Posts Tagged ‘vultures’
Monday Links!
* Just came across this card game as part of an editing project I’m working on: The Quiet Year.
The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a community living after the collapse of civilization, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.
* The fact is that there is no excess in teaching critical analysis – in an era of increasing political propaganda and weakening democratic bonds it’s estimably necessary. We teach how to critically read culture – including movies, comics, and television – not because we don’t acknowledge the technical greatness of a Shakespeare, but in addition to it. Contrary to Douthat’s stereotypes, there’s not an English professor alive who doesn’t understand Shakespeare’s technical achievements when compared to lesser texts, but we understand that anything made by people is worthy of being studied because it tells us something about people. That is the creed of Terrence when he wrote that “I am human and I let nothing which is human be alien to me” – no doubt Douthat knows the line. Did I mention that he went to Harvard?
* How College Became a Commodity.
* Price of admission to Johns Hopkins just went up.
* William Gibson: We Are All Science Fiction Writers Now.
* Danger.
* Most people think capitalism does more harm than good, survey shows.
* Tech Companies Want to Run Our Cities. A Georgia town welcomed America’s largest coal plant. Now, residents worry it’s contaminating their water. Rich people live longer and have 9 more healthy years than poor people, according to new research. The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration. Climate change won’t result in a new normal but in constant, horrifying new disasters.
* The Vanishing Executive Assistant: The erosion of jobs that gave women without college degrees a career path happened in dribs and drabs but is as dramatic as the manufacturing decline.
* Virginia Braces for Arrival of Pro-Gun Militias Amid State of Emergency.
* Hunger Striker Nearing Death in ICE Custody: “I Just Want Freedom.”
* The trouble with crime statistics.
* There’s a reason why the royals are demonised. But you won’t read all about it.
* Yet the politically engaged have also taken to believing that electability is a stable and perhaps even measurable quality innate to the candidates themselves. This belief persists despite the victory, in that election, of a man who was widely considered one of the most unelectable candidates ever to seek the presidency. Now many of the sages who rendered that judgment have reconvened to tell us Donald Trump can only be beaten by someone matching a profile—white, male, moderate—that has not won Democrats the presidency in 24 years.
* If you’re going to listen to the endorsement of a neoliberal with terrible opinions, at least make it Matt Yglesias!
* I’m continually amazed that Hollywood as been so slow to adapt Vaughn’s comics, but Ex Machina is a good one and Oscar Isaacs will give it some real juice. Time to reread!
* News you can use: the forever war between “come” and “cum.”
* Real life horror stories: Symphysiotomy – Ireland’s brutal alternative to caesareans.
* Panicking About Your Kids’ Phones? New Research Says Don’t.
* I was way ahead of the game on this: Lego sets its sights on a growing market: Stressed-out adults.
* And a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies.
Happy Happy Monday Monday Links
* 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!
* 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.
* 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.
* 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 politics of the liberal arts nanny.
* And the 26 Best Cities In The World To See Street Art. Below: Philadelpia.
Gerry Canavan 