[BLOG] Five Bad Astronomy links (@badastronomer)

• Bad Astronomy notes the remarkable burst of starbirth at the core of our galaxy one billion years ago, here.
• Bad Astronomy shares a flyby video of the Mars moon of Phobos.
• Bad Astronomer reports on a strange storm around the south pole of Jupiter, here.
• Bad Astronomer reports on an outburst following a debris impact seen by TESS on comet 47P/Wirtanen.
• Bad Astronomer notes the continuing debate over the dynamic nature of the spiral arms of galaxies.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the findings that the LISA Pathfinder satellite was impacted by hypervelocity comet fragments.
• Centauri Dreams reports on what we have learned about interstellar comet Borisov.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the ESA’s Matisse instrument, capable of detecting nanodiamonds orbiting distant stars.
• Gizmodo reports a new study of the great auk, now extinct, suggesting that humans were wholly responsible for this extinction with their hunting.
• The Island Review links to articles noting the existential vulnerability of islands like Venice and Orkney to climate change.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of Tucker Carlson–perhaps not believably retracted by him–to be supporting Russia versus Ukraine.
• Language Hat reports on the new Indigemoji, emoji created to reflect the culture and knowledge of Aboriginal groups in Australia.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes one of the sad consequences of the American president being a liar.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the optimism of the spending plans of Labour in the UK, a revived Keynesianism.
• Marginal Revolution notes the exceptional cost of apartments built for homeless people in San Francisco.
• Strange Maps looks at some remarkable gravity anomalies in parts of the US Midwest.
• Towleroad notes the support of Jamie Lee Curtis for outing LGBTQ people who are homophobic politicians.
• Understanding Society looks at organizations from the perspective of them as open systems.
• Whatever’s John Scalzi gives a generally positive review of the Pixel 4.
• Arnold Zwicky notes the irony of sex pills at an outpost of British discount chain Poundland.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• At anthro{dendum}, Amarilys Estrella writes about the aftermath of a car accident she experienced while doing fieldwork.
• Architectuul notes at a tour of Berlin looking at highlights from an innovative year for architecture in West Berlin back in 1987.
• Bad Astronomer notes that interstellar comet 2/Borisov is behaving surprisingly normally.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes briefly about the difficulty, and the importance, of being authentic.
• Centauri Dreams shares some of the recent findings of Voyager 2 from the edge of interstellar space.
• Crooked Timber shares a photo of a courtyard in Montpellier.
• D-Brief notes a study of the genetics of ancient Rome revealing that the city once was quite cosmopolitan, but that this cosmopolitanism passed, too.
• Dangerous Minds notes a 1972 single where Marvin Gaye played the Moog.
• Cody Delistraty looks at Degas and the opera.
• Bruce Dorminey makes a case, scientific and otherwise, against sending animals into space.
• Far Outliers looks at a 1801 clash between the American navy and Tripoli pirates.
• Gizmodo notes a theory that ancient primates learned to walk upright in trees.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the Cayman Islands overturned a court ruling calling for marriage equality.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the experience of women under Reconstruction.
• Language Hat notes the exceptional multilingualism of the Qing empire.
• Language Log looks at circumstances where the Roman alphabet is used in contemporary China.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the forced resignation of Evo Morales in Bolivia, and calls for readers to take care with their readings on the crisis and the country.
• Marginal Revolution considers a new sociological theory suggesting that the medieval Christian church enacted policy which made the nuclear family, not the extended family, the main structure in Europe and its offshoots.
• Sean Marshall takes a look at GO Transit fare structures, noting how users of the Kitchener line may pay more than their share.
• Neuroskeptic takes a look at the contradictions between self-reported brain activity and what brain scanners record.
• Alex Hutchinson writes at the NYR Daily about human beings and their relationship with wilderness.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the impact of drought in Australia’s New England, and about the need for balances.
• The Planetary Society Blog offers advice for people interested in seeing today’s transit of Mercury across the Sun.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer suggests Argentines may not have cared about their national elections as much as polls suggested.
• Peter Rukavina shares an image of an ancient Charlottetown traffic light, at Prince and King.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the significant convergence, and remaining differences, between East and West Germany.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at some of the backstory to the Big Bang.
• The Volokh Conspiracy suggests the Paris Accords were never a good way to deal with climate change.
• Window on Eurasia shares someone arguing the policies of Putin are simple unoriginal Bonapartism.
• Worthwhile Canadian Economy makes the case that slow economic recoveries are deep economic recoveries.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how the failure of the media to serve as effective critics of politics has helped lead, in the UK of Brexit, to substantial political change.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the idea, first expressed in comics, of Russian sardines.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomy notes the new X-ray telescope eROSITA.
• Centauri Dreams notes evidence of a recent collision between planets in the system of BD +20 307.
• D-Brief notes the appearance of a strange new sort of storm on Saturn.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the discovery by astronomers of a set of orbits that can direct comets into the inner solar system.
• Drew Ex Machina’s Andrew LePage shares some vintage Skylab photos of his native Massachusetts.
• Far Outliers notes how, in 1786, the United states was uninclined to pay tribute to the Barbary States.
• Gizmodo’s George Dvorsky reports on a new fossil discovery showing how quickly mammals took over after the Cretaceous.
• The Island Review shares an essay by photographer Alex Boyd about his new book Isles of Rust, drawing from Lewis & Harris.
• JSTOR Daily looks at sustainable butchery.
• Language Hat notes that Sumerian cuneiform is now in Unicode.
• Victor Mair at Language Log notes how the Indo-Iranian “don” so commonly forms part of the hydronyms for major European rivers.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money calls for an in-depth investigation of Donald Trump, not necessarily an impeachment.
• The LRB Blog examines the background of the mass protests in Santiago and wider Chile.
• The Map Room Blog shares an illuminating cartogram depicting the #elxn43 results in Canada.
• Marginal Revolution looks at how the government of China has been using the NBA to buy social peace.
• The NYR Daily interviews Naomi Oreskes about her campaign to have the science behind global warming, and the actions of the scientists involved, understood.
• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper concluding that traditional gender specializations in British families no longer provide a reproductive advantage.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the speed of gravity must equal the speed of light, if general relativity is to work.
• Window on Eurasia examines the rapid and uncontrolled growth of urban populations in Kazakhstan.

[URBAN NOTE] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers the possibility that our model for the evolution of galaxies might be partially disproven by Big Data.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly reports how she did her latest article for the New York Times.
• Centauri Dreams notes the beginning of a search for habitable-zone planets around Alpha Centauri A and B.
• The Crux looks at how the skull trophies of the ancient Maya help explain civilizational collapse.
• D-Brief notes new evidence suggesting that our humble, seemingly stable Sun can produce superflares.
• Dead Things reports on the latest informed speculation about the sense of smell of Tyrannosaurus Rex.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares the NASA report on its progress towards the Lunar Gateway station.
• Gizmodo looks at the growing number of China’s beautiful, deadly, blooms of bioluminescent algae.
• io9 reports that Stjepan Sejic has a new series with DC, exploring the inner life of Harley Quinn.
• JSTOR Daily looks at an example of a feminist musical, the Chantal Akerman The Eighties.
• Language Hat links to a review of a dystopian novel by Yoko Tawada, The Emissary, imagining a future Japan where the learning of foreign languages is banned.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money reiterates that history, and the writing of history, is an actual profession with skills and procedures writers in the field need to know.
• Liam Shaw writes at the LRB Blog about how people in London, late in the Second World War, coped with the terrifying attacks of V2 rockets.
• The Map Room Blog links to a new book, Wayfinding, about the neuroscience of navigation.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution reviews a Robert Zubrin book advocating the colonization of space and finds himself unconvinced.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at the ancient comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko explored by the ESA Rosetta probe.
• Roads and Kingdoms provides tips for visitors to the Paraguay capital of Asuncion.
• Peter Rukavina reports that, on the day the new PEI legislature came in, 105% of Island electricity came from windpower.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel argues that, in searching for life, we should not look for exoplanets very like Earth.
• Strange Company shares another weekend collection of diverse links.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little shares the views of Margaret Gilbert on social facts.
• Window on Eurasia suggests Kadyrov might dream of a broad Greater Chechnya, achieved at the expense of neighbouring republics.
• Arnold Zwicky considers some superhero identity crises, of Superman and of others.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait writes about the ephemeral nature and historically recent formation of the rings of Saturn.
• Centauri Dreams hosts an essay looking at the controversies surrounding the arguments of Avi Loeb around SETI and ‘Oumuamua.
• D-Brief links to a new analysis of hot Jupiters suggesting that they form close to their stars, suggesting further that they are a separate population from outer-system worlds like our Jupiter and Saturn.
• Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the sociology of the online world, using the critical work of Zeynep Tufekci as a lens.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing makes a great point about the seemingly transparent online world: We might, like a protagonist in a Hawthorne story, confine ourselves falsely that we know everything, so becoming jaded.
• JSTOR Daily notes how, in the early 20th century, US Park Rangers were actually quite rough and tumble, an irregular police force.
• Language Hat looks at the overlooked modernist fiction of Dorothy Richardson.
• Language Log examines the origins of the phrase “Listen up”.
• The LRB Blog visits a Berlin cemetery to note the annual commemoration there of the lives of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
• Marginal Revolution considers the proportion of centenarians on Okinawa, and considers if a carbohydrate-heavy diet featuring sweet potatoes is key.</li<
• Tim Parks at the NYR Daily engages with the idea of a translation being an accomplishment of its own.
• Roads and Kingdoms has a fascinating interview with Tanja Fox about the history and development of the Copenhagen enclave of Christiania.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that early returns from New Horizons suggest Ultima Thule is a typical “future comet”.
• Strange Company shares the story of the haunting of 18th century Gael Donald Bán.
• Towleroad shares the account by Nichelle Nichols of how her chance encounter with Martin Luther King helped save Star Trek.
• Window on Eurasia notes the different quasi-embassies of different Russian republics in Moscow, and their potential import.
• Arnold Zwicky, looking at penguins around the world, notices the CIBC mascot Percy the Penguin.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Anthro{dendum} considers ways to simulate urgency in simulations of climate change.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers what could possibly have led to a Mars crater near Biblis Patera, on Tharsis, having such a flat bottom.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog gives readers some tips as to what they should see in New York City.
• Centauri Dreams notes some of the early returns sent back by the OSIRIS-REx probe from asteroid Bennu.
• The Crux notes the limits of genetic determinism in explaining human behaviour, given the huge influence of the environment on the expression of genes and more.
• D-Brief suggests that the rapid global dispersion of the domestic chicken, a bird visibly distinct from its wild counterparts, might make an excellent marker of the Anthropocene millions of years hence.
• Bruce Dorminey notes that Comet 46 P/Wirtanen is set to come within a bit more than eleven million kilometres of the Earth next week, and that astronomers are ready.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing suggests that the Internet, by exposing everything, makes actual innovation difficult.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the innovative art of early 20th century Expressionist Charlotte Salomon, a person not only groundbreaking with her autobiographical painting series but linked to a murder mystery, too.
• Anne Curzan writes at Lingua Franca about what she has learned in six years about blogging there abut language.
• Sara Jayyousi writes at the LRB Blog about her experiences over time with a father imprisoned for nearly a decade and a half on false charges of supporting terrorism.
• Marginal Revolution shares Tyler Cowen’s argument that Macron’s main problem is that he lacks new ideas, something to appeal to the masses.
• Sylvain Cypel at the NYR Daily argues that Macron, arguably never that popular, is facing a Marie Antoinette moment, the Yellow Jackets filling the place of the sans culottes.
• Drew Rowsome rightly laments the extent to which social media, including not just Facebook but even Tumblr, are currently waging a war against any visible sex in any context.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how, in 2019, astronomers will finally have imaged the event horizon around the black hole Sagittarius A* at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy.
• Window on Eurasia reports on polls which suggest that young Belarusians are decidedly apolitical.

[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.

[NEWS] Five science links: BC fires, urban animal intelligence, Oort clouds, stars, dark energy

• The fires of British Columbia are so vast that their smoke is reaching the west of France. Ici Radio-Canada reports.
• Are the unique challenges posed by modern cities making the animals who live in them smarter? The Atlantic examines the issue.
• Universe Today notes that the Oort clouds of other stars may well be visible on microwave frequencies.
• Universe Today reports on the very recent finding that star formation in the Milky Way Galaxy shut down for billions of years, that we are in the middle of a second wave of star formation.
• Do not fear: There is at least one hypothetical strategy that an arbitrarily advanced future civilization could adopt to minimize the effect of dark energy on its exploration of the universe. Universe Today reports.

[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: cometary disasters, ET malware, Kepler, bird language, Canadian rockets

• Universe Today notes that, 12.8 thousand years ago, a disintegrating comet set a tenth of the Earth’s surface area on fire.
• Should messages from extraterrestrial civilizations be automatically deleted on reception, for fear of their malware? Universe Today reports.
• 14 different worlds detected by Kepler have been scanned for technological signatures of advanced civilizations. Universe Today reports.
• Brandom Keim at National Geographic describes a fascinating study suggesting some birds–here, Japanese tits–have human-like rules for language and can picture in their mind’s eye the subjects of their communication.
• CBC asks the perfectly sensible question why Canada does not have any indigenous rocket program.