Gerry Canavan's Blog, page 18
August 5, 2019
Monday Morning Links!
[image error]* Now this I’d watch.
* Extrapolation 60.2 is up, with articles on Wonder Woman and feminism, rape culture and fantasy, the various versions of The Three-Body Problem, and a symposium on the state of science fiction studies for the journal’s 60th anniversary. My contribution turned out to be a little bit of a rant.
* MOSF Journal of Science Fiction 3.2: Disability Studies Special Issue.
* That time of year again: 5 Easy Fixes for a Broken Faculty Job Market.
* Relax, English Majors. You’re Still Plenty Employable!
* Should You Go into Debt for an MFA? The crucial contribution is Kelly Link’s nightmare thread about the debt load some people have coming out of more predatory programs.
* Marine Todd wept: A long-term study run by a Republican finds no evidence professors are discriminating against their conservative students.
* How the Wealthy and Well Connected Have Learned to Game the Admissions Process.
* Warning That Their ‘House Is on Fire,’ Alaska President Urges Regents to Act Quickly on Budget Crisis. But there’s always money in the banana stand.
Some of y’all act like these are your only options pic.twitter.com/BGWxb7a9OK
— ZУЯT (@tonalplexus) July 30, 2019
* The Amazon is approaching an irreversible tipping point. Greenland’s Melting: Heat Waves Are Changing the Landscape Before Their Eyes. The terrible truth of climate change. How an accelerated warming cycle in Alaska’s Bering Sea is creating ecological havoc. Arctic Ice Is Crashing, and That’s Bad News For Everyone. Charred forests not growing back as expected in Pacific Northwest, researchers say. Burn. Build. Repeat: Why Our Wildfire Policy Is So Deadly. Chevron spills 800,000 gallons of oil and water in Kern County canyon. Lost Cities and Climate Change. Stopping Climate Change Will Never Be “Good Business.” Irish Teenager Wins Google Science Award for Removing Microplastics From Oceans. 1/11th of the Pentagon’s annual budget, not counting the separate Overseas Contingency Operations fund. We could fund the transition to green energy with 10-30% of the world’s fossil fuel subsidy. Environmental activist murders double in 15 years. Philippines is deadliest country for defenders of environment. Back to Paradise. And the Times is ready to face the serious challenges of our time.
* There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of disruption innovation entrepreneurism progress.
* On a momentous day for Tribal Nations, Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), the House Republican Conference Chairwoman, stated that the successful litigation by tribes and environmentalists to return the grizzly bear in Greater Yellowstone to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) “was not based on science or facts” but motivated by plaintiffs “intent on destroying our Western way of life.”
The world is finite, precious, and free. The question for any economic order is how it preserves the finite, honors the precious, & shares the free. Eco-socialism & other commonwealth ideas seek to shift sharply from the present in all three dimensions. https://t.co/l8MgVWq80c
— Jedediah Purdy (@JedediahSPurdy) July 31, 2019
you, an intellectual: we can’t afford a better society
me, a plebe: DoD spends $15mil/yr trying to kill brown tree snakes it accidentally released on Guam; they’re currently aerially bombing the island with dead mice stuffed with Tylenol, which is toxic to snakes
— Mass for Shut-ins (podcast) (@gin_and_tacos) July 31, 2019
I grew up thinking social and technological progress was leading us towards utopia and am going to spend the rest of my life living through the collapse of civilization. 2 stars.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) August 4, 2019
* Trump’s Racism Is a National Emergency. Where Taking the Concerns of Racists Seriously Has Gotten Us. They’re still stealing kids. An American Middle Schooler, Orphaned by Deportation. Death as ‘Deterrence’: the Desert as a Weapon. Editorial: Why No Borders? Because the latest mass shootings are opening a tiny crack of a conversation about white supremacy in the United States, remember that climate change and white supremacy are also connected. And from the archives: Larry Niven Tells DHS to Spread Organ Harvesting Rumors.
Jesus Christ pic.twitter.com/AXAyT0Hy1D
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) July 30, 2019
* About every 7 months, Uber loses the equivalent of the cost of building a subway from UCLA to the San Fernando Valley. “A flaming Lyft vehicle is somehow a fitting symbol for investors’ worst fears about ride-hailing. Lyft and Uber Technologies Inc. are asking investors to trust that they will someday stop figuratively setting on fire hundreds of millions of dollars or more a quarter.”
* Somewhat relatedly—and this is the important part—Elon Musk has also said all Teslas will be fully capable of self-driving and can serve as robotaxis by next year. So if that’s true, why human-driven cars for the CES tunnel in 2021?
* Another way to describe these efforts is what the U.S. security establishment has long referred to as “pushing out the border.” It’s not a project that’s new to the Trump administration, and it’s not one that’s unique to the United States, as journalist Todd Miller expounds in his latest book, “Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World.”
* A panel of federal judges dismissed Wisconsin’s high-profile redistricting lawsuit on Tuesday after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week determined claims against partisan gerrymandering are beyond the reach of federal courts. They might award the GOP court fees! Why let Democrats in Wisconsin vote at all?
* Phone farms and late capitalism.
* Can young white men be saved? Cloudflare severs ties with 8chan in the wake of shootings: site has become “a cesspool of hate.” Video games don’t cause violent crime; research indicates that, if anything, it’s the opposite.
wild to think we're just going to have periodic white supremacist mass shootings for the rest of our lives and our political system is seemingly unable or unwilling to stop it
— Mark (@haircut_hippie) August 3, 2019
* Andrew Yang 2020: The world is fucked, you’re on your own, take some money, head to higher ground.
in this regard, Yang’s “higher ground” remark at the Dem debates is prescient for the kind of rhetoric we’re going to hear more and more of. don’t mitigate or reverse; accept and protect your own, inevitably along lines of race, class, gender, ability, and so forth
— Jeffrey Moro (@jeffreymoro) August 2, 2019
(increasingly of the opinion that ONLY the right is truly preparing for climate change (by building walls, camps, and xenophobic nationalism) and that the right's position on "border security" (no border, no country) is more coherent than the Dems "kinder gentler status quo")
— Aaron Bady (@zunguzungu) August 3, 2019
* Marianne Williamson isn’t funny. She’s scary. Get your house in order Vox.
* Pete Buttigieg had the most important answer at the Democratic debate.
Democrats please put your differences aside and come together in recognition of the fact that if you nominate Biden you are gonna get fucking massacred and deserve it.
— Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan) August 1, 2019
* Wow, not a good look, Ronald Reagan.
* Meet the people working to kick Chicago out of Illinois.
* Americans aren’t as terrible as their leaders.
* Wild ride: “Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA.” Doesn’t he know you only get what you give?
I forced a bot to watch 1,000 hours of Law & Order: SVU then forced it to write an episode of Law & Order: SVU of its own… https://t.co/4d8TgSFdxu
— Dr. Bluman* (@drbluman) July 31, 2019
* a day late / a buck short / I’m writing / the report
* Quentin Tarantino curated a 4-hour playlist of songs from his own movies, just for you.
* Aaron Bady endorses The Boys.
Which is to say: if you think superhero shows are essentially superfluous profit-making distractions from what really matters, the show interestingly posits that in a world where superheroes are real, they'd be superfluous profit-making distractions from what really matters.
— Aaron Bady (@zunguzungu) July 31, 2019
* In search of lost time: nostalgia gaming.
* Hunting Dinosaurs in Central Africa.
* American novelists as Simpsons screens, an occasional thread.
2. Ernest Hemingway pic.twitter.com/RkFupjUiOA
— Michael Docherty (@maybeavalon) July 30, 2019
* Charles Manson was a Republican.
* Shuen’s flagrant disregard for consent was motivated not by malice but by greed. He was taking advantage of peculiarities in OHIP’s billing system, which encourage all sorts of chicanery that, while not always illegal, can tempt doctors into bending the rules.
* Should Board Gamers Play the Roles of Racists, Slavers and Nazis?
* Online, the many horrified reactions to the clip only crystallized how younger Americans appear to feel about yelling in general—namely, that it’s no longer a signifier of dominance, power, or authority but, instead, a mortifying and old-fashioned display of toxic masculinity. What was once associated with a degree of toughness or vigor, and perhaps suggested some hard-earned power—a boss might yell, or a military general—is now considered aggressive and domineering, an odious side effect of hubris and privilege. People who lose control and start screaming are received only with consternation and embarrassment. It is simply not something a serious person should do.
* 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now. The El Paso Shooting and the Gamification of Terror. Unwritten: On Richard Seymour’s The Twittering Machine.
Social media tends to lend itself more towards a politics of isolation and generalized antagonism. Social media lends itself to stochastic terrorism because its entire model of influencing is stochastic, processing tendencies through algorithms that intensify and cultivate existing sentiments, pushing them to something only social media can satisfy. The stochastic nature of social media works with the inchoate nature of contemporary anger, racism, and misogyny always threatening to tip the latter over into the violent actions the punctuate daily life. As Seymour writes, “Fascist terror is ‘stochastic’ because fascism is still fractal: the armed shitstorm, a material possibility of the medium ever bit as much as the meatspace troll, has yet to materialize. But these are early days for the networked fascism of the twenty-first century.”
The United States has institutionalized the mass shooting in a way that Durkheim would immediately recognize. As I discovered to my shock when my own children started school in North Carolina some years ago, preparation for a shooting is a part of our children’s lives as soon as they enter kindergarten. The ritual of a Killing Day is known to all adults. It is taught to children first in outline only, and then gradually in more detail as they get older. The lockdown drill is its Mass. The language of “Active shooters”, “Safe corners”, and “Shelter in place” is its liturgy. “Run, Hide, Fight” is its creed. Security consultants and credential-dispensing experts are its clergy. My son and daughter have been institutionally readied to be shot dead as surely as I, at their age, was readied by my school to receive my first communion. They practice their movements. They are taught how to hold themselves; who to defer to; what to say to their parents; how to hold their hands. The only real difference is that there is a lottery for participation. Most will only prepare. But each week, a chosen few will fully consummate the process, and be killed.
* How do the Handmaids reach Ontario?
OK, we hear you complaining that we’re just overanalyzing stuff that isn’t meant to be taken too literally. But does all this just feed into common American preconceptions that Canada is really just an extension of the United States with a few tweaks? And, from an environmental history perspective, does the show undermine how integral the water border is between the two countries?
* They’re doing something weird with the X-Men again.
* If anything, this ADA suit from Domino’s is even more egregious than UC Berkeley’s.
* The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has ended its partnership with Sesame Street.
* Shock of shocks: Cancer patients are being denied drugs, even with doctor prescriptions and good insurance.
* The Abandoned, Apocalyptic Architecture of One Bold 1970s Retail Chain.
* A four-hour Netflix cut of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?
* Bookmarked for the fall: An annotated “Frankenstein” brings lessons for today.
* And I must say again that we in the Gerry community do not find this amusing: It’s here. GERRY. A font created by your congressional districts. Log on toUglyGerry.com and use the font to tell congress how happy you are that your vote doesn’t matter.
July 30, 2019
Once Upon a Time in… Tuesday Links
* Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, is about male friendships as they evolve or don’t, fall apart or stay the same. It’s his kindest film, the one freest of his ego and the defensiveness of showy camerawork and clever editing. It’s unpretentious in a wholly surprising way, and vulnerable, too, in revealing fears of growing older and, as a consequence, becoming obsolete, soft, a joke. There’s some suicide stuff in that one, so be warned.
Of course, this drama of male friendship has to happen over the brutalized bodies of women. This is Hollywood after all.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 30, 2019
* For as much as Tarantino establishes a contrast between Tate on one side of the hedge, and Rick and Cliff on the other, he sees them as equally vulnerable, in different ways. Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino’s wistful midlife crisis movie. Quentin Tarantino’s Obscenely Regressive Vision of the Sixties. ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood’ takes the Sharon Tate murders — and makes them about men. Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood Doubles Down on Shittiness Toward Women. tarantino’s good movies revolve around women & the bad ones don’t. reservoir dogs is sort of an exception, but it also depicts a world without women as a horrific farce. Tarantino vs. Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee’s Daughter Saddened by ‘Mockery’ in ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.’ Let’s Discuss That Massive Inaccuracy in ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.’ Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood… annotated. ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ is a three-hour reminder of Tarantino’s talent — and blind spots. The end of the affair: why it’s time to cancel Quentin Tarantino.
* A few scattered thoughts from me on Twitter. I’m still chewing on it.
He did exactly what everyone expected him to do, which I didn’t expect him to do.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 30, 2019
1. Inglourious Basterds
2. Kill Bill (sentimental favorite, shoot me)
3. Pulp Fiction
4. Jackie Brown
5. Reservoir Dogs
6. Death Proof
7. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
8. Django
9. Hateful Eight https://t.co/imrlMQCJfF
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 30, 2019
* Adam Tooze, historian of the Third Reich’s economy and of the recent 2008 crash, has argued that Neumann’s insights are quite germane today: “That there is no natural harmony between developed capitalism and legal, political, and social order; that modern capitalism is a fundamentally disruptive force that constantly challenges the rule of law as such.” Read this together with the warning by David Frum, conservative political commentator and author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (2018): ”If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” That is the Benjaminian moment of danger we’re in now, looking forward with trepidation to the 2020 elections.
* CFP: Octavia Butler and Afrofuturism. CFP: The Fast and the Furious. CFP: Celebrity Studies — Keanu Reeves. CFP: Fandom: The Next Generation.
* Disney Is A Symptom, Not The Cause, Of The Problems Facing Hollywood.
* Greta Thunberg to sail across Atlantic for UN climate summits.
* Trump aide submitted drafts of 2016 ‘America First’ energy speech to UAE for edits, emails show.
* When you’ve figured out a way to monetize mass shootings.
* While Democrats dither, Republicans are innovating new ways to cheat to win.
* China Claims to Have Released Most of the Estimated 1 Million Muslims Held in Internment Camps.
* Parents Are Giving Up Custody of Their Kids to Get Need-Based College Financial Aid. I don’t see why every treatment of this leads with “and it’s all legal” when it seems like it’s unquestionably fraud.
* Inside the #MeToo crisis—and coverup—sparked at Golden Valley High.
* Clergy Abused an Entire Generation in This Village. With New Traumas, Justice Remains Elusive.
* Alan Dershowitz, Devil’s Advocate.
* She Invented the Gender Reveal Party. She Has Some Regrets.
* Becoming Full Professor While Black.
* Inside the Fortnite World Cup.
* BREAKING (MY HEART): Humans Will Never Colonize Mars.
* This Asteroid Could Have Wiped Out a City. Scientists Almost Missed It.
* And an oldie, but a goodie: Neil and Buzz didn’t go very far.
sorry, charlie manson — ya cancelled
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 30, 2019
July 29, 2019
Monday Morning Links!
* Principles of inclusive teaching.
* Marquette to Add Nine Faculty in Race, Ethnic and Indigenous Studies.
* Alaska defunds scholarships for thousands of university students ahead of fall semester.
* Bolsonaro vs. the future of the human race.
* Immigration Officials Snatch 9-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Heading To School, Hold Her For 2 Days. “I was scared. I was completely by myself,” says sobbing fourth-grader.
* “U.S. citizens may be increasingly swept up in federal immigration custody amid new rule change.” Seems like a good reason not to do it!
* What I’ve Learned About Unemployment And Being Poor After Applying For 215 Jobs.
* How mindfulness privatizes a social problem.
* And although they’ve been writing together for years—including on a number of Bad Robot productions that never saw the light of day—the duo has never written anything that’s actually been produced in Hollywood, which seems just absolutely wild given how much money, prestige, etc. is at stake here. Amazon’s new Lord Of The Rings showrunners have never made a TV show before. Yikes.
* A common problem in long-lived modern-dance troupes is “older-dancer syndrome.”
The 4 types of adult
1. Alcoholic parent
2. IBS sufferer
3. Disney season pass holder
4. Facebook racist
— Nick Wiger (@nickwiger) July 28, 2019
right wing culture warriors never mention that modern US comics and movies were constitutively shaped by literal codes of conduct that said 'no queerness' and 'cops have to be the heroes'
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) July 29, 2019
Bar
Home
Office
Airport
Temple
Church
College
Mosque
Concert
Hospital
Nightclub
Newsroom
Pre-school
Synagogue
Yoga studio
High school
City building
Military base
Bowling alley
Street corner
Movie theater
Political event
Middle school
Elementary school
Gilroy garlic festival
— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) July 29, 2019
* Journalist Misses His Deadline on Manson Article. By 20 Years.
Q: Any advice for other reporters who want to pick up the story where you left off?
A: Just move on. Don’t make the same mistake I did.
* This college dropout was bedridden for 11 years. Then he invented a surgery and cured himself. Amazing story.
* 1950s science fiction. Laughter is the best medicine. Sagametrics. AI. False humility. Mortal life is a test. Morally speaking, can you eat humans? The intrinsic value of learning. The ultimate insult. Science!
* A Quest for the Holy Grail: On D. W. Pasulka’s “American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology.”
* And Disney owns all your dreams.
July 27, 2019
Saturday Night Links! Apologies to Anyone Who Actually Tries to Read This Post!
* CFP: “New Worlds of Speculation.” CFP: Star Trek Novel Worlds. CFP: Slowness. CFP: SFRA News associate editors. And in case you missed it: SFFTV is finally looking for book, DVD, and video game reviewers again.
* Speaking of SFRA: The 2020 conference will be held at Indiana University from July 8-11, 2020.
* Tenure-track job: Assistant Professor, Disability Studies Program.
* As If: Alternative Histories from Then to Now.
* Syllabus: Philosophy of Middle-Earth. Microsyllabus: Animal Studies.
* Collateral Journal has a special issue on the weird, mostly focused on Vandermeer.
* For my “Jesuits in Space!” syllabus: Why do Catholic priests keep popping up in sci-fi? Science Fiction and Catholicism: The Rise and Fall of the Robot Papacy.
* What South Asian SF can tell us about our world.
* What will Palestine be like in 2048? Writers turn to sci-fi for the answer.
* From Black Panther to Tade Thompson: why Afrofuturism is taking over sci-fi.
* ‘Guilty’ Pleasures? No Such Thing.
* Let’s talk about peeing in space.
* Utopia for realists: The case for a universal basic income, open borders, and a 15-hour workweek.
* Another starry-eyed young writer discovers that Columbia School of the Arts is a scam. Still angry after all these years!
* College and the future of work. The Humanities as We Know Them Are Doomed. Now What? ‘Dire Financial Straits’: A Portrait of a Desperate University That Made All the Wrong Bets. ‘Better, Not Bigger’: As Private Colleges Hunger for Students, One University Slims Down.
* This historic map of 6 million syllabi reveals how college is changing.
* Chaos theory as career counseling. And on a more down to Earth level: 8 Tips to Improve Your CV.
* Generous Worlds: Rethinking the Fate of the American University.
Securing a better future almost certainly means working outside established institutional and administrative power channels. That means labor unions and persistent collective action by the people who actually allow the university to function day to day, and by the publics that surround it. Fitzpatrick has little to say about such action, aside from some late, quick references to the recent wave of K–12 teachers strikes. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would entail a fundamental restructuring of schools, running them like truly democratic, far less hierarchical collectives, and that runs counter to their institutional history. Undoing our present system would be a massive undertaking in both material and conceptual terms, and I fail to see how anything less than union action would make it possible. There is reason for hope, though, as unionization is beginning to win victories for adjunct faculty across the United States.
* ‘Everybody Is Panicking’: Thousands of Alaska Students Scramble With Scholarship Money in Jeopardy. Alaska Lawmakers Fail to Avert Sweeping Cuts to the University System. Here’s What Happens Next. Facing unprecedented state cuts, faculty members at one branch of the University of Alaska system assert that another campus should absorb most of the financial pain. Its peers aren’t pleased. Despair, rage.
* UC Berkeley Removed From US News College Rankings For Misreporting Statistics.
* But how did we get to the point where the idea of education as a human right and a public good is back on the table, and where free college and debt cancellation on a mass scale are being advanced by members of Congress, including a top presidential candidate? One answer is grass-roots organizing by people who have been fighting on this front for years, including members of an organization that I helped to co-found, the Debt Collective.
* The Alaska village where every cop has been convicted of domestic violence.
* Part two of the great ESPN expose on kids sports: Under the knife: Exposing America’s youth basketball crisis.
* America is warming fast. See how your city’s weather will be different in just one generation. This Year’s Wild, Wet Spring Is Feeding Massive Blobs of Toxic Algae. ‘Toxic Stew’ Stirred Up by Disasters Poses Long-Term Danger, New Findings Show. We Were Already Over 350 ppm When I Was Born. All-time temperature records tumble again as heatwave sears Europe. Climate Change Is a Humanitarian Crisis. Climate change and hurricanes. California’s Wildfires Are 500 Percent Larger Due to Climate Change. Huge swathes of the Arctic on fire, ‘unprecedented’ satellite images show. Beautiful, isn’t it. 3M admits to releasing toxic chemicals into the Tennessee River for over a decade. How Can You Tell When a Glacier Is Dead? Who needs food, anyway? Every movie is a climate change movie. Climate change is making people suicidal. Open Borders Must Be Part of Any Response to the Climate Crisis. “I spend my billions on space because we’re destroying Earth.”
imagine being a billionaire and funneling all your stolen money into a fantasy plan to colonize mars like a cartoon villain instead of just like, planting trees
— ghoulia
July 15, 2019
SCIENCE FICTION FILM AND TELEVISION Call for Reviewers 2019
The academic journal Science Fiction Film and Television (Liverpool University Press) is seeking reviewers of recent SF visual media (still primarily film and television, though we are interested in expanding into video games).
Reviews typically run 1000-2000 words, or 2000-4000 words in our “review essay” format. Samples of both types of review are available upon request.
We are currently in the process of shifting the format of our review section. We are now primarily interested in:
* reviewers who are calling attention to things that have gone overlooked in the larger entertainment-media-complex landscape, especially international film;
* reviewers with a specific aesthetic, political, or philosophical “take” on a text, as opposed to a more traditional review that recapitulates the plot at length and advises the potential viewer whether or not they ought to watch it.
This notion of a specific “take” is especially important for blockbuster franchise fare, like the MCU or Star Wars movies; in most cases we would only be interested in a review essay for such a film, discussing it within some larger critical context.
Due to a recent review backlog we have not been soliciting reviewers for some time; as a result, most SF media from 2018-2019 is still available for reviewing. If there is a film you are interested in reviewing, please contact gerry.canavan@marquette.edu and let him know the name of the film and what you think you’d like to say about it. Deadlines are quite flexible. We look forward to hearing from you!
July 12, 2019
Friday Morning Links GUARANTEED* Not to Send You Into a Tailspin of Misery and Despair!
* In effect, more than a third of all cinema tickets bought in North America are for a Disney movie.
* UAA students, staff respond to impending, unprecedented budget cuts.
* ‘Mother Is Not Going to Like This’: The 48 Hours That Almost Brought Down Trump. New disclosures about lewd Trump video reveal his mastery of the GOP.
* Really, are the liberals okay?
I knew it would happen and said it would in November 2016 but even so it is wild to watch the Democrats become consumed entirely by disgust for their left flank while Trump and Trumpism take over the country.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 12, 2019
* A “cheerful white woman” who voted for Trump loses her birth certificate, can’t get a passport, gets stuck in expensive and frightening citizenship limbo. Concludes “I don’t think anyone should be treated like that, period.” Plans to vote for Trump again. What a journey.
* ICE Told Agents ‘Happy Hunting!’ as They Prepped for Raid.
* Mother Whose Toddler Died After Leaving ICE Custody Tells Harrowing Story To Congress.
* On the brink of being homeless in a sanctuary city.
* Immigrants in U.S. Illegally Are Hiding Out, Staying Home From Work Amid Looming ICE Raids. Immigration law firm worker says silent raids in SoCal have already begun.
* When news broke that thousands of current and former Border Patrol agents were members of a secret Facebook group filled with racist, vulgar, and sexist content, Carla Provost, chief of the agency, was quick to respond. “These posts are completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see — and expect — from our agents day in and day out,” Provost said in a statement. “Any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.” About that…
* Cop lies. Cop lies. Cop lies.
* Pleading guilty just to go home.
* Today in the richest country in human history.
* In the time of Stranger Things, this seems like a gimme: Paper Girls Ordered to Series By Amazon Studios.
* And speaking of which: The Real Monsters in Stranger Things Are Adults. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Ender’s Game — hard to think of a classic SFF text where this isn’t the case. Why Stranger Things‘ nostalgia isn’t quite as magical in season 3.
* Indeed, the only thing the domestic outrage over the Iraq War seemed to accomplish has been a massive effort waged by the government and the corporate elite to engineer a public that doesn’t complain and doesn’t care when their government meddles or invades another country.
* Martian time-slip: How Should Space Settlers Keep Track of Time?
* What old age is really like.
* The Once and Future MetaFilter.
* In a dark time, Americans stood up: Thousands of people have taken a Facebook pledge to storm Area 51 to ‘see them aliens.’
* Do you think there’s a meaning of life?
* “Fatal Accident With Metal Straw Highlights a Risk.”
* Conservationists have coined a new term—“The Fifth Season”—for the month or two of wildfires that now descends on much of the West each late summer. Red sun; yellow skies; oddly chill, acrid air. A nightmare inversion of summer. In addition to the Jemisin reference, this is also a running joke on the podcast Hello from the Magic Tavern, where the magical land of Foon has an extra season where the whole world just burst into constant flame for a few months.
sure, it seems bad that major America cities are slammed by increasingly insurmountable climate disasters year after year, but the truth is this is only the start of it
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 12, 2019
* And now I’m anxious about this! Thanks for nothing.
July 11, 2019
Thursday Night Links!
* CFP: Essays on SyFy Channel Original Films.
* How Milwaukee became so segregated and why it matters when it comes to crime. Busing for Integration Worked in Milwaukee—Until It Didn’t. It’s not just Joe Biden—the Democratic Party has backed away from its commitment to fighting segregation in the public schools.
* Wisconsin could decide 2020. Inside the new Democratic plan to win it back.
* Bernie Sanders’s Campaign Is Different.
* Not much hope for the University of Alaska. Enter: the accreditors!
* The 10 factors that put small private colleges and universities at risk of closure.
* Odds Are, Your Doctorate Will Not Prepare You for a Profession Outside Academe.
I've seen this movie before with the last challenge to ACA on the funding of the exchanges. Most people agreed in the beginning it was a ridiculous suit, but somehow, weirdly, GOP-appointed judges just kept ruling in favor of the plaintiffs till it made it to the Supreme Court! https://t.co/zhONJnwMEs
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 9, 2019
* These Are The People Struggling The Most To Pay Back Student Loans.
* ICE Just Quietly Opened Three New Detention Centers, Flouting Congress’ Limits. Migrant kids in overcrowded Arizona border station allege sex assault, retaliation from U.S. agents. This gay teen lost his asylum appeal & will be sent back to Iran where ‘they will execute me.’ I’m with her. Trump’s mass arrests are set to begin. Chicago gets it right.
* “A nasty, brutal fight”: what a US-Iran war would look like.
* Trump backs down on rigging the Census directly, possibly for good.
“The structure of the Constitution enshrines white minority rule” lots of room to spare https://t.co/EJJkPR6hDo
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 10, 2019
* Jeffrey Epstein’s Fortune May Be More Illusion Than Fact. This is exactly how I think Jeffrey Epstein made his money. When Epstein ordered a 53-pound shredder. I was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein; here’s what I know. NYPD let convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein skip judge-ordered check-ins. 28 Women Reportedly Sent to Mar-a-Lago in 1992 for VIP Party of Two—Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. In Patriarchy No One Can Hear You Scream: Rebecca Solnit on Jeffrey Epstein and the Silencing Machine. The Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Like Nothing I’ve Seen Before.
I am Team We’re Gonna Find Out Epstein’s Quote Unquote Hedge Fund Was a Ponzi Scheme Buttressed By Blackmail.
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) July 10, 2019
self-confessed sexual predator is the president and all anyone does is joke about it, probably part of his thinking https://t.co/1mIKHX3x92
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 9, 2019
* The depravity is bipartisan.
* The numbers are in: SF homeless population rose 30% since 2017.
* Escape From New York 38 years later.
* Scenes from the class struggle in journalism.
* “I Did Not Die. I Did Not Go to Heaven.” Gasp!
* Red flag wildfire warning issued for much of Alaska; smoke chokes Fairbanks. New Orleans Braces for a One-Two Weather Punch. Enormous Antarctic glacier on brink of collapse could raise sea levels by half a metre alone, scientists warn. These are Canada’s worst-case scenarios. Between the Devil and the Green New Deal. Environmentalism’s Next Frontier: Giving Nature Legal Rights. The New York Times is ready. What could possibly go wrong?
This is downtown New Orleans right now…and the soon-to-be #HurricaneBarry hasn't even hit yet.
Our thoughts are with everyone in the path of the storm.
Climate change is an emergency. It's time our leaders start acting like it. https://t.co/nNxxVLNnAD
— Sunrise Movement
July 9, 2019
Tuesday Afternoon Links!
* CFP: Tolkien/Whedon.
* A people’s history of New Coke.
* The Atlanteans and the Middle Passage.
* Stonewall, Before and After: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany.
* Are we living in a simulated universe? Here’s what scientists say. Scientists are trying to open a portal to a parallel universe.
* Ugly academic war ends with unprecedented apology from USC, $50-million settlement.
* The California coast is disappearing under the rising sea. Our choices are grim. Alaska is having an environmental and political meltdown. Alaskan glaciers melt at fastest pace in centuries. Trump Administration Is Suppressing Science and Public Opinion to Drill the Arctic Refuge. Six shocking climate events that happened around the world this week. Are parts of India becoming too hot for humans? A Ferocious Heat in Delhi. India staring at a water apocalypse. All Mississippi Beaches Close Due To Toxic Algae Bloom. The Internet Is Drowning. Fish die-offs in Wisconsin expected to double by 2050, quadruple by 2100, report says. Breaching a ‘carbon threshold’ could lead to mass extinction. And sure let’s go back to killing all the bees while we’re at it.
my brother just told me captain planet's not real but his enemies are and i felt it in my bones
— i'm tired (@artboypolitico) July 5, 2019
There are more LEGO figures in the world than humans, and they will last longer then any person alive today. #Anthropocene #plastic https://t.co/tJxkkyAqVb
— Simon Lewis (@SimonLLewis) July 8, 2019
* Fear of immigration raids looms as plans for ICE ‘family operation’ move forward. FBI, ICE find state driver’s license photos are a gold mine for facial-recognition searches. (81% of ‘suspects’ flagged by Met’s police facial recognition technology innocent, independent report says.) Hungry, Scared and Sick: Inside the Migrant Detention Center in Clint, Tex. ‘It’s a Terrible Existence’: The Crisis of Emergency Dialysis Care for Undocumented Immigrants. ICE deports dozens of Cambodian refugees. Officials expect Trump to try and add citizenship question to the census via executive action this week — an idea officials say was not a serious one as recently as Wednesday. Attorney General Barr tells SC reporters he’s found a legal recourse on Census question. Trump Lied to the Supreme Court, and Four Justices Don’t Care. Whatever’s coming, the career folks couldn’t abide.
[ten thousand years later. earth is a smoking cinder. dead dust and ash coats the world] could we be on the brink of a constitutional crisis https://t.co/wqNuPGfkJb
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 8, 2019
* On the migrant crisis, European governments are failing the first test of climate change.
* The Postcolonial Case for Rethinking Borders.
* Amazon Workers Plan Prime Day Strike at Minnesota Warehouse.
* Democratic candidates’ school integration plans, explained.
* Democrats will never allow the system to be reformed.
* But this time around, I don’t think 2007–8 produced anything. The resulting policies were, if anything, even more neoliberal. But the problem is that neoliberalism has lost its attractiveness and legitimacy, so is now enforced by authoritarian and right-populist means.
* The Millennial Condition: History, Revolution, and Generational Analysis.
* To see how the Koch brothers’ free-market utopia operates, look no further than Corpus Christi.
* I’ve always been cold on Russiagate, but I’ll believe any conspiracy theory you have to sell me about Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who is friends with Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, explained. The Mystery Around Jeffrey Epstein’s Fortune and How He Made It. How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime. Epstein indictment renews questions about earlier case handled by Trump Cabinet official. When Jeffrey Epstein Joked About Sex Abuse. DA knew Jeffrey Epstein was a dangerous pedophile when arguing for leniency. Flashback to 2003. Inside Epstein’s $56 Million Mansion: Photos of Bill Clinton, Woody Allen and Saudi Crown Prince. Barr won’t recuse, again.
real glass half full feelings about the way the guy who was openly sex trafficking for the ultra-rich and powerful has finally been arrested after decades of just completely getting away with it
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 7, 2019
* So much corruption you can’t even keep it all straight: Investigation Intensifies Into Top Trump Fund-raiser.
* Nancy Pelosi Has Chosen Her War, and It’s With Her Own Party’s Future.
* Progressive Boomers Are Making It Impossible For Cities To Fix The Housing Crisis.
* The Bernie-Warren Suicide Pact to Save America.
* Americans Shouldn’t Have to Drive, but the Law Insists on It. Don’t Count on U.S. Regulators to Make Self-Driving Cars Safe for Pedestrians.
* MSP troopers blow through stop sign, arrest driver that ran into them.
* Most Americans like to think of their country as a meritocracy, a system that rewards hard work and intelligence over privilege. But if you look at how things actually work, @sarahrlnrd argues, it’s clear the U.S. is more of an aristocracy…
* Far from Home saving the MCU from itself.
* MLMs Are A Nightmare For Women And Everyone They Know.
* When Philip K. Dick turned to Christianity.
* Stranger Things and Nostalgia Now.
* When a car crashed outside of tiny Tonopah, Nevada, volunteer EMS workers raced to the scene in minutes. But ever since Tonopah’s hospital closed, the town is now hours away from the nearest emergency room.
* Another animal intelligence roundup.
* Zoos Called It a ‘Rescue.’ But Are the Elephants Really Better Off? Despite mounting evidence that elephants find captivity torturous, some American zoos still acquire them from Africa — aided by a tall tale about why they needed to leave home.
* Principal Refused to Call the Holocaust a Fact. Five seconds later: Principal Who Tried to Stay ‘Politically Neutral’ About Holocaust Is Removed.
* Digital Jail: How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants Into Debt.
* On average, older adults spend over half their waking hours alone.
* A retired teacher found some seahorses off Long Beach. Then he built a secret world for them.
* The Rise of the Professional Dungeon Master.
* Baseball has a home-run problem.
* Will Impossible Burgers be the norm for Gen Z?
* And if aliens call, what should we do? Scientists want your opinion.
July 6, 2019
Saturday Morning Links!
So intelligent species burn out too quickly to make intergalactic headway—I have to ask, do you think that’s what will happen to us?
I don’t know. We used to think that the biggest threat we faced as a species was nuclear war. Now it looks like it’s global warming. If we survive that, it’d be tempting to think that it’ll smooth sailing afterwards, but any consideration of this question is primarily a reminder of how much we don’t know.
* A math equation that predicts the end of humanity.
* The struggling US media industry is facing its worst year for job layoffs in a decade as news organizations continue to cut staff and close shop, according to a new survey. And this is before the coming recession hits.
* University Of Alaska Readies For Budget Slash: ‘We May Likely Never Recover.’ Alaska Isn’t a Bellwether. It’s a Swan Song.
* Remembering the strike that brought teachers unions back from the dead.
* Defeated in the courts, Trump may issue an executive order to try to rig the Census. There are no laws in America, only power.
Trump's Census shenanigans and subpoena challenges are a template for people worried he won't accept defeat in 2020. He won't dictatorially assert power despite the election results. He'll cloak his denial of its legitimacy in lawfare and nearly all Republicans will support him.
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) July 3, 2019
* The anger and hate that spews from 8chan is not a conscious extension of the anger and hate of its creator – though he had plenty – but an inevitable byproduct of the dark structure he built. The story of 8chan’s founder, Fredrick Brennan, is a perfect expression of this: born with a profound disability and shuttled in and out of foster care, his creation of the site was born not out of cold calculation or political ambition, but from a need to find community in loneliness. 8chan is a monster, but its creator had no idea what it would become. He was just a kid.
* These profiteers and bureaucrats of the immigration-industrial complex were fresh from the 2019 Border Security Expo—essentially a trade show for state violence, where law enforcement officers and weapons manufacturers gather, per the Expo’s marketing materials, to “identify and address new and emerging border challenges and opportunities through technology, partnership, and innovation.”
* Former ICE Chief Counsel Gets 4 Years In Prison For Stealing Immigrants’ Identities.
* Meet the people fighting for health care access for disabled kids detained at the border.
obviously it is traumatic and terrible for every child in detention, NO child should be in detention, but I worry when my autistic 8yo is w/ a new caregiver for one hour; I cannot even think about disabled kids in detention without wanting to heave https://t.co/pUE31nSlAl
— Nicole Chung (@nicole_soojung) July 6, 2019
* DHS watchdog details dangerous conditions for migrants at border centers. What a Pediatrician Saw Inside a Border Patrol Warehouse. The Treatment of Migrants Likely ‘Meets the Definition of a Mass Atrocity.’ “The Whole Facility’s Culture Is Rotted From the Core”: What Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Saw Inside the El Paso Camps. The department is seeking 20-year leases for most of the sites, signaling they don’t expect challenges to fade.
“Our prison for stolen children isn’t a concentration camp because we’re only killing them accidentally” is not the winning argument you think it is
— Jake Maccoby (@jdmaccoby) July 2, 2019
A Border Patrol agent tells CNN about the "filthy" holding cells at the detention centers and how his boss joked about dead migrants. pic.twitter.com/aA3uqfsJJW
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 3, 2019
That the entire political, juridical, clerical, media, academic apparatus of the United States has proven totally inadequate to the task of preventing concentration camps from being erected on US soil is something of a wake up call.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 3, 2019
* Trump administration ending in-person interpreters at immigrants’ first hearings.
* The Exceptional Cruelty of a No-Hugging Policy.
* Drawings by migrant children in detention show them in cages.
* ICE Threatens Immigrant in Sanctuary in Chapel Hill With $314,000 Fine.
* “Seth Donnelly was one of the many inmates Texas prison officials use as prey for dog hunts. He died from heatstroke after collapsing on the job in Abilene.” I’m gonna need you to start from the top.
One of the fucking what now https://t.co/cvZ3sRhsua
— That is the power of「TENNESSEE PETE」 (@Tennessee_Pete) July 4, 2019
* Scholars Push Back on Holocaust Museum’s Rejection of Historical Analogy.
[image error]* Happy 4th! Here are some readings on concentration camps.
* What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
* Europe’s Bold Plan for a Moon Base Is Coming Together. How will we deal with squatters on the Moon?
* World’s most full of shit people nearly terminally full of shit.
* Scientists warn that losing another fifth of Brazil’s rainforest will trigger the feedback loop known as dieback, in which the forest begins to dry out and burn in a cascading system collapse, beyond the reach of any subsequent human intervention or regret. This would release a doomsday bomb of stored carbon, disappear the cloud vapor that consumes the sun’s radiation before it can be absorbed as heat, and shrivel the rivers in the basin and in the sky.
* If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I’d plant a tree today.
* “Plan to ban seagulls from the sea suspended.”
* Deep-sea mining to turn oceans into ‘new industrial frontier’.
* Heatstroke warnings in Anchorage.
Map to twitter pic.twitter.com/Fjm5j57b9r
— Geoffrey (@geofflapid) July 3, 2019
Never forget. pic.twitter.com/J4qi9o1PDR
— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) July 4, 2019
* How Washington’s Elite Learned to Love Policy Wonks.
* When your email spies on you.
* The arc of history is long, but.
This week, a new law went into effect in Mississippi. The state now bans plant-based meat providers from using labels like “veggie burger” or “vegan hot dog” on their products. Such labels are potentially punishable with jail time. Words like “burger” and “hot dog” would be permitted only for products from slaughtered livestock. Proponents claim the law is necessary to avoid confusing consumers — but given that the phrase “veggie burger” hasn’t been especially confusing for consumers this whole time, it certainly seems more like an effort to keep alternatives to meat away from shoppers.
* Scientists are searching for a mirror universe. It could be sitting right in front of you.
* Geoengineer the Planet? More Scientists Now Say It Must Be an Option.
* Here, the truth is made plain: the childlike nature of corporate branding isn’t a random trend, but part of the mindset that consumers ought to be treated like children. Details are the sinister machinations of faceless authority figures; friendly colors and geometric letters like those on a toddler’s building blocks are comforting by contrast. That each brand looks more or less like the next is only for the better: the world is a little smaller that way, less likely to confuse or frighten. As Jesse Barron wrote for Real Life magazine in 2016, “We’re in the middle of a decade of post-dignity design, whose dogma is cuteness.” Cuteness, employed as these companies do, talks down to you without words.
* The Impact of a World Without The Walking Dead.
* The Harry Potter franchise is going to take another crack at a prequel.
* What’s missing in Spider-Man: Far from Home.
I haven’t seen SPIDER-MAN yet but fundamentally the issue is that unwinding the Snap — politically, economically, philosophically, spiritually — would take more than the rest of all these people’s lives. No going back to school or going on school trips as if nothing happened.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 3, 2019
Leaving the storyworld that way after ENDGAME was a signal from Disney that they just aren’t going to try anymore. So I’m finding it hard to get revved up for FAR FROM HOME knowing where we’re headed from here.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 3, 2019
* Another take: Far from Home as metafiction.
* And nothing gold can stay: The end of MAD.
July 3, 2019
July 3 Links! Accept No Substitutes!
* CFP for ICFA 2020: Expanding the Archive.
* Forgot to link this yesterday: If The Democratic Primary Field Was a University History Department.
* Cory Doctorow: What is it that makes some people vulnerable to anti-vax messages?
I think it’s the trauma of living in a world where there is ample evidence that our truth-seeking exercises can’t be trusted. That’s a genuinely scary idea, because if the truth is open to the highest bidder, then we are facing a future of chaos and terror, where you can’t trust the food on your plate, the roof over your head, or the school your child attends.
* ‘They Set Us Up to Fail’: Black Directors of the ’90s Speak Out.
* Medievalism goes to war with itself.
* Milwaukee County absolutely determined to destroy itself.
* In the world’s northernmost town, temperatures have risen by 4C, devastating homes, wildlife and even the cemetery. Will the rest of the planet heed its warning? Welcome to the fastest-heating place on Earth.
* Amazon destruction accelerates 60% to one and a half soccer fields every minute. Bolsonaro is the greatest crisis on the planet right now and everyone has agreed to just let it happen.
* ‘Families belong together’: Hundreds gather in Milwaukee to protest migrant detention centers.
* Watchdog Slams ‘Overcrowding’ At DHS Detention Centers.
* Another ICE detainee has died in custody.
* Whatever the merits of her criticism, when those in power are caught abusing that power in ways that are morally indefensible and politically unpopular, they will always seek to turn an argument about oppression into a dispute about manners.
* ‘Unprecedented in Our History’: One State Is on the Verge of Slashing Higher-Ed Funding, Leaving Public Colleges in a Panic. Alaska Governor’s “Unprecedented” Higher Education Cuts Could Shutter Entire Departments.
* Will Donald Trump’s Fourth of July Parade Break the Law?
* Must have absolutely broken their hearts: FBI claims it lost file on neo-Nazi website Stormfront ‘after a reasonable search.’
* The Single Most Reliable Recession Indicator of the Past 50 Years Has Officially Started Blaring.
* The madness of factchecking. The hits against Sanders this week are especially incredible even by factchecking’s already low standards.
* Teenager Accused of Rape Deserves Leniency Because He’s From a ‘Good Family,’ Judge Says.
This is completely infuriating. This boy filmed himself raping her, called it rape in a text to friends, and the judge *still* decided it wasn't rape. https://t.co/WlLudz2t85
— Laila Lalami (@LailaLalami) July 3, 2019
It’s an underdiscussed problem in America that some huge percentage of its judges are bug-nuts irrational and irresponsible, just wholly abusing their position to make up rules on the fly.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 3, 2019
* The Democrats Aren’t a Left-Wing Party — They Just Play One on TV. And a truly evergreen tweet.
The Democratic Party is essentially an elaborate set of psychological defense mechanisms for the American bourgeoisie
— Roger Bellin (@rogerbellin) July 13, 2016
At some point people will have to begin acknowledging that the role of Democrats is to keep the rabble from impeding the lucrative and murderous actions of the elite. This self-pleasing pretense that our leaders are forced to do nothing is pathetic.
— Susan of Texas (@SusanofTexas) July 2, 2019
* We had our time. The world belongs to the humanzees now.
* Why did octopuses become smart?
* They say time is the fire in which we burn.
* At least Discovery season three starts filming in two weeks, which means I should be good and disappointed by the end of the year.[image error]
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