Nuclear
More adventures in nuclear incompetence (feeling like a broken record). David Willman, “$40-Billion Missile Defense System Proves Unreliable.”
The inverted nuke in the garden (seriously, a broken record) . . . : Dylan Matthews, “A New Report Shows Nuclear Weapons Almost Detonated in North Carolina in 1961.”
Alex Wellerstein found this, wow, simply amazing document: assessing post-apocalyptic land values.
Iraq
Robin Wright, “A Third Iraq War?”
Lawrence Wright, “ISIS’s Savage Strategy in Iraq.”
Elliot Ackerman, “Watching ISIS Flourish Where We Once Fought.”
Rod Nordland and Alissa J. Rubin, “Massacre Claim Shakes Iraq.”
Rod Nordland and Suadad Al-Salhay, “Extremists Attack Iraq’s Biggest Oil Refinery.”
David Frum, “Iraq Isn’t Ours to Save.”
J. M. Berger, “How ISIS Games Twitter.”
Moíses Naím, “The Rise of Militarized NGOs.”
Jeffrey Goldberg, “The New Map of the Middle East.”
And Greg Shupak at Jacobin, “No More Imperial Crusades.”
NSA and the National Security State
Sue Halpern reviews three books on the Edward Snowden and the NSA.
Economics
Jacques Leslie, “The True Cost of Hidden Money: A Piketty Protégé’s Theory on Tax Havens.”
Um, really? Tyler Cowen, “The Lack of Major Wars May Be Limiting Economic Growth.”
Jordan Weissmann, “We Have No Idea If Online Ads Work.”
Archival
John Bohannon, “How Much Did Your University Pay for Your Journals.”
Xeni Jardin, “Boy, 9, Creates Library in His Front Yard. City, Stupid, Shuts it Down.”
US Literature and Culture
Did the CIA fund all of the humanities during the Cold War? Nick Romeo, “Is Literature ‘the Most Important Weapon of Propaganda?'”
The US Patent Office cancels the trademark for the Washington Redskins.
The Humanities and Higher Education
Rebecca Schuman reports on the enormous pay gap between professors and administrators in higher ed and how this has been highlighted by four professors from the University of Alberta applying to be the university’s president. This would be funny if it wasn’t so bleak.
Rachel Riederer on how teaching is no longer a middle class job.
David Dayen, “College is Ruining Lives! How to Stop Student Debt’s Paralyzing Spiral.”
Getting a bit of attention in a few places: Kim Brooks, “Death to High School English.”
More on the PhD employment problem.
And we should all be celebrating Juneteenth!
The Boston Review has interviewed my friend CM Burroughs about her poetry, her collection The Vital System (2012): “Toxicity, Vulnerability, Intimacy.”
And I’m delighted to announce that my friend Emmy Wildwood just released her Mean Love EP. You can listen to the whole thing and read an interview with her at Audio-Femme. The title track and “Blondes” are must listens. (Wow, what a line: “Blondes look better in blood.”)
