[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul looks at some architecturally innovative pools.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at Wolf 359, a star made famous in Star Trek for the Starfleet battle there against the Borg but also a noteworthy red dwarf star in its own right.
• Centauri Dreams looks at how the NASA Deep Space Atomic Clock will play a vital role in interplanetary navigation.
• The Crux considers the “drunken monkey” thesis, the idea that drinking alcohol might have been an evolutionary asset for early hominids.
• D-Brief reports on what may be the next step for genetic engineering beyond CRISPR.
• Bruce Dorminey looks at how artificial intelligence may play a key role in searching for threat asteroids.
• The Island Review shares some poetry from Roseanne Watt, inspired by the Shetlands and using its dialect.
• Livia Gershon writes at JSTOR Daily about how YouTube, by promising to make work fun, actually also makes fun work in psychologically problematic ways.
• Marginal Revolution notes how the relatively small Taiwan has become a financial superpower.
• Janine di Giovanni at the NYR Daily looks back at the 2000 intervention in Sierra Leone. Why did it work?
• Jamais Cascio at Open the Future looks back at a 2004 futurological exercise, the rather accurate Participatory Panopticon. What did he anticipate correctly? How? What does it suggest for us now to our world?
• The Planetary Society Blog notes that LightSail 2 will launch before the end of June.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at how the discovery of gas between galaxies helps solve a dark matter question.
• Strange Company shares a broad collection of links.
• Window on Eurasia makes the obvious observation that the West prefers a North Caucasus controlled by Russia to one controlled by Islamists.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at American diner culture, including American Chinese food.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• In an extended meditation, Antipope’s Charlie Stross considers what the domestic architecture of the future will look like. What different technologies, with different uses of space, will come into play?
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the new SPECULOOS exoplanet hunting telescope, specializing in the search for planets around the coolest stars.
• The Crux looks at the evolutionary origins of hominins and chimpanzees in an upright walking ape several million years ago.
• D-Brief notes the multiple detections of gravitational waves made by LIGO.
• The Dragon’s Tales looks at the development of laser weapons by China.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the gap between social theory and field research.
• Gizmodo shares an interesting discussion with paleontologists and other dinosaur experts: What would the dinosaurs have become if not for the Chixculub impact?
• Hornet Stories notes the ways in which the policies of the Satanic Temple would be good for queer students.
• io9 notes how the Deep Space 9 documentary What We Leave Behind imagines what a Season 8 would have looked like.
• Joe. My. God. reports that activist Jacob Wohl is apparently behind allegations of a sexual assault by Pete Buttigieg against a subordinate.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the uses of the yellow ribbon in American popular culture.
• Language Hat shares an account of the life experiences of an Israeli taxi driver, spread across languages and borders.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money makes deserved fun of Bret Easton Ellis for his claims to having been marginalized.
• Marginal Revolution considers, briefly, the idea that artificial intelligence might not be harmful to humans. (Why would it necessarily have to be?)
• The NYR Daily considers a British exhibition of artworks by artists from the former Czechoslovakia.
• Peter Rukavina looks at gender representation in party caucuses in PEI from the early 1990s on, noting the huge surge in female representation in the Greens now.
• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress is preserving Latin American monographs.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how Einstein knew that gravity must bend light.
• Window on Eurasia explains the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s.

[NEWS] Five tech links: Apple, AI, Beresheet 2, agricultural robots, gene editing

• Wired notes that Apple is transforming itself into a luxury brand. Is this an unsustainable niche?
• Wired examines how Google’s human AI experts are trying to train artificial intelligences to do their work.
• Universe Today notes that SpaceIL is planning to return to the Moon with a Beresheet 2 probe.
• The New Yorker looks at the progress made towards the roboticization of agriculture, looking at strawberry harvesting in particular. Can it be done?
• Stephen Buranyi writes at the NYR Daily about the impact of gene editing technologies on humanity. How will we manage them? Can we?

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Centauri Dreams notes the discovery of rocky debris indicative of destroyed planets in orbit of the white dwarf SDSS J122859.93+104032.9, 400 light-years away.
• JSTOR Daily shows how the Columbine massacre led to a resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US.
• Language Log notes an example of digraphia, two scripts, in use in Taiwan.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money identifies the presidential run of Howard Schultz in ways unflattering to him yet accurate.
• The LRB Blog takes a look at the current, unsettling, stage of artificial intelligence research.
• At the NYR Daily, Boyd Tonkin writes about an exhibition of the works of Van Gogh at the Tate Britain highlighting his ties with England and with his Europeanness.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on the ultimate fate of the Earth, a cinder orbiting a black dwarf.
• Strange Company tells the strange, sad story of 19th century California writer Yda Hillis Addis.
• At Vintage Space, Amy Shira Teitel explains why the Apollo missions made use of a dangerous pure-oxygen environment.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, 41 years ago, protests in Georgia forced the Soviet Union to let the Georgian republic keep Georgian as its official language.
• Arnold Zwicky starts with peeps and goes on to look at dragons.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Centauri Dreams notes the remarkable imaging of the atmosphere of HR 8799 e.
• Crooked Timber starts a discussion about books that, once picked up, turned out to be as good as promised.
• The Crux considers obsidian, known in the Game of Thrones world as dragonglass.
• Bruce Dorminey notes that NASA is considering a proposal for a floating Venus probe that would be recharged by microwaves from orbit.</li.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares a report that Russia has developed a new satellite to work with a new anti-satellite weapons system.
• Far Outliers notes what U.S. Grant learned from the Mexican-American War, as a strategist and as a politician.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing suggests, drawing from the image of M87*, that we have had a world disenchanted by the digital technology used to produce the image.
• JSTOR Daily shares what critical theory has to say about the binge-watching of television.
• Language Hat notes the Cherokee-language inscriptions on the wall of Manitou Cave.
• Language Log considers when the first conversing automaton was built.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at a corner of 1970s feminism forgotten despite its innovative ideas.
• Marginal Revolution considers the idea of restricting some new migrants to particular regions of the United States.
• The NYR Daily explores the important new work by Igiaba Scego, Beyond Babylon.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel answers a surprisingly complex question: What is an electron?
• Window on Eurasia explains why the cost of a professional military means Russia will not abandon the draft.
• Arnold Zwicky explores “johnson” as a euphemism for penis.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomy notes a push by astronomers to enlist help for giving trans-Neptunian object 2007-OR10 a name.
• Centauri Dreams reflects on M87*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of M87 recently imaged, with its implications for galactic habitability.
• Crooked Timber is right to note that Kirstjen Nielsen, architect of the cruel border policies of Trump, should not be allowed to resume a normal professional life.
• The Crux looks at the Event Horizon Telescope Project that imaged M87*.
• D-Brief notes that one-quarter of Japanese in their 20s and 30s have remained virgins, and explains why this might be the case.
• Far Outliers notes the process of the writing of U.S. Grant’s acclaimed memoirs.
• Mark Graham highlights a BBC documentary, one he contributed to, asking if artificial intelligence will kill global development.
• Gizmodo explains why the image of black hole M87* does not look exactly like the fictional one from the scientifically-grounded Interstellar.
• Hornet Stories explains the joys of Hawai’i in fall.
• io9 notes that the new Deep Space Nine anniversary documentary is scheduled for a one-day theatrical release. (Will it be in Toronto?)
• JSTOR Daily makes the point that mass enfranchisement is the best way to ensure security for all.
• Language Hat looks at the kitabs, the books written in Afrikaans using its original Arabic script kept by Cape Malays.
• Language Log notes, with examples, some of the uses of the words “black” and “evil” in contemporary China.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money makes the point that having a non-octogenarian president is a good idea.
• Marginal Revolution shares the thoughts of Samir Varma on the new technologies–better computers, faster travel, artificial life–that may change the world in the near future.
• The NYR Daily explores the subversive fairy tales of 19th century Frenchman Édouard Laboulaye.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes the sad crash of the Beresheet probe on the surface of the Moon.
• Drew Rowsome engages with the body of work of out horror writer John Saul.
• Peter Rukavina maps out where Islanders will be voting, and the distances they will travel, in this month’s election.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel engages with the possibility that we might be alone. What next? (Myself, I think the idea of humanity as an elder race is fascinating.)
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the sort of humour that involves ambiguous adverbs.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: anti-racist protest, AI at U of T, naloxone, TTC, Airbnb

• National Observer notes how, in Toronto, hundreds of anti-racist protesters blocked a far-right group.
• A $C 100 million donation has recently been made to the University of Toronto, to fund artificial intelligence research. CBC reports.
• Harm reduction activists want TTC operators to be trained in the usage of naloxone kits, to aid overdose victims. CBC reports.
• Transit Toronto notes its new Family of Services concept, intended to help Wheel-Trans users access wider city transit.
• Samantha Edwards writes at NOW Toronto about how Airbnb is worsening the living experiences of permanent residents in condo developments, by encouraging a more transient crowd less invested in local communities.