Friday Links!

• Great looking one-day symposium: Queer Utopias.
• CFP: Camps, (In)justice, and Solidarity in the Americas – Commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camps. CFP: Kinship in the Fiction of N. K. Jemisin: Relations of Power and Resistance. CFP: SFRA Panels at ASLE 21. CFP: Migration and Exile in Science Fiction. CFP: Black Feminism on the Edge. CFP: The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature. CFP: Alternatives to the Anthropocene.
• Kurt Vonnegut: March Madness Edition.
• Sci-Fi Writer or Prophet? The Hyperreal Life of Chen Qiufan.
• In this situation, safeguarding the planet requires building a counter-hegemony. What is needed is to resolve the present cacophony of opinion into an eco-political commonsense that can orient a broadly shared project of transformation. Certainly, such a commonsense must cut through the mass of conflicting views and identify exactly what in society must be changed to stop global warming—effectively linking the authoritative findings of climate science to an equally authoritative account of the socio-historical drivers of climate change. To become counter-hegemonic, however, a new commonsense must transcend the ‘merely environmental’. Addressing the full extent of our general crisis, it must connect its ecological diagnosis to other vital concerns—including livelihood insecurity and denial of labour rights; public disinvestment from social reproduction and chronic undervaluation of carework; ethno-racial-imperial oppression and gender and sex domination; dispossession, expulsion and exclusion of migrants; militarization, political authoritarianism and police brutality. These concerns are intertwined with and exacerbated by climate change, to be sure. But the new commonsense must avoid reductive ‘ecologism’. Far from treating global warming as a trump card that overrides everything else, it must trace that threat to underlying societal dynamics that also drive other strands of the present crisis. Only by addressing all major facets of this crisis, ‘environmental’ and ‘non-environmental’, and by disclosing the connections among them, can we begin to build a counter-hegemonic bloc that backs a common project and possesses the political heft to pursue it effectively.
• If voting worked, they’d make it illegal, and they’re going to.
• I’d like this to stop: Drone comic.
• Undergrad and incarcerated students are learning side-by-side at Marquette. The result is transformative.
• “No one gets fired.” Protest to reinstate 39 eliminated faculty ends up in the street. ‘It’s criminal’ : How Marquette’s languages department is trying to stay afloat amid budget shortfalls and failed support.
• Tenure’s not the problem; administrative bloat is.
• $40 Billion for Colleges. Accreditor Places Wheeling University on Probation. Faculty union at Elon declares victory as university agrees to bargain. Spring Enrollment Keeps Slipping.
• Some Notes on Romulans from Michael Chabon. Shockingly compelling!
• History Channel Launching ‘The Center Seat’ Docuseries All About Star Trek.

The "cone" is an absolutely insane shape. What if a triangle was a circle. A nightmarish vision from the deranged mind of H.P. Lovecraft

— stu (@rinbcage) March 5, 2021

• Zoom isn’t carbon-free. The climate costs of staying home.
• The Rules for Race: Dungeons & Dragons in the Suburbs.
• Satanic Panics and the Death of Mythos.
• How I (Barely) Survived the Abject Failure of My Much Hyped Debut Novel.
• I Shouldn’t Have to Dehumanize My Son to Get Him Support. Parenting as a Radical Act of Love.
• A Marvelous History of the Vision’s Penis.
• We will never let them cancel Pepe le Pew.
• Curation is not cancellation.
• This is why we can’t have nice things.

This is why we can't have nice things. pic.twitter.com/8D8lkEij6k

— Amy is rightfully pissed off now ☭ (@Amysaysfuckalot) March 7, 2021

• The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting.
• Andrew Cuomo Should Resign.
• Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.
• “Can you please paint The Artist Formerly Known As Prince having a fight with Prince Harry over who is least known as Prince now. In the background we can see the The Queen, and Queen (the band) also fighting over a similar thing.”
• Misogynoir Nearly Killed Meghan Markle.
• Unions Are Cool Now.
• The Lost Year: What the Pandemic Cost Teenagers.
• ‘There’s a lot of nasty stuff’: the people living with long Covid.
• Life after vaccination.
• “Scientists” should call their publicist, I think someone’s talking out of school: Scientists want to send 6.7M sperm samples to the moon.
• The Invention of murder.
• Inside the incel.
• ‘My body is unserviceable and well past its sell-by date’: the last days of Avril Henry.
• The arc of the moral universe is long, but Texas school scraps assignment that had girls ‘obey any reasonable request of a male’.
• We don’t belong on Mars, we haven’t landed on Earth yet.
• Scientists Announce a Physical Warp Drive Is Now Possible. Seriously.
• The New Star Wars Trilogy Wasn’t Worth It.
• Against WandaVision.
• Watch a supercut of sci-fi movies that use Asian bodies without casting Asian characters.
• What took so long? FX Orders Pilot Based On Octavia E. Butler’s ‘Kindred’ Novel From Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Courtney Lee-Mitchell & Protozoa. More Butler content! Reviews of her career in the New Yorker and Bookforum.

Call me Space Ishmael. Some space years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no space money in my space purse, and nothing particular to interest me on space shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the spacey part of the world.

— Space Moby Dick (@space_moby_dick) March 7, 2021

Some Links for the Weekend!

* After compiling extensive data from over 600 LEGO sets, students found that most Lego sets were marketed almost exclusively to boys and included very few female mini-figures. And, as one student wrote, “if there is a lego girl, she is either covered in make up or a Damsel in Distress.”

* Marvel and the war machine. Dragonlance and loneliness. Star Trek continuity: Talmudic and fundamentalist paradigms.

* Meanwhile the he-wasn’t-really-Khan heresy extends its influence.

* The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is establishing a major new center for the analysis of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the only such center based in a public research library, Schomburg officials said on Thursday.

* Milwaukee Bar Celebrates World Cup In Most Tone Deaf Way Possible. Could the 2022 World Cup really move from Qatar to the USA? Losing Brazil. The World Cup and Utopia.

The tournament is sold to us as the story of a level playing field from which a few deserving souls might be elevated to something more spectacular than equal access to opportunity. As if the latter were a given in our lives, and not, in fact, the elusive aim of an ongoing struggle. The level playing field of a bright green square of uniform grass produces a world of losers. What keeps the World Cup in place? What keeps national associations under FIFA’s sway?Who on earth really wants yet another tournament that concludes with a cynical exchange of fouls by two teams we imagine as enemies but who are, really, two sides of the same coin? Where, the fan asks, do we turn for a glimpse of some other possibility?

* The headline reads, “Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown.”

* Like Edge of Tomorrow, but every time he wakes up he has to invade Iraq again.

* 12 Futuristic Forms of Government That Could One Day Rule the World.

* Only the young rich can save us now, Community ratings edition. Dan Harmon remains pessimistic about revival, but teases a potential sequel series.

* The violence of the system: A Pennsylvania mother of seven died in a jail cell where she was serving a two-day sentence for her children’s absence from school, drawing complaints from the judge that sent her there about a broken system that punishes impoverished parents.

* Leaving Homeless Person On The Streets: $31,065. Giving Them Housing: $10,051.

* The Turing Test is complete nonsense, but this chatbot doesn’t even come close.

* How to design a warp drive.

* Ramona (at forty).

* Game of Thrones: Westeros High.

* Labor and/vs. the environment.

* Chris Hedges and plagiarism.

* Academic freedom watch 2014.

* And why didn’t anyone warn us! Baby No. 2 Is Harder on Mom Than Dad.

Tuesday Night Links!

* This won’t be the last time you hear about it, but Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction finally has a pre-order page.

* In a post-employment economy ridden with arbitrary credentialism, a résumé is often not a reflection of achievement but a document sanctioning its erasure. One is not judged on what one has accomplished, but on one’s ability to walk a path untouched by the incongruities of market forces.

* Want to teach your students about structural racism? Prepare for a formal reprimand. Lessons from the Collection IV: Teaching While Black (Part I). Part II.

* Free as in speech. Free as in beer. Free as in Huey. Free as in lunch. Free as in bird. Free as in love. Free education for all.

* At Some Other Berkeley: Frederick Wiseman’s At Berkeley mistakes the enemies of public higher education for its defenders.

* Has UC Berkeley mortgaged itself to football?

* “‘Too good to check’ used to be a warning to newspaper editors not to jump on bullshit stories. Now it’s a business model.”

* American Students Fall Behind International Peers In Math, Science, And Reading. Countries With Higher Math Scores Have Unhappier Kids.

* Point: Superheroes are a bunch of fascists. Counterpoint: Stop Calling Superheroes ‘Fascist.’

* Democracy watch: Gov. Snyder has effectively absolute authority dismantling Detroit despite losing in the city 20-1. What’s next for Detroit?

* I Am Sitting in a Room, 2013.

* Europe Could Be 9 Degrees Warmer By The End Of The Century.

* Uruguayan President Asks for World to Support His Marijuana Legalization Plan.

* British Think Tank Revives 40-year-old Plan to Build Space Colonies. How NASA might build its very first warp drive.

* And What’s Wrong With America’s Newspaper Opinion Columnists in One Chart.

Thursday! Thursday! Thursday!

* The newest Ted Chiang story details the struggle of forgetting against memory.

* CFP for ICFA 2014, always my favorite conference experience of the year. This year’s theme is “Fantastic Empires.” If history is any guide, I’d wager Ted Chiang will be there!

* Am I Yanomami or am I nabuh? The child of a Yanomami woman and a male American anthropologist goes to the Amazon to look for his mother.

* The Internet Explained By Prisoners Who Have Never Seen It.

* Covert action. Surveillance. Counterintelligence. The U.S. “black budget” spans over a dozen agencies that make up the National Intelligence Program.

* The five (and a half) stages of humanitarian military intervention. Great moments in op-eds: Bomb Syria, Even if It Is Illegal. Adam Kotsko: If the U.S. government lacks either the will or the ability to take care of those very serious problems in a country where it enjoys largely unquestioned legitimacy, stable institutions, and a docile population, exactly why the fuck is it remotely plausible that it can solve problems in a foreign country embroiled in a civil war?

* Hometown news! A Morris County court has determined that knowingly texting a driver could leave you on the hook for their crash.

* Football’s Concussion Crisis, Explained. The NFL has just settled with the players for $765 million in the latest round of concussion-related lawsuits.

* Johnny Manziel’s suspension exposes ridiculousness of NCAA’s double standards.

* Even if he wins, will Bill de Blasio actually be able to accomplish anything?

* Do Republicans really have better-than-even odds to take the presidency in 2016?

* Northeastern just has its adjuncts’ best interests at heart. If anything, maybe it loves too much.

* Meet Dr. Donna Nelson, science advisor for Breaking Bad.

* Eric Holder Says DOJ Will Let Washington, Colorado Marijuana Laws Go Into Effect.

* Science proves men are just the worst.

* The New York Times has a feminist history of Monopoly.

* Definitely, 100% accurate: Scientists say they’ve found key to actual warp drive.

* Teju Cole’s Dictionary of Received Ideas.

SCANDAL. If governmental, express surprise that people are surprised. If sexual, declare it a distraction, but seek out the details.

SEMINAL. Be sure to use in a review of a woman’s work. Proclaim your innocence after.

SMART. Any essay that confirms your prejudices.

STRIKE. Always “surgical.” (See EGGS.)

* Mitch Hurwitz keeps making promises that he better by God deliver.

* And SEK’s Internet Film School is officially open for business. Go read up!

A Few Friday Morning Links

* Miracles and wonders? The Princeton Election Consortium thinks Democrats are favorites to regain the House. Meanwhile. And meanwhile.

* We Are All Welfare Queens Now.

* In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a “safe haven” law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off at a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here’s the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family — nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

* How not to write comics criticism.

* More on the only good thing that’s happening anywhere, NASA’s work on warp drive.

* FBI successfully thwarts another FBI-led terror plot.

* And Ted McCagg has your best word ever. Please be advised.

Tuesday Morning

* Yeah, so it’s fair to say Mitt Romney’s been having a pretty bad week.

* Stealing magic has become a commonplace crime. Teller, a man of infinite delicacy and deceit, decided to do something about it.

* Don’t say it unless you mean it: NASA developing a real warp drive.

* Kenya uses a science fiction book to teach children ethnic tolerance.

* By 2020, two-thirds of U.S. jobs will require a college degree. It’s almost as if all the recent hooplah about not going to college was totally ignorant of the actual economic realities in the U.S.

* And in sad news: Newborn Loses Faith In Humanity After Record 6 Days.

“This shatters all previous records,” University of Chicago psychologist Douglas McAllister said Monday. “In all of documented medical history, there is no case of a newborn taking less than four months to develop the mental faculties required to grasp the full extent of this existential nightmare we call life on earth.”

 

Trek and Anti-Trek

Proposed by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994, the drive would propel a ship at superluminal speeds by creating a bubble of negative energy around it, expanding space (and time) behind the ship while compressing space in front of it. In much the same way that a surfer rides a wave, the bubble of space containing the ship and its passengers would be pushed at velocities not limited to the speed of light toward a destination.

Of course, when the ship reaches its destination it has to stop. And that’s when all hell breaks loose.