On today of all days, I have a short essay, “Mobile Games, SimCity BuildIt, and Neoliberalism,” up at First Person Scholar.
Internet
“2015.01” in TXTOBJX
“2015.01,” a poem from my ongoing sonnet sequence, was just published in TXTOBJX. The journal, edited by Andrew Kiraly, publishes what it calls “text objects,” which are “pieces of automatic fictoidal writing produced in one or two sessions.” A text object will be up on the site for a few days and then “the text object sinks into the shuffle and is accessible only randomly via the ‘nxtobjx’ link.” You can read more about the journal here.
Mid-Summer Links 2016
Nuclear and Environment
Naomi Klein, “Let Them Drown: The Violence of Othering in a Warming World.”
Aamna Mohdin, “Fearing a Nuclear Terror Attack, Belgium Is Giving Iodine Pills to Its Entire Population.”
Annabell Shark, “MoMA, The Bomb and the Abstract Expressionists.”
Alex Wellerstein, “The Demon Core and the Strange Death of Louis Slotin.”
Lake Chad disappearing over the past fifty years.
End of the Semester Links, Spring 2016
Nuclear and Environmental
Justin Gillis, “Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries.”
Ross Andersen, “We’re Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction.”
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, “On Extinction and Capitalism.”
Robert Macfarlane, “Generation Anthropocene.”
Will Worley, “Radioactive Wild Boar Rampaging around Fukushima Nuclear Site.”
Rebecca Evans, “Weather Permitting.”
Spring Break Links 2016
It has been a very busy past few months, and my links have suffered. But spring break has provided some lovely, unencumbered time, so here are many, many links (futilely) attempting to catch up with what’s been happening in the world. (In the interest of space, I’ve also passed over some of the more visible recent stories.)
Nuclear and Environmental
Paul Krugman, “Republicans’ Climate Change Denial Denial.”
Democracy Now, “Naomi Klein on Paris Summit: Leaders’ Inaction on Climate Crisis Is ‘Violence” Against the Planet.”
Adrienne LaFrance, “The Chilling Regularity of Mass Extinctions.”
Isabelle Stengers, In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism.
Sebastian Anthony, “Scientists Discover an Ocean 400 Miles Beneath Our Feet that Could Fill Our Oceans Three Times Over.”
Kylie Mohr, “Apocalypse Chow: We Tried Televangelist Jim Bakker’s ‘Survival Food.'”
Alex Trembath, “Are You and Upwinger or a Downwinger?”
Eric Bradner, “Newly Released Documents Reveal US Cold War Nuclear Target List.”
October 2015 Links
Nuclear and Environment
Saeed Kamali Dehghan, “Iranian Parliament Passes Bill Approving Nuclear Deal.”
McKenzie Wark, “The Capitalocene.”
Trevor Paglen, Trinity Cube.
September 2015 Links
These links are coming a day late, but as anticipated, it has been a very busy semester.
Nuclear and Environmental
Lizzie Wade, “Earth in 10,000 Years.”
John Metcalfe, “Imagining the Most Catastrophic Climate Future Ever.”
Steven Vogel, “Environmental Ethics in a Postnatural World.”
Chris Mooney, “Why Some Scientists Are Worried About a Surprisingly Cold ‘Blob’ in the North Atlantic Ocean.”
Laurence Topham , Alok Jha and Will Franklin, “Building the Bomb.”
Ross Andersen, “Watching Nuclear War From Across the Galaxy.”
Beginning of the Semester Links
Now that the semester is starting, I will have less time to read things on the internet. So here’s one last link dump for the summer.
Nuclear and Environment
Maria Temming, “Geoengineering Won’t Save Us: Why It Can’t Halt the Effects of Climage Change by Itself.”
Claire L. Evans, “Climate Change Is so Dire We Need a New Kind of Science Fiction to Change It.”
Alan Taylor, “A World without People.”
Bill McKibben, “The Pope and the Planet.”
Mark Soderstrom, “Unequal Universes.”
And Kenneth Chang, “World Will not End Next Month, NASA Says.”
Brandon Shimoda, ed., The Volta, no. 56, and April Naoko Heck, “Dispatch from Hiroshima.”
Sam Stein, “July Was The Hottest Month Ever; Cable News Barely Noticed.”
Fall Semester 2015
I’m eager to begin a new semester at the University of Pittsburgh. This fall I am teaching a number of classes: Narrative and Technology (ENGLIT 0399), Introduction to Critical Reading (ENGLIT 0500), and Postmodern Literature (ENGLIT 1350). I have taught all three courses before and enjoy each one. The syllabus for Introduction to Critical Reading can be found on my Academia.edu page and I’d be happy to send along the others to interested parties, which tweak previous versions. I have decided not to do any blogs for any of my classes this semester, partially as an experiment, but also because I am trying to limit how much time I spend in front of a screen. For the blogs of previous classes, see the category “Teaching” to the right.
The Seventieth Anniversary of the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Other Links
Nuclear and Environmental
Thomas Powers, “Was It Right?”
Jonah Walters, “A Guide to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Attacks.”
Colin Wilson, “The Slaughter of Hiroshima.”
The New York Times, “Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Revives Debate Over the Atomic Bomb.”
Christian Appy, “The Indefensible Hiroshima Revisionism that Haunts America to This Day.”
Rebecca J. Rosen, “Rare Photo of the Mushroom Cloud Over Hiroshima Discovered in a Former Japanese Elementary School.”
Paul Ham, “The Bureaucrats Who Singled Out Hiroshima for Destruction.”
The Hyperarchival Parallax 
