Didactic Synapse
hip-hop, politics, education, movies, books, killer robots, and video games
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I know, I need to fix this blog. I’ll get to it one of these days. Or maybe I won’t. Who knows? Anyway, here’s a new SynCast.
It’s been a really long time since I’ve done a podcast, and I appreciate all the kind words of encouragement (and demands) that I’ve gotten. Here, finally, is the new show! (Yay.)
DS#98: A Huge Explosion of News
Top Links + Action
- Forbes: Wall Street Costs The Economy 2% Of GDP Each Year
- Wall Street’s threat to the American middle class
- What I Want People To Understand About Why Teachers Are Frustrated
- Take Action:Â Free Raif!
Current Events
- Baltimore riots: the fire this time and the fire last time and the time between
- Rachel Dolezal
- It Isn’t Crazy to Compare Rachel Dolezal With Caitlyn Jenner, But They’re Very Different
- Dolezal on MSNBC
- An American Kidnapping (This is the story that should be getting the media’s attention!)
- Scott Walker!
- Fracking!
- High levels of benzene found in fracking waste water
- Documents Reveal EPA’s National Fracking Study Halted by Industry Pressure
- EPA Study of Fracking Finds ‘No Widespread, Systemic’ Pollution (Be sure to read the article above for important info about what’s not in the EPA study.)
- Oil & gas execs ‘pressured’ Oklahoma geologists not to reveal fracking-quakes link
- Upstate New York towns consider secession after state bans fracking
- Florida Lawmakers Pass Bill That Arrests Local Efforts To Ban Fracking
- Small amounts of fracking chemicals found in Pennsylvania drinking water
- Ebola: Early calls for help ‘ignored’ says MSF
Economics
- Walmart to give 500,000 employees pay raises, improve scheduling and training programs
- Classic Wall Street Villain to Haters: “Bite Me”
- Reflections on Stress and Long Hours on Wall Street
- A father’s heartbreaking essay about the untimely death of his 22-year-old Goldman Sachs analyst son
- Banks Prep Defense for Anti-Wall Street Campaigns
- Barack Obama advances rule hitting Wall Street, financial advisers
- We Thought Our Pay Would Be Higher, Wall Streeters Say in Poll
- HFT satire from The Onion: Wall Street Firm Develops New High-Speed Algorithm Capable Of Performing Over 10,000 Ethical Violations Per Second
- SkyMall Files for Bankruptcy
Education
- NPR: Where Have All The Teachers Gone?
- NPR: How Do You Motivate Kids To Stop Skipping School?
- BW: News Corp.’s $1 Billion Plan to Overhaul Education Is Riddled With Failures
- An Open Letter to Governor Walker
Killer Robots, Etc
- These military-funded robots learn by watching YouTube
- Japanese bank introduces robot workers to deal with customers in branches
Hip-Hop
Lupe Fiasco: “Mural”
Matt Taibbi’s new book The Divide is superb. Everyone needs to read it right away. He oscillates from heartbreaking descriptions of people arrested for “blocking pedestrian traffic” (these arrests are purely done to meet police quotas) and enraging explanations of white-collar criminal activity that’s never investigated, let alone punished.
What emerges is a devastating critique of dysfunctional American injustice, especially for those on the top and bottom of our economic system. Toward the end he explains beautifully:
This goes far beyond the oft-quoted liberal cliché about how we now have “two Americas”, one for the rich and one for the poor, with different sets of laws and different levels of punishment (or more to the point, nonpunishment) for each. The rich have always gotten breaks and the poor have always had to swim upstream. The new truth is infinitely darker and more twisted.
The new truth is a sci-fi movie, a dystopia. And in this sci-fi world the issues aren’t justice and injustice, but biology and mortality. We have a giant, meat-grinding bureaucracy that literally alters the physical makeup of its citizens, systematically grinding down the losers in a smaller, meeker, lower race of animal while aggrandizing the winners, making them bigger than life, impervious, super-people.
Again, the poor have always faced the sharp end of the stick. And the rich have always fought ferociously to protect their privilege, not just in America but everywhere.
What’s different now is that these quaint old inequities have become internalized in that “second government” — a vast system of increasingly unmangeable bureaucracies, spanning both the public and private sectors. These inscrutable, irrational structures, crisscrossing back and forth between the worlds of debt and banking and law enforcement, are growing up organically around the pounding twin impulses that drive modern America: burning hatred of all losers and the poor, and breathless, abject worship of the rich, even the talentless and undeserving rich.
It’s a new show for a new year. Enjoy!
DS #96: Wall Street Is Your Enemy
Top Links
- I’m an Instructor at the 2015 UW-Madison Writers’ Institute
- I Don’t Know What to Do With Good White People
- Michael Lewis: Eight Things I Wish for Wall Street
- Take Action:Â YWCA Action Center
Current Events
- President Jeb? KRS-ONE called it with “I’m On The Mic”
- Defense Lawyers March In Brooklyn To Protest Police Killings
- Deadly suicide bombing interrupts play condemning suicide bombings
- New York moves to ban fracking
Economics
- The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn’t Really Exist
- 3 things Wall Street doesn’t want you to know
- Ben Edelman, Harvard Business School Professor, Goes to War Over $4 Worth of Chinese Food
Education
Killer Robots, Etc
- A “Precise” U.S. Drone War? Report Says 28 Unidentified Victims Killed for Every 1 Target
- Cyberdyne Wants to Offer Robot Suit HAL in the U.S.
- Tablets and E-readers May Disrupt Your Sleep
- What do you get Pope Francis for his birthday? 1,760 pounds of chicken meat.
Hip-Hop
- Dana Dane is Coming To Town
Well, I failed miserably at blogging every day, and I haven’t been podcasting very often, either. Fortunately, however, I’ve recorded a new show for you. WOOP WOOP! Enjoy.
DS #92: Gargling with Chemicals
Top Links
- I forgave the Nazis despite what they did to my family
- A Century of Controversy: Accidents in West Virginia’s Chemical Valley
- US DOJ didn’t go after banks
- Take Action: Tell Shell’s new CEO to scrap arctic drilling
Current Events
- Chemical spill in West Virginia
- Fracking news
- Affluenza defense works
- Cancer treatments in France compared to USA
- Colorado shooting victim’s father forgives shooter
- NYT and Guardian urge Obama to grant clemency to Edward Snowden
Economics
- Goldman Sachs workers take one for the team
- The pope, Obama, and a former banker walk into a slum: Does the 1% still win?
- USA Today editorial on High-Frequency Trading
- HFT — Lasers!
Education
- I would love to teach, but…
- In what other profession…?
- Milwaukee voucher school collects $200,000, closes
Hip-Hop
M/A/R/R/S:Â Pump Up The Volume
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