[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Ryan Anderson at anthro{dendum} looks at the unnatural history of the beach in California, here.
• Architectuul looks at the architectural imaginings of Iraqi Shero Bahradar, here.
• Bad Astronomy looks at gas-rich galaxy NGC 3242.
• James Bow announces his new novel The Night Girl, an urban fantasy set in an alternate Toronto with an author panel discussion scheduled for the Lillian H. Smith Library on the 28th.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the indirect evidence for an exomoon orbiting WASP-49b, a possible Io analogue detected through its ejected sodium.
• Crooked Timber considers the plight of holders of foreign passports in the UK after Brexit.
• The Crux notes that astronomers are still debating the nature of galaxy GC1052-DF2, oddly lacking in dark matter.
• D-Brief notes how, in different scientific fields, the deaths of prominent scientists can help progress.
• Bruce Dorminey notes how NASA and the ESA are considering sample-return missions to Ceres.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the first test flights of the NASA Mercury program.
• The Dragon’s Tales looks at how Japan is considering building ASAT weapons.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the first test flights of the NASA Mercury program.
• Far Outliers looks how the anti-malarial drug quinine played a key role in allowing Europeans to survive Africa.
• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox considers grace and climate change.
• io9 reports on how Jonathan Frakes had anxiety attacks over his return as Riker on Star Trek: Picard.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the threatened banana.
• Language Log looks at the language of Hong Kong protesters.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how a new version of The Last of the Mohicans perpetuates Native American erasure.
• Marginal Revolution notes how East Germany remains alienated.
• Neuroskeptic looks at the participant-observer effect in fMRI subjects.
• The NYR Daily reports on a documentary looking at the India of Modi.
• Corey S. Powell writes at Out There about Neptune.
• The Planetary Society Blog examines the atmosphere of Venus, something almost literally oceanic in its nature.
• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money considers how Greenland might be incorporated into the United States.
• Rocky Planet notes how Earth is unique down to the level of its component minerals.
• The Russian Demographics Blog considers biopolitical conservatism in Poland and Russia.
• Starts With a Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers if LIGO has made a detection that might reveal the nonexistence of the theorized mass gap between neutron stars and black holes.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps looks at Marchetti’s constant: People in cities, it seems, simply do not want to commute for a time longer than half an hour.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at how the US Chemical Safety Board works.
• Window on Eurasia reports on how Muslims in the Russian Far North fare.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at cannons and canons.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Anthro{dendum} features an essay examining trauma and resiliency as encountered in ethnographic fieldwork.
• Architectuul highlights a new project seeking to promote historic churches built in the United Kingdom in the 20th century.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait examines Ahuna Mons, a muddy and icy volcano on Ceres, and looks at the nebula Westerhout 40.
• Centauri Dreams notes the recent mass release of data from a SETI project, and notes the discovery of two vaguely Earth-like worlds orbiting the very dim Teegarden’s Star, just 12 light-years away.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes that having universities as a safe space for trans people does not infringe upon academic freedom.
• The Crux looks at the phenomenon of microsleep.
• D-Brief notes evidence that the Milky Way Galaxy was warped a billion years ago by a collision with dark matter-heavy dwarf galaxy Antlia 2, and notes a robotic fish powered by a blood analogue.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that India plans on building its own space station.
• Earther notes the recording of the song of the endangered North Pacific right whale.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the role of emotional labour in leisure activities.
• Far Outliers looks at how Japan prepared for the Battle of the Leyte Gulf in 1944.
• Gizmodo looks at astronomers’ analysis of B14-65666, an ancient galactic collision thirteen billion light-years away, and notes that the European Space Agency has a planned comet interception mission.
• io9 notes how the plan for Star Trek in the near future is to not only have more Star Trek, but to have many different kinds of Star Trek for different audiences.
• Joe. My. God. notes the observation of Pete Buttigieg that the US has probably already had a gay president.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which the rhetoric of Celtic identity has been used, and notes that the archerfish uses water ejected from its eyes to hunt.
• Language Hat looks at why Chinese is such a hard language to learn for second-language learners, and looks at the Suso monastery in Spain, which played a key role in the coalescence of the Spanish language.
• Language Log looks at the complexities of katakana.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the death of deposed Egypt president Mohammed Morsi looks like a slow-motion assassination, and notes collapse of industrial jobs in the Ohio town of Lordstown, as indicative of broader trends.
• The LRB Blog looks at the death of Mohamed Morsi.
• The Map Rom Blog shares a new British Antarctic Survey map of Greenland and the European Arctic.
• Marginal Revolution notes how non-religious people are becoming much more common in the Middle East, and makes the point that the laying of cable for the transatlantic telegraph is noteworthy technologically.
• Noah Smith at Noahpionion takes the idea of the Middle East going through its own version of the Thirty Years War seriously. What does this imply?
• The NYR Daily takes a look at a Lebanon balanced somehow on the edge, and looks at the concentration camp system of the United States.
• The Planetary Society Blog explains what people should expect from LightSail 2, noting that the LightSail 2 has launched.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw points readers to his stories on Australian spy Harry Freame.
• Rocky Planet explains, in the year of the Apollo 50th anniversary, why the Moon matters.
• Drew Rowsome reviews, and praises, South African film Kanarie, a gay romp in the apartheid era.
• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper examining the relationship between childcare and fertility in Belgium, and looks at the nature of statistical data from Turkmenistan.
• The Strange Maps Blog shares a map highlighting different famous people in the United States.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why different galaxies have different amounts of dark matter, and shares proof that the Apollo moon landings actually did happen.
• Towleroad notes the new evidence that poppers, in fact, are not addictive.
• Window on Eurasia warns about the parlous state of the Volga River.
• Arnold Zwicky takes an extended look at the mid-20th century gay poet Frank O’Hara.

[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 Wednesday links

• Anthrodendum reviews the book Fistula Politics, the latest from the field of medical anthropology.
• Architectuul takes a look at post-war architecture in Germany, a country where the devastation of the war left clean slates for ambitious new designers and architects.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at newly discovered Kuiper Belt object 2008 VG 18.
• Laura Agustín at Border Thinking takes a look at the figure of the migrant sex worker.
• Centauri Dreams features an essay by Al Jackson celebrating the Apollo 8 moon mission.
• D-Brief notes how physicists manufactured a quark soup in a collider to study the early universe.
• Dangerous Minds shares some photos of a young David Bowie.
• Angelique Harris at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at what the social sciences have to say about sexuality and dating among millennial Americans.
• Gizmodo notes the odd apparent smoothness of Ultima Thule, target of a very close flyby by New Horizons on New Year’s Day.
• Hornet Stories notes the censorship-challenging art by Slava Mogutin available from the Tom of Finland store.
• Imageo shares orbital imagery of the eruption of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia, trigger of a devastating volcanic tsunami.
• Nick Stewart at The Island Review writes beautifully about his experience crossing the Irish Sea on a ferry, from Liverpool to Belfast.
• Lyman Stone at In A State of Migration shares the story, with photos, of his recent whirlwind trip to Vietnam.
• JSTOR Daily considers whether or not fan fiction might be a useful tool to promote student literacy.
• Language Hat notes a contentious reconstruction of the sound system of obscure but fascinating Tocharian, an extinct Indo-European language from modern XInjiang.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the irreversible damage being caused by the Trump Administration to the United States’ foreign policy.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting users of Facebook would need a payment of at least one thousand dollars to abandon Facebook.
• Lisa Nandy at the NYR Daily argues that the citizens of the United Kingdom need desperately to engage with Brexit, to take back control, in order to escape catastrophic consequences from ill-thought policies.
• Marc Rayman at the Planetary Society Blog celebrates the life and achievements of the Dawn probe.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that so many Venezuelans are fleeing their country because food is literally unavailable, what with a collapsing agricultural sector.
• The Russian Demographics Blog breaks down polling of nostalgia for the Soviet Union among Russians.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that simply finding oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet is not by itself proof of life.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy reports on how the United States is making progress towards ending exclusionary zoning.
• Whatever’s John Scalzi shares an interview with the lawyer of Santa Claus.
• Window on Eurasia reports on a fascinating paper, examining how some Russian immigrants in Germany use Udmurt as a family language.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the lives of two notable members of the Swiss diaspora in Paris’ Montmartre.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Centauri Dreams considers, in the light of potential climate change extinction, the definitions of habitable exoplanets. Do we assume life to be too flexible?
• D-Brief notes that the Dawn probe found evidence of organic compounds, amorphous carbon, on the surface of Ceres.
• Lauren Madden at the Everyday Sociology Blog urges people to resist the impulse to misclassify the causes of mass shootings as senseless randomness.
• Hornet Stories takes a look at Jobriath, the man who for a brief time in the mid-1970s was an out queer rock god, on what would have been his birthday.
• Imageo notes that anthropogenic climate change risks plunging the global climate back to the heat and high sea levels of 50 million years ago, to the Eocene.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the fairy tale stereotype of the passive female character was created by moral reformers following the Protestant Reformation.
• Language Hat notes the Ao language, created by utopian early 20th century dreamers from Lithuania’s Jewish community as a universal method of communication.
• Mark Liberman at Language Log notes the emergence and evolution of the word “biomarker” over the past half-century.
• Simon Balto at Lawyers, Guns and Money writes about a frightening encounter on a night out with his partner with an aggressive person who kept calling him a “snowflake”. What does this, the embrace of this word as a supposed critique, say about racism and conservatism in the United States now?
• The LRB Blog notes the prosecution of the Stansted 15 for blocking a deportation of refugees on terrorism. What does this say about the administration of justice and borders in the United Kingdom now?
• Marginal Revolution notes that, in China, scientists convicted of fraud will face serious hits to their social credit ratings.
• The NYR Daily takes a look at the “toxic femininity” of women on the American far right.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at the struggle of Mayan peoples in Guatemala to secure their land claims in the face of commercial agriculture.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society takes a look at how government enacts policy, not doing so as a unified whole at all.
• Window on Eurasia notes the deep hostility of Lukashenko in Belarus to any talk of deep integration with Russia, something he sees as tantamount to Belarus’ annexation into Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the remarkable steel-banded sculpture of Fernando Suárez Reguera, and of sculptors like him.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• D-Brief notes that, with the Dawn probe unresponsive, its mission to Vesta and Ceres is now over.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports that NASA is seeking commercial partners to deliver cargo to the proposed Gateway station.
• JSTOR Daily looks back to a time where chestnuts were a staple food in Appalachia.
• Language Log takes a look at prehistoric words in Eurasia for honey, in Indo-European and Old Sinitic.
• Joy Katz at the LRB Blog writes about her lived experience of the conventional Pittsburgh neighbourhood of Squirrel Hill, a perhaps unlikely scene of tragedy.
• The Map Room Blog links to an interactive map showing the Québec election results.
• Marginal Revolution links to that New York Magazine article about young people who do not vote to start a discussion.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at the real dangers faced by Venezuelan refugees in the northern Brazilian state of Roraima, at the start of the era of Bolsonaro.
• Window on Eurasia argues that changes to the Russian census allowing people to identify with multiple ethnicities could lead to a sharp shrinking in the numbers of minority nationalities.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomy shares an image of Hyperion, a proto-supercluster of galaxies literally jawdropping in scope.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly asks an interesting question: Who is your rock, your support? Who is your gravel?
• Centauri Dreams notes a new paper suggesting a way to determine the size of undetected planets from the sorts of dust that they create.
• Crooked Timber notes the obvious, that neither China nor the United States would win in a war in the South China Sea.
• D-Brief ,a href=”http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/10/16/ganymede-moon-jupiter-world-tectonic-faults/”>notes that Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter and in the solar system, has tectonic faults in its icy crust.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that Russia is interested in cooperating with India in space travel.
• David Finger at The Finger Post reports on his search for a Philly cheese steak sandwich in Philadelphia.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing considers the way in which modern social networking creates a totalitarianism, enlisting people through games into supporting its edifice.
• Joe. My. God. notes that Thailand is preparing to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples.
• JSTOR Daily notes the 19th century heyday of “mummy brown”, a paint pigment used by artists made of ground-up Egyptian mummies.
• Language Log notes that the expression “add oil”, originally from Chinese slang, is now in the OED.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how the lies of Facebook about the popularity on online video dealt a terrible blow to journalism.
• Lingua Franca examines how the word “smarmy” came about and spread.
• Marginal Revolution notes the exceptional generosity of actor Chow Yun Fat, who is giving away his vast estate.
• Hugh Eakin at the NYR Daily takes a look at the role of the United States in mounting repression in Saudi Arabia, symbolized by the Khashoggi killing.
• Marc Rayman at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the achievements of the Dawn probe, at Ceres and Vesta and the points in between, on this its 11th anniversary.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a photo essay looking at the difficult treks of the Rohingya as they are forced to scavenge firewood from a local forest.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the homoerotic photography of James Critchley.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at what it was likely, in the early universe, when starlight became visible for the first time.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps debunks a map purporting to show post-Fukushima contamination of the entire Pacific, and has it with false and discouraging apocalyptic maps generally.
• Window on Eurasia takes a look at the deep divide between the Russian and Ukrainian nations.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Centauri Dreams considers the OSIRIS-REx asteroid probe to Bennu.
• D-Brief notes that the core and the crust of dwarf planet Ceres apparently rotate at different speeds.
• Dangerous Minds shares the early glam rock of Rick Springfield.
• Gizmodo looks at the discovery of a new, oddly faint, sort of supernova explosion, one that explains how neutron stars can ever be so close as to collide.
• JSTOR Daily examines the concept of mana, the mystical power that can be generated by the act of speech.
• The LRB Blog considers how humanity will ever be able to address the rising sea, through geoengineering or techniques still more new to us.
• Window on Eurasia wonders if Belarus is likely to be the new target of Russian expansionism.

[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.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly talks about her rules for life.
• The Crux explores the development of robots that can learn from each other.
• JSTOR Daily explores the legal and environmental reasons why commercial supersonic flight never took off.
• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money imagines what might have been had the F-14 Tomcat never escaped development hell.
• Peter Watts wonders if, with de-extinction becoming possible, future generations might become even less careful with the environment, knowing they can fix things and never bothering to do so.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw argues that, with MOOCs and multiple careers in a working lifespan, autodidacticism is bound to return.
• The Planetary Society Blog’s Marc Rayman looks at the final orbits of the Dawn probe over Ceres and the expected scientific returns.
• Roads and Kingdoms explores the New Jersey sandwich known, alternatively, as the Taylor ham and the pork roll.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers what led to the early universe having an excess of matter over antimatter.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy explores why the California Supreme Court took the trifurcation of California off referendum papers.
• Window on Eurasia notes how some in independent Azerbaijan fears that Iranian ethnic Azeris might try to subvert the independent country’s secularism.