[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how the dinosaurs seem to have been killed off 65 million years ago by a combination of geological and astronomical catastrophes.
• Centauri Dreams examines Kepler 1658b, a hot Jupiter in a close orbit around an old star.
• The Crux reports on the continuing search for Planet Nine in the orbits of distant solar system objects.
• D-Brief notes how researchers have begun to study the archaeological records of otters.
• Cody Delistraty profiles author and journalist John Lanchester.
• Far Outliers reports on the terrible violence between Hindus and Muslims preceding partition in Calcutta.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing suggests the carnival of the online world, full of hidden work, is actually an unsatisfying false carnival.
• Hornet Stories reports that São Paulo LGBTQ cultural centre and homeless shelter Casa 1 is facing closure thanks to cuts by the homophobic new government.
• io9 reports on one fan’s attempt to use machine learning to produce a HD version of Deep Space Nine.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the increasing trend, at least in the United States and the United Kingdom, to deport long-term residents lacking sufficiently secure residency rights.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the literally medieval epidemics raging among the homeless of California.
• Marginal Revolution considers how the Book of Genesis can be read as a story of increasing technology driving improved living standards and economic growth.
• The NYR Daily interviews Lénaïg Bredoux about #MeToo in France.
• The Planetary Society Blog considers the subtle differences in colour between ice giants Uranus and Neptune, one greenish and the other a blue, and the causes of this difference.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle shares beautiful photos of ice on a stream as he talks about his creative process.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers what the universe was like back when the Earth was forming.
• Window on Eurasia reports on a statement made by the government of Belarus that the survival of the Belarusian language is a guarantor of national security.
• Arnold Zwicky was kind enough to share his handout for the semiotics gathering SemFest20.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at the question of how far, exactly, the Pleiades star cluster is from Earth. It turns out this question breaks down into a lot of interesting secondary issues.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly starts an interesting discussion around the observation that so many people are uncomfortable with the details of their body.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the exciting evidence of cryovolcanism at Ceres.
• The Crux reports on new suggestions that, although Neanderthals had bigger brains than Homo sapiens, Neanderthal brains were not thereby better brains.
• D-Brief notes evidence that the ability of bats and dolphins to echolocate may ultimate derive from a shared gene governing their muscles.
• Bruce Dorminey notes that astronomers have used data on the trajectory of ‘Oumuamua to suggest it may have come from one of four stars.
• Far Outliers explores the Appalachian timber boom of the 1870s that created the economic preconditions for the famed feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.
• Language Hat notes the unique whistling language prevailing among the Khasi people living in some isolated villages in the Indian state of Meghalaya.
• Lingua Franca, at the Chronicles, notes that the fastest-growing language in the United States is the Indian language of Telugu.
• Jeremy Harding at the LRB Blog writes about the import of the recognition, by Macron, of the French state’s involvement in the murder of pro-Algerian independence activist Maurice Audin in 1958.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution praises the diaries of Mihail Sebastian, a Romanian Jewish intellectual alive during the Second World War
• The New APPS Blog takes a look at the concept of the carnival from Bakhtin.
• Gabrielle Bellot at NYR Daily considers the life of Elizabeth Bishop and Bishop’s relationship to loneliness.
• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog describes how CubeSats were paired with solar sails to create a Mars probe, Mars Cube One.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer considers some possible responses from the left to a conservative Supreme Court in the US.
• Roads and Kingdoms takes a look at the challenges facing the street food of Xi’an.
• Rocky Planet examines why, for decades, geologists mistakenly believed that the California ground was bulging pre-earthquake in Palmdale.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel examines how some objects called stars, like neutron stars and white dwarfs and brown dwarfs, actually are not stars.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps notes how China and Europe stand out as being particularly irreligious on a world map of atheism.
• Window on Eurasia notes the instability that might be created in the North Caucasus by a border change between Chechnya and Ingushetia.
• Arnold Zwicky shares some beautiful pictures of flowers from a garden in Palo Alto.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: George Villiers, LGBT films, Ottawa museum, Provincetown, Carnival

• Hornet Stories tells of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, lover to King James I.
• The Daily Beast reports on the remarkable films showing ordinary LGBT lives as far back as the 1940s, recovered by filmmaker Stu Maddux.
• Radio Canada International reports on exciting plans to fundraise for a new museum to LGBTQ history in Canada based in Ottawa.
• Hornet Stories shares photos from Carnival in gay mecca Provincetown.
• Ashleigh Rae-Thomas writes at Daily Xtra about the importance of creating and maintaining queer spaces at Toronto’s Carnival.