Weekend Links!

* South Carolina Officer Is Charged With Murder of Walter Scott. The police can’t police themselves. And now the public is too scared to cooperate with them. Police Reform Is Impossible in America. The Police Are America’s Terrorists. Man Who Recorded Walter Scott Murder Is Worried Police May Kill Him. White America’s Silence on Police Brutality Is Consent.

* Montreal professors stare down riot cops.

* Colleges are raising costs because they can.

* How self-segregation and concentrated affluence became normal in America.

* How to survive a mega-drought.

* The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct.

* None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use.

* In The Midst Of Toxic Oil Spill, Vancouver Announces It Will Go 100 Percent Renewable.

* Report: Hillary Clinton Overlooked Labor Violations After Millions in Donations. Guess what I’m #ready for?

* Is Hillary Clinton even any good at running for president?

* The Assistant Economy.

* Elizabeth Warren Is Right About Everything.

* The Columbia Report on Rolling Stone‘s Rape Story Is Bad for Journalism.

* The Brontosaurus Is Back. Take that, science!

* A Map Showing UFO Hot Spots Across The United States.

* The analysis concluded that, over the past 10 years, the five pension funds have paid more than $2 billion in fees to money managers and have received virtually nothing in return, Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said in an interview on Wednesday.

* The man who was accidentally released from prison 88 years early.

* What Was On a 1920s Membership Application for the KKK?

* Haunted by The Handmaid’s Tale.

* On correcting the Bible.

* Wired proves the laws of physics don’t apply to Legolas.

* Videogame Publishers: No Preserving Abandoned Games, Even for Museums and Archives, Because All “Hacking” is Illegal.

* Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to get even more boring spinoff. If that’s possible.

* Memorial for the “Unknown Deserter” – Potsdam, Germany.

* The Photographer Who Took This Picture Barely Escaped With His Life.

* This Probably Made Up Reddit Story About a Potato Is Incredibly Good.

* There’s nothing sweet in life.

* Lili Loofbourow takes the bait on the “is that all there is?” Mad Men and boredom thinkpiece. Also from Lili: You Should Be Watching ‘Fortitude,’ A Murder-Mystery That Makes Climate Change The Real Villain.

* Arrested Development returning for 17 episodes, according to Brian Grazer.

* A cheat sheet for figuring out where in the US you are by recognizing the background from movies.

* 12 Ways Humanity Could Destroy The Entire Solar System.

* And I really hope they catch him this time.

Friday Links

* Oh, JK: Harry Potter Spin-Off Movie Coming, JK Rowling Writing Screenplay.

* The “Merit Aid” Fiasco.

* “500 year flood” in Colorado. We get those every year now.

* When you can pause for a moment between waves of stomach-churning heebie-jeebies, you realize that not only are these women sympathetic characters, but they’re all the more terrifying because they have every bit of anger that makes living women sources of fear, but none of the societal restriction. The Feminist Power of Female Ghosts.

* The President and the Pipeline.

* There’s Something Wrong With America’s Premier Liberal Pollster.

* What Isaac Asimov Thought 2014 Would Look Like. Of course, he wasn’t always so optimistic.

* U-Va. should break some ties with state, panel says in preliminary report. I’m very conflicted about this — I’m not interested in UVA’s ability to “more easily increase tuition” but I would like to see it preserve its independence, and I like the idea of legislatures facing some potential political cost for destroying state university systems.

* Vladimir Putin, the most successful troll of all time.

* Shocked, shocked! Allegations of sex, pay and grade changes trouble Oklahoma State University football fans.

* Massive fire last night at the Seaside Heights boardwalk. Just terrible.

* And all that is solid melts into air: RIP, Marshall Berman. I feel like I begin half the things I write with a quote from All That Is Solid.

Revenge of the Unnecessary Sequels

Star Wars Sequel Debacle Simulator.

Thursday Night Links

* Why did small business owner and gamer dad Mike Hoye spend the last few weeks hand-tweaking the text in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker so that the main character was referred to as a girl instead of a boy? As he put it, “I’m not having my daughter growing up thinking girls don’t get to be the hero.”

* Romney Adviser: Not a Single Person on the Campaign Thought He Would Lose.

* What You Can Get for $228,646,000. I could have lost them basically everything for half that.

* Nate Silver explains that malapportionment in the Electoral College may actually be flowing the Democrats’ way in the near-term:

The problem for Republicans is that in states like these, and others like Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas, they are now winning by such large margins there that their vote is distributed inefficiently in terms of the Electoral College.

By contrast, a large number of electorally critical states – both traditional swing states like Iowa and Pennsylvania and newer ones like Colorado and Nevada – have been Democratic-leaning in the past two elections. If Democrats lose the election in a blowout, they would probably lose these states as well. But in a close election, they are favored in them.

* I really don’t understand why Rolling Jubilee is worth doing. Why would we give the banks free money for bad debt they’ve already written off?

* The pros and cons of a Casablanca sequel. Spoiler alert: there is no possible pro.

Bangarang

I can’t tell if Hook is actually underrated or if my nostalgia for the film is just entirely emotive—and I don’t want to know!—but I think we can all agree that the world has waited for its Rufio spinoff long enough.

Quick Links

* 4th laziest state looks a lot better than 37th in child welfare.

* Receipts are coated with BPA and your box spring is conspiring to kill you. Nothing’s going right.

* For the first time in forty years, Congress has repealed a mandatory minimum sentence.

* A federal judge has blocked much of Arizona’s documentation law from taking effect.

The law will still take effect Thursday, but without many of the provisions that angered opponents — including sections that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws. The judge also put on hold a part of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places.

* Bill O’Reilly: America-hating hippie.

* How Glenn Beck cons his viewers (Goldline edition). Via MeFi.

* There is no good reason on Earth to oppose the DREAM Act.

* There is no good reason on Earth to continue making Battlestar Galactica spinoffs.

* There is every reason in the world to make a Quantum Leap film. Please do this.

* Conservatives may be willing to shrug off the possibility of rising sea levels, desertification and mass extinctions, but can they live with the risk of more Mexicans crossing the border to breathe their precious American air?

* Hopefully not while we’re there next week: “Liverpool Disappears for a Billionth of a Second.”

* I bet the $45 was well-spent.

* Oil spills, oil spills.

* To avenge Paul the psychic octopus, we must invade Iran.

* And Wookieleaks is your best source for anti-Imperial news.

How to Save ‘Heroes’

How to save Heroes: Kill the show, salvage what you can in spin-offs. Via io9.

Veronica Mars: First Time as Farce, Second Time As…

Veronica Mars showrunner Rob Thomas has been tapped to helm the Beverly Hills, 90210 sequel series. I guess they liked his mockery of the show so much they wanted to see him try it straight. Via AICN.

Also: Fox is making a Family Guy spin-off about Cleveland? That’s got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.