Arbitrary Thing Are You?

* The latest in terrible education reform ideas: the “parent trigger.”

* The latest in weird weather: “frost quakes.”

* Train Spills 12,000 Gallons Of Oil In Minnesota, No Major Cleanup Effort Planned.

* Jerry Seinfeld, philosopher.

“You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested. I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that.”

* True facts that sound false.

* Stolen Stradivarius violin recovered, sources say.

* Marbles Anne Frank gave a playmate when her family went into hiding from World War II Nazis are on exhibit in the Netherlands after 70 years in a cupboard.

* Marriage equality in Scotland.

* The tactical brilliance of BDS becomes clearer with every passing month.

* Iran Is Apparently Adopting Universal Health Care.

* ‘Shy’ male sues Women’s Studies teacher for failing him after he refused to attend class.

* What happens when two chatbots try to seduce each other.

* Finally, a Bachelor Contestant Exposes the Show’s Weird Sex Issues.

At some point we jumped the tracks and wound up in a really polemic 1980s dystopia.

Latinos overwhelmingly want action on climate change.

* Bill Watterson wins the Nobel Prize of Comics.

* So much for my doomsday prepping: The Great Lakes May Be Drying Up.

Single Mother Fired For Staying Home With Her Son When Schools Closed For Subzero Weather.

XStat Rapid Hemostasis System for Gunshot Wounds Works in 15 Seconds.

Wisconsin’s law on police accountability in custody deaths goes unused.

“That is as bad as anything I’ve ever heard,” he said of the decision to let Weston work with cleaning products. “Not only did they know he was suicidal, they know how he did it, and they gave him the very agent that he’s used to try to commit suicide. That sounds criminal.”

Your iPhone Has a Secret Undo Button.

* There’s a new TNI out, on H8.

* They’re making a movie out of High Rise, which is great news.

* The first fear is always the fear of the doppelgänger.

* And LifeHack has some important Beard Facts.

Mashable-Beard-Facts-Comic

Thursday Night Links

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* I saw this movie: Brains of rats connected allowing them to share information via internet.

It bears repeating: The candidate’s adviser sent us a letter on which both “department of history” and “faculty of arts and sciences” were misspelled.

Advice From Tenure-Track Faculty To Those Entering The Profession.

* Beyond the MOOC: While other universities move quickly to offer courses online for free, Carnegie Mellon University is instead starting for-profit efforts designed to capture segments of the education market. I’ll promote this a bit more as the date gets closer, but I’ll be speaking at a “What’s the Matter with MOOCs?” event at UWM in mid-March.

Boots on Campus: Yale Flap Highlights Militarization of Academia.

Student Debt Nearly Tripled In 8 Years, New York Federal Reserve Reports.

* The Dan Harmon backlash, at the AV Club and TNR (of all things).

* Justice, American style: The city’s complaint in federal court claims that if Ms. Truong is entitled to damages for the nearly three years she spent in jail awaiting trial, then Mr. Ryan is as much to blame as the city because he took too long to get the coerced confession tossed out of court by the judge.

* What is happening with Bob Woodward? Seriously, WTF Is Up With Bob Woodward?

Will a Republican friend-of-the-court brief tip the Supreme Court in favor of gay marriage? I’m pretty sure it’ll have more luck than Obama’s.

These numbers are unprecedented: by 2014 President Obama will have deported over 2 million people – more in six years than all people deported before 1997. That “before 1997” actually means since 1892.

AFL-CIO Executive Council Endorses Comprehensive Doomsday Policy for Working Families.

“We need union jobs today, not tomorrow,” said Rich Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO.  “The resolution balances our desire to protect the fragile ecosystem of the earth, while acknowledging the economic benefits of a high-road strategy to develop the doomsday technologies of the future.”

* Never forget: The entire staff of the West Wing died on Voyager.

How Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the EmpireTurned Star Wars into Science Fiction.

Women Work Harder Than Men, Study Says.

* The Turn against Nabokov.

* When the White House was completely gutted.

The social events of the 1948 holiday season had to be canceled. And with good reason: Experts called the third floor of the White House “an outstanding example of a firetrap.” The result of a federally commissioned report found the mansion’s plumbing “makeshift and unsanitary,” while “the structural deterioration [was] in ‘appalling degree,’ and threatening complete collapse.” The congressional commission on the matter was considering the option of abandoning the structure altogether in favor of a built-from-scratch mansion, but President Truman lobbied for the restoration.

* When Martin Luther King played pool.

“Preserved” plushies in jars.

* Help wanted: must be infallible.

* They’re making a movie out of The Drowned World.

Shale Gas Fracking Will Be Around For a Long, Long Time.

* And American history, Breitbart style: Journalists on the campaign trail saw Johnson drunkenly board a plane armed with nuclear weapons and then accidentally drop them on the United States. We all saw it!

Wake Up Sheeple

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Barack Obama appears exactly one minute into this classic video. The truth is out there.


Written by gerrycanavan

June 5, 2010 at 4:26 pm

Remembering the Beatles

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…in 1000 years. Thanks, Erica!

Written by gerrycanavan

November 24, 2009 at 8:48 am

Sopraneys

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True fact: if you took every swear word from The Sopranos and stacked them one top of another, it would reach the Moon.

Written by gerrycanavan

February 10, 2009 at 2:31 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

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