July Links

(It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted links, so some of this is already pretty dated, but heck . . it’s also been a jam-packed couple of weeks in the news.)

 

Nuclear

Nina Strochlic, “Britain’s Nuke-Proof Underground City.”

Forthcoming book: Fabienne Colignon’s Rocket States: Atomic Weaponry and the Cultural Imagination.

 

Environment

Lindsay Abrams, “The Ocean Is Covered in a Lot Less Plastic Than We Thought–and That’s a Bad Thing.”

James West, “What You Need to Know About the Coming Jellyfish Apocalypse.”

Brad Plumer, “Oklahoma’s Earthquake Epidemic Linked to Wastewater Disposal.”

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Atomurbia and Other Links

Environment

Bill McKibben, “Climate: Will We Lose the Endgame?”

Paul Krugman, “The Big Green Test: Conservatives and Climate Change.”

 

Science

What I’ve been speculating about for years now: physicists are saying consciousness is a state of matter.

The Hubble has seen a star eat another star.

 

Economics

Benjamin Kunkel’s long review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

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News From Iraq, Nuclear Weirdness, and Shutting Down a 9 Year Old Boy’s Library

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.”

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Quantum Data Teleportation and Other Science Fictions (Links)

Hyperarchival

Adrienne LaFrance, “The US Army Says It Can Teleport Quantum Data Now, Too.”

Joe Veix, “Top Tweets from the CIA.”

Adrienne LaFrance, “The Promise of a New Internet” and “Facebook is Expanding the Way It Tracks You and Your Data.”

Robinson Meyer, “Google Owns a Satellite Now.”

According to Tim Parks, in “Reading: The Struggle,” it is really hard to read today. I wish someone would talk to me before making such claims. . . .

Andrew Leonard, “Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Vision of the Future is Terrifying.”

And some good news in hyperarchivalism: the entire Jade Tree catalog just became available for streaming. Avail, Cap’n Jazz, Denali, Jets to Brazil, Lifetime, Milemarker, Pedro the Lion, The Promise Ring, These Arms Are Snakes, The Turing Machine, et cetera. My youth in miniature.

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It’s Ideology, Stupid! Climate Change Denial and Other Links

Nuclear and National Security State

Mark Strauss, “Failed Nuclear Weapons Recycling Program Could Put Us All in Danger.”

Lauren Gambino, New York Review of Books Slams CIA with Twitter Attack.”

 

Climate Change

It’s sad that we even see articles like this one. Allison Kopicki, “Is Global Warming Real? Most Americans Say Yes.” Argh.

Lori Montgomery, “In Norfolk, Evidence of Climate Change Is in the Streets at High Tide.”

Paul Krugman: it’s not big business lobbying against environmental protections, it’s ideology, stupid!

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Notes from the Anthropocene: Insuring the Apocalypse and Other Links

Nuclear

More adventures in nuclear incompetence: Lily Hay Newman, “Air Force Security Failed a Takeover Drill at a Nuclear Silo.”

 

Climate Change, Catastrophe, and the Anthropocene

We’re doomed. “A Galaxy Far, Far Away . . . Will Hit Ours.”

Lindsay Abrams, “Researchers: The Collapse of Greenland’s Ice Sheet Could Be a Bigger Disaster Than We Thought.”

Ari Phillips, “In Landmark Class Action, Farmers Insurance Sues Local Government for Ignoring Climate Change.” Is that what we need? For the insurance companies to get involved?

Yes. McKenzie Funk, “Insuring the Apocalypse.”

Paul Krugman, “Cutting Back on Carbon.”

On the flooding in the Balkans.

Everything is the worst: Ryan Koronowski, “House Votes to Deny Climate Science and Ties Pentagon’s Hands on Climate Change.”

And scientists agree, we should just start calling climate change “You will be burnt to a crisp and die.”

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The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse and Other Portents of Doom

Climate Change

The New York Times on the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Paul Krugman, “Points of No Return.”

Eyder Peralta, “New Report Finds Climate Change Already Having Broad Impact.”

Gerry Canavan on “Dystopia, Anti-Utopia, and the End of the World.”

Peter Frase, “Adjusting to the Apocalypse.”

A very interesting piece at Jacobin reflecting on an analogy between abolitionists and environmentalists: Matt Karp, “A Second Civil War.”

Roger Peet, “A Radical Approach to the Climate Crisis.”

Martin Lukacs, “New, Privatized African City Heralds Climate Apartheid.”

Julie Beck on John Oliver’s “Statistically Representative Climate Change Debate.”

Saskia Sassen, “Countdown to Oblivion: The Real Reason We Can’t Stop Global Warming.”

Mike Wall, “To Combat Climate Change, Humanity Must Act Now, NASA Chief Says.”

Brad Plumer, “Five Horrifying Maps of America’s Massive Drought.”

And “Picture This: U.S. Cities Under 12 Feet of Sea Level Rise.” An example:

The Back Bay in Boston under 12 Feet of Sea Level Rise

The Back Bay in Boston under 12 Feet of Sea Level Rise

But don’t fret, “This Couple is Making Roads Out of Solar Panels, and They Actually Work.”

And Michelle Nijhuis, “How to Laugh at Climate Change.”

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Science Fiction, Science Fact, and Other Links

Science Fiction, Science Fact

Claire Cain Miller and Chi Birmingham, “A Vision of the Future From Those Likely to Invent It” and Risa Marisa, “All the Time Science Fiction Became Science Fact in One Chart.”

Deobrah K. Fitzgerald, “At MIT, the Humanities Are Just as Important as STEM.”

Early Octavia Butler stories coming out soon.

Samuel R. Delany reviews Star Wars (1977).

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More End of Spring Semester 2014 Links

So because the semester is still winding down and I’m finding new oodles of time to post stuff, here’s some more links for the end of the semester.

Gabriel García Márquez

Since I posted last the world has seen the loss of one of its greatest writers, Gabriel García Márquez. In memoriam, some links.

Obituary at The New York Times. At The Huffington Post. A 1999 piece from The New Yorker. The New York Review of Books reviews One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1970.

 

National Security State

Vivian Salama, “Death From Above: How American Drone Strikes are Devastating Yemen.”

Edward Snowden discusses his conversation with Vladimir Putin.

 

Science

Earth twin found. And here.

Climate change is not natural.

A space elevator? . . . almost.

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