Elsewhere for October 28, 2017

You should read this for 10/28/2017:

Art and Film

Internet “Entrepreneur” Shocked That Copyright Owner Sued Him For Stealing Their Work Isn’t it interesting that plagiarists and copyright abusers are always shocked and surprised?
A Long Time Ago: Martha Wells on How Star Wars Inspired Her Writing See also this nifty piece by SF writer Elizabeth Bonesteel: A Long Time Ago: Elizabeth Bonesteel on Seeing Star Wars in Theaters/p>
Namatjira matriarch dies shortly after return of copyright to family “Under the terms of the 1957 agreement, 87.5 per cent of Namatjira’s interest in his copyright — the Namatjira inheritance, if you will — was assigned to Legend Press, for which Namatjira was paid £10.” If you’re not familiar with Albert Namatjira’s work, you really need to check it out.
Let Us Gather Round and Cry About The Ghost and Mrs. Muir  This is the original 1947 film; it’s charming.
Rare ghostly image of Mary Queen of Scots discovered hidden beneath artwork
“A previously unknown rare portrait of Mary Queen of Scots, as she would have looked as she languished in captivity in England some four and a half centuries ago, has been discovered underneath a later painting of a Scottish nobleman.”

Books, Writing, and Language

The State Of Sexual Harassment In The Library
Noel Malcolm  reviews Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufmann “A transformative history – in Tudor times there were Africans living and working in Britain, and they were free”
Kirkus Reviews and the Plight of the “Problematic” Book Review “In altering a recent review of the young-adult novel “American Heart,” Kirkus somehow managed to misunderstand both the nature of reviewing and the nature of books.” I can understand the desire to add a codicil, but not the way they did this, and not given this reviewer. Offer an additional POV, or even a new review.
Cambridge academics seek to ‘decolonise’ English syllabus ““It is also not just about adding texts but about rethinking the whole question of Britishness, Englishness and what they mean in relation to the empire and the post-imperial world, questions of race, gender, sexuality and so on. There’s also a sense that the curriculum should have an expansive sense of ‘Britain’ and English literature itself.” I am all for expanding the curricula. However, Chaucer, Shakespeare in particular are crucial in terms of understanding the evolution of English as a language; cut people like Thoreau, or Smollett or Richardson or Dryden; not Chaucer and not Shakespeare. Use them to highlight the issues, not bury them.
‘I Was Blind And Complicit And Just, Like, Did Nothing’: New Republic Staffers Speak Out

Food and Drink

Michigan lawmaker wants to charge Nestlé $20M a year for water extraction
Wines Are No Longer Free to Travel Across State Lines “The efforts to curtail interstate shipping, many retailers believe, are a result of heavy lobbying by wine and spirits wholesalers, supported by generous campaign contributions to state legislators and other elected officials. In New York State, for example, wholesalers have given $2.7 million to candidates for office, compared with $678,000 donated by retailers, according to the Nation Institute on Money in State Politics.”

History and Archaeology

Limerick castle crumbles in furious winds during storm  Ophelia finished the work of  Time. ”A book entitled Castles and Big Houses describes Rathcannon Castle as “a manor of the Earls of Kildare after the Rebellion of Silken Thomas Fitzgerald of Kildare House in 1534.”
Neanderthals With Disabilities Survived Through Social Support “A re-analysis of a 50,000 year old Neanderthal skull shows that, in addition to enduring multiple injuries and debilitations, this male individual was also profoundly deaf. Yet he lived well into his 40s, which is quite old by Paleolithic standards. It’s an achievement that could have only been possible with the help of others, according to new research.”
Rare Solar Navigation Tool Found in Ancient Shipwreck “The device was found on a ship that once belonged to a fleet led by Vasco da Gama during Europe’s ‘Golden Age of Exploration.”

Society

Leaked White House Memo Outlines Plans For All-Out War On Women’s Health
“The memo, which reads like a wish-list straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale, says Title X funding to help low-income women afford birth control “should be cut in half at least.” The money would be diverted in part to “childcare programs” — a move that suggests the Trump administration knows cutting Title X funding would result in more (unintended) pregnancies and births. ”/p>
Myth Busters Adam Savage: gender is a spectrum. The closer you look at ANYTHING the blurrier the lines get. INCLUDING GENDER. LIFE is complicated.
Americans Are Retiring Later, Dying Sooner and Sicker In-Between Oh brave new GOP world. You’re killing your own in order to feast on their bones.
New Orleans celebrity chef John Besh steps down after sexual harassment allegations
Anthony Bourdain Wonders What He Could Have Done
The Danger of President Pence This man is evil; 💩🔥💰 is a tool, Pence will officiate like a ghoul while sabotaging the rights of women, and criminalizing same-sex marriage. That’s his hope.
Rachel Maddow: Trump’s TV Nemesis She’s brilliant, she’s compassionate, and she’s literate.
What Is Money Laundering? And Why Does It Matter To Robert Mueller? Cui bono ? Follow the money.
Four Quitters Walk Into a Bar… To swap war stories from an administration they couldn’t serve for one more minute.
KENTUCKY: State Loses Appeal, Ordered To Pay $222K In Legal Fees To The Gay Couples Who Sued Kim Davis
Here’s the thing; she can be as hateful and bigoted as she likes on her own time. She was on the clock as a duly appointed official of the state. She needs to follow the laws and regulations of her office.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Parents are exhausting their children. An eighth-grade boy explains how.
‘Death Cleaning’ Is the Newest Way to Declutter. Here’s What to Know “There’s a Swedish word for my dad’s newfound willingness to unload and declutter: dostadning, a hybrid of the words for death and cleaning. And as morbid as it sounds, that’s exactly what death cleaning is: the process of cleaning house before you die, rather then leaving it up to your loved ones to do after you’re gone.

Science and Technology

Georgia lawmaker: Can people with HIV be ‘legally’ quarantined? “A Georgia state representative — who is also an anesthesiologist and the wife of the former federal Health and Human Services secretary . . . “What are we legally able to do?” Dr. Betty Price, a Republican, asked Dr. Pascale Wortley, director of the HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Surveillance Section at the Georgia Department of Public Health. “I don’t want to say the ‘quarantine’ word, but I guess I just said it. … What would you advise, or are there any methods, legally, that we could do that would curtail the spread?”
‘Neopets’: Inside Look at Early 2000s Internet Girl Culture “How one game community inspired a legion of girls.”

Women’s Work

One of the last Bletchley Park ‘listeners’ dies Alison Robins taught herself German to intercept Nazi messages in WWII and pass the secrets to codebreakers.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

GOP Politicized Military Deaths Under Obama, Now Says Don’t Criticize 💩🔥💰
John Kelly and the Dangerous Moral Calculus of Working for 💩🔥💰 Anyone in politics or government who works for Donald Trump, whether on the payroll or in some other supporting role, is forced to make a sacrifice. Working for Trump means that one’s credibility is likely to be damaged, so there is a kind of moral calculation that any Trump supporter must make: Does working for him serve some higher purpose that outweighs the price of reputational loss?
What John Kelly got wrong about Rep. Frederica Wilson and the Johnson family
Empty barrels
💩🔥💰 Teases, Threatens And Dodges With ‘We’ll See What Happens’ “Trump’s frequent use of phrases like “big league” and “believe me” have gotten plenty of attention. But functionally those are filler words, without much meaning in practice. “We’ll see what happens” is different. It can be a veiled threat, an admission that the president doesn’t know what will happen, a tease or simply a way of blowing off a question.’
The cascade of missteps that turned one White House error into a messy week
By Col. Robert Killebrew, U.S. Army (Ret.): An Old Colonel Looks at General Kelly “A thousand years ago when I was about to begin my military career, a wise old retired Marine colonel, a veteran of the carnage at Tarawa, gave me some advice.”
President Donald Trump kicked off Thursday with a series of tweets that all but accused Hillary and Bill Clinton of corruption and accepting of millions of dollars from Russia. He also slammed his predecessor, Barack Obama, for knowing about a deal that gave a Russian state-run company control of 20 percent of the uranium in the United States, but not shutting it down. “Yes, the foundation received money and Bill Clinton was paid to give a speech, but there’s no evidence the Clintons were paid by Russians to push through the uranium deal.”
The New Yorker’s newest President Trump cover is the most brutal one yet