Posts Tagged ‘Zoey’
Emergency Blogpost: Board Game of This Arbitrary Amount of Time! Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
A new linkpost will be coming soon, but I wanted to do a special emergency blogpost just to hype a fun board game that may be old hat to many of you, but news to others: the Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle cooperative card game. I got it for my birthday and Zoey and I (and, occasionally, Jaimee) have been playing it nonstop ever since; it’s really just a perfect game, especially for a Harry Potter obsessed kid. You start off in the first book and play through all seven years, with the game evolving through the introduction of new cards, rules, and mechanics as you go.
There’s an expansion pack I haven’t tried yet but I’m certain is also terrific.
How to play video here if you want to get a sense of it before you buy, but I really recommend it (and Christmas is coming!). If it seems in any way like the sort of thing you think you’d be remotely into, you’ll love it.
Thursday Afternoon Links!
* Mark Z. Danielewski has written a pilot for a potential House of Leaves TV series. It’s good! The question of adapting the novel wound up being a minor subtheme in our discussion of the book in my summer grad class last month, so I was gratified to actually get to see the script — and directly incorporating the novel into the storyworld of the TV series seems like an intriguing solution to the book’s basic unfilmability. I think I hope someone makes it!
* I haven’t had a chance to see Ant-Man and the Wasp yet, so I’m gratified someone went ahead and wrote my triennial rant about franchise fictions and narrative closure on my behalf.
* Texas Studies in Literature and Language has a special issue on Wes Anderson.
* CFP for the SFRA guaranteed panel at ASLE 19. ASLE 19 (in Davis, CA) is a week after the planned dates for SFRA 19 in Hawaii, so if you’re going to the West Coast anyway it could be almost like a two-for-one…
* The second issue of Fantastika Journal is now available.
* That the things that gave my life meaning growing up have all become vectors for recruitment to misogynistic and white nationalist hate groups is the bitterest surprise of my middle age. That and Trump. Two bitterest surprises.
* Nominations Are Open for the 2018 Brittle Paper Awards.
* Ken Liu Presents Broken Stars, A New Anthology of Chinese Short Speculative Fiction.
* The Fall of Wisconsin. How to win Wisconsin back.
* Shakespeare in the state parks.
* The Self-Helpification of Academe: How feel-good nostrums cover up the university’s cruelty.
* Another piece on searching for work outside academia.
* Professor Faces Fraud Charges for False Job Offer. Reading the confession letter just makes me cringe.
* His University Asked Him to Build an Emoji-Themed Parade Float. Then It Fired Him.
* Why Donald Trump Nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Brett Kavanaugh Will Mean Challenging Times For Environmental Laws. The Vice Report. The Coming Era of Forced Abortions. The end of net neutrality. The imperial presidency 2.0. Trump’s Supreme Court Pick Could Spell a Fresh Hell for Workers’ Rights. Brett Kavanaugh Ruled Against Workers When No One Else Did. The issue with Kavanaugh is that he seems completely reactionary, bouncing from one indefensible position to another, without applying any judgment whatsoever. Liberal media in full effect. The Liberal Case for Kavanaugh Is Complete Crap. He’s a very normal Republican pick — that’s the problem. Establishment Extremist. What’s coming. It’s bad y’all. Someone investigate precisely how this deal was made and what the terms were. And from the archives: The Three Alitos.
* The Supreme Court: still bad.
* Capitalism is ruining science. The Business Veto: The demise of social democracy shows the precariousness of any project of reform under capitalism.
* Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras.
* Technoleviathan: China, Silicon Valley, and the rise of the global surveillance state. How Artificial Intelligence Will Reshape the Global Order.
* Silicon Valley Is Bending Over Backward to Cater to the Far Right.
* How Silicon Valley Fuels an Informal Caste System. Rule-Making as Structural Violence: From a Taxi to Uber Economy in San Francisco.
* Former Obama Officials Are Riding Out The Trump Years By Cashing In.
* The end of NATO. ‘They Will Die in Tallinn’: Estonia Girds for War With Russia.
* Trump is set to separate more than 200,000 U.S.-born children from their parents. Trump’s Office of Refugee Resettlement Is Budgeting for a Surge in Child Separations. ‘Don’t You Know That We Hate You People?’ ICE is lawless, racial profiling edition. Where Cities and Counties Are Detaining Immigrants. Pregnant Women Say They Miscarried In Immigration Detention And Didn’t Get The Care They Needed. Government Told Immigrant Parents to Pay for DNA Tests to Get Kids Back, Advocate Says. As Migrant Families Are Reunited, Some Children Don’t Recognize Their Mothers. Deported after Trump order, Central Americans grieve for lost children. ‘What if I lose her forever?’ Undocumented Grover Beach mother deported despite community rallying in her support. Facing a Tuesday deadline to reunite about 100 migrant toddlers with their parents, feds say they’ve reunited 2. Inside The Courts Where Some Immigrants Plead Guilty Without Knowing What’s Happening. Now they’re coming for grandmas.
* Woman arrested in assault of 91-year-old Mexican man who was told to ‘go back to your country.’
* There’s been a spate of violent far-right extremism since the 2016 election.
* If you’re anti- antifa, that must mean…
* It’s Not Civil Disobedience if You Ask for Permission.
* Liberalism, legitimacy, and loving the Parkland kids.
* Why Marx’s Capital Still Matters.
* Nixon’s $7B carbon tax forms centerpiece of energy agenda.
* The Industrial Age May Have Actually Been Kind of a Bad Idea.
* An interview with Julia Salazar. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, In Her Own Words. Cynthia Nixon: I’m a democratic socialist. Meanwhile our old pal Joe Crowley looks like he’s trying to get away with something.
* We Should Embrace the Ambiguity of the 14th Amendment.
* Alan Dershowitz is ALL IN on Trump. But he’s not the only person with some truly around-the-bend ideas of what lawsuits can do.
* Weird science: Girls sometimes inherit almost two full sets of their dad’s genes, which seems to cause rare cancers.
* An Arkansas man complained about police abuse. Then town officials ruined his life.
* Did… did Milwaukee write this?
* Jeff Bezos Is Now $50 Billion Richer Than Anyone Else on Earth.
* All 12 Thai Boys Successfully Rescued from Cave after Third Dangerous Mission. The only person unhappy is Elon.
* WHO’s Language on Breastfeeding Really Is Flawed. This was our experience with breastfeeding for sure; I’m sure it’s great for a lot of people but we needed formula as a supplement from the first night on. That said, the corporate forces that promote formula over breastfeeding are utterly gross.
* When the relationship status truly is complicated.
* Scotland’s official plan if the Loch Ness Monster is found.
* Japan and the stay-at-home dad.
* Reality Winner and the espionage act.
* My Best Friend Lost His Life to the Gig Economy.
* When your child reveals sexual abuse from your parent.
* The Socialist Case for School Integration.
* Your town tomorrow: Kure residents cut off from outside world due to flooding.
* I knew wearing a tie was making me stupid.
* Bad subtitling is a daily problem for deaf viewers.
* How swimming pools became a flashpoint of racial tension in America.
* California brings emissions down below 1990 levels. But it’s not all good news.
* Feminist Apparel CEO Fires Entire Staff After They Learn He’s An Admitted Sexual Abuser. RIP, Papa John.
* There is too much uncertainty in sports; even if you bribe the officials, something unaccounted for could still cause the “wrong” result. It can be a bad idea to gather large crowds opposed to your team (and, by extension, your dictatorship). During Franco’s rule, Barcelona FC’s stadium was the only place the Catalans could wave their flag and sing their songs. Dictators are better off with tyranny and oppression. Football is for people who can accept a loss.
* David Graeber’s new book argues that many of us are toiling in dummy jobs with no ostensible purpose. Any poll will show you he has a point. But his thesis is built on scant evidence and dubious claims of a ruling class conspiring to keep us busy. Bullshit jobs exist not due to orchestrated oppression but because of something altogether simpler: bad managers.
* An even tougher review of a book that seems like a big step down from Debt.
* The SAT, constantly innovating new ways to make teenagers unhappy.
* Through such characters, Muluneh’s work explores the layered psychic realms of blackness and womanhood that the African-American science fiction writer Octavia Butler, whom she cites as a major influence, explored through her otherworldly prose. In the process, Muluneh’s work has helped reorient the way black women are perceived. “As women, especially as African women,” Muluneh said, “we forget—and the world forgets—our positioning in history and religion and culture.”
* And amusing ourselves to death: 12 theme parks where the danger is real.
Return of the Son of Occasional Linkblogging
With new and unexpected obligations in the last few months it’s become very hard for me to keep up with the link-blogging. Sorry! It’s bad enough that I’m considering putting this function on the blog on (likely permanent) hiatus. But, for now at least, some links…
* Wordless, but one of the best things about parenting I’ve ever read: Dan Berry’s “Carry Me.” Made me cry each time I read it.
* For the night, which becomes more immense /and depressing and utter / and the voices in it which argue and argue. / For this conflict with the stars. / For ashes. For the wind. / For this emergency we call life. All-Purpose Elegy.
* This is really good too: “the best Spider-Man story of the last five years.”
* CFP: Utopia, now!
* Class, Academia, and Anxious Times. From Duke’s Own Sara Appel.
* Hugo nominations 2017! How well did the new rules do against the Sad Puppies? Meet the Hugo-Nominated Author of Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By the T-Rex.
* The African Speculative Fiction Society holds the Nommo Awards to celebrate the year’s greatest speculative fiction written by African authors.
* A list of contributors has been announced for Letters to Octavia, which has been renamed Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (which I’m in, by the way — I’m the rascal writing about “whether we should respect Butler’s wishes about not reprinting certain works”). I’m also a small part of the Huntington’s current exhibit of the Butler archives, presenting at the associated research conference in June.
* I wrote a small encyclopedia article on “Science Fiction” for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia, which is live now…
* Desperation Time: Visions of the future from the left.
* ‘Doomsday Library’ Opens In Norway To Protect The World’s Books From Armageddon.
* The 43 senators who plan to filibuster Gorsuch represent 53 percent of the country.
* The history of all heretofore existing society is the history of archery dorks. Evidence that the human hand evolved so we could punch each there.
* Check out my friend David Higgins on NPR’s On Point, talking dystopias.
* War, forever and ever amen. What We Do Best. Trump’s bombing of Syria likely won’t be met with a wall of “resistance,” certainly not within the halls of power. That’s because for nearly all liberal and conservative pundits and politicians, foreign wars — particularly those launched in the name of “humanitarianism” — are an issue where no leader, even one as disliked as Trump, can ever go wrong. The Syrian Catastrophe. A Solution from Hell. Profiles in courage. There are no humanitarian wars. 7 Charities Helping Syrians That Need Your Support. The only answer is no.
* Incredible story: Hired Goon Drags Man Off United Flight After He Refuses to Give Up Seat. More details here. It’s only going to get worse.
* Trump Conspiracy Tweetstorms Are The Infowars Of The Left. It is shocking how these things erupt through my timeline day after day, then evaporate utterly as if they’d never happened.
* This week in the richest country that has ever existed in human history.
* Being Wealthy in America Earns You 15 Extra Years of Life Span Over the Poor.
* New York will no longer prosecute 16 and 17 year olds as adult criminals.
* I loved this story about the connections that expose us: This Is Almost Certainly James Comey’s Twitter Account.
* We did it guys, we did it. But let’s not lose our heads yet.
* What Happens When Your Internet Provider Knows Your Porn Habits?
* Activism we can all believe in: Protesters raise more than $200,000 to buy Congress’s browsing histories.
* Democrats Against Single Payer.
* How to Survive the Next Catastrophic Pandemic.
* An epidemic of childhood trauma haunts Milwaukee. An intractable problem: For the last half-century, Milwaukee has been caught in a relentless social and economic spiral. Milwaukee celebrates groundbreaking of new Black Holocaust Museum site.
* Dolphins beat up octopuses before eating them, and the reason is kind of horrifying.
* Wild situation in X-Men Gold #1. The artist’s statement.
* If nothing else, Operation Blue Milk had me at “Nnedi Okorafor.” Everything Cut from Rogue One. The Final Star Wars Movie Will Include The Late Carrie Fisher.
* The Minnesota Eight Don’t Want to Be Deported to a Country They’ve Never Lived In. Abolish ICE. Abolish ICE Yesterday.
* 7 Tips for Writing a Bestselling Science Fiction Novel.
* Can the Great Lakes Be Saved?
* Does This Band Name Start With The? A Quiz.
* America’s first female mayor was elected 130 years ago. Men nominated her as a cruel joke.
* Diabetes is even deadlier than we thought, study suggests.
* The Biggest Employer in Each US State. Look at all those universities we don’t need!
* Already old news, but worth noting: whether out of general interest or revenge Joss will be doing Batgirl. If I had Joss’s ear I’d pitch about 20-30 minutes of kung-fu action girl Batgirl and then have her paralyzed and do the Oracle plot instead. It’d be something different in this genre and something different for Whedon too, as opposed to something we’ve frankly seen from him a few too many times by now.
* Pedagogy watch: Why won’t students ask for help?
* More on the history of sleep: Why Do We Make Children Sleep Alone?
* When Every Day Is Groundhog Day: The Danny Rubin Story.
* No thanks: Disney Could Go Westworld With New Patent Filing for Soft ‘Humanoid’ Robots.
* There are dozens of us! Dozens! The Life Aquatic might not be Wes Anderson’s best film. But it is his greatest: The director’s misunderstood classic knows that sadness can’t be defeated, only lived with.
* Star Trek: Discovery ZZzzzzzzZZzzzzzZzzzz.
* Joe Hill (son of Stephen King): In the late 1990s I asked my Dad how to write a cover letter for my short fiction submissions. He was glad to help out.
* I always call Chuck Schumer the worst possible Democrat at the worst possible time, but Rahm Emanuel really gives him a run for his money.
* Margaret Atwood is dropping hints about a Handmaid’s Tale sequel. She even wrote a little bit extra, just in time for me to teach it this summer!
* KSR talks NY2140. KSR talks world building. KSR in conversation with Adam Roberts and Francis Spufford.
* Geoengineering watch. Sadly, this is probably our civilization’s only hope.
* These Are the Wildly Advanced Space Exploration Concepts Being Considered by NASA.
* If you want a vision of the future.
* Tyrannosaurus rex was a sensitive lover, new dinosaur discovery suggests.
* PS: Conservatives and liberals united only by interest in dinosaurs, study shows.
* The proliferation of charter schools, particularly in areas of declining enrollment and in proximity to schools that have closed, is adding financial stress to Chicago’s financially strapped public school system, a new report co-authored by a Roosevelt University professor shows.
* How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons.
* Great Barrier Reef at ‘terminal stage’: scientists despair at latest coral bleaching data.
* The Original Ending of Alien Was Both Terrifying and a Huge Bummer.
* Fuck You and Die: An Oral History of Something Awful.
* The arc of history is long, but New York now has more Mets fans than Yankees fans.
* Congratulations to North Carolina.
* OK. OK. But I’m watching both of you.
* each-Ins Helped Galvanize Student Activism in the 1960s. They Can Do So Again Today.
* The Uses of Bureaucracy. Browser Plug-In Idea. A Brief History of Theology. To thine own self be true. Stop me if you’ve heard it.
* Politics. Democracy. Art. #2017. Submitted for Your Approval. We lived happily during the war. Five years later. Pretty grim. Any sufficiently advanced neglect is indistinguishable from malice. How to tell if you are sexually normal. Juxtaposition of wish fulfilment violence and infantile imagery, desire to regress to be free of responsibility… Join the movement. Know your sins.
* And even in the darkest times, there is still hope: Spiders could theoretically eat every human on Earth in one year.
Wednesday Is Now Trumpnesday, All Hail Trump
* CFP: 42nd Meeting of the Society for Utopian Studies, Memphis, TN.
* Fascism happens fast: First look at Biff to the Future, the alt-history comic chronicling the BTTF universe.
* Trump and disaster capitalism.
* Dissenting from Within the Trump Administration.
* Delusional Democrats Yearning to Prove They Can Work With Trump. From Jonathan Chait, no less!
* “The White House is deploying a network of advisers to the top of federal agencies as a direct line to stay on top of Cabinet officials.” “U.S. Government Agencies Go Silent, May Have Been Swallowed By Black Hole.” “Trump Health Care Plan Would Take Medicaid Coverage Away from Up to 31 Million People.” “Trump Aides Can’t Stop Blabbing about How He’s a Madman.” “Donald Trump’s stock in oil pipeline company raises concern.” Oh, no, not concern! “American Carnage.” “The Resistance.” Nailing it.
The bad press over the weekend has not allowed Trump to “enjoy” the White House as he feels he deserves, according to one person who has spoken with him.
* Almost certainly our next president, ladies and gentleman.
* Within minutes of each other: Trump Revives Keystone Pipeline. Canada oil pipeline spills 200,000 liters on aboriginal land.
* Bill would end Virginia’s ‘winner take all’ electoral vote system.
* Some details on the shooting at the Milo Yiannopoulos talk at U Washington.
* Science corner! Badlands National Park Twitter account goes rogue, starts tweeting scientific facts. The Science of Sean Spicer’s Compulsive Gum Swallowing Habit. How long would a liberal have to cry to fill a coffee mug with tears? Flint water is fine again, also it was no one’s fault, trust us.
* Standpoint theory doesn’t say we can just make shit up; it says we need a clear-eyed understanding of power relations in order to understand and evaluate knowledge-claims. In other words, pomo feminists didn’t create “alt facts”; it’s pomo feminists who have given us the tools to oppose them.
* In Discarded Women’s March Signs, Professors Saw a Chance to Save History.
* Minnesota bill would make convicted protesters liable for policing costs. N.C. state lawmaker says shouting at current or former gov’t officials should be punishable by 5 years in prison.
* Interesting little story about Dan Harmon’s work on/against an early version of Dr. Strange.
* Like someone peeled open my skull and put my inner monologue on the Internet.
* The arc of history is long, but white women are going to prison at a higher rate than ever before.
* Wisconsin lawmaker wants Sheriff David Clarke booted from office, immediately.
* Further Thoughts on the Problem of Susan.
* Whitefish, Montana vs. the Nazis.
* This is how American health care kills people.
* Going back to the old days on health insurance, a first draft.
* Potential Trump Science Adviser Says 90 Percent of U.S. Colleges Will Disappear. I’m amazed they think a full tenth will escape the Sentinels.
* Arrested Development Season 5 rumors.
* Columbia University Releases Report on School’s Ties to Slavery.
* The Other Buffett Rule, or, why better billionaires will never save us.
* The Web Is a Customer Service Medium.
* And this truly is the darkest timeline.
Tom the Dancing Bug 1322 view from trump tower 2
Closing Every Tab Not In Anger But In Disappointment Links
* I have a new essay out on zombies and the elderly in this great new book on zombies, medicine, and comics: The Walking Med: Zombies and the Medical Image. And if you’re interested in my Octavia Butler book, podcaster Jonah Sutton-Morse (@cabbageandkings) is going through it piece by piece on Twitter with #mmsfoeb. Also, check out this LARB interview with Ayana Jamieson on her work in the Butler archives!
* CFP: Comics Remixed: Adaptation and Graphic Narrative, University of Florida. CFP: ASLE 2017 (Detroit, MI). CFP: Special Issue of Green Letters on Crime Fiction and Ecology. CFP: Global Dystopia.
* Maybe the best thing you’ll read this year: Clickhole’s Oral History of Star Trek.
* Wes Anderson made a Christmas commercial. Updated Power Rankings coming soon!
* ‘Feast or Famine’ for Humanities Ph.D.s.
* Las Vegas is a microcosm. “The world is turning into this giant Skinner box for the self,” Schüll told me. “The experience that is being designed for in banking or health care is the same as in Candy Crush. It’s about looping people into these flows of incentive and reward. Your coffee at Starbucks, your education software, your credit card, the meds you need for your diabetes. Every consumer interface is becoming like a slot machine.”
* Jesuit university presidents issue statement supporting undocumented students. Catholic college leaders pledge solidarity with undocumented students. Dissent on sanctuary cities.
* Public universities and the doom loop. UW-Madison drops out of top five research universities for first time since 1972. Student visas, university finances, and Trump.
* Stealing it fair and square: In split decision, federal judges rule Wisconsin’s redistricting law an unconstitutional gerrymander. And so on and so on.
* The 13 impossible crises that humanity now faces.
* How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red.’ Maybe the Internet Isn’t a Fantastic Tool for Democracy After All. Postelection Harassment, Case by Case. Here are 20 lessons from across the fearful 20th century, adapted to the circumstances of today. Making White Supremacy Acceptable Again. Trump and the Sundown Town. No one can stop President Trump from using nuclear weapons. That’s by design. If only someone had thought of this eight years ago! A time for treason.
* Texas Elector Resigns: Trump Is Not Qualified And I Cannot Vote For Him. Trump and the End of Expertise. On Taking the Electoral College Literally. Some Schmittian reflections on the election. Stop Calling the United States a Banana Republic. Potential Conflicts Around the Globe for Trump, the Businessman President. Emoluments. A running list of how Donald Trump’s new position may be helping his business interests. A billionaire coup d’etat. Wunderkind. Voting under the influence of celebrity. We have an institution that could stop this (no not that one), but it won’t. Wheeeeee! Wheeeeeeeeeeee!
* And I’m afraid the news only gets worse.
* “I would rather lose than win the way you guys did,” Ms. Palmieri said.” Respectfully disagree! The Myth of the Rust Belt Revolt. Who Lost the White House? Careful! We don’t want to learn anything from this.
* I was reminded recently of this post from @rortybomb a few years ago that, I think, got the Obama years right earlier and better than just about anyone. And here he is on the election: Learning from Trump in Retrospect.
* Maybe America is simply too big.
* Inside the bizarre world of the military-entertainment industry’s racialized gamification of war.
* Trump’s already working miracles: Dykes to Watch Out For is out of retirement.
* The Nitty-Gritty on Getting a Job: The 5 Things Your English Professors Don’t Teach You.
* Remembering Scott Eric Kaufman.
* Huge Cracks In the West Antarctic Ice Sheet May Signal Its Collapse.
* Four Futures: Life After Capitalism review – will robots bring utopia or terror?
* If I developed a drug and then tested it myself without a control group, you might be a bit suspicious about my claims that everyone who took it recovered from his head cold after two weeks and thus that my drug is a success. But these are precisely the sorts of claims that we find in assessment.
* A world map of every country’s tourism slogan. Here Are the Real Boundaries of American Metropolises, Decided by an Algorithm.
* The youth concussion crisis.
* Cheating at the Olympics Is at Epic Levels.
* Mr. Plinkett and 21st-Century Star Wars Fandom. An addendum.
* Moana before Moana. This one’s pretty great by the way, my kids loved it.
* From the archives: Terry Bisson’s “Meat.”
* Stanislaw Lem: The Man with the Future Inside Him.
* U.S. Military Preps for Gene Drives Run Amok.
* Fidel Castro: The Playboy Interview.
* Cap’n Crunch presents The Earliest Show.
* Coming soon: Saladin Ahmed’s Black Bolt. Grant Morrison’s The Savage Sword of Jesus Christ.
* Parker Posey Will Play Dr. Smith and Now We Suddenly Care a Lot About Netflix’s Lost in Space. TNT fires up a Snowpiercer pilot. Behind the scenes of the new MST3K. The Cursed Child is coming to Broadway.
* “Magneto Was Right”: Recalibrating the Comic Book Movie for the Trump Age.
* Now my childhood is over: both Florence Henderson and Joe Denver have died.
* Of course you had me at “Science fiction vintage Japanese matchbox art mashup prints.”
* A brief history of progress.
* The first, last, and only truly great object of our time.
* And say what you will about OK Go, this one’s pretty damn good.
THE FORCE AWAKENS Bridge Scene Debate – New Evidence!
I’ve had a running debate with a few friends about what I think were (possibly quite late) rewrites to The Force Awakens regarding the reveal that Kylo Ren is Han Solo’s child. The strongest version of this is my suspicion that in some original cut of the film this was revealed at the bridge, with some riff on “Luke, I am your father” that was reworked either because it turned into a groaning laugh line or because test or corporate audiences found it too distracting and lost the thread of the scene.* (In the final cut of the film Kylo Ren’s identity is revealed much earlier, in a scene involving Kylo in the mask and the CGI Snoke — which is to say, a scene that could have been done in Burbank with a stand-in with Adam Driver and Andy Serkis on the phone. There are also several later, slightly awkward scenes that seem to be written as if they too were revealing this information for the first time, as if we didn’t already know; I think there was probably a cut where “I saw him, Leia. I saw our son” was the reveal, for instance.)
The Little Golden Book edition of The Force Awakens (out today!) isn’t bulletproof evidence — even if such adaptations often work off very early versions of scripts — but I found this page interesting:
* Devotees of my rants know I also have a theory that in some version of the script there was probably a “Luke, I am your daughter” / “Rey, I am your father” cut from the last second of the movie, which I think was also cut on the distracting-and-or-groaner basis. These two theories are somewhat incompatible — not even TFA would go to that well twice! — but I don’t have to explain myself to you.
Easter Monday (Hardly Knew ‘Er)
* Marquette suspends McAdams through the fall 2016 semester. Marquette’s statement. McAdams has some interesting comments specifically with regard to the the apology requirement on his blog. What a mess.
* Alien vs. Predator: Connecticut Politicians Want to Tax Yale Endowment.
* Husband and wife HMS students seek treatment for her fatal disease. It isn’t Huntington’s, though it’s very similar, and Huntington’s research does play a minor role in the story.
* Good Friday in Middle-earth.
* Batman v. Superman: you know, for kids. But, honestly, at this point I almost feel bad.
* For 15 years, the superhero blockbuster has allowed American audiences to project an illusory dual image of its character, a fiction in which it’s at once helpless victim and benevolent savior, the damsel in distress and the hero coming to her aid. Where Batman vs. Superman and Captain America: Civil War strive and likely fail, Suicide Squad presents a much more honest, holistic image of America as superpower in the 21st century. It’s the conclusion to an argument whose articulation has been 15 years in the making. We’re neither the victims nor the heroes, it suggests. The resemblance isn’t passing. We simply are the villains.
* Sanders had a strong week, and this has been a crazy year in politics. But there’s nothing in the recent results to suggest that the overall trajectory of the Democratic race has changed. Clinton was and is a prohibitive favorite to win the nomination. The Long March of Bernie’s Army.
* For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been the Iraq invasion, the financial crisis, free trade, mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, police brutality, debt and income inequality, among others. And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues.
* These Are The Phrases That Sanders And Clinton Repeat Most.
* Sublime Photos of African Wildlife Roaming Their Lost Habitat. The links keep coming after the picture.
* The Harvard Library That Protects The World’s Rarest Colors: The most unusual colors from Harvard’s storied pigment library include beetle extracts, poisonous metals, and human mummies.
* The woman who can see 100 times more colors than you can.
* Here comes pseudolaw, a weird little cousin of pseudoscience.
* The emergency managers Snyder imposed on Detroit and Flint had no chance of restoring those cities to solvency. Forced austerity can’t solve financial problems caused by a low tax base and a lack of revenue sharing. Meanwhile, in Illinois: How to destroy a state.
* Civic leaders in Portland, Oregon, want to start busing homeless people out of town. The city council there quietly set aside $30,000 to buy one-way tickets for certain homeless individuals last week, the Portland Mercury reports.
* Fighting over my vote: Who’s the Most UFO-Friendly Presidential Candidate? Related: Hillary Clinton Is Serious About UFOs. And in local news: Aaron Rogers Describes Seeing a UFO in New Jersey in 2005.
* Sample Questions from the Trump University Final Exam.
* N.F.L.’s Flawed Concussion Research and Ties to Tobacco Industry. Jerry Jones: Absurd to Link Football to CTE. Absurd!
* The True Story Behind the Legendary “Lost Ending” of The Shining.
* How 4chan and 8chan turned that chatbot racist. How Not to Make a Racist Bot.
* 10 Rules for Students, Teachers, and Life.
* Happily ever after? Advice for mid-career academics.
* About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic Sea. The confrontation can’t be found in any history books—the written word didn’t become common in these parts for another 2000 years—but this was no skirmish between local clans. Thousands of warriors came together in a brutal struggle, perhaps fought on a single day, using weapons crafted from wood, flint, and bronze, a metal that was then the height of military technology.
* Somehow I’d forgotten Netflix is actually doing Voltron, and that wasn’t just a joke about the creative bankruptcy of our times.
* This, however, I’m 100% in favor of.
* Mr. Speaker, this is not a perfect bill. I never said it was. I saw Hamilton, so now I’m going to orphan my son.
* With The Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling Shows Us Harry Potter’s Future Isn’t What You Expected.
* Tycoons plan base on moon by 2026.
* Harrowing tales of true crime.
* Secret history of the Clinton email scandal.
* They stole Shakespeare’s skull!
* To Boldly Go Provides a Rare Look Behind the Scenes of Star Trek.
* Bedrock City in Ruins: The rise and fall of the Flintstone empire.
* Just the thought every parent wants in their mind on the happy occasion of their daughter’s fourth birthday: I had a baby in my 40s. Part of my job is preparing my daughter for life without me.
* And there’s nothing sweet in life: Red Mars TV Series Now On Hold After Showrunner Suddenly Departs.
Christmas Hangover Links
* This was fun: My Tolkien/The Force Awakens mini-essay got picked up by Salon.
* Is Star Wars setting up Poe Dameron as its first queer protagonist? Rey is not a role model for little girls. The prior texts against which this film needs to be judged are not those long-ago movies, but rather the trailers for this new movie. And bah humbug! Double humbug! Double triple bah humbug!
* And for the devotee: How Did This Get Made? covered The Star Wars Holiday Special this week — with bonus oral history.
* A Christmas Carol: Dedicated to Scrooge, And His Art Collection.
* New York University is known for bestowing lavish perks on its leaders. Its new president, Andrew Hamilton, will be no exception. NYU sort of hitting it out of the park this week generally. The latest extravagances in the college sports arms race? Laser tag and mini golf.
* Economists Say ‘Bah! Humbug!’ to Christmas Presents.
* Phylogeny of elves finds that santa’s workers are actually dwarves.
* The death of the Wisconsin idea: Under the proposed policies, faculty members could be laid off for financial reasons or if academic programs are discontinued for education reasons, including long-term strategic planning that includes “market demand and societal needs.”
* Let this be our Christmas story. Why? Well, that requires some explaining and perhaps even a stronger rationale than I’m yet able to muster. Because it has no cheer, redemption or family bonding. It’s about power, money, greed, recklessness and what can only be termed the sort of roughshod ridiculousness and surreal unintentional comedy that comes from being powerful enough or serving people with sufficient power that the ordinary sort of fear of getting caught and having to explain yourself simply doesn’t apply.
* Call for ideas: the Museum of Capitalism.
* From Bleeding Heart Libertarians: “Universities may indeed be exploiting adjuncts, but they cannot rectify this mistake without significant moral costs.”
* What really happened in the Christmas truce of 1914? The Real Story Behind the 1914 Christmas Truce in World War I.
* The Typical American Lives Only 18 Miles From Mom.
* The strange case of Case Western Reserve University law school.
* El Niño, explained: A guide to the biggest weather story of 2015. Records smashed on East Coast’s warmest ever Christmas Eve.
* African-Inspired Space Opera Yohancé Is Going To Be Our Next Obsession.
* ‘Unprecedented’ gas leak in California is the climate disaster version of BP’s oil spill.
Christmas Eve Eve Links
* I was on On Point on NPR last week to talk about Star Wars. How to tell if someone read the EU novels. What We Talk About When We Talk about Star Wars. Medieval Star Wars. Smash the Force. Humorless Marxist Reviews: The Force Awakens. Starkiller Base: The Contractor Memos. Star Wars as Pastiche. “We now have something like proof that life for the average citizen in the Star Wars universe would have been better off if the rebellion had failed.” The Force Awakens as Jedi rewrite. Star Wars and the monomyth of Silicon Valley. George Lucas’s Secret Weapon. The only element that actually got me excited about what another galaxy might look and feel like was Rey’s instant bread. We Need to Make Room For This Gingerbread Darth Vader in the Smithsonian. This Lifesize BB-8 Cake Is Almost Too Beautiful To Eat. ‘Star Wars,’ if it were directed by Ken Burns. #WheresRey. An inversion of stakes so monstrous that it makes the film actually despicable. Please Stop Spreading This Nonsense that Rey From Star Wars Is a “Mary Sue.” Anyway, it did okay. And from the archives: “Hobbits in Space,” 1977.
* Another classic 1980s property gets a dark, gritty reboot.
* MLA Watch: 10 Years Gone But Change Goes On: Octavia E. Butler’s Public Legacy.
* A nine-month, non-tenure position teaching “What Is The Good Life?” to up to six hundred students. I’m not sure I know what the good life is but I think I can rule out at least one thing.
* Here’s Why the SpaceX Rocket Landing Is Such a Big Deal.
* What It’s Like to Be Noam Chomsky’s Assistant.
* In short, Orcs aren’t monsters. We are.
* Better Management Through Belles Lettres.
* Simon Pegg ‘Didn’t Love’ the ‘Star Trek Beyond’ Trailer, Asks Fans to ‘Hang in There.’
* “yes Virginia, there is a left-wing reform movement.”
* World’s largest Star Wars cosplay association says new Star Wars villains are not evil enough.
* Marquette falls behind its peer institutions.
* That’s right. The same educational policies that are pushing academic goals down to ever earlier levels seem to be contributing to—while at the same time obscuring—the fact that young children are gaining fewer skills, not more.
* Would you support or oppose bombing Agrabah?
* Racebending Hermione, now canon.
* Historians often undermine the hopes that activists live on.
* The Star Wars Holiday Special Was The Worst Thing on Television Ever. Look for it on How Did This Get Made? this week.
* Immediately greenlit: Quentin Tarantino Almost Made A Luke Cage Movie And Wants To Create His Own Superhero.
* And I say teach the controversy: ‘Bleeding’ Communion Wafer Caused By Mold, Not A Miracle.
Watching THE FORCE AWAKENS as the Father of a Three-and-a-Half-Year-Old Girl (No Spoilers)
There’s still plenty of weird plot holes in the movie to complain about — and, of course, call no trilogy happy until it is concluded — and the man simply doesn’t get Star Trek at a basic and fundamental level — but J.J. Abrams achieves something in a sequence of shots near the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that I hope I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. My daughter is three and a half right now, and she’s still piecing together the world. We’ve raised her, somewhat accidentally, without much concept of gender; it’s only recently that she’s even come to really understand that some people are boys and other people are girls. And it’s broken my heart a bit, as this process has come into focus for her, to see her recognize that nearly all the protagonists in nearly all the stories she loves are boys. She sometimes announces, as we play, that she gets to be the boy — by which she means that she gets to be the hero, the star. I’m the boy, daddy; you’re the dragon. I’m the boy, daddy; you’re the witch.
And as I watched this one particular, truly perfect scene, at the climax of The Force Awakens, I really felt like I could see the whole thing through her eyes, and imagined the moment she watches it a few months or years from now and how it might undo a bit of the toxic lessons she’s already started to learn about boys and girls. I cried. I’m crying now, just writing about it. And however else The Force Awakens is received and whatever its reputation winds up being, however badly 8 and 9 screw it all up (or don’t), Abrams has given little girls like mine a tremendous and very special gift. That bit lives forever, as far as I’m concerned.
I’ll write a longer and more spoiler-y post once more people have seen it, I think, but for now I wanted to say just that much.
Tuesday Night Links!
* Climate Fiction Short Story Contest judged by Kim Stanley Robinson. Fall fiction contest judged by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer.
* Whoa: Ta-Nehisi Coates to Write Black Panther Comic for Marvel.
* Whiteness, Political Economy, and the MFA.
The majority of these reasons have to do with student desire. It is obvious that people have to want the degree for universities to feel motivated to create programs. But there are many economic pressures that induce colleges and universities to expand and aggressively advertise and recruit for programs in creative writing. We do not think it is an overstatement that, prior to the 1990s and the intensifying financial pressures that brought about the corporatization of the university, English departments tended to have a studious lack of interest that bordered on disdain about the teaching of creative writing. And top-tier schools still tend to not offer graduate degrees in creative writing. Of the top 10 universities according to USNWR rankings, only Columbia has an MFA program.
The story of how these financial pressures show up in the college where we work — a small liberal arts college that admits self-identified women and people assigned female at birth who do not fit into the gender binary — might provide a useful illustration here. In 1990, the board of the college voted to go co-ed. In response, students went on a strike that they won after two weeks; the board backed down and the school did not go co-ed. Despite the outpouring of support, the college still had significant enrollment issues. Administration responded to this in the 90s by focusing on co-ed graduate programs. Between 1990 and 2013, graduate students went from 25 percent of the total enrollment at the college to 40 percent. The MFA in creative writing was targeted for growth. During the same period, the number of MFA graduates in the creative writing program more than doubled, from an average of 13 to 34 annually. This growth was not under department control. In 2005, after a long discussion, the department decided that they wanted to admit a smaller, more selective class. It was clear that “targeted for growth” meant adding more students, not more resources. But the president of the college held the acceptance letters until the department agreed to admit everyone on the fairly large wait list. This resulted in the largest class ever admitted.
* An excerpt from Claire Vaye Watkins’ upcoming novel, Gold Fame Citrus, “a sweeping, apocalyptic vision of the Southland after the water wars turn California into a roaming sand dune sea.”
* Interdepartmental research shows that during that 12-month period when body cameras were in use, instances of some types of force by San Diego police officers actually rose by 10%.
* If You Live In These States You’ll Soon Need A Passport For Domestic Flights. I can’t imagine that this will actually come to pass, but I just got my driver’s license renewal and Wisconsin is treating its default ID as not-airplane-ready.
* In honor of the ten years since speculative fiction author Octavia Butler’s untimely transition, the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network and the Octavia E. Butler Society are joining forces to create simultaneous West and East coast events February 25-28, 2016 in L.A. and at Spelman College in Atlanta respectively. The two organizations will also be collaborating on a special edition of the academic journal Palimpsest that highlights her written work and impact on humanity.
* The majority of white people who take the implicit association test (IAT) for racial bias do demonstrate biases against dark-skinned people.
* Higher education as Veblen good.
* Dispatches From the Future’s Past: How a collection of sci-fi fanzines helps us understand the prehistory of the Internet.
* Why Is College So Expensive if Professors Are Paid So Little?
* “Canada’s oldest independent arts university has struggled financially in recent years, and currently faces a $13-million debt.” So of course the solution is to build a new campus for $25 million.
* Cornell’s Pitch to Humanities and Social-Sciences Ph.D.s: All of You, Apply Here.
* If 2008 taught us anything, it’s that the whole culture has followed the economic quants far enough down the complexity rabbit hole. I would argue that it might be the scholarship that neoclassical economists dismiss most forcefully that we should look to for help in questioning the self-interested models that the financial sector asserts are real. As these books help us realize, it is humanists who are best trained to pull back the curtain on what we are talking about when we talk about finance.
* Criminal charges for Volkswagen? A CEO just got 28 years in prison after nine people died from his salmonella-tainted peanuts, and VW probably killed more people than that in California alone.
* Men haven’t gotten a raise in forty years.
* Sheboyganfreude: Scott Walker suspends presidential campaign.
* Eleanor Rigby, greenlit for six seasons and a movie.
* One dad’s sad, expensive, and brief encounter with Ron Weasley.
* I Confronted Donald Trump in Dubai.
* Why does light have a top speed?
* No, I’m Not Piercing My Daughter’s Ears.
* A Glossary of Gestures for Critical Discussion.
* Gymnastics and the abusers. Incredible, incredibly disturbing read.
* “Preventing Ethnic Fraud.” Should Universities Be Policing Professors’ Ethnicity Claims?
* Games connect you with the sublime infinity of the mathematical universe, but they intersect with the real world only in secret and for pretend. Only in your head.
* A new scandal, though, is putting Johnson’s rise at serious risk. It involves the mayor replacing civil servants with private citizens funded by the Wal-Mart empire and tasked with the twin purposes of working to abolish public education and bring in piles of cash for Kevin Johnson. The rising star, it seems, set up a fake government—and some people are starting to notice.
* The Road to a 100% Clean-Powered Planet.
* The rise, and rise, of literary annotation.
* Selfies Killed More People Than Sharks This Year.
* And it was certainly nice of them to name the whole generation after my kid.
Thursday Links, Inc.
* Like Kirk said, don’t let them promote you: Rising to Your Level of Misery at Work.
* Best American Poetry Pseudonyms.
* All the Sensible Progressives agree: The Clinton email scandal is over, over, so over.
* Big-Name Plan B’s for Democrats Concerned About Hillary Clinton. I guess I’ll get started on Plan C.
* The Hal Salive Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
* At long last, the billionaires have come for their ancient enemy, UNC’s English department.
* Rutgers Faculty Union Urges Inquiry Into Football Coach.
* Cooperation or Collusion? Lawsuit Accuses Duke and UNC of Faculty Non-Poaching Deal. I think they bought themselves a whole lot of legal trouble here.
* Amid all the weirdness of the U Iowa president hire, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Gotta spend money to make money. University of Iowa Faculty Senate votes ‘no confidence’ in Board of Regents. “We’re just getting started.”
* Some good news in Wisconsin: MATC announces free tuition for low-income students.
* Here’s the truth: academia is an amazing sector with some of the best features of any job, even if it also has substantial problems. Folks on the way out might feel like they’re biting their thumb at something, and those still “stuck” on the inside of this troubled-but-terrific career might feel some welcome-if-temporary solidarity. But after that, it’s just more fodder for legislators, corporations, and the general public to undermine the academy. It helps nobody in the long run. No One Cares That You Quit Your Job.
* Mediocrity is the secret key that explains everything. Moving beyond the early focus on conformity, we propose that the threat of status loss may make those with middle status more wary of advancing creative solutions in fear that they will be evaluated negatively. Using different manipulations of status and measures of creativity, we found that when being evaluated, middle-status individuals were less creative than either high-status or low-status individuals (Studies 1 and 2). In addition, we found that anxiety at the prospect of status loss also caused individuals with middle status to narrow their focus of attention and to think more convergently (Study 3). We delineate the consequences of power and status both theoretically and empirically by showing that, unlike status, the relationship between power and creativity is positive and linear (Study 4). By both measuring status (Studies 2 and 3) and by manipulating it directly (Study 5), we demonstrate that the threat of status loss explains the consequences of middle status.
* Researchers have discovered a better way to wait in line, and you’re going to hate it.
* Half of Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes. This is framed as good news: “…after two decades of linear growth, the prevalence of diabetes in the United States has finally started to plateau.”
* Words about slavery that we should all stop using.
* “Prison gets rich looking up preschoolers.”
* Kim Davis has defeated us all. Related: Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis Never Should Have Gone to Jail.
* The Final Discworld Book Is Bittersweet For Many Reasons. I haven’t read one of these in decades, but I’m still sad he’s gone.
* Brooklyn College’s Longtime Janitor Is Also Its Cocaine Dealer, Police Say.
* An interview with Ursula K. Le Guin.
* Salman Rushdie’s Bewilderment at Snapchat Inspired Him to Write Science Fiction.
* The Joy Machine: Stephen Colbert, Satire, and Faith.
* The High Burden of Low Wages: How Renting Affordably in NYC is Impossible on Minimum Wage.
* One lawyer’s crusade to defend extreme pornography.
* Washington’s Football Team Is the Donald Trump of the NFL.
* Wifework and the university.
* And Boots lives. I anticipate that this will make Zoey’s entire year.
Thursday Morning Links
* This is not an SF postdoc per se, but Liverpool has a tremendous SF archive and it would be a great opportunity for an SF scholar.
* Some impressive student journalism from Marquette undergrads: “Marquette’s reporting to the federal government misses just less than half of sexual assaults on campus.”
* Really interesting piece on how not to build a Star Wars MMORG. MetaFilter mostly hated it, but I thought the idea of limiting the Jedi to a minigame where you inevitably get hunted down and murdered by Darth Vader was brilliant.
* Louisiana State University on the brink. More here and here. This really is the end of the university system — or at least tenure — in America. I can’t believe it’s happening so quickly.
* I mean, the LSU thing is so terrible I can barely even be bothered to get upset about the ASU MOOCs.
* One of the Original X-Men Is Gay, And It Matters More Than You Think. It’s a nice piece by Rachel Eddidin and a bummer that it’s at playboy.com. I’m amazed that they don’t maintain a SFW skin of their site for prose writing that goes viral.
* Tell Us About the First Time You Realized Dudes Were Checking You Out.
* Fugitive Turns Himself In After 40 Years So He Can Get Health Care.
* The rise of zero-tolerance policies strips school officials of the ability to exercise common sense.
* How to think about the risk of autism.
* Clickhole’s Oral History of Mad Men.
* The disturbing world of bootleg Disney’s Frozen games.
* Star Trek 3 is apparently Star Trek Beyond, and Idris Elba is the villain. I’m okay with the title — I like the ethos if not the continued insistence on reading “trek” as a verb –but wish they could do one that doesn’t have a “villain” for a change.
* The good news is: this civilization is over. And everybody knows it. And the good news is: we can all start building another one, here in the ruins, and out of pieces of the old one.
* DC is going to try to attract girl readers of comics with a special Super Hero Universe Designed Just For Girls, where, I presume, sex and sexual violence are somewhat less of an overriding focus.
* Pseudoscience in the Witness Box: The FBI faked an entire field of forensic science.
* DID YOU KNOW that academic departments use curricular requirements to encourage enrollment in courses that don’t just automatically fill by themselves? It’s true!
* The Story of Class Struggle, America’s Most Popular Marxist Board Game.
* And from the genius behind the art in Braid and one of my absolute favorite web comics of all time, A Lesson Is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible, comes Zelda pastiche Second Quest. Man I miss that web comic.
Gerry Canavan 