I am a Grading Bot

Cleverly, I made assignments due from both my Comp I students and my writing students, so I am reading 25 short stories and 25 source evaluations today. Today and tomorrow and the next day. 

Keep me in your thoughts and have some links.

No way to prevent this -- this article has been published more than 30 times, which is probably all you need to know about gun violence in the only country that has gun violence like this.

No, wait: you also need to know this. One in twenty! USA! USA!

Pharyngula also has something to say. This reminded me of what my school did. Be sure to fight the gunman, but be aware that if you do the police (and Good Men with Guns) might well kill you if you do.

On the earthquake in Turkey -- as with Ohio, it seems deregulation, that darling of Conservatives and Capitalist, may be behind the immense death toll.

Also from TYWKIWDBI, the cloud over Ohio:

Upcoming SFF books -- thanks to my reviewing activities, I've already read some of these. 

A short story from one of my former colleagues -- he and his wife were our buddies when I was teaching in Idaho, and the wife and I had babies together, her second and my only.

A perfect short story:

Today, nobody showed up to my 8.15am class.

0 students of about 40. Sitting in the empty room, I email them, trying to disguise my hurt feelings.

2 mins later, I get a reply: "Professor, we think you might be in the wrong room." So anyway off I go to live in a hole forever.

— Joseph Mullins (@josephmullins) February 14, 2023

Hmm...I wonder what happened in 1980?

 

Links

 What do QAnon conspiracy theories and blood libel stories have in common? Reactionary politics. I know, I'm shocked too.

The lady at check in with the twin towers on her nails and airplanes on her thumb nails says there’s a demonic show on Netflix about screwing little babies she just read it on the news on Facebook

— Lauren Hough (@laurenthehough) September 12, 2020

But does anyone really believe such nonsense?

Thread from Erik Loomis's This Day in History

Systemic racism? You don't say.

It's all about eugenics with these piles of hate

Police are the rioters

 Apparently MAGA Americans are even more gullible than I thought

Tucker Carlson: Pro-mass murder

 

Links

In the wake of Harris being chosen by Biden as his VP, I am having to take a break from social media. The frothing bigotry and willful ignorance are just too much.

Have some links while I read novels and take walks instead.

As Jenny F. Scientist noted, the deaths from Covid-19 are, indeed, being miscounted

The official count has over 1000 people dying per day -- almost 1500 died yesterday.

The Far-Right more bizarre every day

More birtherism. Color me surprised.

Bringing facts is useless, but

Rightwing boot-licker

The state of the economy

Some good news

This is cool

So is this

Links

Interesting

This is excellent news -- also, if you haven't read the Underground Railroad, what are you waiting for?

Probably only interesting if you read SF

The roots of Trump

How gullible do you have to be to believe this sort of silliness?

About those claims

Someone collected my posts

What the police say









  Cat in a box

Links

Those Romans!

This is also pretty cool

From Data is Beautiful

Conservative plan for the future slaps

How ignorant would you have to be to believe hospitals are over-counting Covid-19 deaths for some nefarious pupose? (Sadly enough, many people are just that ignorant, to judge by my FB feed.)

This is an article many people are citing as "evidence," but if you actually read it, it says nothing of the sort. So both ignorant and illiterate, I guess.

Speaking of ignorant

What went wrong   “Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it.”

I'm halfway between "Buzz it all" and "Uh oh"

That’s top drawer Italianing. pic.twitter.com/NuIG3R7JpR

— David Paxton (@DavidDPaxton) May 7, 2020

Links

This is very cool

This is more interesting than cool

Mike makes some points, but I have to say, I haven't found that MAGAits are having any trouble at all ignoring reality.

See here for an example.

Not the flu

Your MAGA response to the virus:

Links

Necessary, if disquieting, reading from Jenny F. Scientist

Also interesting

More bad news

This talks about why the virus might attacks where it does

Who to avoid

Via TYWKIWDBI:

Camesteros writes about one of these Covidiots (term happily stolen from TYWKIWDBI). See more here. If you link over to the original sources, maybe avoid the comments. They will destroy your faith in humanity.

Not about Covid-19, but relevant to our current economy 

Also sadly relevant

Links: A Mini-edition for the Plague Years

Both sides are not the same

What? That rabid hyena might eat MY face?

Larry Brilliant (who helped defeat smallpox) explains (more of this, please, and less pants-wetting screeching)

Unemployment claims skyrocket

Erik Loomis and the birth of the Republican Party

This Day in Labor History: March 20, 1854. The Republican Party is founded in Ripon, Wisconsin. Let's talk about its core belief--which was not anti-slavery. It was free labor ideology and this would define the incredibly exploitative Gilded Age. pic.twitter.com/Bj3XWjScaH

— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) March 20, 2020

How to deal with the quarantine:

I can’t stop watching this. It’s amazing. pic.twitter.com/Dwq4SMxl46

— iPaulie (@iPaulie) March 19, 2020

Links

This thread on scapegoating minorities in the time of plague

Let’s talk about plagues and scapegoating, shall we?

Specifically, let’s look at treatment of Jews during the Black Death, see if there’s anything to be learned there.

1/x

— Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) March 10, 2020

Contrasts interestingly with this "use racism to fight the plague!!1!" take from Rod Dreher.

Snopes fact-checks a viral FB post (pun intended)

Depressingly accurate

Less depressing

Also accurate

The main thing I took away from my 7 years living in the US is that nothing works in the US. The DMV, the IRS, the post office etc. Republican & neoliberal austerity has made everything shitty, then convinced people it's because government is inherently shitty at doing stuff.

— Katie Fitzpatrick (@katiefitzpat) March 5, 2020

Very like my kid's experience in our local high school

Trans experience

Spoilers: No

Sunday Links

Jews and trans people

This is very cool

Trump's America is filled with transphobes

I got Very Low on this quiz, mostly because I'm Very Broke

Flu Pandemics (science)

cis ppl: why has the number of trans people grown so quickly? is it just trendy?

trans ppl: our numbers haven’t grown, just the amount of people who are comfortable coming out has grown because we‘re more accepted now.

cis: we may never know. it’s a mystery. must be a trend.

— Gay Rat Sascha 🐀 (@confusedophan) February 22, 2020

Links

A short story from my kid

The system is broken

27% of American adults

Capitalism kills

Capitalism kills hundreds of thousands of people a year

Capitalism corrupts 

Controlling women 

Doing Harm

Here's why you shouldn't support the GOP, the party of conspiracy theories and xenophobic lies

Links

This is interesting

The damage done 

I mean, no one is really expecting anything else

Just a little list

Might be the problem

America -- SO GREAT


Your typical TERF -- and, sadly, more and more often your typical "Christian."

How cool is this? (Probably only really cool if you're an English professor)

Brookings on the SOTU speech (The Brookings Institution is a non-partisan think tank -- well worth following: they put out succinct but data-filled papers on crucial issues of the nation.)

See also this

Links

This is wonderful

So is this

Also wonderful

What the Torah says

This, on the other hand

Let Freedom Ring

Putting in the science

Why The Kids Are Upset

Quiz


My new favorite song:

Links

I'm working on my (useless and boring) annual evaluation. Have some links!

This XKCD comic crushes me

Despite what TERFs claim, puberty-blockers are good medicine

 A nice pushback

I feel this

Whaaaat?

Links

Thing Explainer (this is a link to Randall Monroe's site, challenging you to explain something complicated using only the most common 1000 words in the English language. It's an interesting challenge!)

ETA: The Kid uses the Thing Explainer:

Valgus Knees

Most animals can't walk on two legs. But humans can. This is because we have cool parts in our legs. The parts make our legs go straight down from our bodies. Some animals have two legs, but they don't have the right parts in their legs, so they don't go straight down. These animals can't stand up without leaning over, even though they can stand up. Because we have the cool leg parts, we can walk really far without getting as tired as other animals.

Detritivores:

Most animals eat things that grow. Some animals eat dead things. When bad stuff happens, the second kind of animal has a better time than the first, because things that grow are less strong. Animals that eat dead things are stronger and are happier when bad things happen to animals or leaves. If something really bad happens to the world, animals that eat dead things will live longer than animals that eat things that grow.

Why to avoid almond milk (Chidi on The Good Place kept SAYING almond milk was problematic)

I remember this change

You shall have my axe




http://existentialcomics.com/comic/289

Links

This is wonderful

As is this -- especially great if, like me, you are always running short of new books to read

A free quality university education is indeed possible -- we just have to decide to do it

What could it be

This is nice, but won't make much difference, since Conservatives believe whatever lies Fox News feeds them

If unemployment is so low, why is everyone so broke? (An explanation.)

I've got your erased history right here

Making American Great Again

Here also

The RESPECTABLE White Nationalist Propaganda

Links

As usual, the big outrageous story about those kids today being outrageous snowflakes turns out to be absolute bullshit

What Trump taught us about "Christians"

Speaking of which -- medical care should be based on science, not on whatever religious text a given doctor might be following, or how they choose to interpret that text this week

But here's some good news

When your child is a possession

Who do you write like? (According to this app, I write like William Gibson.)

Some good advice about writing the other

Trump continues to destroy America

Here's the world he's bringing us

And to cheer you up a little

Also this, which I already shared, but it's great:

Links

Buying our courts

Abortion rates at a new low. Why? Obamacare. (Also the terrible economy, but)

A look at the future

Similarly with all those ever so touching stories about the tender feelings of Trump voters

Weird childhoods

Epistemic injustice, defined

This is very cool:

Links

In case, like me, you're trying to figure out what's going on over there in Parliament, this might be helpful

The story we hear about Antifa from the Right is (and I know this will shock you) a big fat lie

Amy Wax, a Leading Intellectual of White Nationalism, Tells All (it's exactly as willfully ignorant as you'd expect)

Zero tolerance for dangerous freeloading immigrants

LOL

What are women for

Living in the future

Labor Day -- not about the sales and picnics

In my Working Class Lit class, I taught about the above, and also showed the great John Sayles film, Matewan -- it's well worth watching, and I see it's being released on BluRay soon

The inevitable American solution to everything comes for addiction

This almost killed me -- but remember, pregnancy isn't an illness, and it doesn't need medical treatment (the constant chant from the "pro-life" crowd)

Fifty years ago, her pastor would absolutely have found biblical "proof" that the bible didn't allow interracial marriage, just as solid as the "proof" Evangelicals are quoting against LGBTQ people now:

Update: Mississippi venue owners apologize for refusing to host interracial wedding "saying that they incorrectly believed that interracial marriage went against their Christian beliefs"

And yet, they're still allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ couples https://t.co/HDlor4GDGy https://t.co/ndLVoDd61F

— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) September 4, 2019

Links

"Pro-life" crusaders claim to want to stop abortion, yet eliminate access to birth control -- which, as we know, increases the number of abortions

More on this

And more

TYWKIWDBI shares a nice 5-minute informational video on what the USA is doing wrong with the minimum wage

I was posting awhile back about how atrocity stories are used to inflame populations -- buried in this story is such an atrocity story, used to justify stealing infants from the Chinese. I remember many such stories from that era.

What's wrong with sharing these stories?

About those rallies

Long, but worth watching (true of most of Philosophy Guy's work)

Written by my colleagues (in one case, now a former colleague)

Here's a pretty good reading list

Despite the lies Trump keeps screeching at us

The kids are okay; old white Americans? Not so much. (Frankly, this video is just really sad.)

Does everything look alright you dumb fucker? I want that Truck off my lawn. Thor's retirement is not going well. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/RDBNJ9drs7

— Eugene W (@NOW1SOLAR) August 19, 2019

are you telling me that the guy who ran a scam university and a scam charity and a scam magazine and a scam airline and sold scam mortgages and scam steaks and scam vodka and scam fucking water for fuck's sake, has been running a scam economy? fuck me, I did not see that coming

— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) August 18, 2019

My father is a die hard Fox News watching Trump voter. Let me tell you: it is not a good use of time to try to flip Trump voters. No amount of logic or humanizing or anything else works. Just move on and mobilize and stop voter suppression.

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) August 18, 2019

Heh:

quillette, the other white nationalism

— ᴀsᴄʜ 'demonic ink' ᴄᴏɴꜰᴏʀᴍɪᴛʏ 🍈🍮🥀⚗️🦠 (@AschConformity_) February 27, 2019

Eventually, you know, you gotta ask yourself if we're the baddies: