A Bit More Detail

Assorted Personal Notations, Essays, and Other Jottings

[BLOG] Some Friday links

(A day late, I know; I crashed after work yesterday.)

  • Antipope’s Charlie Stross has a thought experiment: If you were superwealthy and guaranteed to live a long health life, how would you try to deal with the consequence of economic inequality?
  • Vikas Charma at Architectuul takes a look at the different factors that go into height in buildings.
  • Bad Astronomy notes S5-HVS1, a star flung out of the Milky Way Galaxy by Sagittarius A* at 1755 kilometres per second.
  • The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly shares photos from two Manhattan walks of hers, taken in non-famous areas.
  • Centauri Dreams looks at habitability for red dwarf exoplanets. Stellar activity matters.
  • Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber shares words from a manifesto about data protection in the EU.
  • Dangerous Minds shares photos from Los Angeles punks and mods and others in the 1980s.
  • Bruce Dorminey notes a ESA report suggesting crew hibernation could make trips to Mars easier.
  • Gizmodo notes that the Hayabusa2 probe of Japan is returning from asteroid Ryugu with a sample.
  • Imageo shares photos of the disastrous fires in Australia from space.
  • Information is Beautiful reports on winners of the Information is Beautiful Awards for 2019, for good infographics.
  • JSTOR Daily explains how local television stations made the ironic viewing of bad movies a thing.
  • Kotaku reports on the last days of Kawasaki Warehouse, an arcade in Japan patterned on the demolished Walled City of Kowloon.
  • Language Hat notes how translation mistakes led to the star Beta Cygni gaining the Arabic name Albireo.
  • Language Log reports on a unique Cantonese name of a restaurant in Hong Kong.
  • Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to an analysis of his suggesting the military of India is increasingly hard-pressed to counterbalance China.
  • The LRB Blog notes the catastrophe of Venice.
  • Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting states would do well not to place their capitals too far away from major population centres.
  • Justin Petrone at North! remarks on a set of old apple preserves.
  • The NYR Daily looks at how the west and the east of the European Union are divided by different conceptions of national identity.
  • Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reports from his town of Armidale as the smoke from the Australian wildfires surrounds all. The photos are shocking.
  • Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog lists some books about space suitable for children.
  • Drew Rowsome reviews the Canadian film music Stand!, inspired by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting that, in Switzerland, parenthood does not make people happy.
  • The Signal notes that 1.7 million phone book pages have been scanned into the records of the Library of Congress.
  • Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains the concept of multi-messenger astronomy and why it points the way forward for studies of astrophysics.
  • Strange Maps looks at how a majority of students in the United States attend diverse schools, and where.
  • Strange Company explores the mysterious death of Marc-Antoine Calas, whose death triggered the persecution of Huguenots and resulted in the mobilization of Enlightenment figures like Voltaire against the state. What happened?
  • Towleroad hosts a critical, perhaps disappointed, review of the major gay play The Inheritance.
  • Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at the power of individual people in political hierarchies.
  • Window on Eurasia shares an opinion piece noting how many threats to the Russian language have come from its association with unpopular actions by Russia.
  • Arnold Zwicky explores queens as various as Elizabeth I and Adore Delano.