[NEWS] Seven science links

• Climate change is playing a major role in the wildfires of California. Are we now in the Fire Age? Global News considers.
• The new normal of the Arctic Ocean is to be ice-free. Global News reports.
• Plants first reached land through unexpected horizontal gene transfers. CBC reports.
• Zebra mussels have made it to the Lake of the Woods. Global News reports.
• An artificial leaf that turns carbon dioxide into usable fuel is a remarkable technology. Universe Today reports.
• Earth once hosted nine human species; now it has one. What happened? National Pot considers.
• Thanks to better medical care and preventative measures, people have longer healthy lifespans than ever before. Global News reports.

[NEWS] Five NYR Daily links: Colombia, slavery, churches, journalism, Shakespeare&Co (@nyr_daily)

• The NYR Daily shares a report from Colombia, about the ways in which the filling of the Hidroituango Dam interacts with Colombia’s other social and political issues, here.
• Sean Wilentz makes the compelling argument at the NYR Daily that the young United States was a critical venue for antislavery movements, here.
• The NYR Daily tells the stories of two churches, one white and one black, as they merge, here.
• The NYR Daily shares the stories of a half-dozen pioneering, but overlooked, black woman journalists in the United States, here.
• Caitlin O’Keefe tells at the NYR Daily of how Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company played a key role in the growth of feminism, here.

[NEWS] Six technology links

• Carl Newport at WIRED argues that past generations have never been as suspicious of technology as we now think, here.
• Anthropologist Darren Byler at The Conversation argues, based on his fieldwork in Xinjiang, how Uighurs became accustomed to the opportunities of new technologies until they were suddenly caught in a trap.
• James Verini at WIRED notes how the fighting around Mosul in the fall of ISIS could be called the first smartphone war.
• National Observer looks at how Québec is so far leading Canada in the development of clean technologies, including vehicles.
• VICE reports on how a Christian rock LP from the 1980s also hosted a Commodore 64 computer program.
• Megan Molteni at WIRED looks at a new, more precise, CRISPR technique that could be used to fix perhaps most genetic diseases.

[NEWS] Ten JSTOR Daily links: Beowulf, grain and beer, Sinclair, birds, TV, books …

• JSTOR Daily considers race as a subject for discussion in Beowulf.
• JSTOR Daily suggests the possibility that grain was domesticated not to produce bread, but rather to produce beer.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the wild rice of North America resisted efforts at domestication.
• JSTOR Daily notes the Outer Banks Brewing Station, a North Carolina brewery powered by wind energy.
• JSTOR Daily shares a classic essay by Upton Sinclair from 1906 on the issues of the American economy.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the history of the pet bird in the 19th century United States.
• JSTOR Daily considers the ways in which streaming television might not fragment markets and nations.
• JSTOR Daily reports on how Sylvia Beach, with help, opened legendary Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the surprisingly democratic origins of the Great Books of American literature.
• JSTOR Daily reports on how the horror movies of the 1970s and 1980s captured a new female audience by having more appealing girl and woman characters.

[VIDEO] Windmill turning, Exhibition Place

The Windshare Turbine at Exhibition Place turns relentlessly, continuing to generate clean power.

[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.

[NEWS] Five JSTOR Daily links: hobos, bird green, Ireland linen, Frank Lloyd Wright, photosynthesis

• JSTOR Daily looks at how early 20th century Americans facing underemployment and persecution under vagrancy laws organized themselves, ultimately creating the Hobo College of Chicago.
• JSTOR Daily explains how the green that we think we see in the feathers of some birds actually is not really there.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the Napoleonic Wars helped transform the linen industry in Ireland, not least by drawing women into the workforce.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Frank Lloyd Wright was decidedly unhappy with the mass produced Taliesin Line of homewares made in the 1950s.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the amazing potential of artificial photosynthesis, particularly as a source of fuel.

[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 Sunday links

• D-Brief reports on the abundance of plastic waste found buried in the beaches of the Cocos Islands.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the US has imposed tariffs against India.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the strange history of phrenology.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes note of the Trump Administration’s honouring of Arthur Laffer.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer looks at the electricity price crisis that might determine who gets to be elected president of Argentina.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how the Pauli Exclusion Principle makes matter possible.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy argues against importing the principles of the Berlin Wall to the US-Mexico border.
• Window on Eurasia shares concerns that Russia is trying to expand its influence in the east of Belarus.

[NEWS] Five tech links: Marion Stokes TV, data caps, Hydro-Québec, batteries, Anki

• Atlas Obscura remarks on the remarkable decades-long archive of taped television made by Marion Stokes.
• Motherboard notes, rightfully, that Americans will have good reason to be upset with data caps.
• Hydro-Québec is set to continue expanding its energy exports, with New York being the latest consumer. CBC reports.
• The National Observer comments on the game-changing improvements of batteries.
• Wired notes that home robotics company Anki is winding down, though not without leaving a good legacy for the future.