[PHOTO] Glitched out

Going through my photo archives on one of my devices, I found this image. I think photos produced by failure can be eye-catching. You?

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Architectuul looks back at some highlights from 2019.
• Bad Astronomy looks at the gas cloud, red and green, of RCW 120.
• Crooked Timber looks at the dynamics of identity politics, here.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a NASA statement about the importance of understanding dust dynamics in other solar systems to find Earth analogues.
• Far Outliers looks at the problems pacifying the Chesapeake Bay area in 1813, here.
• Gizmodo looks at the most popular Wikipedia articles for the year 2019.
• io9 shares a video of images from a 1995 Akira cyberpunk computer game that never got finished.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the United States tried to “civilize” the Inupiat of Alaska by giving them reindeer herds.
• Language Hat links to an online atlas of Scots dialects.
• Language Log reports on a 12th century Sanskrit inscription that testifies to the presence of Muslims in Bengal at that point.
• Marginal Revolution notes how much Tuvalu depends on revenue from its .tv Internet domain.
• Drew Rowsome looks at the Duncan Ralston horror novel Salvage, set in small-town Canada.
• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at the strong relationship between wealth and life expectancy in France.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that, in a hypothetical supernova, all life on an Earth-like planet would be boiled alive by neutrinos.
• Strange Maps links to a graphic interface that translates a word into all the languages of Europe.
• Understanding Society looks at the structures of high-reliability organizations.
• Window on Eurasia shares a suggestion that Homer Simpson is actually the US’ version of Russia’s Ivan the Fool.

[PHOTO] Five photos of vintage calculators and Commodores, Z&Z Accounting (#thejunction)

I was passing by with Jim through the Junction on Dundas West one recent night when we came across the storefront location of Z & Z Accounting and Income Tax Services, at 3102 Dundas Street West. There, they had on display vintage machines of the sort that earlier generations of accountants would have used, including mechanical calculators and some vintage Commodore computers. (The C64 was not there, but the PET and VIC-20 were.)

[PHOTO] Major malfunction, Presto card reader, 29 Dufferin bus

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait tells readers how the orbit of a newly-discovered object, like one of the newly found moons of Saturn, is calculated.
• D-Brief looks at the import of observations of the young HD 163296 system, where gas has been detected flowing onto young planets. Is this where atmospheres come from?
• Gizmodo notes the recent claim by Google to have achieved a quantum computing milestone.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how, in the early 20th century, old unpaved country roads gave way to modern ones.
• The LRB Blog looks at the latest on Brexit and British politics.
• Marginal Revolution notes an article arguing Airbnb has helped undermine trust even in Himalayan villages.
• The NYR Daily looks at a landmark exhibition of the works of William Blake at the Tate Britain.
• Rocky Planet shows how the hyper-precise records of ice cores can be used to identify not just the existence but the locations of volcanic eruptions.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at a newly-founded mysterious dark ancient massive galaxy that may have insights on the processes of the wider universe.
• Window on Eurasia looks at a UN report examining how Russia, occupying Crimea, has promoted demographic transformations.
• Arnold Zwicky tells of his experiences with OUTiL, an organization he helped form in 1991 that brought together out linguists.

[PHOTO] The C64 Mini, $C 59.99

The nostalgia I felt on seeing this device yesterday felt physical to me.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Saira Mehmood blogs at {anthro}dendum about her experiences as an ethnographer in her New Orleans community.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait blogs about Supernova 2016iet, a rare example of a pair-instability supernova.
• At the Broadside Blog, Caitlin Kelly writes about the need of people to avoid isolation.
• Centauri Dreams notes that future astronomers might be able to detect the fluorescence of life on exoplanets during flares.
• Why, Crooked Timber asks, shouldn’t children be given the vote?
• D-Brief notes scientists have manufactured a ring of carbon atoms.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the complexities of #VanLife in the United States, at once a lifestyle choice in the US and a response to poverty.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money is decidedly unimpressed by the recent rewriting of the Statue of Liberty.
• Neuroskeptic looks at how neuroimaging studies study surprisingly few left-handers, and how this is a problem.
• The NYR Daily looks at how Big Data in China is enhancing state power, concentrating on the situation in Xinjiang.
• Drew Rowsome looks at a new documentary on the genesis of Fiddler on the Roof, Fiddler: Miracle of Miracles.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at how dark matter and black holes can interact.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at coded anti-black racism in the 1937 United States.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: New York City, Los Angeles, Paris, Venice, Istanbul

• The OS/2 operating system is used in New York City to run that metropolis subway system. VICE reports.
• The problem of homelessness in Los Angeles, the Guardian reports, is shocking.
• CityLab reports on plans for new sorts of urban forests outside famous landmarks in Paris.
• DW reports on how people in Venice protest against the intrusions of huge cruise ships into their lagoon, threatening the delicate environment.
• Guardian Cities reports on how the hipster class in Istanbul has begun to migrate to the countryside, driven out of their city by real estate prices and by politics.

[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 Thursday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at Abell 30, a star that has been reborn in the long process of dying.
• Centauri Dreams uses the impending launch of LightSail 2 to discuss solar sails in science fiction.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber, as part of a series of the fragility of globalization, considers if migration flows can be reversed. (He concludes it unlikely.)
• The Crux considers if the record rain in the Midwest (Ontario, too, I would add) is a consequence of climate change.
• D-Brief notes that the failure of people around the world to eat enough fruits and vegetables may be responsible for millions of premature dead.
• Dangerous Minds introduces readers to gender-bending Italian music superstar Renato Zero.
• Dead Things notes how genetic examinations have revealed the antiquity of many grapevines still used for wine.
• Gizmodo notes that the ocean beneath the icy crust of Europa may contain simple salt.
• io9 tries to determine the nature of the many twisted timelines of the X-Men movie universe of Fox.
• JSTOR Daily observes that the Stonewall Riots were hardly the beginning of the gay rights movement in the US.
• Language Log looks at the mixed scripts on a bookstore sign in Beijing.
• Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money argues that Jeremy Corbyn has a very strong hold on his loyal followers, perhaps even to the point of irrationality.
• Marginal Revolution observes that people who create public genetic profiles for themselves also undo privacy for their entire biological family.
• Sean Marshall at Marshall’s Musings shares a photo of a very high-numbered street address, 986039 Oxford-Perth Road in Punkeydoodle’s Corners.
• The NYR Daily examines the origins of the wealth of Lehman Brothers in the exploitation of slavery.
• The Planetary Society Blog shares a panorama-style photo of the Apollo 11 Little West Crater on the Moon.
• Drew Rowsome notes that classic documentary Paris Is Burning has gotten a makeover and is now playing at TIFF.
• Peter Rukavina, writing from a trip to Halifax, notes the convenience of the Eduroam procedures allowing users of one Maritime university computer network to log onto another member university’s network.
• Dylan Reid at Spacing considers how municipal self-government might be best embedded in the constitution of Canada.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle pays tribute to the wildflower Speedwell, a name he remembers from Watership Down.
• Strange Maps shares a crowdsourced map depicting which areas of Europe are best (and worst) for hitchhikers.
• Window on Eurasia notes the distribution of native speakers of Russian, with Israel emerging as more Russophone than some post-Soviet states.