[BLOG] Five Window on Eurasia links

• Window on Eurasia notes the post-Soviet collapse of the numbers of learners of the Russian language, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports the claim of a Russian politician that in 1991, securing the nuclear arsenal of Ukraine was a bigger priority than trying for borders changes, here.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Belarus cannot protect itself from Russia, here.
• Window on Eurasia explains why the Soviet Union let the Armenians and Georgians keep their alphabets, here.
• Window on Eurasia explains how Russia’s naval and marine power is not doing well, here.

[NEWS] Ten Window on Eurasia links

• What will become of the Azerbaijani language in education in Iran? More here.
• Is a Russia-Belarus state union feasible? More here.
• Is Estonia, as some would have it, a viable model for the Finnic Mordvin peoples of the Russian interior? More here.
• Will Russia be happy with its alliance with China if this makes it a secondary partner, a relatively weaker exporter of resources? More here.
• How many Muslims are there in Moscow, and what import does the controversy over their numbers carry? More here.
• Is the Russian fertility rate set to stagnate, leading to long-term sharp decline? More here.
• If 10% of the Russian working-age population has emigrated, this has serious consequences for the future of Russia. More here.
• Irredentism in Kazakhstan, inspired by the example of Crimea, is just starting to be a thing. More here.
• The decline of Russian populations in the north of Kazakhstan, and the growth of Uzbeks, is noteworthy. More here.
• The different Russian proposals for the future of the Donbas, an analyst notes, are built to keep Ukraine a neutral country. More here.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Architectuul looks at the Porto architectural project Critical Concrete, here.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares the evidence for our galaxy having experienced a phase as a quasar a quarter-million years long some 3.5 million years ago.
• Author James Bow celebrates the end of his publicity tour for The Night Girl, including a controversy over cover art featuring the CN Tower.
• Robert Zubrin at Centauri Dreams considers how we could detect energy from artificial singularities used for power and propulsion. (Is this how we find the Romulans?)
• The Crux considers whether or not the new proposals for more powerful supercolliders in China and Europe are likely to produce new discoveries.
• D-Brief explains why older generations so often look down on the young: The elders idealize their younger selves too much.
• Dead Things notes new evidence, in the tracks of trilobites moving in line 480 million years ago, for early life being able to engage in collective behaviour.
• io9 interviews Kami Garcia about her new YA book featuring venerable DC character Raven, remaking her for new readers.
• The Island Review interviews David Gange about The Frayed Atlantic Edge, his book account of his kayak trip down the western coasts of Britain and Ireland.
• JSTOR Daily explains why Martin Luther King Jr. thought so highly of jazz.
• Eleanor Penny argues at the LRB Blog against taking Malthus, with his pessimism trending towards a murderous misanthropy, as a prophet for our times.
• The NYR Daily looks at the play American Moor, which touches on the efforts of black actors to engage with Shakespeare.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the new film The Flick, an old to old-style movies and theatres.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map depicting Hutterite migrations across early modern Europe.
• Starts With A Bang shares new speculation that some evidence for dark matter might actually be a mistake in measurement.
• Strange Maps notes the now mostly submerged continent of Greater Adria.
• Window on Eurasia shares a suggestion that the deep Russophilia of many ordinary people in Belarus might support union with Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the different meanings of “unaccompanied”.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul shares photos from a bike tour of Berlin.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on new evidence that exocomets are raining on star Beta Pictoris.
• Larry Klaes at Centauri Dreams reviews the two late 1970s SF films Alien and Star Trek I, products of the same era.
• D-Brief reports on Hubble studies of the star clusters of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• Bruce Dorminey shares Gemini telescope images of interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov).
• The Dragon’s Tales shares video of Space X’s Starhopper test flight.
• Far Outliers notes the import of the 13th century Norman king of England calling himself Edward after an Anglo-Saxon king.
• Gizmodo notes that not only can rats learn to play hide and seek, they seem to enjoy it.
• io9 notes the fantastic high camp of Mister Sinister in the new Jonathan Hickman X-Men run, borrowing a note from Kieron Gillen’s portrayal of the character.
• Joe. My. God. notes that Guiliani’s soon-to-be ex-wife says he has descended from 911 hero to a liar.
• Language Log looks at the recent ridiculous suggestion that English, among other languages, descends from Chinese.
• The LRB Blog looks at the brief history of commemorating the V2 attacks on London.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the practice in Saskatchewan of sterilizing First Nations women against their consent.
• Marginal Revolution suggests that farmers in Brazil might be getting a partly unfair treatment. (Partly.)
• The Planetary Society Blog explains why C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) matters.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, for the first time, immigrants from Turkmenistan in Belarus outnumber immigrants from Ukraine.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul notes a bike tour of Bauhaus architecture in Berlin.
• Bad Astronomy Phil Plait notes the discovery of Beta Pictoris c, a second super-Jovian planet in that young system.
• Centauri Dreams notes that the NASA Europa Clipper is moving ahead.
• Crooked Timber shares a gorgeous night photo of San Giorgio Maggiore, in Venice.
• The Crux notes what we are learning about the Denisovans.
• D-Brief notes that Neanderthals were prone to swimmer’s ear.
• Dangerous Minds looks at some of the pop culture likes of Karl Marx.
• Drew Ex Machina’s Andrew LePage looks at the exoplanets of GJ 1061.
• Earther notes how Icelanders mourned the loss of a glacier in a ceremony.
• Whitney Kimball at Gizmodo looks at what the mass data loss of more than a decade’s worth of music at Myspace means for our Internet era.
• Imageo shares photos of spiraling cloud formations photographed at night from space.
• Ian Humberstone at The Island Review writes about his witnessing of the bonxies, birds of the Shetlands.
• Joe. My. God. notes a report suggesting Trump joked about swapping Greenland for Puerto Rico.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the rhythmic dancing of the Shakers in 18th century America marked that sect as different.
• Language Hat considers the humour of some philosophers.
• Language Log notes the oblique commentaries of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing on his city-state’s protests.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the idiocy of the Trump fetish for Greenland.
• The Map Room Blog notes how astronomers have mapped the Local Void, of deep intergalactic space.
• Marginal Revolution wonders if the future of Venice might be found in its becoming a Chinese portal into Europe.
• Sean Marshall notes how the Ford government is undermining conservation in Ontario.
• The NYR Daily shares some of the New York City photography of Phil Penman.
• Starts With A Bang’s notes the immense storms of Saturn.
• Strange Company shares a weekend collection of links.
• Window on Eurasia looks at how Belarus plans on reorganizing its internal structures to try to minimize rural depopulation.
• Nick Rowe at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative talks about monetary policy in metaphors.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at some penguins from around the world.

[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 Sunday links

• D-Brief reports on the abundance of plastic waste found buried in the beaches of the Cocos Islands.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the US has imposed tariffs against India.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the strange history of phrenology.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes note of the Trump Administration’s honouring of Arthur Laffer.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer looks at the electricity price crisis that might determine who gets to be elected president of Argentina.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how the Pauli Exclusion Principle makes matter possible.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy argues against importing the principles of the Berlin Wall to the US-Mexico border.
• Window on Eurasia shares concerns that Russia is trying to expand its influence in the east of Belarus.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Architectuul looks at the history of brutalism in late 20th century Turkey.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the evidence for the Milky Way Galaxy having seen a great period of starburst two billion years ago, and notes how crowded the Milky Way Galaxy is in the direction of Sagittarius.
• Centauri Dreams considers if astrometry might start to become useful as a method for detecting planets, and considers what the New Horizons data, to Pluto and to Ultima Thule, will be known for.
• Belle Waring at Crooked Timber considers if talk of forgiveness is, among other things, sound.
• D-Brief considers the possibility that the differing natures of the faces of the Moon can be explained by an ancient dwarf planet impact, and shares images of dust-ringed galaxy NGC 4485.
• Dead Things notes the discovery of fossil fungi one billion years old in Nunavut.
• Far Outliers looks at how, over 1990, Russia became increasingly independent from the Soviet Union, and looks at the final day in office of Gorbachev.
• Gizmodo notes the discovery of literally frozen oceans of water beneath the north polar region of Mars, and looks at an unusual supernova, J005311 ten thousand light-years away in Cassiopeia, product of a collision between two white dwarfs.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the colour of navy blue is a direct consequence of slavery and militarism, and observes the historical influence, or lack thereof, of Chinese peasant agriculture on organic farming in the US.
• Language Log considers a Chinese-language text from San Francisco combining elements of Mandarin and Cantonese.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the terrible environmental consequences of the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia, and Shakezula at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at how, and perhaps why, Sam Harris identifies milkshake-throwing at far-right people as a form of “mock assassination”.
• The Map Room Blog shares a personal take on mapmaking on the Moon during the Apollo era.
• Marginal Revolution observes a paper suggesting members of the Chinese communist party are more liberal than the general Chinese population. The blog also notes how Soviet quotas led to a senseless and useless mass slaughter of whales.
• Russell Darnley writes about the complex and tense relationship between Indonesia and Australia, each with their own preoccupations.
• Martin Filler writes at the NYR Daily about I.M. Pei as an architect specializing in an “establishment modernism”. The site also takes a look at Orientalism, as a phenomenon, as it exists in the post-9/11 era.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw reflects on the meaning of Australia’s New England.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes how Hayabusa 2 is having problems recovering a marker from asteroid Ryugu.
• Peter Rukavina reports on an outstanding Jane Siberry concert on the Island.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map of homophobia in Europe.
• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress makes use of wikidata.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle reports, with photos, from his latest walks this spring.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers what the Earth looked like when hominids emerged, and explains how amateur astronomers can capture remarkable images.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a controversial map depicting the shift away from CNN towards Fox News across the United States.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society examines the Boeing 737 MAX disaster as an organizational failure.
• Window on Eurasia looks why Turkey is backing away from supporting the Circassians, and suggests that the use of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Russian state as a tool of its rule might hurt the church badly.
• Arnold Zwicky takes apart, linguistically and otherwise, a comic playing on the trope of Lassie warning about something happening to Timmy. He also
  reports on a far-removed branch of the Zwicky family hailing from Belarus, as the Tsvikis.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul takes a look at “infrastructural scars”, at geopolitically-inspired constructions like border fences and fortifications.
• Centauri Dreams notes what we can learn from 99942 Apophis during its 2029 close approach to Earth, just tens of thousands of kilometres away.
• D-Brief reports on the reactions of space artists to the photograph of the black hole at the heart of M87.
• Dangerous Minds shares the first recording of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that Germany has begun work on drafting laws to cover space mining.
• Gizmodo reports on what scientists have learned from the imaging of a very recent impact of an asteroid on the near side of the Moon.
• io9 makes the case that Star Trek: Discovery should try to tackle climate change.
• Joe. My. God. notes that Verizon is seeking a buyer for Tumblr. (Wouldn’t it be funny if it was bought, as other reports suggest might be possible, by Pornhub?)
• JSTOR Daily reports on a 1910 examination of medical schools that, among other things, shut down all but two African-American medical schools with lasting consequences for African-American health.
• Language Log asks why “Beijing” is commonly pronounced as “Beizhing”.
• Simon Balto asks at Lawyers, Guns and Money why the murder of Justine Ruszczyk by a Minneapolis policeman is treated more seriously than other police killings, just because she was white and the cop was black. All victims deserve the same attention.
• Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares a video of the frieze of the Parthenon.
• The NYR Daily responds to the 1979 television adaptation of the Primo Levi novel Christ Stopped at Eboli, an examination of (among other things) the problems of development.
• Peter Rukavina is entirely right about the practical uselessness of QR codes.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society points readers towards the study of organizations, concentrating on Charles Perrow.
• Window on Eurasia notes the argument of one Russian commentator that Russia should offer to extend citizenship en masse not only to Ukrainians but to Belarusians, the better to undermine independent Belarus.
• Arnold Zwicky shares photos of some of his flourishing flowers, as his home of Palo Alto enters a California summer.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes how the warp in space-time made by the black hole in V404 Cygni has been detected.
• The Crux reports on the discovery of the remains of a chicha brewery in pre-Columbian Peru.
• D-Brief notes a new model for the creation of the Moon by impact with primordial Earth that would explain oddities with the Earth still being molten, having a magma ocean.
• Bruce Dorminey shares the idea that extraterrestrial civilizations might share messages with posterity through DNA encoded in bacteria set adrift in space.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on progress in drones and UAVs made worldwide.
• Gizmodo notes some of the privacy issues involved with Alexa.
• JSTOR Daily explains how some non-mammals, including birds and fish, nurse their young.
• Language Hat reports on the latest studies in the ancient linguistic history of East Asia, with suggestions that Old Japanese has connections to the languages of the early Korean states of Silla and Paekche but not to that of Koguryo.
• Language Log considers the issues involved with the digitization of specialized dictionaries.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money remembers the start of the Spanish Civil War.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points towards his recent interview with Margaret Atwood.
• The NYR Daily reports on a remarkable new play, Heidi Schreck’s What The Constitution Means To Me.
• Towleroad reports on what Hunter Kelly, one of the men who operatives tried to recruit to spread slander against Pete Buttigieg, has to say about the affair.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that a Russian annexation of Belarus would not be an easy affair.
• Arnold Zwicky reports on the latest signs of language change, this time in the New Yorker.