However Many Links You Think There Are In This Post, There Are Actually More Links Than That

* First, they cast Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, and I said nothing.

* de Boer v. Schuman re: Hopkins. It’s not the supply, it’s the demand.

* The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto.

* Earth’s Quietest Place Will Drive You Crazy in 45 Minutes.

* If I worked at Kansas University, this post might get me fired.

* Rortybomb v. the social safety net.

* Charlie Stross v. Bitcoin.

* X-tend the Allegory: What if the X-Men actually were black? Essay version. Via.

* “Men’s Rights” Trolls Spammed Us With 400 Fake Rape Reports.

* The Coming ‘Instant Planetary Emergency.’ It’s already here. 96 Percent Of Network Nightly News’ Coverage Of Extreme Weather Doesn’t Mention Climate Change. The year in fossil fuel disasters.

* “Unfathomable”: Why Is One Commission Trying to Close California’s Largest Public College? ACCJC Gone Wild.

* San Jose State University has all but ended its experiment to offer low-cost, high-quality online education in partnership with the massive open online course provider Udacity after a year of disappointing results and growing dismay among faculty members.

* Data Mining Exposes Embarrassing Problems For Massive Open Online Courses.

* CSU-Pueblo revising budget downward; up to 50 jobs at risk, loss of $3.3M.

* For-Profit College Oakbridge Academy Of Arts Suddenly Shuts Down.

* “This kid was dealt a bad hand. I don’t know quite why. That’s just the way God works. Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not,” the billionaire told Politicker, calling her plight “a sad situation.”

* In Defense of ‘Entitlements.’

* The way we die now.

* Oh, I see, there’s your problem right there. Links continue below the graph.

* “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”

* World’s first full-size Lego car can hit 20 mph, powered by insane, 256-cylinder compresed air engine.

* Scott Walker signals he will sign school mascot bill.

* Thieves steal risqué calendars, leave protest signs.

* DC Passes Great Minimum Wage and Paid Sick Days Bills. What’s in Them?

* France institutes a carbon tax.

* Community Season 5 Feels Like An Old Friend Has Finally Come Home.

* 62 Percent of Restaurant Workers Don’t Wash Their Hands After Handling Raw Beef.

* Mars by night.

* Shock in Ohio: No evidence of plot to register non-citizen voters. That only proves how successful the conspiracy has been!

* Wow: Tampa Toddler Thriving After Rare 5-Organ Transplant.

* The Decline of the US Death Penalty. Still illegal to murder people in Detroit (maybe). 15 Things That We Re-Learned About the Prison Industrial Complex in 20123. Data Broker Removes Rape-Victims List After Journal Inquiry.

* The true story of the original “welfare queen.”

* Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way of Holding Each Other Accountable.

* The 16 Colleges and Universities Where It’s Hardest to Get an A.

* Michael Pollan on plant intelligence.

* Signs Taken as Wonders: Žižek and the Apparent Interpreter.

* Marriage equality reaches New Mexico.

* A vigil planned as a peaceful remembrance of a teen killed in police custody ended with tear gas and arrests Thursday night in downtown Durham.

* An oral history of the Cones of Dunshire.

* On scarcity and the Federation.

* “Characters” trailer for The Grand Budapest Hotel.

* And ion has your science fiction postage stamps.

Sandy Politics

* GOP Congressman Warns Of Hurricane Sandy Relief Aid Going Towards ‘Gucci Bags.’ Kudos on waiting almost a whole day before starting in with this bullshit. I saw a woman driving through the flooded streets of New York in a Cadillac! Your tax dollars at work!

* Chris Christie’s plays eleven-dimensional chess? #3 is hilarious—this is all just part of a desperate lifelong quest for Bruce Springsteen’s approval!—but I still think the real answer is that Christie knows New Jersey’s only real chance for federal relief is under an Obama administration (which is looking more and more inevitable, anyway). The 2016 thing might work in a novel, but the real Christie’s savvy enough to know he can’t win a GOP primary in either 2016 or 2020.

None of this is a criticism of Christie, by the way; I don’t think he’s a very good governor, but he’s doing a fine job on Sandy as far as I can tell.

* …the denial that disasters have anything to do with politics is in itself a denial of reality.

* “Three of the top 10 highest floods at the Battery since 1900 happened in the last two and a half years. If that’s not a wake-up call to take this seriously, I don’t know what is.”

* And just grab something: disaster relief, the Romney way...

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.