[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at the extreme millisecond pulsar IGR J17062−6143.
• Centauri Dreams looks at a proposal to intercept objects of extrasolar origin like ‘Oumuamua.
• The Crux looks at how researchers are discovering traces of lost hominid populations in the DNA of contemporary humans.
• D-Brief notes a crowdsourcing of a search for intermediate-mass black holes.
• Gizmodo notes the impending production of a new working Commodore 64 clone.
• The Island Review notes people of the Norway island of Sommarøy wish to make their island, home to the midnight sun, a #TimeFreeZone.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the art that has been produced in the era of digital addiction.
• Language Log looks at how, in Iran, the word “Eastoxification” has entered into usage alongside the older “Westoxification.”
• Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money looks at the many likely failings of a Corbyn foreign policy for the United Kingdom.
• The LRB Blog notes that opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu has been re-elected as mayor of Istanbul.
• The Map Room Blog links to various maps of the Moon.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper looking at markets in Lagos, suggesting they are self-regulating to some degree.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains when the earliest sunrise and latest sunset of the year is, and why.
• Towleroad shares an interview with Jack Baker and Mike McConnell, a same-sex couple married for nearly a half-century.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the open approach of the Russian Federation to Russian diasporids is not extended to diasporas of its minority groups, particularly to Muslim ones like Circassians and Tatars.
• Arnold Zwicky considers some Pride fashion, with and without rainbows.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at Westerlund-1, a massive star cluster with many bright stars in our galaxy.
• Centauri Dreams notes a finding that giant planets like Jupiter are less likely to be found around Sun-like stars.
• D-Brief notes how, in a time of climate change, birds migrated between Canada and the equator.
• Bruce Dorminey lists five overlooked facts about the Apollo 11 mission.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that the US House of Representatives has approved the creation of a US Space Corps analogous to the Marines.
• JSTOR Daily considers tactics to cure groupthink.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, looking at the experience of Hong Kong, observes how closely economic freedoms depend on political freedom and legitimacy.
• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog explains his rationale for calculating that the Apollo project, in 2019 dollars, cost more than $US 700 billion.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the star R136a1, a star in the 30 Doradus cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud that is the most massive star known to exist.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Circassians in Syria find it very difficult to seek refuge in their ancestral lands in the North Caucasus.
• Arnold Zwicky looks, in occasionally NSFW detail, at the importance of June the 16th for him as a date.

[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 Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the import of the discovery of asteroid 2019 AQ3, a rare near-Venus asteroid.
• Centauri Dreams notes the how the choice of language used by SETI researchers, like the eye-catching “technosignatures”, may reflect the vulnerability of the field to criticism on Earth.
• John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers what is to be done about Virginia, given the compromising of so many of its top leaders by secrets from the past.
• The Crux notes how the imminent recovery of ancient human DNA from Africa is likely to lead to a revolution in our understanding of human histories there.
• D-Brief notes how astronomers were able to use the light echoes in the accretion disk surrounding stellar-mass black hole MAXI J1820+070 to map its environment.
• JSTOR Daily considers the snow day as a sort of modern festival.
• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to his consideration of the plans of the German Empire to build superdreadnoughts, aborted only by defeat. Had Germany won the First World War, there surely would have been a major naval arms race.
• The NYR Daily looks at two exhibitions of different photographers, Brassaï and Louis Stettner.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares an evocative crescent profile of Ultima Thule taken by New Horizons, and crescent profiles of other worlds, too.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the mystery of why there is so little antimatter in the observable universe.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map exploring the dates and locations of first contact with aliens in the United States as shown in film.
• Window on Eurasia notes a new push by Circassian activists for the Circassian identity to be represented in the 2020 census.

[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 Wednesday links

• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber praises Candice Delmas’ new book on the duty of resistance to injustice.
• D-Brief looks at how the designers of robots took lessons from wasps in designing a new robotic swarm that can pull relatively massive objects in flight.
• Dead Things notes new evidence that the now-extinct elephant birds of Madagascar were nocturnal.
• Far Outliers notes how the reeducation of Japanese prisoners of war by Chinese Communists helped influence American policy towards Japan, imagining a Japan that could be reformed away from imperialism.
• At the Island Review, Alex Ingram profiles–with photos–some of the many different people who are the lone guardians of different small isolated islands removed from the British mainland.
• JSTOR Daily notes how asteroids can preserve records of the distant past of the solar system.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money has contempt for Pence’s use of Messianic Jews to stand in for the wider, non-Christian, Jewish community.
• At Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen considers the consequence that a decline of art galleries might have on the wider field of modern art.
• The NYR Daily considers the lessons that Thucydides, writing about Athens, might have for the United States now.
• Anjali Kumar at Roads and Kingdoms writes about a meal of technically illegal craft beer served with raw shrimp in Bangkok.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel illustrates the six different ways a start can end up in a supernova.
• Window on Eurasia notes that official Russian efforts to reach out to the Russian diaspora do not extend to non-Russian minorities’ own diasporas, like that of the Circassians of the North Caucasus.
• Arnold Zwicky, starting by noting the passing of Dorcas, she who invented green bean casserole, looks at different pre-prepared foodstuffs.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares the latest from exoplanet PDS 70b, which has a gain in mass that has actually been detected by astronomers.
• The Crux considers what information, exactly, hypothetical extraterrestrials could extract from the Golden Record of Voyager. Are the messages decipherable?
• D-Brief shares the most detailed map yet assembled of Comet 67P, compiled from images taken by the Rosetta probe.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the way changing shopping malls reflect, and influence, changes in the broader culture.
• Hornet Stories notes that, while Pope Francis may not want parents of gay children to cut their ties, he does think the parents should look into conversion therapy.
• JSTOR Daily links to a paper examining how beekeeping in early modern England led to the creation of a broader pattern of communications and discourse on the subject.
• Language Hat shares the story of an American diplomat in 1960s Argentina, and his experiences learning Spanish (after having spoken Portuguese) and travelling in the provinces.
• Language Log shares a biscriptal ad from Hong Kong.
• The LRB Blog shares a story told by Harry Stopes about a maritime trip with harbour pilots from Cornwall.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares an anecdote of a family meal of empanadas in the Argentine city of Cordoba during the world cup.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why, in the early universe, the most massive stars massed the equivalent of a thousand suns, much larger than any star known now.
• Towleroad shares Karl Schmid’s appearance on NBC Today, where he talked with Megyn Kelly about HIV in the era of undetectability.
• Window on Eurasia notes the many obstacles placed by the Russian government in the way of Circassian refugees from Syria seeking refuge in their ancestral North Caucasus homeland.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Anthrodendum considers what, exactly, anthropology majors can do job-wise with their degrees. Interesting ideas.
• Centauri Dreams considers the possible origins of cometary organics in deep space.
• Hornet Stories talks of anti-immigrant Americans with immigrant ancestors who skirted relevant laws themselves, like Donald Trump.
• Language Hat considers byssus, an exotic ancient textile and a word with a complex history.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at how the potential for disaster in Florida is worsened by poor planning.
• The LRB Blog looks at the sad intersection of war, xenophobia, and rising rates of polio in Pakistan (and elsewhere).
• The Map Room Blog notes an interactive map-related play still showing at the Halifax Fringe, Cartography.
• The NYR Daily notes a high-profile corruption trial of a former government minister in Moscow.
• The Planetary Society Blog shares Paul Schenk’s story about how he interned at JPL in 1979 for the Voyager 2 flyby.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at the search by a Brazilian man for caves in the south of that country.
• The Volokh Conspiracy asks some interesting questions about the mechanics of Settlers of Catan.
• At Whatever, John Scalzi remembers Jerry Pournelle.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Russia is strongly opposed to any Circassian return to their ancestral homeland.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes one source suggesting red dwarf stars may produce too little ultraviolet to spark life on their planets.
• Hornet Stories notes how LGBTQ Dreamers will be hit badly by the repeal of DACA.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money approves of Frederick Crews’ critical takedown of Freud as a scientist.
• The LRB Blog looks at a new South Korean film examining the Gwangju massacre of 1980.
• The NYR Daily notes that China seems set to head into a new era of strict censorship, with calamitous results.
• The Planetary Society Blog considers the 40th anniversary of the Voyagers in the light of the Pale Blue Dot of Carl Sagan.
• The Signal reports that, for archivists’ purposes, online newspaper sites are actually very poorly organized.
• At Spacing, Adam Bunch notes how Upper Canadian governor John Simcoe’s abolition of slavery was not quite that.
• Window on Eurasia notes the continued official contortions around Circassian history in Russia.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• D-Brief notes the apparent discovery by Hubble of water plumes from Europa.
• The Dragon’s Gaze links to a paper noting different solutions to the mystery of Boyajian’s Star.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos of deserted Pripyat in Ukraine.
• Joe. My. God. notes that 80% of Chicago police dashcams were disabled by the police.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money and Noel Maurer respond to the American presidential debate.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes that Europa is crying for exploration.
• pollotenchegg maps electoral polarization in Ukraine in 2004.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the official Russian stances on the country’s demographic issues.
• The Signal links to the Library of Congress’ online collections.
• Torontoist reports on waterfront litter.
• Towleroad shares the complaints of Mykki Blanco that gay hip hop stars are not given a chance for stardom.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the Circassians of Syria are denied a chance to return to their ancestral homeland in Russia.