[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Citizen Science Salon highlights Australian Michelle Neil, here.
• Ingrid Robeyns argues at Crooked Timber that the idea of punitive taxation of the superrich is hardly blasphemous.
• The Crux looks at the ongoing debate over the age of the rings of Saturn.
• io9 notes the sad death of Aron Eisenberg, the actor who brought the character of Nog to life on DS9.
• JSTOR Daily shares a debate on the ego and the id, eighty years later.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how Mitch McConnell may have started the movement of Elizabeth Warren towards the US presidency.
• The Map Room Blog takes a look at the credible and consistent mapping of Star Wars’ galaxy.
• The NYR Daily looks at Springsteen at 70 as a performer.
• Peter Rukavina shares a photo of a New England forest in fall.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes a sticker that straddles the line between anti-Muslim sentiment and misogyny, trying to force people to choose.
• Window on Eurasia notes the strong anti-Russian sentiment prevailing in once-independent Tuva.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• In an extended meditation, Antipope’s Charlie Stross considers what the domestic architecture of the future will look like. What different technologies, with different uses of space, will come into play?
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the new SPECULOOS exoplanet hunting telescope, specializing in the search for planets around the coolest stars.
• The Crux looks at the evolutionary origins of hominins and chimpanzees in an upright walking ape several million years ago.
• D-Brief notes the multiple detections of gravitational waves made by LIGO.
• The Dragon’s Tales looks at the development of laser weapons by China.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the gap between social theory and field research.
• Gizmodo shares an interesting discussion with paleontologists and other dinosaur experts: What would the dinosaurs have become if not for the Chixculub impact?
• Hornet Stories notes the ways in which the policies of the Satanic Temple would be good for queer students.
• io9 notes how the Deep Space 9 documentary What We Leave Behind imagines what a Season 8 would have looked like.
• Joe. My. God. reports that activist Jacob Wohl is apparently behind allegations of a sexual assault by Pete Buttigieg against a subordinate.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the uses of the yellow ribbon in American popular culture.
• Language Hat shares an account of the life experiences of an Israeli taxi driver, spread across languages and borders.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money makes deserved fun of Bret Easton Ellis for his claims to having been marginalized.
• Marginal Revolution considers, briefly, the idea that artificial intelligence might not be harmful to humans. (Why would it necessarily have to be?)
• The NYR Daily considers a British exhibition of artworks by artists from the former Czechoslovakia.
• Peter Rukavina looks at gender representation in party caucuses in PEI from the early 1990s on, noting the huge surge in female representation in the Greens now.
• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress is preserving Latin American monographs.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how Einstein knew that gravity must bend light.
• Window on Eurasia explains the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomy notes a push by astronomers to enlist help for giving trans-Neptunian object 2007-OR10 a name.
• Centauri Dreams reflects on M87*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of M87 recently imaged, with its implications for galactic habitability.
• Crooked Timber is right to note that Kirstjen Nielsen, architect of the cruel border policies of Trump, should not be allowed to resume a normal professional life.
• The Crux looks at the Event Horizon Telescope Project that imaged M87*.
• D-Brief notes that one-quarter of Japanese in their 20s and 30s have remained virgins, and explains why this might be the case.
• Far Outliers notes the process of the writing of U.S. Grant’s acclaimed memoirs.
• Mark Graham highlights a BBC documentary, one he contributed to, asking if artificial intelligence will kill global development.
• Gizmodo explains why the image of black hole M87* does not look exactly like the fictional one from the scientifically-grounded Interstellar.
• Hornet Stories explains the joys of Hawai’i in fall.
• io9 notes that the new Deep Space Nine anniversary documentary is scheduled for a one-day theatrical release. (Will it be in Toronto?)
• JSTOR Daily makes the point that mass enfranchisement is the best way to ensure security for all.
• Language Hat looks at the kitabs, the books written in Afrikaans using its original Arabic script kept by Cape Malays.
• Language Log notes, with examples, some of the uses of the words “black” and “evil” in contemporary China.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money makes the point that having a non-octogenarian president is a good idea.
• Marginal Revolution shares the thoughts of Samir Varma on the new technologies–better computers, faster travel, artificial life–that may change the world in the near future.
• The NYR Daily explores the subversive fairy tales of 19th century Frenchman Édouard Laboulaye.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes the sad crash of the Beresheet probe on the surface of the Moon.
• Drew Rowsome engages with the body of work of out horror writer John Saul.
• Peter Rukavina maps out where Islanders will be voting, and the distances they will travel, in this month’s election.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel engages with the possibility that we might be alone. What next? (Myself, I think the idea of humanity as an elder race is fascinating.)
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the sort of humour that involves ambiguous adverbs.

[NEWS] Five social science links: Canadian Jews, US mafia, Miles O’Brien, online fandoms, Monopoly

• The Conversation hosts an article looking at the evolution of Jewish identity in Canada from something religious to something cultural.
• The state of the American mafia, so thoroughly Americanized, is remarkable in a lot of ways. VICE reports.
• There is definitely something to be said for the idea that Star Trek’s Chief Miles O’Brien is one of the best representations of someone Irish and of Irish culture in popular culture. entertainment.ie has it.
• This Wired article takes a look at the online interactions, positive and malign both, that have complicated so many fandoms like that of Harry Potter.
• Monopoly, this article reminds us at The Conversation, was a board game invented to remind people about the pitfalls of capitalism.

[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.

[NEWS] Five sci-fi links: Annihilation, Blade Runner, The Telling, Sandman, Deep Space Nine

• If Annihilation is the start of a wave of interesting new sci-fi films, looking at the genre from new angles, this is good. I just hope distribution can be solved. Rolling Stone has it.
• This essay on the role of memory in the Blade Runner series, as a marker of identity and more, is superb.
• The Telling, last of Le Guin’s Hainish novels, is set for a movie release. io9 reports.
• That Neil Gaiman has authorized DC Comics to release four comics set in the Sandman part of their universe is amazing. io9 reports.
• This extended take on how Deep Space Nine revolutionized the Trek format, looking at the universe from new and very creative angles, says what needs to be said. This is the reason it is my favourite Trek series. io9 has it.

[LINK] “How Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Helped to Invent Everything You Love”

Writing at io9, Charlie Jane Anders makes the case for the critical importance of Deep Space 9

20 years ago today, the very first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine aired on American television. And Star Trek would never be the same again — but Deep Space Nine also had a lasting impact on all genre television. The grittiest of Star Trek series helped to give us a lot of the things we take most for granted on science fiction and fantasy television today — and here are just a few of the ways.

Those long, sweeping arcs. It seems like a weird thing to mention now, because every random cop show or space adventure has storylines that carry on from episode to episode, more like serialized novels than collections of self-contained stories. But back when Deep Space Nine started, the idea of following “arcs,” especially ones that went on for more than one season, was still more unusual on TV. For a Star Trek show, especially, it was considered weird to have so many continuing storylines.

As writer/producer Ron Moore said, in an interview at TrekMovie:

The Enterprise, like I said earlier, could pull up to a planet and have an episode and keep going. With Deep Space Nine, anything that took place on the station, well guess what? Next week you are still on the station. And Bajor is not going anywhere. So really you had to keep playing those stories. You couldn’t make a big change in Bajor’s political structure in one week and then ignore it then next. You had to keep it going. Kira’s story with his relationship with Bajorans had to keep evolving and so did Sisko’s and they had a long-term mission. They had a mission about Bajor into the Federation. That alone meant that it was going to be serialized at least on that front.

Anders goes on to identify multiple other legacies of the best Star Trek–the place given to religion, the exploration of the ethics of terrorism, and so on. While commenters who point out the similar role of Babylon 5, I’m inclined to think that these two shows of the 1990s often worked in parallel to each other without imitating each other.