Monday Links!

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* Just came across this card game as part of an editing project I’m working on: The Quiet Year.

The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a community living after the collapse of civilization, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.

* The fact is that there is no excess in teaching critical analysis – in an era of increasing political propaganda and weakening democratic bonds it’s estimably necessary. We teach how to critically read culture – including movies, comics, and television – not because we don’t acknowledge the technical greatness of a Shakespeare, but in addition to it. Contrary to Douthat’s stereotypes, there’s not an English professor alive who doesn’t understand Shakespeare’s technical achievements when compared to lesser texts, but we understand that anything made by people is worthy of being studied because it tells us something about people. That is the creed of Terrence when he wrote that “I am human and I let nothing which is human be alien to me” – no doubt Douthat knows the line. Did I mention that he went to Harvard?

* How College Became a Commodity.

* Price of admission to Johns Hopkins just went up.

*  William Gibson: We Are All Science Fiction Writers Now.

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* Danger.

* Most people think capitalism does more harm than good, survey shows.

* Tech Companies Want to Run Our Cities. A Georgia town welcomed America’s largest coal plant. Now, residents worry it’s contaminating their water. Rich people live longer and have 9 more healthy years than poor people, according to new research. The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration. Climate change won’t result in a new normal but in constant, horrifying new disasters.

* The Vanishing Executive Assistant: The erosion of jobs that gave women without college degrees a career path happened in dribs and drabs but is as dramatic as the manufacturing decline.

* Virginia Braces for Arrival of Pro-Gun Militias Amid State of Emergency.

That Nazis will simply take over Richmond on Monday, Martin Luther King Day, and all anyone can do is damage control just shows how far things have already sunk.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 19, 2020

* Hunger Striker Nearing Death in ICE Custody: “I Just Want Freedom.”

* A giant kettle of vultures has encrusted a CBP radio tower at the US-Mexico border in feces and vomit.

* The trouble with crime statistics.

* Fractal white nationalism.

* There’s a reason why the royals are demonised. But you won’t read all about it.

* Yet the politically engaged have also taken to believing that electability is a stable and perhaps even measurable quality innate to the candidates themselves. This belief persists despite the victory, in that election, of a man who was widely considered one of the most unelectable candidates ever to seek the presidency. Now many of the sages who rendered that judgment have reconvened to tell us Donald Trump can only be beaten by someone matching a profile—white, male, moderate—that has not won Democrats the presidency in 24 years.

* If you’re going to listen to the endorsement of a neoliberal with terrible opinions, at least make it Matt Yglesias!

The only ways to make it through primary season are to log off or go insane, and I have chosen to go insane

— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) January 19, 2020

Whenever I try to get people to understand where they *actually* are in the class war, the reminder that "you are *always* three very bad months away from being homeless, but *never* three very good months away from being a millionaire", can be clarifying. https://t.co/G3UEzHsWEZ

— John Rogers (@jonrog1) January 4, 2020

idk who needs to hear this but you are significantly closer to being homeless than you will ever be to being a billionaire, have some class solidarity and stop glorifying your oppressors

— Alexis Isabel (@lexi4prez) January 16, 2020

* I’m continually amazed that Hollywood as been so slow to adapt Vaughn’s comics, but Ex Machina is a good one and Oscar Isaacs will give it some real juice. Time to reread!

* Any sufficiently long-running fantasy system (Tolkien, Buffy, most recently Star Wars) eventually considers whether it’s actually ok for the heroes to just exterminate enemy soldiers without feeling bad about it, and then has to find some way to cram that worry back into the box.

* All fan theories about TNG must begin from the proposition that Troi does not have either psionic powers or therapeutic training, everyone on the ship is aware of it, and plays along with her delusions for reasons not yet explored in canon.

A useful dualism:

1) The Rorschach effect, in which a character intended to be criticized is instead widely embraced by fans as the hero.

2) The Dark Knight Returns effect, in which a character held up as an uncritical ideal is widely read as ironic or critical.

— Best El of the Decade (@ElSandifer) January 18, 2020

* News you can use: the forever war between “come” and “cum.”

* Real life horror stories: Symphysiotomy – Ireland’s brutal alternative to caesareans.

* Panicking About Your Kids’ Phones? New Research Says Don’t.

* I was way ahead of the game on this: Lego sets its sights on a growing market: Stressed-out adults.

* And a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies.

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