[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes the first time that an exoplanet, HR 8799e, has been directly observed using optical interferometry.
• Centauri Dreams notes the possibility, demonstrated by the glimpsing of a circumplanetary disc around exoplanet PDS 70b, that we might be seeing a moon system in formation.
• The Citizen Science Salon looks what observers in Antarctica are contributing to our wealth of scientific knowledge.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares links to articles looking at the latest findings on the Precambrian Earth.
• The Frailest Thing’s L.M. Sacasas writes about his ambivalent response to a Twitter that, by its popularity, undermines the open web.
• Gizmodo notes that NASA is going to open up the International Space Station to tourists.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how croquet, upon its introduction in the 19th century United States, was seen as scandalous for the way it allowed men and women to mix freely.
• Shakezula at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the unaccountable fondness of at least two Maine Republican legislators for the Confederacy.
• Marginal Revolution suggests that the economic success of Israel in recent decades is a triumph of neoliberalism.
• Stephen Ellis at the NYR Daily writes about the gymnastics of Willem de Kooning.
• Drew Rowsome profiles out comic Brendan D’Souza.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the still strange galaxy NGC 1052-DF2, apparently devoid of dark matter.
• John Scalzi at Whatever shares his theory about a fixed quantity of flavor in strawberries of different sizes.
• Window on Eurasia looks at a contentious plan for a territorial swap between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at the German city of Nordlingen, formed in a crater created by the impact of a binary asteroid with Earth.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the possibility that the farside of the Moon might bear the imprint of an ancient collision with a dwarf planet the size of Ceres.
• D-Brief notes that dredging for the expansion of the port of Miami has caused terrible damage to corals there.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the last appearances of David Bowie and Iggy Pop together on stage.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that China is on track to launch an ambitious robotic mission to Mars in 2020.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog talks about what sociological research actually is.
• Gizmodo reports on the discovery of a torus of cool gas circling Sagittarius A* at a distance of a hundredth of a light-year.
• io9 reports about Angola Janga, an independent graphic novel by Marcelo D’Salete showing how slaves from Africa in Brazil fought for their freedom and independence.
• The Island Review shares some poems of Matthew Landrum, inspired by the Faroe Islands.
• Joe. My. God. looks at how creationists are mocking flat-earthers for their lack of scientific knowledge.
• Language Hat looks at the observations of Mary Beard that full fluency in ancient Latin is rare even for experts, for reasons I think understandable.
• Melissa Byrnes wrote at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the meaning of 4 June 1989 in the political transitions of China and Poland.
• Marginal Revolution notes how the New York Times has become much more aware of cutting-edge social justice in recent years.
• The NYR Daily looks at how the memories and relics of the Sugar Land prison complex outside of Houston, Texas, are being preserved.
• Jason C Davis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the differences between LightSail 1 and the soon-to-be-launched LightSail 2.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer looks in detail at the high electricity prices in Argentina.
• Peter Rukavina looks at the problems with electric vehicle promotion on PEI.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at when the universe will have its first black dwarf. (Not in a while.)
• Window on Eurasia suggests that Belarusians are not as interested in becoming citizens of Russia as an Internet poll suggests.
• Arnold Zwicky highlights a Pride Month cartoon set in Antarctica featuring the same-sex marriage of two penguins.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomy identifies the most distant globular cluster known to exist around the Milky Way Galaxy, PSO J174.0675-10.8774 some 470 thousand light-years away.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the strange ring of the Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Haumea.
• Crooked Timber looks at an ill-constructed biography of Eric Hobsbawm.
• D-Brief notes an experiment that proves antimatter obeys the same laws of quantum mechanics as regular matter, at least insofar as the double-slit experiment is concerned.
• Earther notes that life in Antarctica depends critically on the presence of penguin feces.
• Imageo looks at awesome satellite imagery of spring storms in North America.
• The Island Review interviews Irene de la Torre, a translator born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, about her experiences and thoughts on her insular experiences.
• Joe. My. God. notes a new deal between Gilead Pharmaceuticals and the American government to make low-cost PrEP available to two hundred thousand people.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which The Great Gatsby reflects the norms of the Jazz Age.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money is rightly critical of the Sam Harris suggestion that white supremacism is not an ideology of special concern, being only a fringe belief.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution solicits questions for an upcoming interview with demographer of religion Eric Kaufmann.
• Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares cute video of otters frolicking on the Singapore River.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel asks when the universe became transparent to light.
• Arnold Zwicky shares photos of his blooming flower gardens.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Architectuul reports on its Forgotten Masterpieces campaign, aiming to promote overlooked and endangered works of 20th century architecture.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on how the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy has just now been calculated at 1.54 trillion solar masses.
• blogTO reports that three thousand students at the University of Toronto apparently fund their education through sugar daddies.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about how she found a new tribe at a journalism conference.
• Centauri Dreams notes that black hole starship engines count as a detectable technosignature for SETI searches.
• John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers the emotionalism of Peterson and Shapiro versus facts in the light of Plato.
• The Crux notes how, before settling the Moon, we have to first develop the techniques necessary for mining the Moon.
• D-Brief notes the threats posed by humanity to the ecosystems of Antarctica.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a proposal before NASA to dispatch a smallsat probe to asteroid Pallas.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the first test flights, in the 1960s, of the reusable space plane the X-15.
• Far Outliers looks at the separation of Muslims from Hindus in Calcutta, and the subordination of the former to the latter.
• Gizmodo reports on an exciting new display of the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the American Museum of Natural History that features, finally, feathers.
• Keiran Healy crunches the numbers to notes how the hierarchy of academic institutions in the United States has scarcely changed over the previous century.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the 1971 marriage in Minnesota of Michael McConnell and Jack Baker has been officially recognized.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the overlooked radical politics of Frida Kahlo.
• Language Hat looks at the mysterious choice in names for the pre-Columbian Adena culture of North America. Why “Adena”?
• At Language Log, Victor Mair shares a post by a Chinese father who calls for a liberation of Chinese languages from their traditional script.
• Steve Attewell writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the history of the Marvel Universe’s Hellfire Club, memorably created by Chris Claremont.
• Marginal Revolution shares a paper supporting the thesis of Jared Diamond about the importance of the axes of continents in explaining biological and cultural diffusion.
• The New APPS Blog reports on the complicated trajectory from Marx to Foucault.
• Rachel Aspden writes at the NYR Daily about the political economy of safari tours.
• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog notes a fiscal year 2020 proposal before NASA for a sample return mission to Mars.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes that the Global Data Lab has just had a paper published in Nature on their database of subnational entities’ rankings on the Human Development Index.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel argues that the new Trump budget for FY2020 would cause terrible damage to NASA.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that the Putin government’s policies are driving more rural-to-urban migration in Russia.
• Frances Woolley writes at Worthwhile Canad8ian Initiative about the relationship, under the Ford government of Ontario, of age limits for professors with tenure.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the lovely clematis.

[NEWS] Five space science links: Moon, Mars, Planet Nine, ‘Oumuamua, dark matter

• This Universe Today article takes a look at the idea of building basic installations, the most ambitious like the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, on the Moon.
• Scientific American reports that NASA is preparing to declare the mission of the Mars Opportunity rover, active for 15 years, at an end.
• Popular Science looks at the likely procedures by which Planet Nine, if found, would be given a name.
• Universe Today considers the possibility that ‘Oumuamua might be part of the debris cloud of a disintegrated interstellar comet.
• Scientific American notes the important discovery of two nearby galaxies apparently lacking in dark matter.

[NEWS] Six JSTOR Daily links: silkwomen, dissection, Lewis, Byrd and Antarctica, sex, warp drive

• JSTOR looks at the silkwomen of medieval London.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the public spectacle of dissections in the medieval and early modern worlds.
• JSTOR Daily explores the mysteries surrounding the death of American explorer Meriwether Lewis.
• JSTOR Daily explores the motivations behind Byrd’s south polar expedition of 1928-1930.
• JSTOR Daily cautions against fearing a “sex recession”.
• JSTOR Daily explores the concept of warp drive, a technology that might actually be doable.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer notes the possibility that red dwarf exoplanets might, as AU Microscopii suggests, be made deserts. Centauri Dreams also examines the possibility that red dwarf exoplanets might be starved of volatiles.
• The Crux notes the extent to which the formation of our solar system was marked by chaos, planets careening about, looking at other planetary systems for guidance.
• D-Brief takes a look at the latest from the endangered Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica.
• Joe. My. God. notes that, in the home of the Danforth shooter in Toronto, DVDs from Alex Jones’ Infowars were found along with more guns and ammunition.
• JSTOR Daily links to a paper suggesting that organic agriculture contributes to a greater extent to climate change than regular agricultural systems.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at the evolution of the Chinese air force.
• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes that the Hayabusa2 probe is looking for touchdown sites on asteroid Ryugu for sampling.
• Roads and Kingdoms considers the humble sabich of Tel Aviv.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the Robert Leleux memoir The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy.
• Strange Company shares an old news clipping reporting on the murderous ghost that, in 1914, seems to have haunted the Croguennec family of Brittany.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the prospects for a hypothetical future Belarusian Orthodox Church.
• At Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Nick Rowe takes a look at the relationship between inflation and the debt/GDP ratio.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the picturesque community of Mollis, in mountainous central Switzerland.

[NEWS] Ten D-Brief links

• Did extraterrestrial sugars seed life on Earth? D-Brief reports.
• A detailed simulation suggests how black holes can function as natural particle accelerators. D-Brief reports.
• This trompe l’oeil photo seemingly combines the two Saturnian moons of Dione and Rhea. D-Brief shares this.
• Evidence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars is strangely lacking. D-Brief reports.
• Astronomers found, with help from a quasar, a patch of gas in deep intergalactic space apparently a pure sampling from the Big Bang. D-Brief reports.
• A species of midge has become an invasive species in Antarctica. D-Brief reports.
• Plants have been made to grow in space. D-Brief reports.
• These remarkable images of Ultima Thule from New Horizons shows a two-lobed world. D-Brief shares them.
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, the effect of climate change could lead to greater electricity consumption in China. D-Brief reports.
• Congratulations are due to China for the successful landing of the Chang’e-4 probe on the far side of the Moon.

[NEWS] Five science links: Antarctica blood falls, Great Green Wall, Mars, blueberry Earth, blue

• The mysterious cause of the “blood falls” of Antarctica has been uncovered. VICE’s Motherboard reports.
• The Great Green Wall of Africa may not have prevented desertification in the Sahel, but it is a project that has left some positive legacies. Smithsonian Magazine reports.
• Universe Today considers if cyanobacteria could be used to help terraform Mars. (Maybe, though there would still be the planet’s shortages of basic chemicals to deal with.)
• The Atlantic reports on the almost surprisingly revelatory nature of an Anders Sandberg paper imagining what would to the Earth if it became a mass of blueberries.
• WBUR reports on the discovery of a new pigment for my favourite colour blue, comprising (among other elements) the rare indium.

[NEWS] FIve LGBTQ links: Pride in Antarctica, Marvel, Edmonton, movies, HIV/AIDS

• National Geographic let us know that, this year, Pride was celebrated around the world, even in Antarctica.
• What was the gayest Marvel movie to date? I do think Thor: Ragnarok has a good claim, myself. Vulture ranks them.
• Daily Xtra notes how queer rights–specifically, the rights of students–became a big political issue in Edmonton.
• The stories of the first movies to come out in the 1980s dealing with the AIDS crisis do need to be told. The Guardian reports.
• I entirely agree with the opinion of this Advocate writer that we need to think smartly about HIV/AIDS, especially in light of continuing technologies and new safer-sex techniques like PrEP.