[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Architectuul looks at the Porto architectural project Critical Concrete, here.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares the evidence for our galaxy having experienced a phase as a quasar a quarter-million years long some 3.5 million years ago.
• Author James Bow celebrates the end of his publicity tour for The Night Girl, including a controversy over cover art featuring the CN Tower.
• Robert Zubrin at Centauri Dreams considers how we could detect energy from artificial singularities used for power and propulsion. (Is this how we find the Romulans?)
• The Crux considers whether or not the new proposals for more powerful supercolliders in China and Europe are likely to produce new discoveries.
• D-Brief explains why older generations so often look down on the young: The elders idealize their younger selves too much.
• Dead Things notes new evidence, in the tracks of trilobites moving in line 480 million years ago, for early life being able to engage in collective behaviour.
• io9 interviews Kami Garcia about her new YA book featuring venerable DC character Raven, remaking her for new readers.
• The Island Review interviews David Gange about The Frayed Atlantic Edge, his book account of his kayak trip down the western coasts of Britain and Ireland.
• JSTOR Daily explains why Martin Luther King Jr. thought so highly of jazz.
• Eleanor Penny argues at the LRB Blog against taking Malthus, with his pessimism trending towards a murderous misanthropy, as a prophet for our times.
• The NYR Daily looks at the play American Moor, which touches on the efforts of black actors to engage with Shakespeare.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the new film The Flick, an old to old-style movies and theatres.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map depicting Hutterite migrations across early modern Europe.
• Starts With A Bang shares new speculation that some evidence for dark matter might actually be a mistake in measurement.
• Strange Maps notes the now mostly submerged continent of Greater Adria.
• Window on Eurasia shares a suggestion that the deep Russophilia of many ordinary people in Belarus might support union with Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the different meanings of “unaccompanied”.

[NEWS] Seven space links: Moon and Mercury, black holes and neutron stars, probes

• Universe Today notes that shadowed areas on the Moon and Mercury might have thick deposits of ice, here.
• Science Alert notes a study suggesting that a large number of black holes might be careening throughout the galaxy, here.
• Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy, recently flared for an unknown reason. Science Alert has it.
• Astronomers have found the most massive neutron star yet known, J0740+6620 at 2.17 solar masses 4600 light-years away. Phys.org reports.
• The environment surrounding a supermassive black hole like Sagittarius A* might actually be a good place to live, if you have the needed technology. Scientific American considers.
• Universe Today notes that the Hubble has been looking at the fading 2017 kilonova GRB 170817A, mapping the fading glow.
• A new study suggests that space is not filled with civilizations of self-replicating probes competing with each other. Cosmos Magazine reports.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomy notes the remarkably eccentric orbit of gas giant HR 5138b.
• Centauri Dreams notes the impact that large-scale collisions have on the evolution of planets.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber noted yesterday that babies born on September 11th in 2001 are now 18 years old, adults.
• The Crux notes that some of the hominins in the Sima de los Huesos site in Spain, ancestors to Neanderthals, may have been murdered.
• D-Brief reports on the cryodrakon, a pterosaur that roamed the skies above what is now Canada 77 million years ago.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the political artwork of Jan Pötter.
• Gizmodo notes a poll suggesting a majority of Britons would support actively seeking to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations.
• io9 has a loving critical review of the first Star Trek movie.
• JSTOR Daily shares, from April 1939, an essay by the anonymous head of British intelligence looking at the international context on the eve of the Second World War.
• Language Log notes a recent essay on the mysterious Voynich manuscript, one concluding that it is almost certainly a hoax of some kind.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the future of the labour movement in the United States.
• Marginal Revolution considers what sort of industrial policy would work for the United States.
• Yardena Schwartz writes at NYR Daily about the potential power of Arab voters in Israel.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections explains why, despite interest, Australia did not launch a space program in the 1980s.
• Drew Rowsome provides a queer review of It: Chapter Two.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how government censorship of science doomed the Soviet Union and could hurt the United States next.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, in the Volga republics, recent educational policy changes have marginalized non-Russian languages.
• Arnold Zwicky shares a glossy, fashion photography-style, reimagining of the central relationship in the James Baldwin classic Giovanni’s Room, arranged by Hilton Als.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Anthro{dendum} features an essay examining trauma and resiliency as encountered in ethnographic fieldwork.
• Architectuul highlights a new project seeking to promote historic churches built in the United Kingdom in the 20th century.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait examines Ahuna Mons, a muddy and icy volcano on Ceres, and looks at the nebula Westerhout 40.
• Centauri Dreams notes the recent mass release of data from a SETI project, and notes the discovery of two vaguely Earth-like worlds orbiting the very dim Teegarden’s Star, just 12 light-years away.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes that having universities as a safe space for trans people does not infringe upon academic freedom.
• The Crux looks at the phenomenon of microsleep.
• D-Brief notes evidence that the Milky Way Galaxy was warped a billion years ago by a collision with dark matter-heavy dwarf galaxy Antlia 2, and notes a robotic fish powered by a blood analogue.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that India plans on building its own space station.
• Earther notes the recording of the song of the endangered North Pacific right whale.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the role of emotional labour in leisure activities.
• Far Outliers looks at how Japan prepared for the Battle of the Leyte Gulf in 1944.
• Gizmodo looks at astronomers’ analysis of B14-65666, an ancient galactic collision thirteen billion light-years away, and notes that the European Space Agency has a planned comet interception mission.
• io9 notes how the plan for Star Trek in the near future is to not only have more Star Trek, but to have many different kinds of Star Trek for different audiences.
• Joe. My. God. notes the observation of Pete Buttigieg that the US has probably already had a gay president.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which the rhetoric of Celtic identity has been used, and notes that the archerfish uses water ejected from its eyes to hunt.
• Language Hat looks at why Chinese is such a hard language to learn for second-language learners, and looks at the Suso monastery in Spain, which played a key role in the coalescence of the Spanish language.
• Language Log looks at the complexities of katakana.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the death of deposed Egypt president Mohammed Morsi looks like a slow-motion assassination, and notes collapse of industrial jobs in the Ohio town of Lordstown, as indicative of broader trends.
• The LRB Blog looks at the death of Mohamed Morsi.
• The Map Rom Blog shares a new British Antarctic Survey map of Greenland and the European Arctic.
• Marginal Revolution notes how non-religious people are becoming much more common in the Middle East, and makes the point that the laying of cable for the transatlantic telegraph is noteworthy technologically.
• Noah Smith at Noahpionion takes the idea of the Middle East going through its own version of the Thirty Years War seriously. What does this imply?
• The NYR Daily takes a look at a Lebanon balanced somehow on the edge, and looks at the concentration camp system of the United States.
• The Planetary Society Blog explains what people should expect from LightSail 2, noting that the LightSail 2 has launched.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw points readers to his stories on Australian spy Harry Freame.
• Rocky Planet explains, in the year of the Apollo 50th anniversary, why the Moon matters.
• Drew Rowsome reviews, and praises, South African film Kanarie, a gay romp in the apartheid era.
• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper examining the relationship between childcare and fertility in Belgium, and looks at the nature of statistical data from Turkmenistan.
• The Strange Maps Blog shares a map highlighting different famous people in the United States.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why different galaxies have different amounts of dark matter, and shares proof that the Apollo moon landings actually did happen.
• Towleroad notes the new evidence that poppers, in fact, are not addictive.
• Window on Eurasia warns about the parlous state of the Volga River.
• Arnold Zwicky takes an extended look at the mid-20th century gay poet Frank O’Hara.

[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: NASA climate, Starlink, CO2 on the seabed, moving Earth, neutrino beams

• Evan Gough at Universe Today notes that the long-term climate predictions of NASA have so far proven accurate to within tenths of a degree Celsius.
• Matt Williams at Universe Today notes how the launching of satellites for the Starlink constellation, providing Internet access worldwide, could be a game-changer.
• Eric Niiler at WIRED suggests that Texas–and other world regions–could easily sequester carbon dioxide in the seabed, in the case of Texas using the Gulf of Mexico.

Matteo Ceriotti explains at The Conversation how, as in The Wandering Earth, the Earth might be physically moved. https://theconversation.com/wandering-earth-rocket-scientist-explains-how-we-could-move-our-planet-116365ti

• Matt Williams at Universe Today shares a remarkable proposal, suggesting Type II civilizations might use dense bodies like black holes to create neutrino beam beacons.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Larry Claes at Centauri Dreams considers the issues of the alien featuring in the title of the classic The Thing, facing human persecution.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber starts a debate about past blogging and conventional wisdom.
• The Crux reports on a mass rescue of orphaned flamingo chicks in South Africa.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that asteroids provided perhaps half of the Earth’s current supply of water.
• Cody Delistraty looks at how the far-right in Germany is appropriating artworks to support its view of history.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that China may be hoping to build a base at the Moon’s south pole by 2029.
• Far Outliers reports on the 1865 collapse of the Confederacy.
• Gizmodo reports on how astronomers have identified the approximate location of a kilonova that seeded the nascent solar system with heavy elements.
• Joe. My. God. shares the news from yet another study demonstrating that HIV cannot be transmitted by HIV-undetectable people. U=U.
• JSTOR Daily notes how, via Herb Caen, the Beat Generation became known as Beatniks.
• Language Hat shares and comments upon a passage from Dostoevsky noting how an obscenity can be stretched out into an entire conversation.
• Language Log considers a peculiarity of the Beijing dialect.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how statehood has been used to game the American political system.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that countries with greater levels of gender inequality are more likely to produce female chess grandmasters.
• Justin Petrone at North!, considering the history of writers in Estonia, considers what the mission of the writer should be.
• The NYR Daily examines the black people once miners in the Kentucky town of Lynch, remembering and sharing their experiences.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw considers what he has learned from a recent research and writing contract.
• Jason C. Davis at the Planetary Society Blog reports in greater detail on the crater Hayabusa 2 made in asteroid Ryugu.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how the Event Horizon Telescope acts like a mirror.
• Strange Company shares an impressively diverse collection of links.
• Towleroad talks with writer Tim Murphy about his new novel, Correspondents.
• Window on Eurasia considers future directions for Ukrainian language policy.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the artistic riches horded by the Nazis in the Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes how the warp in space-time made by the black hole in V404 Cygni has been detected.
• The Crux reports on the discovery of the remains of a chicha brewery in pre-Columbian Peru.
• D-Brief notes a new model for the creation of the Moon by impact with primordial Earth that would explain oddities with the Earth still being molten, having a magma ocean.
• Bruce Dorminey shares the idea that extraterrestrial civilizations might share messages with posterity through DNA encoded in bacteria set adrift in space.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on progress in drones and UAVs made worldwide.
• Gizmodo notes some of the privacy issues involved with Alexa.
• JSTOR Daily explains how some non-mammals, including birds and fish, nurse their young.
• Language Hat reports on the latest studies in the ancient linguistic history of East Asia, with suggestions that Old Japanese has connections to the languages of the early Korean states of Silla and Paekche but not to that of Koguryo.
• Language Log considers the issues involved with the digitization of specialized dictionaries.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money remembers the start of the Spanish Civil War.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points towards his recent interview with Margaret Atwood.
• The NYR Daily reports on a remarkable new play, Heidi Schreck’s What The Constitution Means To Me.
• Towleroad reports on what Hunter Kelly, one of the men who operatives tried to recruit to spread slander against Pete Buttigieg, has to say about the affair.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that a Russian annexation of Belarus would not be an easy affair.
• Arnold Zwicky reports on the latest signs of language change, this time in the New Yorker.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers the possibility that interstellar objects like ‘Oumuamua might help planets consdense in young systems.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly explains the genesis of news stories.
• Centauri Dreams explores a remarkable thesis of somehow intelligent, living even, mobile stars.
• Citizen Science Blog reports on an ingenious effort by scientists to make use of crowdsourcing to identify venerable trees in a forest.
• The Crux takes a look at the idea of rewilding.
• D-Brief takes a look at how active auroras can lead to satellite orbits decaying prematurely.
• Bruce Dorminey reports on a new finding suggesting that the suspected exomoon given the name Kepler-162b I does not exist.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the incident that led to the concept of Stockholm syndrome.
• Language Log takes a look at the idea of someone having more than one native language. Is it even possible?
• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at how trade war with the EU is hurting the bourbon industry of the United States.
• The LRB Blog reports on the aftermath in Peru of the startling suicide of former president Alan Garcia.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that rising health care costs have hurt the American savings rate and the wider American economy.
• Russell Darnley takes a look at the innovative fish weirs of the Aborigines on Australia’s Darling River.
• The NYR Daily takes a look at Russian Doll and the new era of television.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes the formal end of the Mars rover expeditions. Spirit and Opportunity can rest easy.
• Drew Rowsome praises Out, a one-man show at Buddies in Bad Times exploring what it was like to be out in the late 1970s.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that a search for dark matter has revealed evidence of the radioactive decay of pretty but not perfectly stable isotope xenon-124.
• Window on Eurasia considers the likely impact of new Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelensky on Ukrainian autocephaly.
• Arnold Zwicky celebrated the penguin drawings of Sandra Boynton, starting from her World Penguin Day image from the 25th of April.

[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 sci-tech links: Chixculub archive, male pill, Garfield phones, Nova Scotia, ETI wars

• Journalist Douglas Preston U>writes in The New Yorker about a potentially amazing site in North Dakota, a rich fossil bed that may well have been formed in the first hour after the Chixculub asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous.
• Arielle Pardes writes at WIRED about how a potential lack of demand among men might hinder the sale of male contraceptives.
• Vulture reports the identification of the source, at last, of the components of Garfield phones that have been washing up on the French coast in a lost shipping crate from the 1980s.
• CBC reports on the meticulous reports of environmental changes by Nova Scotia students more than a century ago, collected over years under the order of their teacher Alexander Mackay, that provide invaluable information about climate change.
• Matt Williams writes at Universe Today about the possibility that the lack of self-replicating probes visible to us might be explainable by conflict between some of these probes and others.