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Adam Harris has done some good reporting (ungated) on this, interviewing federal staff.

Inside Higher Ed has followed this story closely.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 9:43 AM on April 17, 2024

This is a fiasco which might have some serious fallout. Right now it's a massive tide of stress for a lot of would-be and current students, their families, college and university staff and administrators, the federal workers we've mentioned, and more.

Over the summer and fall, the FAFSA debacle might push some current students not to return to classes, and some applicants to give higher ed a miss this year (and maybe longer). In other words, American higher ed… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 9:50 AM on April 17, 2024

From TFA:

If journalists, activists and democratic institutions stand to lose from Meta’s policy to limit political content, who stands to gain?

“I think ultimately it benefits the fossil fuel industry, for one,” says climate justice campaigner Wawa Gatheru, founder of the non-profit Black Girl Environmentalist. “For example, if more people don't know about the fact that the build-out of LNG exports [in the US] is currently the single… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 9:01 AM on April 14, 2024

Thinking of her commentary on Colossus, I wonder what Wells makes of Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:48 PM on April 13, 2024

Glad to learn more about these guys, of whom I'd previously read only hints.
Thank you for the post, chavenet.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:42 PM on April 13, 2024

I was going to rant about how stupid and destructive the Satanic panic was, but wanted to share these horrific bits from TFA:

Dr. Braun’s inpatient unit at Rush became a magnet for referrals and a warehouse for patients, some of whom he kept medicated and under supervision for years...

Dr. Braun and Dr. Sachs sent Mrs. Burgus and her children to a mental health facility in Houston, where they were held apart for nearly three years with… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:29 PM on April 13, 2024

Season one has a 100% rating on the Tomatometer. 94% audience score.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 9:37 AM on April 11, 2024

For epistolary novels, the 18th century British ones are golden.
But Dracula is also a fine one. (Ok, not entirely letters. Also recordings, clippings, receipts, but you get the idea)
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 9:35 AM on April 11, 2024

What a cool idea.
LEGOs are amazing.


...and now I'm thinking of how William Blake used to make his own books...
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 11:08 AM on April 10, 2024

Chickens, on the other hand, are fucking assholes...
they are also, I've been told, stupider than most plants.

We raised chickens for years and can confirm both counts.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:59 AM on April 10, 2024

Racial demographics in the Amherst public schools are also locally locally determined to an extent, shall we say:

Just over twelve per cent of the city’s residents are Black or Hispanic; about seventy per cent are white, and roughly thirteen per cent are Asian. But the public-school district is more racially diverse than the wider community—about a quarter of students are Black or Hispanic—in part because of the number of white and Asian families that opt for private or charter schools.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:47 AM on April 10, 2024

.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:24 AM on April 10, 2024

part of the WSJ's plan to normalize fascist Republican speak

Heh.

Actually, if you want to do conspiracy writing properly, you need to capitalize Certain Words to indicate their esoteric Importance. More caps!
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:01 AM on April 7, 2024

I love how worked-over the first page of Nineteen Eighty-Four is. I show it to anyone struggling with writing to show them that even the greatest had to revise a lot.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 4:51 PM on April 6, 2024

Now I'm thinking of "Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!"
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:35 PM on April 4, 2024

.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:54 AM on April 3, 2024

Bravo! And a nice little Space: 1999 ref at the end.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:23 PM on April 1, 2024

Great post, Rhaomi.

So much good stuff. It's important to remember just how vast and terrifying was the specter of atomic war in the middle and late 20th century.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 5:31 PM on March 31, 2024

"hey, did you know some people still use Netflix for the DVDs?"

Hi, I was one of them

(raises hand) Me as well.

For years I've been scheming to build up a DVD movie collection. I always check Criterion sales - well, Criterion every day - and start to assemble discs. What holds me back is the problem of dealing with the sheer amount of stuff which results.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 1:54 PM on March 31, 2024

Oh, this sounds like fun.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:05 PM on March 30, 2024

Very nice piece.
I'm fond of Melville's bizarre list of quotes which prefaces Moby-Dick.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 11:22 AM on March 29, 2024

MetaFilter: mythic and subversive, joyful and maddening, enchanting and sobering, and utterly chilling
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 11:22 AM on March 29, 2024

Oh, that's such a terrible set of losses.

.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 7:16 AM on March 28, 2024

Fun part about Cypher: after he begs Agent Smith to let him back into the simulation, Smith purrs back, calling him "Mr. Reagan."

I remember showing the movie to my students that summer, and all but one were too young to get the joke. The one was older and very conservative, yet fell into the aisle laughing.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 6:30 PM on March 25, 2024

.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 6:14 PM on March 25, 2024

I find it hard to accept 'you're not alone" messages from someone who has been given everything we need when we can't access it ourselves.

Same here. Not buying the illusion that wealthy celebrities - or, worse yet, aristocrats and royals - are like us.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 1:55 PM on March 22, 2024

We could have drawn strength from each other, perhaps shared our personal experiences of this horrible disease, and surviving tragedies

But that's the thing. Monarchy and aristocracy are precisely about *not* having shared personal experiences. They are radically predicated on the separation between a handful of people around a bit of DNA and the rest of us, the latter being degraded as a result.

Yes, there's the secondary… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 7:57 AM on March 23, 2024

I wonder if someone should fire up a MeTa thread about how we talk about royals.
This thread shows us to be deeply, at times bitterly divided.
We also had a mod tell us not to criticize the monarchy in this thread, but folks are doing it anyway (like me).

Should we accept that this is one topic MeFiites are just going to split passionately over, or should we get MeTa on it?
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 11:49 AM on March 23, 2024

I am so sorry, Rev. Irreverent Revenant. This is horrendous.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 4:06 PM on March 23, 2024

Charles had "gone public about his prostate treatment, with the aim of encouraging more men to get prostate checks;" in the 24 hours after his disclosure, the NHS webpage for benign prostate enlargement saw a 1061% increase in traffic.

I despise royals and aristocrats, but I'm glad that every one in a while they use their undemocratic, unjust, inhumane power to do the occasional bit of good for the rest of the human race.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:42 PM on March 24, 2024

Superb.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 11:40 AM on March 23, 2024

Same here, ocschwar. The Chinese adaptation is *30 episodes long* and very faithful to the novel.

Hoping to start the Netflix version tonight. Already unhappy that it decenters China.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:43 PM on March 22, 2024

It's also basically the darkest, most pessimistic vision of the universe imaginable. I don't know why people like this series so much.

Have you looked at popular fiction for the past decade+? I've been to school libraries where they make dystopias a *section*.

(That's not the only reason people like the books, btw)
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 1:58 PM on March 22, 2024

Does the Chinese series have less gore, animal harm, and disturbing imagery?

I haven't started the Netflix series yet, umber vowel, so I can't compare, but the Chinese version was very PG except for the climactic Panama scene (ep 29, I think).
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:00 PM on March 22, 2024

that second book was like hitting the proverbial brick wall. I just couldn’t get a handle on it, no matter how much I tried.

Different translator and I've heard complaints about the results from people who know Chinese and English (I only know the latter, so can't comment authoritatively). I think the Wallfacer plot is great, but I kept getting tripped up on weirdly constructed paragraphs, plus a very sexist subplot involving our putative hero.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:02 PM on March 22, 2024

everyone seems to hate them

It might be this thread, or just MetaFilter's customary acidity. But the books sold well - which is a remarkable thing in the US, which doesn't like to read stuff from other countries, generally. The first book got a Hugo, albeit in a weird convention.

For me, I admire the trilogy for a bunch of reasons: deep dive into a series of sf ideas, an unusual take on one classic sf trope (alien invasion),… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:38 PM on March 22, 2024

Thank you for the observations on Chinese literature, paimapi.
I've read some of the classics - Dream of the Red Chamber, Outlaws of the Marsh, Three Kingdoms - but only in English. There I enjoyed them immensely.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:02 AM on March 23, 2024

old anglosphere science fiction -- dry and factual. The prose had a Benford vibe to me.

Benford is old? (looks at the new gray hair which just sprouted)
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:03 AM on March 23, 2024

re Kim Stanley Robinson's maglev on compacted regolith in Red Mars.

Good one, unearthed. Fwiw, Robinson did a followup novel with lunar settlements, called Red Moon. (For me, it wasn't his best)
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 3:22 PM on March 22, 2024

Manned space flight is a stupid wasteful project and humans are not going to live permanently off of the Earth anytime soon. This is not a topic on which well-informed, non-delusional people can have good-faith differences of opinion.

Interesting take. So everyone who disagrees with you on this is either delusional or ill-informed? That's... nice.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 3:26 PM on March 22, 2024

The amount of support required to allow human life off of this planet is not a thing that anyone has solved in any meaningful way

Besides several Earth orbital space stations? Yes, the call for sending humans to other planets depends on innovation. Which isn't a bad bet, given the huge wave of innovation which enabled crewed and non-crewed spaceflight so far.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 4:50 PM on March 22, 2024

Ah, book club editions. As a teenager the Science Fiction Book Club was my gateway to a lot of sf: low cost (crucial for me then) and introducing me to things I didn't see at the library.

Later in my life I worked at a used bookshop and book club editions were... interesting. We sold some as low-cost editions. I learned the many ways of distinguishing trade from book club copies, which meant this post gave me serious nostalgia.

There's a set… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:55 AM on March 21, 2024

Reader's Digest Condensed Books: my Russian immigrant grandparents had some (alongside a big collection of the Little Lenin Library). I remember reading into them when I visited as a bored kid and being surprised at how easy they were.

I think my grandparents may have gotten them to practice reading English while getting into American culture.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:49 PM on March 22, 2024

Fascinating article with its focus on regional and family radical politics as contexts for Dune, plus Soul Catcher.

Now I'm wondering how this background influenced the rest of Herbert's extensive bibliography.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:47 PM on March 22, 2024

I'm always glad to get more Armando Iannucci. I'll just mention In The Thick of It and The Death of Stalin.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 5:56 AM on March 22, 2024

What a productive life, and what a loss to science fiction.

I loved the galumphing huge space operas, but keep coming back to Rainbows End.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:28 AM on March 21, 2024

GenX here, born 1967, but this sounds like me:

They're Boomers but without the perks: Many born in 1964 are trying to stay afloat in overpriced real estate markets that made their predecessors rich, while caring for aging parents and trying to help their kids get a financial footing…
the sexual revolution older boomers enjoyed was being shadowed by the AIDS pandemic….
They are caring for aging parents and are trying to help their kids… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 6:33 PM on March 20, 2024

Aaaand here's the clear break away from the Boomer experience:

"“I never had problems affording university on my own. I never had a problem affording housing."
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 6:34 PM on March 20, 2024

This is grand, Wobbuffet. Thank you for the post.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 4:33 PM on March 18, 2024

Nelson, that also brought to mind Shelley:

"Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few."
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 4:34 PM on March 18, 2024