Spring 2023 Links

Nuclear and Environmental

Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (1960).

Raymond Zhnog, “For Planet Earth, This Might Be the Start of a New Age.”

Nicholas Kristof, “Cheer Up! The World Is Better Off Than You Think.”

Rebecca Solnit, “What If Climate Change Meant Not Doom–But Abundance?”

Elizabeth Kolbert, “It’s Earth Day—and the News Isn’t Good.”

David Wallace-Wells, “Greta Thunberg: ‘The World Is Getting More Grim by the Day.'”

Mark O’Connell, “Our Way of Life Is Poisoning Us.”

Simon Schama, “Simon Schama on the Broken Relationship between Humans and Nature: ‘The Joke’s on Us. Things Are Amiss.'”

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Fall 2022 Links

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Nuclear and Environmental

Max Bearak, Raymond Zhong, and Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, “Deadly Floods Devastate an Already Fragile Pakistan.”

Katie Rogers and David E. Sanger, “Biden Calls the ‘Prospect of Armageddon’ the Highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

David Wallace-Wells, “The World Took a Bold, Toothless Step Forward on Climate Justice” and “Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming into View.”

Somini Sengupta, “‘A Reason to Act Faster’: World Leaders Meet on Climate Amid Other Crises.”

Max Bearak, “Climate Pledges Are Falling Short, and a Chaotic Future Looks More Like Reality.”

Brad Plumer, Max Bearak, Lisa Friedman, and Jenny Gross, “UN Climate Talks End with a Deal to Pay Poor Nations for Damage.”

Catrin Einhorn, “Researchers Report a Staggering Decline in Wildlife. Here’s How to Understand It.”

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Hartwick College’s Faculty Lecture Series, Spring 2023

This spring, the Faculty Development Committee and the Office of Academic Affairs at Hartwick College will present three more speakers in its annual Faculty Lecture Series.

All talks take place at during the common hour: 12:20–1:15 p.m. in Eaton Lounge, Bresee Hall at Hartwick College, Oneonta, New York.


Zachary McKenney, “The Ruling Class Does Rule: Reflections on the UAW-Volkswagen Labor Organizing Campaign,” Friday, February 17, 2023.

Ana Laura González, “The Sonic Identity and the Recording Journey: Is There One Way to Get It Right?” Friday, March 10, 2023.

Kyle Burke, “The Rise and Radicalization of the Transatlantic Far Right,” Friday, April 14, 2023.

For more information, visit the Faculty Lecture Series webpage.

Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 29: July 16–August 15, 2022

This is the last volume in my “Links in the Time of Coronavirus” series. This is for a few reasons. First and foremost, a new academic year is about to start, and I know I’m going to be busy (especially this coming semester), will again fall behind with posting regularly, and would like to return to putting up just four(ish) link posts per year (one each season: e.g., “Fall 2022 Links”). This will also allow me to be more selective and less encyclopedic in my links and to worry less about capturing the full “fabric” of events as I perceive them (from my obviously limited and privileged subject position). Second, as the CDC has just (quite controversially) considerably reduced COVID-19 guidelines—with the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Greta Massetti saying: “‘This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives,'” adding later that: ‘”We know that COVID 19 is here to stay,'”—it seems as good a point as ever, considering these links began on the occasion of an official body (the World Health Organization) declaring a global pandemic, to stop this series.

For no matter how much we may disagree with the CDC’s decision, Massetti’s latter point seems pretty clearly the case at this point, that COVID-19 is here to stay, and it is this point in particular that has made me to decide to cease grouping my links as part of the “time of coronavirus” series. It appears that there will never now not be a time of coronavirus; from here on out any links I post will always be “in the time of coronavirus.” (When I imagine keeping this series going until we might say it is “not” the time of coronavirus—such a prospect is dauntingly disheartening.) Let me be clear, however: my decision to discontinue this series has nothing to do with thinking that the pandemic is “over,” only that it appears to have made a shift to something that—woefully, unfortunately, perhaps criminally—is just part of the fabric of being human in the twenty-first century; it has become a fact of our lives no matter how much we wish it had all gone differently, wish that we lived in a world/country with a functioning healthcare system and a greater agreement about scientific facts, with a greater capacity to care for each other, to wear masks, to get vaccinated, etc. But we didn’t, we don’t. The current point the pandemic has reached, this point of ubiquity, of defeatism, of “normalization,” of the fact that COVID-19 rarely dominates headlines in this time of search warrants and climate bills, means that it is now time, at least for my practice of putting up links, to move them to another position, another standpoint. See you in “Fall 2022 Links.”


Nuclear and Environmental

Emily Cochrane, “Senate Passes Climate, Health and Tax Bill, with All Republicans Opposed.”

Jack Ewing and Ivan Penn, “Climate Bill ‘Transformative’ for Auto and Energy Industries.”

Kate Aronoff, “Congress Is about to Pass a Historic Climate Bill. So Why Are Oil Companies Pleased?”

Paul Krugman, “Did Democrats Just Save Civilization?”

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Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 28: June 16–July 15, 2022

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Nuclear and Environmental

Eric Schlosser, “What If Russia Uses Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine?”

Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Strips Federal Government of Crucial Tool to Control Pollution.”

Zach St. George, “Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?”

Neelan Bohra, “Arizona Wildfire Destroys Observatory Buildings.”

Christopher Flavelle and Julie Tate, “How Joe Manchin Aided Coal, and Earned Millions.”


Politics

Max Fisher, “Is the World Really Falling Apart, or Does It Just Feel That Way?”

Carl Hulse, “Mitch McConnell’s Court Delivers.”

Charlie Savage, “Decades Ago, Alito Laid Out Methodical Strategy to Eventually Overrule Roe.”

Ezra Klein, “Dobbs Is Not the Only Reason to Question the Legitimacy of the Supreme Court.”

Katherine Stewart, “Christian Nationalists Are Excited about What Comes Next.”

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Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 27: May 16–June 15, 2022

Nuclear and Environmental

Mitt Romney, “We Must Prepare for Putin’s Worst Weapons.”

United Nations Environment Programme, “In South Asia, Record Heat Threatens Future of Farming.”

Margaret Renkl, “One Way to Do More for the Environment: Do Less With Your Yard.”

Christopher Flavelle, “As the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces an ‘Environmental Nuclear Bomb.’”

Jonathon Catlin, “Why We Love Disaster Films.”


Coronavirus

Noah Weiland, “White House Outlines Coronavirus Vaccine Plan for Children under Five.”

Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland, “FDA Panel Recommends Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines for Youngest Children.”


Ukraine

Anton Troianovski, “‘They Basically Got Everything Wrong’: A Russian Diplomat Speaks Out on the War.”

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Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 26: April 16–May 15, 2022

Politics and Economics

Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward, “Supreme Court has Voted to Overturn Abortion Rights, Draft Opinion Shows.”

Roxane Gay, “It’s Time to Rage.”

Matt Gertz, “With Attack on Twitter, the Right Shows It Has Institutionalized Trump’s Corrupt Use of Government Power.”

Anthony Cuthbertson, “NFT Sales Plummet 92% as Market ‘Collapses.'”

David Yaffe-Bellany, Erin Griffith, and Ephrat Livni, “Cryptocurrencies Melt Down in a ‘Perfect Storm’ of Fear and Panic.”

Eric Budish, “The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and Blockchain.”

Nuclear and Environmental

Chris Cameron, “Climate Activist Dies after Setting Himself on Fire at Supreme Court.”

Abrahm Lustgartn, “The Great Climate Migration.”

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Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 25: March 16–April 15, 2022

Nuclear and Environmental

Max Fisher, “As Russia Digs In, What’s the Risk of Nuclear War? ‘It’s Not Zero.’”

William J. Broad, “How America Watches for a Nuclear Strike.”

Rod Buntzen, “This Is What It’s Like to Witness a Nuclear Explosion.”

Cara Buckley, “‘OK Doomer’ and the Climate Advocates Who Say It’s Not Too Late.”

Brad Plumer and Raymond Zhong, “Stopping Climate Change Is Doable, but Time Is Short, UN Panel Warns.”

John Vidal, “Energy Efficiency Guru Amory Lovins: ‘It’s the Largest, Cheapest, Safest, Cleanest Way to Address the Crisis.'”

Henry Fountain, “In a First, an Ice Shelf Collapses in East Antarctica.”


Ukraine

Jane Burbank, “The Grand Theory Driving Putin to War.”

Malachy Browne, David Botti, and Haley Willis, “Satellite Images Show Bodies Lay in Bucha for Weeks, Despite Russian Claims.”

“‘At Night I Dream of Mariupol’: Nine Accounts of Surviving a Russian Siege.” Continue reading

Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 24: February 16–March 15, 2022

Ukraine (Ordered by Date of Appearance)

Alexander Gabuev, “On Why Vladimir Putin and His Entourage Want War.”

Edward Wong, Julian E. Barnes, and Anton Troianovski, “US Says Russia Has a List of Ukrainians to Kill or Detain after an Invasion.”

Anton Troianovski, “Moscow Orders Troops to Ukraine’s Separatist Regions after Putin Recognizes Their Independence.”

“Ukrainian Officials Report Missile Attacks in Kyiv.”

Mike McIntire and Michael Forsythe, “Putin Faces Sanctions, but His Assets Remain an Enigma.”

Peter Baker, “Biden and Putin, Children of the Cold War, Face Off in New Conflict.”

Emma Ashford, “It’s Official: The Post-Cold War Era Is Over.”

Manveen Rana, “Volodymyr Zelensky Survives Three Assassination Attempts in Days.”

Michael Schwirtz, Andrew E. Kramer and Michael Levenson, “Russian Forces Pound Civilians, as Putin Likens Sanctions to a ‘Declaration of War.'”

Michael D. Shear, “Biden Bans Oil Imports from Russia, Calling It a ‘Blow to Putin’s War Machine.'”


Nuclear and Environmental

James M. Acton, “The Most Immediate Nuclear Danger in Ukraine Isn’t Chernobyl.”

David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, “Putin Declares a Nuclear Alert, and Biden Seeks De-Escalation.”

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Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 23: January 16–February 15, 2022

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Nuclear and Environmental

Henry Fountain, “An Extraordinary Iceberg Is Gone, but Not Forgotten.”

Jacob Blumenfeld, “Climate Barbarism: Adapting to a Wrong World.”

Joshua Rothman, “Can Science Fiction Wake Us Up to Our Climate Reality?”


Ukraine

The New York Times, “Moscow Is Pessimistic about Reaching Accord with US on Ukraine, but Talk Continues.”

Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper, “US Battles Putin by Disclosing His Next Possible Moves.”

And Max Fisher, “On Ukraine, US, and Russia Wage Signaling War to Avert Actual War.”


Coronavirus

Apoorva Mandavilli, “Yes, Omicron Is Loosening Its Hold. But the Pandemic Has Not Ended.”

Steven Kurutz, “Too Young to Feel So Old.”

Alexander Provan, “The Great Equalizer” (from June 2020).

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