Link Salad

• Neil deGrasse Tyson in video on education.  (At AlterNet; from Bill Maher's program)
• Benjamin Dangl at AlterNet on the failure of neoliberalism and how long it has taken to be admitted.  (IMF does not really stand for Impossible Missions Force.)
• Professor Chaos (hi!) of The Daily Irritant allows Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas to demonstrate comprehensive foolishness.  CNN video.  Bonus Duck Amuck gifs.
• Jurassicpork on the late Muhammad Ali.
• The state of the City University of New York (Cory Robin, Crooked Timber) is not so good.
• Sarah Guppy, designer of bridges.  But modest (spits).
• ETA because I had forgotten the tab was still open:  Jesse Curtis asks whether Americans can be honest about our history.  And cites some of that history.  And addresses the elephant the candidacy of Donald Trump.

  What's remarkable about this is that whole swaths of the nation's institutions cannot even describe it. They are compelled to resort to euphemism and obfuscation. Politicians and pundits avoid using hard-edged words like racism not because they are inadequate descriptors of the matter at hand, but because, a priori, one simply doesn't describe contemporary America in this vein. To admit that Trump is running a racist campaign is to admit that America is not what we thought it was. It is to admit that progress has not been as easy, facile, or comprehensive as our national myths tell us.