[BLOG] Some Friday links
- Bad Astronomer Phil Plait urges caution in identifying K2-18b, a mini-Neptune with water vapour in its atmosphere, as Earth-like.
- Centauri Dreams reports on the discovery of C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), a likely interstellar comet like ‘Oumuamua.
- The Crux reports on the orange roughy, a fish commonly caught as byproduct that can live up to 250 years.
- D-Brief looks at the harm that may be caused by some insecticides to songbirds, including anorexia and delayed migrations.
- Dangerous Minds considers if David Bowie actually did burn his 360-ton Glass Spider stage prop.
- Gizmodo notes the formidable, fanged marsupials once existing in Australia.
- Imageo notes signs that a dreaded blob of hot water, auguring climate change, might now be lurking in the Pacific Ocean.
- io9 notes that Ryan Murphy has shared the official title sequence for the 1984 season of American Horror Story.
- JSTOR Daily looks at the history, in popular culture and actual technology, of the artificial womb.
- Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at how lightly the Sackler family got off for their involvement in triggering the opioid crisis with OxyContin.
- Marginal Revolution notes many companies are now seeking insurance to protect themselves in the US-China trade war.
- Tim Parks writes at the NYR Daily about how every era tends to have translations which fit its ethos.
- The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper suggesting that immigration and immigrants do not have major effects on the overall fertility of highly-developed countries.
- Frank Jacobs notes a mysterious 1920s German map of South America that shows Brasilia, the Brazilian capital built only from 1956. What is up with this?
- Window on Eurasia reports on the negative effects of massive migration of workers from Tajikistan on the country’s women.
Written by Randy McDonald
September 13, 2019 at 9:30 pm
Posted in Assorted, Demographics, Economics, History, Politics, Popular Culture, Science, Social Sciences
Tagged with agriculture, american horror story, artificial womb, astronomy, australia, birds, blogs, brazil, c/2019 q4, central asia, china, crime, david bowie, Demographics, drugs, economics, ectogenesis, environment, exocomets, exoplanets, fish, fisheries, former soviet union, futurology, geopolitics, global warming, health, k2-18, k2-18b, language, links, maps, migration, oceans, oddities, orange roughy, popular culture, popular literature, russia, south america, space science, tajikistan, technology, television, translation, united states