July 2022 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Meta
FB Recap: Privilege in Back to the Future
Growing up gives you a perspective that can ruin all the good things of your childhood. I’m going to comment on Back to the Future here, so if that’s an integral pillar of /your/ childhood, you might want to skip.
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Posted in movie, personal, philosophy, politics
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FB Recap: Seal and Eagle
Interesting socio-cultural question: In this cover of “Fly Like an Eagle”, Seals sings “I want to fly like an eagle” but omits “till I’m free”, and changes “through the revolution” to “into the future”.
These aren’t accidental changes — I wonder what prompted him and what does it say about the times in which the songs were released (1996 versus 1976). Or… was it because Seal’s version was for a major studio film (Space Jam, believe it or not) and the corporate overlords would brook no mention of the revolution?
Posted in teaching
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Facebook recaps
As usual, I told myself all Spring Break that I should be writing more. Then I realized that I output a noticeable amount of musings, rants, and thoughts — not a flood, but at least a trickle — on Facebook and other social media. I’m going to go through and pull out the longer or (in my opinion) more noteworthy posts and repost them here on Mongrel Dogs. Because self-plagiarism is by far the best kind of plagiarism.
Books 2020
Evermore
Paris at the End of the World
Godsgrave
Mythos
Darksdawn
Working Futures
Bridge of Spies
Redemption Falls
The Secret Lives of the US Presidents
This is How You Lose the Time War
Cities: The First 6000 Years
World War Z
Middlegame
A Brightness Long Ago (re-read)
The Consuming Fire (re-read)
The Last Emperox
Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol 1: Vader (graphic novel)
The Diamond Age (re-read)
Murderbot 1: All Systems Read
Murderbot 2: Artificial Condition
A Memory Called Empire
The Invisible Hook
Target: Vader (graphic novel)
Renaissance Diplomacy
Binti
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
Posted in books, personal, review
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Meh the Force Be With You: Review of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Spoilers for the final chapter in the Star Wars Saga.
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Posted in movie, personal, review, science fiction
Tagged review, science fiction, Star Wars
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Flags of Freedom

So there’s a controversy with Nike again, because Nike pulled a line of shoes showing the so-called Betsy Ross flag. (You’ve seen it — it’s the one with a circle of 13 stars.) It’s not entirely clear why Nike did so. Some sources says it’s because Colin Kaepernick asked them to (and if so, it’s not clear why he did, although Vox claims it’s because “he argued, is pulled from the era of slavery and doesn’t warrant celebration”). Further investigation seems to indicate that some white nationalist groups have started using the “Betsy Ross flag” as an emblem.
Continue readingOn racism and candy
I originally wrote this in 2015 on Facebook, in response to a meme that ticked me off. (Since the original meme link has decayed, I’m appending a screenshot.) In light of Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s self-serving and tone-deaf comments on reparations, I thought it still a propos. At the least it serve as conclusive proof that I can torture a metaphor with the best of them.
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Posted in American cantos, law, politics
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