[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at the strange galaxy NGC 5866.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly looks at some of her prep work when she covers a news story.
• Centauri Dreams considers the idea of using the Earth itself for gravitational lensing.
• D-Brief notes a newly-discovered fossil parrot from New Zealand, a bird nearly one metre in size.
• Far Outliers looks at the values of cowrie shells in 19th century central Africa. What could they buy?
• Gizmodo notes the limited circumstances in which IMDb will allow transgender people to remove their birth names from their records.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the abortive American state of Franklin.
• Language Hat notes a 19th century Russian exile’s experience with the differences between Norwegian and Swedish.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes, after Epstein, the incompetence that too often characterizes American prisons.
• Marginal Revolution notes the importance of slavery in the history of Venice.
• The NYR Daily notes how W.H. Auden was decidedly unimpressed by the Apollo moon landing, and why.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the import of astronomers’ discovery of an ancient early black hole.
• Strange Maps’ Frank Jacobs shares a vertical world map from China.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little considers how competent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission actually is.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the internal divides of Russia.