[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Charlie Stross at Antipope shares an essay he recently presented on artificial intelligence and its challenges for us.
• P. Kerim Friedman writes at {anthro}dendum about the birth of the tea ceremony in the Taiwan of the 1970s.
• Anthropology net reports on a cave painting nearly 44 thousand years old in Indonesia depicting a hunting story.
• Architectuul looks at some temporary community gardens in London.
• Bad Astronomy reports on the weird history of asteroid Ryugu.
• The Buzz talks about the most popular titles borrowed from the Toronto Public Library in 2019.
• Caitlin Kelly talks at the Broadside Blog about her particular love of radio.
• Centauri Dreams talks about the role of amateur astronomers in searching for exoplanets, starting with LHS 1140 b.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber looks at what is behind the rhetoric of “virtue signalling”.
• Dangerous Minds shares concert performance from Nirvana filmed the night before the release of Nevermind.
• Bruce Dorminey notes new evidence that, even before the Chixculub impact, the late Cretaceous Earth was staggering under environmental pressures.
• Myron Strong at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about how people of African descent in the US deal with the legacies of slavery in higher education.
• Far Outliers reports on the plans in 1945 for an invasion of Japan by the US.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing gathers together a collection of the author’s best writings there.
• Gizmodo notes the immensity of the supermassive black hole, some 40 billion solar masses, at the heart of galaxy Holm 15A 700 million light-years away.
• Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res writes about the issue of how Wichita is to organize its civic politics.
• io9 argues that the 2010s were a decade where the culture of the spoiler became key.
• The Island Review points readers to the podcast Mother’s Blood, Sister’s Songs, an exploration of the links between Ireland and Iceland.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of the lawyer of the killer of a mob boss that the QAnon conspiracy inspired his actions. This strikes me as terribly dangerous.
• JSTOR Daily looks at a study examining scholarly retractions.
• Language Hat shares an amusing cartoon illustrating the relationships of the dialects of Arabic.
• Language Log lists ten top new words in the Japanese language.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the dissipation of American diplomacy by Trump.
• The LRB Blog looks at the many problems in Sparta, Greece, with accommodating refugees, for everyone concerned.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting the decline of the one-child policy in China has diminished child trafficking, among other crimes.
• Sean Marshall, looking at transit in Brampton, argues that transit users need more protection from road traffic.
• Russell Darnley shares excerpts from essays he wrote about the involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War.
• Peter Watts talks about his recent visit to a con in Sofia, Bulgaria, and about the apocalypse, here.
• The NYR Daily looks at the corporatization of the funeral industry, here.
• Diane Duane writes, from her own personal history with Star Trek, about how one can be a writer who ends up writing for a media franchise.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the job of tasting, and rating, different cuts of lamb.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at a nondescript observatory in the Mojave desert of California that maps the asteroids of the solar system.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Eduardo Chavarin about, among other things, Tijuana.
• Drew Rowsome loves the SpongeBob musical.
• Peter Rukavina announces that Charlottetown has its first public fast charger for electric vehicles.
• The Russian Demographics Blog considers the impact of space medicine, here.
• The Signal reports on how the Library of Congress is making its internet archives more readily available, here.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers how the incredibly isolated galaxy MCG+01-02-015 will decay almost to nothing over almost uncountable eons.
• Strange Company reports on the trial and execution of Christopher Slaughterford for murder. Was there even a crime?
• Strange Maps shares a Coudenhove-Kalergi map imagining the division of the world into five superstates.
• Understanding Society considers entertainment as a valuable thing, here.
• Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine announces his new book, Où va l’argent des pauvres?
• John Scalzi at Whatever looks at how some mailed bread triggered a security alert, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports on the massive amount of remittances sent to Tajikistan by migrant workers, here.
• Arnold Zwicky notes a bizarre no-penguins sign for sale on Amazon.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Charlie Stross hosts at Antipope another discussion thread examining Brexit.
• Architectuul takes a look at five overlooked mid-20th century architects.
• Bad Astronomy shares a satellite photo of auroras at night over the city lights of the Great Lakes basin and something else, too.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the directions love has taken her, and wonders where it might have taken her readers.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the Hayabusa 2 impactor on asteroid Ryugu.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the claims of Steven Pinker about nuclear power.
• D-Brief notes the detection, in remarkable detail, of a brilliant exocomet at Beta Pictoris.
• The Dragon’s Tales considers the possibility that China might be building a military base in Cambodia.
• Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about the importance of small social cues, easily overlookable tough they are.
• Far Outliers notes the role of Japan’s imperial couple, Akihito and Michiko, in post-war Japan.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing writes about the potential inadequacy of talking about values.
• Gizmodo notes a new study suggesting the surprising and potentially dangerous diversity of bacteria present on the International Space Station.
• Mark Graham shares a link to a paper, and its abstract, examining what might come of the creation of a planetary labour market through the gig economy.
• Hornet Stories takes a look at Red Ribbon Blues, a 1995 AIDS-themed film starring RuPaul.
• io9 notes that Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke are co-writing a Pan’s Labyrinth novel scheduled for release later this year.
• Joe. My. God. notes a new study suggesting 20% of LGBTQ Americans live in rural areas.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the Bluestockings, the grouping of 18th century women in England who were noteworthy scholars and writers.
• Language Hat notes an ambitious new historical dictionary of the Arabic language being created by the emirate of Sharjah.
• Language Log examines, in the aftermath of a discussion of trolls, different cultures’ terms for different sorts of arguments.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how early forestry in the United States was inspired by socialist ideals.
• The Map Room Blog links to a map showing the different national parks of the United Kingdom.
• Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, noting the new findings from the Chixculub impact, notes how monitoring asteroids to prevent like catastrophes in the future has to be a high priority.
• The New APPS Blog explains how data, by its very nature, is so easily made into a commodity.
• The NYR Daily considers the future of the humanities in a world where higher education is becoming preoccupied by STEM.
• Corey S. Powell at Out There interviews Bear Grylls about the making of his new documentary series Hostile Planet.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw considers the pleasures of birds and of birdwatching.
• Jason C. Davis at the Planetary Society Blog noted the arrival of the Beresheet probe in lunar orbit.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the new amazing-sounding play Angelique at the Factory Theatre.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes a paper that makes the point of there being no automatic relationship between greater gender equality and increases in fertility.
• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress has made use of the BagIt programming language in its archiving of data.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel comes up with questions to ask plausible visitors from other universes.
• Strange Company notes the mysterious deaths visited on three members of a British family in the early 20th century. Who was the murderer? Was there even a crime?
• Towleroad notes the activists, including Canadian-born playwright Jordan Tannahill, who disrupted a high tea at the Dorchester Hotel in London over the homophobic law passed by its owner, the Sultan of Brunei.
• Window on Eurasia notes rising instability in Ingushetia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes that the British surveillance of Huawei is revealing the sorts of problems that must be present in scrutiny-less Facebook, too.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Architectuul looks at a new architecture project intent on the interface between land and sea.
• Bad Astronomy reports on the impact of a meteorite with a house in Uruguay.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog writes about the importance of lightening the loads of others when one can.
• Centauri Dreams writes about how OSIRIS-REx is responding to unexpected conditions at Bennu like its relative rockiness. https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/03/21/working-with-the-unexpected-at-asteroid-bennu/
• The Crux considers the remarkable versatility of ketamine, as anesthetic and anti-depressant among other things.
• D-Brief notes a report that reveals universal patterns of app usage on cell phones by different people.
• Dangerous Minds shares some vintage R.E.M. performances from 1981.
• Earther notes that temperatures in parts of Alaska have just briefly peaked at 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Gizmodo notes the new accurate guide for walkers provided by a new Google Maps system making use of landmarks.
• Kieran Healy breaks down some data from the 2018 General Social Survey.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the Sylvester classic “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” has been selected for preservation by the National Registry of the Library of Congress.
• JSTOR Daily makes a case for treating the art of children not as mere scribblings but rather as art worthy of serious consideration.
• Language Hat notes the sensitive translation by one man of the Bible into the 20th century vernacular Arabic of Egypt.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the Mueller report, what is and is not likely to be in it, and how one should react to it.
• Marginal Revolution notes the extent to which the employment rates of women has been a driving factor in recent American economic history.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw celebrates his 13th anniversary of blogging.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Shannon Mustipher on Caribbean rum culture.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the new interactive theatre piece Amorous Playlist.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why quantum tunneling does not violate the speed of light.
• Towleroad notes that the André Aciman sequel to Call Me By Your Name, Find Me, is scheduled for an October release.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes how the denaturalization by Italy of a man who committed terrible criminal acts sets a bad precedent for citizenship generally.
• Window on Eurasia lists five tactics that non-Russian republics in Russia could adopt to resist their abolition.
• Arnold Zwicky begins a meditation that starts with the sight of a vegetarian reuben sandwich.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait shares Johannes Kroeger’s image of the median Earth.
• The Crux considers when human societies began to accumulate large numbers of aged people. Would there have been octogenarians in any Stone Age cultures, for instance?
• The Dragon’s Tales considers Russia’s strategy in Southeast Asia.
• Alexandra Samuel at JSTOR Daily notes that one way to fight against fake news is for people to broaden their friends networks beyond their ideological sympathizers.
• Language Log, noting a television clip from Algeria in which a person defend their native dialect versus standard Arabic, compares the language situation in the Arab world to that of China.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen explains how the Tervuren Central African museum in Brussels has not been decolonized.
• The Planetary Society Blog explores the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why, in current physics, the multiverse must exist.
• Strange Company explores the strange disappearance, in the Arizona desert in 1952, of a young couple. Their plane was found and in perfect condition, but what happened to them?
• Strange Maps reports on the tragic migration of six Californian raptors, only one of which managed to make it to its destination.
• Towleroad reports on the appearance of actor and singer Ben Platt on The Ellen Show, talking about his career and coming out.
• Window on Eurasia notes the apparently widespread mutual dislike of Chechens and Muscovites.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the French Impressionist artists Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Suzanne Valadon, with images of their art.

[DM] Some news inks: Montréal & Calcutta migration, Chinese languages, former Soviet Union, borders

I’ve a new links post up at Demography Matters.

• La Presse notes that suburbanization proceeds in Montréal, as migration from the island of Montréal to off-island suburbs grows. This is of perhaps particular note in a Québec where demographics, particularly related to language dynamics, have long been a preoccupation, the island of Montréal being more multilingual than its suburbs.
• The blog Far Outliers has been posting excerpts from The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta, a 2018 book by Kushanava Choudhury. One brief excerpt touches upon the diversity of Calcutta’s migrant population.
• The South China Morning Post has posted some interesting articles about language dynamics. In one, the SCMP suggests that the Cantonese language is falling out of use among young people in Guangzhou, largest Cantonese-speaking city by population. Does this hint at decline in other Chinese languages? Another, noting how Muslim Huiare being pressured to shut down Arabic-medium schools, is more foreboding.
• Ukrainian demographics blogger pollotenchegg is back with a new map of Soviet census data from 1990, one that shows the very different population dynamics of some parts of the Soviet Union. The contrast between provincial European Russia and southern Central Asia is outstanding.
• In the area of the former Soviet Union, scholar Otto Pohl has recently examined how people from the different German communities of southeast Europe were, at the end of the Second World War, taken to the Soviet Union as forced labourers. The blog Window on Eurasia, meanwhile, has noted that the number of immigrants to Russia are falling, with Ukrainians diminishing particularly in number while Central Asian numbers remain more resistant to the trend.
• Finally, JSTOR Daily has observed the extent to which border walls represent, ultimately, a failure of politics.

[NEWS] Five language links: Cantonese, Arabic, Gaelic, French, Sumerian

• The Cantonese language, the SCMP reports, is falling out of use among young people in Guangzhou.
• The Muslim Hui, living outside of Xinjiang, are being pressured to shut down Arabic-medium schools. The SCMP reports.
• The Scottish government has received only two complaints about Gaelic on bilingual road signs in the past seventeen years. The National reports.
• HuffPost Québec notes that the French language has been displaced as the chief language of wine by English.
• Advanced artificial intelligence has the potential to aid in the translation of ancient languages like Sumerian, with stockpiles of untranslated material just waiting for an eye’s attention. The BBC explains.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning photos of the Triangulum galaxy.
• The Crux notes how innovative planning and recovery missions helped many NASA missions, like the Hubble and Kepler telescopes, improve over time.
• Sea stars on the Pacific coast of North America, D-Brief notes, are starting to die out en masse.
• David Finger at the Finger Post shows his readers his recent visit to the Incan ruins at Ollantaytambo, in Peru.
• Gizmodo notes how astronomers accidentally found the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Bedin I a mere 30 million light years away.
• JSTOR Daily notes the new evidence supporting the arguments of W.E.B. Dubois that black resistance under slavery helped the Confederacy lose the US Civil War.
• Language Hat notes the discovery of a new trilingual inscription in Iran, one combining the Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian languages.
• Language Log notes the impending death of the Arabic dialect of old Mosul, and notes what its speakers are said to talk like birds.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money thinks that if Cary Booker does not win the Democratic nomination for 2020, he will at least push the discourse leftwards.
• Marginal Revolution notes new evidence that the post-1492 depopulation of the Americas led directly to the global cooling of the Little Ice Age.
• Neuroskeptic considers the ways in which emergence, at different levels, could be a property of the human brain.
• The NYR Daily features an excerpt from the new Édouard Louis book, Who Killed My Father, talking about the evolution relationship with his father over time.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw muses on the potential for a revival of print journalism in Australia.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews journalist Jason Rezaian on the subject of his new book about his long imprisonment in Iran.
• Drew Rowsome writes about how censorship, on Facebook and on Blogspot, harms his writing and his ability to contribute to his communities.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel writes</a about how galaxy clusters lead to the premature death of stellar formation in their component galaxies.
• Window on Eurasia notes a new poll from Ukraine suggesting most Orthodox Christians there identify with the new Ukrainian national church, not the Russian one.
• Arnold Zwicky talks about language, editing, and error.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams celebrates the arrival, and successful data collection, of New Horizons at Ultima Thule, as does Joe. My. God., as does
  Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog. Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explained, before the New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule, why that Kuiper Belt object was so important for planetary science.
• In advance of the New Year’s, Charlie Stross at Antipope asked his readers to let him know what good came in 2018.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber makes the argument that, in the event of a Brexit bitterly resented by many Labour supporters, the odds that they will support a post-Brexit redistributionist program that would aid predominantly pro-Brexit voters are low.
• Bruce Dorminey notes that many Earth-like worlds might be made uninhabitable over eons by the steady warming of their stars, perhaps dooming any hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations on these planets.
• Far Outliers looks at the patterns of early Meiji Japan relations with Korea, noting an 1873 invasion scare.
• L.M. Sacasas writes at The Frailest Thing, inspired by the skepticism of Jacques Ellul, about a book published in 1968 containing predictions about the technological world of 2018. Motives matter.
• Imageo looks at the evidence from probes and confirms that, yes, it does in fact snow (water) on Mars.
• The Island Review interviews author Adam Nicolson about his family’s ownership of the Hebridean Shiant Isles. What do they mean for him, as an author and as someone experience with the sea?
• JSTOR Daily looks at the long history of the human relationship with leather, as a pliable material for clothing of all kinds.
• Language Hat considers the possibility that the New Year’s greeting “bistraynte”, used in Lebanon and by Christians in neighbouring countries, might come from the Latin “strenae”.
• Language Log notes the pressure being applied against the use of Cantonese as a medium of instruction in Hong Kong.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the many reasons why a considerable number of Latinos support Donald Trump.
• Bernard Porter at the LRB Blog comes up with an explanation as to Corbyn’s refusal to oppose Brexit.
• Marginal Revolution notes the many problems involved with the formation of supply chains in Africa, including sheer distance.
• The NYR Daily has a much-needed reevaluation of the Jonestown horror as not simply a mass suicide.
• Author Peter Watts writes about a recent trip to Tel Aviv.
• At Out There, Corey Powell writes about how planetary scientists over the decades have approached their discipline, expecting to be surprised.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel shared some top images collected by Hubble in 2018.
• Strange Company looks at the strange 1953 death of young Roman woman Wilma Montesi. How did she die, leaving her body to be found on a beach?
• Window on Eurasia notes how Circassian refugees in Syria are asking for the same expedited status that Ukrainian refugees have received.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell takes an extended look at the politics of 4G and Huawei and the United Kingdom and transatlantic relations over the past decade.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look, in language and cartoons, at “Jesus fuck”.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the potential threat to the rings of Saturn by the dissipation of its ice over millions of years.
• Centauri Dreams notes the potential radical improvements in the imaging of exoplanets provided by the new generations of telescopes.
• D-Brief notes that the disk of massive star MM 1a is so dense with material that it is forming not companion planets–not visibly–but rather a companion star.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the achievements of Voyager 2, forty-one years after its launch.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money shares the argument of New Mexican Congresswoman Deb Haaland that the United States is neglecting the problems of Native people.
• Marginal Revolution notes the death of art critic Sister Wendy.
• The NYR Daily notes the terrible record of the Weekly Standard.
• Danielle Adams at the Planetary Society Blog writes about the stars and constellations identified by Arab astronomers.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that Colombia lacks birthright citizenship, posing a serious long-term threat of social exclusion given the influx of Venezuelans as likely as not to be permanent.
• Roads and Kingdoms features an interview with photographer Laurence Geai on the protests of the Gilets Jaunes in Paris.

[NEWS] Five language links: Arabic, Cantonese, French, Inuktitut, Spanish

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The Economist looks at the low profile of the Arabic language, arguing one factor lies in its division into multiple very distinctive regional dialects.

The SCMP reports on the differences between the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong and that spoken in Malaysia.

CBC PEI reports on how French-language schools on the Island need more supporting in integrating students whose main language is not French.

CBC North takes a look at the Twitter account of Angus Andersen, where he shares one Inuktitut word a day.

Slate asksa question: Will Spanish-language songs make it into the Great American Songbook?