[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait shares a video of the expansion of supernova remnant Cas A.
• James Bow shares an alternate history Toronto transit map from his new novel The Night Girl.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes the Boris Johnson coup.
• The Crux notes a flawed study claiming that some plants had a recognizable intelligence.
• D-Brief notes the mysterious absorbers in the clouds of Venus. Are they life?
• Dangerous Minds shares, apropos of nothing, the Jah Wabbles song “A Very British Coup.”
• Cody Delistraty looks at bullfighting.
• Dead Things notes the discovery of stone tools sixteen thousand years old in Idaho which are evidence of the first humans in the Americas.
• io9 features an interview with authors Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz on worldbuilding.
• Joe. My. God. notes that a bill in Thailand to establish civil unions is nearing approval.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how using plastic in road construction can reduce pollution in oceans.
• Language Log looks to see if some police in Hong Kong are speaking Cantonese or Putonghua.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the perplexing ramblings and–generously–inaccuracy of Joe Biden.
• The LRB Blog asks why the United Kingdom is involved in the Yemen war, with Saudi Arabia.
• The Map Room Blog looks at the different efforts aiming to map the fires of Amazonia.
• Marginal Revolution reports on how some southern US communities, perhaps because they lack other sources of income, depend heavily on fines.
• The NYR Daily looks at the complex literary career of Louisa May Alcott, writing for all sorts of markets.
• Window on Eurasia reports on the apparently sincere belief of Stalin, based on new documents, that in 1934 he faced a threat from the Soviet army.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at fixings, or fixins, as the case may be.