December 13, 2016

An ode to the Daily Mail’s penis-obsessed headlines. / Jezebel

Look, we don’t feel bad for Lockheed Martin, necessarily, but it’s a little bit insane that Trump’s tweet casting aspersion on the price of the F-35 fighter plane cost the company $4 billion overnight. / The Guardian

“The norms are so different now than they were even seven years ago.” Courts and social media platforms have dug themselves into possibly inescapable holes regarding online mob harassment, reports TMN’s Sam Stecklow. / Select All

Now that it’s 225 years after Mozart’s death, the Guardian asked a bunch of top classical musicians for their favorite pieces. / The Guardian

A dispatch from Austin, the only Uber- and Lyft-less major city in the US, and thus a ground zero Wild West of ridesharing apps. / curbed.com

A report from inside Illinois’s Statesville Correctional Center—the site of the US Army’s human testing of malaria in the ’40s—where the governor has recently ordered F House, a circular panopticon, to be closed. / Truthout

We’ve arrived at a future we don’t understand. Darkly, the Hugo Award “Puppygate” scandals, in which an unforeseen voting bloc rallied against diversity in science fiction, presaged the mainstreaming of populist white identity politics. / Flavorwire

With all the talk of two Americas, China Mieville’s The City & the City springs to mind. / The New York Times

“The history of utopia reveals that purity of means is less important than sheer quantity of imagining. More utopias, however messed up, is better than no utopias... The transformation [from an agricultural to a market economy] was bewildering, unbearable, and quite literally murderous; utopianism was a constant injunction to think of alternatives, as business elites moved to close them off.” Three utopian visions, always speculative, of American liberation. / Bookforum

Science fiction frequently deals with civilizational inflection points. An anthologist of Chinese science fiction says that the genre has become so popular in part because China, in two generations, has dealt with incredible flux. / tor.com

A black science fiction reading list begins with Martin Delany’s story of a Utopian slave revolt in 1859 and ends with Octavia’s Brood, a 2015 collection. / fantasticstoriesoftheimagination.com

The US provides about 600 percent less medical aid to Puerto Ricans than it does mainland residents. / Reuters

The Wall Street Journal breaks down how President-elect Trump uses shell companies to avoid taxes. / The Wall Street Journal

“It’s because of the details of nuclear fusion—the particular size at which nuclei stop producing energy—that iron is the most common element heavier than neon.” How the price of paint is set in the hearts of dying stars. / Yonatan Zunger

In the video, good ol’ frat boy Tucker Carlson goads the New York Times’s public editor into castigating some Times reporters for allegedly criticizing Trump (one was merely tweeting a link to an essay his wife wrote). / YouTube

“The 54-year-old me is much like the 24-year-old me, in terms of feeling disturbed at the current state of our lands—so the likelihood of me recording cheery Christmas songs again is slim.” The Cocteau Twins were sentimental and content when they recorded “Frosty the Snowman,” to fans’ dismay. / Pitchfork

Jordan Bolton delightful movie posters using costume and set design / Wired

A history of the massive walls humans have built to separate people, sometimes from rabbits. / Lapham’s Quarterly

The awesome Sen. Barb Mikulski, who fought like hell for Maryland—and other women legislators—for 40 years, is retiring. / The Washington Post

“For 30 years, it was just assumed that using male crash test dummies would suffice, even though women are typically smaller than men and the smaller a person is the less force they can tolerate in a crash. That cars were not tested to be safe for female bodies helps to explain why women are killed and injured in car accidents at disproportionately higher rates than men. It’s because women were not included in the analysis—at all.” Including women at high levels of business decision-making can save lives and make money. After all, marketing a women-safe car would have been a business coup for Ford or GM. / The Atlantic