Monday Morning Links!

• The latest Grad School Achebe not-so-mini-episode is up! This one is about two of Achebe’s short stories, “Marriage Is A Private Affair” and “Dead Man’s Path.” It was one of our best conversations yet, on some of the slightest literary territory we’ve yet staked out…
• More good podcast news: the Ranged Touch Homestuck podcast is a reality.
• ICYMI: I’ll be doing a lecture and seminar series as a virtual scholar-in-residence @TheRosenbach this fall on four of Octavia Butler’s novels. Here are the details! We’re reading Kindred, Wild Seed, Dawn, and Parable of the Sower…
• CFP: LGBTQIA+ Fantastika Graphics: A Digital Symposium November 20th, 2021.
• An assistant professor position in transgender studies at UC Davis.
• The results of Marquette AAUP’s financial analysis of the university is also out: Independent Analysis Reveals That Marquette University Finances Are Solid — Faculty Demand Greater Role in Financial Decisions and an End to Layoffs.
• A long-delayed interview with me for the Schmitt Fellowship “Leadership” project is up now with lengthy disclaimer indicating that I speak for no one but myself (which is true!).
• Cornell helpfully announces its intention to violate the ADA.

This is straight-up illegal and somebody in the office of the general counsel at Cornell should know it. https://t.co/M0D1PIWzmq

— Michael Bérubé (@MichaelBerube1) August 13, 2021

• Why Mass Effect is some of the best sci-fi ever made.
• Blood, gore and a healthy dose of catharsis: why horror can be good for us. The H Word: Post-Human Horror.
• John Carpenter Interview: “I’m not the biggest fan of talking about my films – but let’s do it.”
• Inside the Nichelle Nichols conservativorship battle.
• ‘Welcome To Cleveland’ rooftop still baffling Milwaukee passengers decades later.
• ‘Mind blowing’: Grizzly bear DNA maps onto Indigenous language families.
• Unnerving gender hypothetical corner.

this is *wild,* the sort of thing i would make up as an "unnerving gender hypothetical" that turns out to have once been routine medical practice: putting cis girls on hrt to keep them from getting "too tall"
https://t.co/Mn2f5uYKBC

— Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li (@perdricof) August 14, 2021

• Milwaukee took a big hit in the new census numbers. The question is whether they’re accurate.
• ‘Be Paranoid’: Professors Who Teach About Race Approach the Fall With Anxiety.
• Higher Ed Has a Credibility Problem.
• July was world’s hottest month ever recorded, US scientists confirm. It’s now or never. “How long can a fish hold its breath?”
• Andrew Cuomo: A Life. Time’s Up to re-evaluate conflict-of-interest policy in wake of Cuomo scandal.
• Why California is beating Florida and Texas on the Delta variant (so far). Inside America’s Covid-reporting breakdown. In the West, a Connection Between Covid and Wildfires. Delta Variant Raises Questions as Campuses Start Semester. Hey, Is Delta Bad for Kids? Yes and no. Why Parents Shouldn’t Hunker Down and Wait for a “Return to Normal”. COVID School Year Three. Covid Vaccines for Kids Can’t Wait.

Each day the question is how can this possibly get worse. Worster. Worstest. And it does.
New records set daily, cases >25,000, hospitalizations >16,000, 31.9% test positivity, increasing deaths pic.twitter.com/V70wrA0x9z

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 14, 2021

• I Can’t Stop Thinking About the First Chapter of This Climate Change Novel: A conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson about The Ministry for the Future and this summer’s extreme heat.
• How a Board Game About Birds Became a Surprise Blockbuster.
• And ladies and gentleman: the Graveyard of Empires.