* I just draw it for myself. I guess I have a gift for expressing pedestrian tastes. In a way, it’s kind of depressing. TCJ: The Bill Watterson Interview (1989).
* “Nada”: The comic adaptation of the short story that inspired They Live!
* The PhD Deluge.
* Jared Diamond: We Could Be Living in a New Stone Age by 2114. Taking the “over” on whether there’ll still be human beings alive in a hundred years, I guess…
* Anthropocene or Capitalocene?
* It was the final night of Uncivilization, an outdoor festival run by the Dark Mountain Project, a loose network of ecologically minded artists and writers, and he was standing with several dozen others waiting for the festival’s midnight ritual to begin.
* Terrible New York Times article on a fascinating topic: the “year zero” project of cultural destruction in Mali.
* Aboriginal rights a threat to Canada’s resource agenda, documents reveal.
* After Holding Mentally Disabled Man Hostage for 34 Years, Texas Rules He Conspired to Keep Himself in Jail.
* In order to pay for his son Cole’s life-saving surgery, he transported meth. But he got caught. Eighteen years later, his family, and the man who prosecuted him, are still working to set him free.
* Women prisoners sterilized to cut welfare costs in California. Of course it was illegal.
* Half of New York City Teens Behind Bars Have A Brain Injury, Study Finds.
* Every once in a while Matt Yglesias still writes something good: The case for confiscatory taxation.
* Carceral leftism: jail time for wage theft?
* Piketty reviews from James K. Galbraith and Doug Henwood.
* Synanon’s Sober Utopia: How a Drug Rehab Program Became a Violent Cult.
* Inside the “certified miracle” that will make Pope John Paul II a saint.
* The Case for Drawing and Doodling in Class. Can’t we just medicate this impulse away?
* The liberal version of unskewing the polls is declaring victory in election cycles that are years away. We’ve got them right where we want them!
* College is probably cheaper than you think, though that’s not saying much.
* I Ran the Pyongyang Marathon.
* Powdered alcohol: what could possibly go wrong?
* Your personal information is worth just $0.16.
* Coming out as a porn star. From Vox, the site dedicated to explaining the news with clarity and specificity traditional news outlets can’t afford.
* Meanwhile, at a traditional news outlet: Can the Klan rebrand? They’ve tried before. Kudos, CNN, you remain the absolute worst.
* Hugo nominees 2014. If you know who Vox Day is, you know how messed up things are about to get.
* Criminal Cab Driver Mastermind (Allegedly) Evaded 3,000 Tolls.
* Antonin Scalia, Patriot.
* Abandon all hope watch: “The Democrats have a mega-donor problem.” Why can’t these naive billionaires see that Democrats who won’t support good policy are better than Republicans who oppose good policy!
* On a crisp morning in late March, an elite group of 100 young philanthropists and heirs to billionaire family fortunes filed into a cozy auditorium at the White House, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
* There’s A Hidden Timebomb In The Senate Rules That Will Go Off If A Supreme Court Justice Retires. But don’t you dare suggest anyone retire now to avoid disaster.
* Life is not a game. Neither is Candy Crush.
* Tumblr of the week: They Get It.
* This was the story of the Hurricane. Hurricane Carter’s dying wish.
* Marek Edelman: Last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis.
* I told that student they are much better off being a B student in computer science than an A+ student in English because it signals a rigor in your thinking and a more challenging course load. If you can’t tell that an A+ student in anything is doing singularly impressive work I don’t think “rigor” is your strong suit.
* Beyond the quantum computer: temporal computing.
* Nebraska School Gives Most Idiotic Advice Ever to Deal with Bullies. Don’t defend yourself, don’t ask for help…
* Paging Margaret Atwood: Drug that wipes out vultures may cause an EU eco-disaster.
* The Farscape movie is happening.
* Why did the TV version of Game of Thrones change Jaime Lannster into a rapist? More here. I’d gotten the impression that Jaime’s arc in the novels goes from “does the worst possible thing imaginable in very first appearance” to “kind of heroic?”’; last night’s episode makes that reading seem impossible.
All of which is build-up to pointing out that in the book, the reunion between Cersei and Jaime is seen from Jaime’s point of view. And once we consider that, those moments when Cersei has questions of propriety in the middle of their love making can take on a more sinister tone. What if we’re being kept from the true horror of what Jaime’s doing because we’re inside his head?
* The inventor of the American suburban shopping mall was a socialist. Could his creation have been saved?
* The politics of the liberal arts nanny.
* And the 26 Best Cities In The World To See Street Art. Below: Philadelpia.
