* CFP: Literature and Social Justice Graduate Conference.
* Dan Harmon’s advice for career happiness — imagine a job you could stand doing and then invent it — is more or less exactly how I describe what I do. I’m definitely getting away with something.
* Explains a lot: Long-Term Couples Develop Interconnected Memory Systems.
* Deafness and Hawkeye #19. How Hawkeye #19 Portrays The World Of A Deaf Superhero To A Hearing Audience, For Next Year’s Eisner Awards. I’m pretty sure this seals the deal on me using Fraction’s Hawkeye run the next time I do my comics class.
* An Astrobiologist Asks a Sci-fi Novelist How to Survive the Anthropocene.
KSR: I think we can make it through this current, calamitous time period. I envision a two-part process. First, we need to learn what to do in ecological terms. That sounds tricky, but the biosphere is robust and we know a lot about it, so really it’s a matter of refining our parameters; i.e. deciding how many of us constitutes a carrying capacity given our consumption, and then figuring out the technologies and lifestyles that would allow for that carrying capacity while also allowing ecosystems to thrive. We have a rough sense of these parameters now.
The second step is the political question: It’s a matter of self-governance. We’d need to act globally, and that’s obviously problematic. But the challenge is not really one of intellect. It’s the ability to enforce a set of laws that the majority would have to agree on and live by, and those who don’t agree would have to follow.
So this isn’t a question of reconciling gravity with quantum mechanics, or perceiving the strings of string theory. Instead it involves other aspects of intelligence, like sociability, long-range planning, law, and politics. Maybe these kinds of intelligence are even more difficult to develop, but in any case, they are well within our adaptive powers.
* Everyone knows the mass extinction of Earth’s animal life is an almost unfathomable evil. What this blog post presupposes is… maybe it isn’t?
* The Pre-History of Halbig. Senate documents and interviews undercut ‘bombshell’ lawsuit against Obamacare. Wheeeeeee!
* Same-sex marriage in the 19th century.
In 1807, Charity and Sylvia moved in together in Vermont. A historian uncovers their story.
* Show your support! Agamben and empty political gestures.
* Wisconsin Supreme Court bumming everyone out today.
* Adjuncts Would Qualify for Loan Forgiveness Under Proposed Bill.
* Under the terms of the proposed legislation, whose exact language has not been made public, colleges that don’t comply with its rules could face fines of up to 1 percent of their operating budgets.
* The open data movement might address some of these challenges but its greatest success to date has been getting governments to release data that is mostly of economic and social utility. The thorny political data is still closely guarded. There’s no “social physics” for the likes of Goldman Sachs or HSBC: we don’t know the connections between their subsidiaries and shell companies registered in tax havens. Nobody is running RCTs to see what would happen if we had fewer lobbyists. Who will nudge the US military to spend less money on drones and donate the savings to the poor?
* God, Democrats can’t even make Republicans eat their own shit right.
* The Long, Sad Fall of Richard Dawkins.
* John Oliver vs. America’s Nuclear Command.
* The Catholic Church Makes A Fortune In The German Porn Business.
* US’s Oldest Private Black University Is in Trouble.
* One Year of Prison Costs More Than One Year at Princeton.
* Prisoners are getting paid $2 a day to fight California wildfires.
* The youngest prisoner at Guantánamo.
* Why Bad New York Cops Can Get Away With Abuse.
* Green groups too white and too male compared to other sectors – report.
* Death threats for MedievalPOC at Tumblr because Reddit is a cesspool.
* David Frum’s Apology for His Nutty Theory Links to More Nutty Theories. Of course his credibility is now shot forever and we’ll never hear anything from him again…
* CIA Pisses on Rule of Law, Separation of Powers, No One Cares.
* The Case Against Cards Against Humanity.
* Scientists Have Measured 16-Foot Waves In The Arctic Ocean.
* The world risks an “insurmountable” water crisis by 2040 without an immediate and significant overhaul of energy consumption and demand, a research team reported on Wednesday.
* How Much Energy Would You Need To Replicate Elsa’s Powers In Frozen?
* Marvel might be doing something with Squirrel Girl.
* South Korean Robots Stand In For Real Baseball Fans.
* A Map Of The U.S., If There Had Never Been A Mexican-American War.
* The six-hour miniseries just greenlit by HBO is based on the book by Lisa Belkin and will be co-scripted by writer-producer David Simon okay I’ll watch.
* Postmodernism is the only explanation for black licorice.
* Tumblr of the minute: Michelle Foucault.
* A rare bit of good news: researchers whose last names begin with A, B, or C who are listed first as authors in articles in a variety of science journals receive, on average, one to two more citations than their peers whose names start with X, Y, or Z.
* Blogger fired from language school over ‘homophonia.”
* And I don’t care how this goes down: I will always consider it Marnie starring as Peter Pan.
