[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomy Phil Plait notes that the location of the Apollo 12 Ascent Module on the Moon may have been found.
• Kieran Healy writes about how he uses scripts to produce animated graphics illustrating charging patterns of baby names over the 20th century in the United States.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Japan has been cleaning up Tohoku after the Fukushima disaster.
• Language Hat looks at an upcoming book project taking a look at how different languages written in the Arabic script interact with each other.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money, looking at “The Bells”, makes the case that this episode’s solution to the issues of Daenerys was probably the best one that could be devised within Game of Thrones’ self-imposed limitations.
• The NYR Daily looks at the trial in Israeli military courts of Palestinian activist Issa Amro.
• Jason C. Davis notes at the Planetary Society Blog that the Lightsail 2 spacecraft is scheduled for a June launch.
• Peter Rukavina reacts, with eventual cool printings, to the Fluxus movement in mid-20th century art.
• Strange Company shares the story of pioneering Edwardian parachustist Dolly Shepherd.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society shares his 1970s proposal for a Marxist philosophy of the social sciences.
• Window on Eurasia notes that the GULAG system was a net loss for the Soviet economy, costly and employing workers at low productivity levels. (Bringing it back would be a mistake, then.)
• Arnold Zwicky shares some wonderful photos of some remarkable lilies.

[NEWS] Five science links: global warming, bees, Balsillie, backups, Neanderthals

• New estimates suggest the costs of global warming will be in the tens of trillions of dollars, with warmer countries taking a particularly big hit. Motherboard reports.
• Indigenous bumblebee populations in Canada are fast approaching extinction, with a certainty of major negative environmental effects. CBC reports.
• MacLean’s reports on the return to prominence of Jim Balsillie, this time not so much as a tech mogul as a sort off tech skeptic.
• This Motherboard article makes a somewhat far-fetched argument that Game of Thrones demonstrates the need for human civilization to have backups.
• The Conversation reports on the recent discovery, in Serbia by a joint Serbian-Canadian team, of a Neanderthal tooth, and what this discovery means for our understanding of the deep past of humanity.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that methane hydrates on the ocean floor will only pose a catastrophic risk of climate change if we do nothing about climate change generally.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the massive flare detected on L-dwarf ULAS J224940.13-011236.9.
• Crooked Timber considers a philosophical conundrum: What should individuals do to combat climate change? What are they responsible for?
• The Crux considers a few solar system locations that future generations of hikers might well want to explore on foot.
• Joe. My. God. notes that Pete Buttigieg is becoming a big star in his father’s homeland of Malta.
• Language Log considers the idea of learning Cantonese as a second language.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the policy innovations of Elizabeth Warren.
• The Map Room Blog looks at how the Russian government is apparently spoofing GPS signals.
• Marginal Revolution reports a claim by Peter Thiel that the institutionalization of science since the Manhattan Project is slowing down technological advances. Is this plausible?
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog notes that the Mars InSight probe has detected marsquakes.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that, finally, astronomers have found the first cold gas giants among the exoplanets, worlds in wide orbits like Jupiter and Saturn.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy notes how some of the praise for Daenerys Targaryen by Elizabeth Warren reveals interesting and worrisome blind spots. (Myself, I fear a “Dark Dany” scenario.)
• Window on Eurasia suggests that Russia is not over the fact that Ukraine is moving on.
• Frances Woolley at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative takes issue with the argument of Andray Domise after an EKOS poll, that Canadians would not know much about the nature of migration flows.
• For Easter, Arnold Zwicky considered red and white flowers, bearing the colours of the season.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross announces (among other things) that his series The Laundry Files has been options for television development.
• D-Brief notes more evidence for the idea that regular exercise can help psychologically, this study suggesting help to long-term memory.
• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Karen Sternheimer writes about sociologists who study subjects that matter to them, subjects that might personally involve them, even.
• Gizmodo notes that astronomers have detected the formation of dark spots on Neptune, akin to those seen by Voyager 2 in its flyby in 1989, for the first time.
• JSTOR Daily considers how humans can live alongside crocodiles in peace.
• Language Log considers gāngjīng 杠精, a new Chinese word that may well denote “troll”.
• Erik Loomis writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about beers that can serve industrial purposes like film development.
• The Map Room Blog notes new maps of a modern Westeros created by designer Jamie Shadrach.
• Marginal Revolution notes regulatory controversy in Alexandria, Virginia, regarding a potential halal butchery facility for chickens.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews writer L. Kasimu Harris about the inequalities of New Orleans.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel shows readers what the galaxy would look like in electromagnetic frequencies other than those of visible light.
• Arnold Zwicky writes about progress in education.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: HMV dispensary, U of T suicide, GoT, real estate, Scarborough

• r/toronto notes, via blogTO, that the old HMV at Yonge and Dundas is set to become a cannabis dispensary.
• The University of Toronto is being criticized by students for its handling of recent suicides and its mental health policies generally. CBC reports.
• blogTO notes that the Ralph Thornton Community Centre in Riverside will be throwing a Game of Thrones-themed festival in May.
• New changes to the regulation of secondary suites may make things easier in the Toronto rental market. CBC reports.
• Urban Toronto reports on two ambitious plans to densify Scarborough Centre.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Anthrodendum considers the question of what, exactly, is the genre of ethnographic film.
• Centauri Dreams features authors’ calls for a debate on METI, on sending messages to extraterrestrial intelligences.
• The Crux reports on the continuing damage caused by the continuing eruptions of Indonesia’s mud volcano, Sidoarjo.
• Imageo shares a cute time-lapse video from Hubble showing the motion of Phobos around Mars.
• Language Hat responds to a newly-translated mid-19th century Russian novella, Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya‘s 1861 novella Пансионерка (The Boarding School Girl).
• Lawyers, Guns and Money has a depressing extended examination of Trump as reflecting structural crisis in the United States.
• The LRB Blog looks at the genesis and continuing success of Nicaraguan Sign Language.
• The Map Room Blog shares a satirical map of Washington D.C., defined by the names that its metro stations should have.
• Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang lists the various worlds in our Solar System possibly hosting life, and notes how you could get an Earth-like world with wildly erratic seasons as in Game of Thrones.
• Unicorn Booty notes that the German president has signed marriage equality into law. (Also, the country has good LGBT protections.)
• Window on Eurasia notes that Putin is fine with an asymmetrical bilingualism in Russia’s republics, aimed against non-Russian languages.

[PHOTO] Game of Cones t-shirt, Cows, Peakes Quay, Charlottetown

I saw this parody T-shirt on sale in Cows Ice Cream‘s Peakes Quay location on the Charlottetown waterfront. I liked.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• io9 shares photos of Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana.
• Anders Sandberg links to a recent discussion of a paper he co-authored on the ethics of augmentation.
• The Dragon’s Gaze links to a paper analyzing the density of different Kepler-discovered exoplanets that determines that worlds more than 2.5 times the diameter of Earth are likely to be mini-Neptunes.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes evidence for global cooling following the Chixculub impact that ended the Cretaceous, tracks the spread of farming from the Neolithic Fertile Crescent, and observes Russia’s withdrawal of a particular rocket engine from use by the United States.
• Discover‘s Imageo blog shares maps of what the world will look like when the West Antarctic sheet melts.
• inuit panda scarlet carwash notes the happy reunion of a cat separated from his owners three years ago by the Japanese earthquake with said.
• Language Log links to a paper suggesting that the location of letters on a standard QWERTY keyboard influences the way we see the words these letters make up.
• Registan warns that it looks as if Kazakhstan won’t be able to balance Russia off with China and the United States now.
• Torontoist shares pictures of the Game of Thrones expedition in town.
• Towleroad notes that disgraced NBA team owner Donald Sterling’s interview with Anderson Cooper went terribly for him.
• The Volokh Conspiracy links to a Michael Totten essay making the point that Cuba is actually a very repressive society.
• Window on Eurasia notes that some Karelians want greater autonomy for their Russian republic.