[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that the galaxy’s stores of star-forming gas are running low, here.
• Centauri Dreams notes the next generation of gravitational wave detectors could detect exoplanets, massive worlds orbiting binary white dwarfs.
• The Crux reports on what is known about Homo naledi.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the risks of social isolation.
• Far Outliers reports on three enclaves of Arab culture encountered by early Western explorers in 19th century East Africa.
• Gizmodo notes the steady progress made by LightSail 2 in its travel around the world.
• The Island Review shares the Phillip Miller poem “Biennale”, inspired by Venice.
• Marginal Revolution looks at how the Norwegian Arctic island of Svalbard works without border controls.
• The NYR Daily notes that while America is not Rome, it thinks it is.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains some oddities of Higgs bosons.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at how the Kyshtym nuclear disaster occurred.
• Window on Eurasia notes that 5% of Russian Orthodox parishes in Ukraine have defected so far to the Ukrainian church.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell applies information and management theory to Brexit.

[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.

[NEWS] Five D-Brief links: T-rex, hallucinations, LIGO, bacteria, Magellanic Clouds

• D-Brief notes new evidence that the biggest Tyrannosaurus was the oldest one.
• D-Brief notes a new study suggesting that hallucinations are the responses of the body to a lack of sensory stimulation.
• D-Brief notes that LIGO has resumed its hunt for gravitational wave sources.
• D-Brief notes that antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be found in abundance at wastewater treatment plants.
• D-Brief notes a new effort to enlist human eyes to detect stellar clusters in the Magellanic Clouds.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Centauri Dreams considers what would be needed, and what would be the use, of a SETI search of Earth’s co-orbitals.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber considers the idea of nature potentially having legal rights in the context of corporations, likewise, actually having such.
• D-Brief reports that the Mars 2020 probe will bring with it a mini-probe built around a helicopter.
• io9 notes that writer Jonathan Hickman will be coming back to Marvel to write two new X-Men books this summer.
• Joe. My. God. notes that a Trump supporter recently arrested for a Mafia slaying had earlier tried to conduct citizen’s arrests of prominent Democrats.
• Language Hat takes a look at obscenities in Russian that do not quite make it over to English.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reacts to the massive anti-Brexit protests in the United Kingdom this past weekend.
• Marginal Revolution discusses just how bad a Brexit is likely to be, or not.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why LIGO and like instruments have not detected gravitational wave sources within our galaxy. (Briefly, they aren’t good enough yet to pick up faint sources.)
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that not much new has come from the release of the Mueller investigation summary.
• Arnold Zwicky builds from a report of a new LGBTQ consumer advocate from Florida, Nik Harris.

[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: Pojang, LIGO, Mars, extraterrestrial life, DM Tauri

• The 2017 Pojang earthquake in South Korea was caused by an experimental geothermal power plant, water injected into the ground creating new instabilities. VICE reports.
• Universe Today notes that, newly upgraded, LIGO will begin searching for gravitational waves anew on 1 April.
• Universe Today examines the factors which making landing large masses on Mars so technically challenging.
• Universe Today considers which sorts of circumstellar habitable zone are the best to search for seekers of extraterrestrial life.
• Motherboard notes astronomers’ study of the relatively Sun-like pre-main sequence star of DM Tauri, which may now be forming a solar system like our own.

[NEWS] Five science links: ancient Earth, Mars, Messier 79, gravitational waves

• James Nicoll at Tor writes about some of the bizarre multicellular life forms of the ancient past of Earth.
• Universe Today looks at the evidence for ancient rivers flowing on the southern highlands of Mars.
• Universe Today notes evidence for continuing volcanic activity on Mars.
• Universe Today examines Messier 79, a globular cluster in our galaxy that may have come from outside.
• Wired notes how improvements in gravitational wave astronomy technology will lead to amazing amounts of detail about our cosmic neighbourhood in the near future.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait considers the possibility that the remarkably low-density ‘Oumuamua might be a cosmic snowflake.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the challenges of free-lance writing, including clients who disappear before they pay their writers for their work.
• Centauri Dreams notes that observations of cosmic collisions by gravitational wave astronomy are becoming numerous enough to determine basic features of the universe like Hubble’s constant.
• D-Brief notes that the Hayabusa2 probe is set to start mining samples from asteroid Ryugu.
• Dangerous Minds remembers radical priest and protester Philip Berrigan.
• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Irina Seceleanu explains why state defunding of public education in the United States is making things worse for students.
• Far Outliers notes how many of the communities in South Asia that saw soldiers go off to fight for the British Empire opposed this imperial war.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the decidedly NSFW love letters of James Joyce to Nora Barnacle. Wasn’t Kate Bush inspired by them?
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how the failure of the California high-speed rail route reveals many underlying problems with funding for infrastructure programs in the United States.
• Marginal Revolution notes the creepy intrusiveness of a new app in China encouraging people to study up on Xi Jinping thought.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at what is to be expected come the launch of the Beresheet Moon lander by Israeli group SpaceIL.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society considers the philosophical nature of the Xerox Corporation.
• Window on Eurasia notes that the Russian Orthodox Church seems not to be allowing the mass return of its priests who lost congregations to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to Russia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell considers the astute ways in which El Chapo is shown to have run his business networks.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at two recent British films centering on displays of same-sex male attraction, The Pass and God’s Own Country.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• D-Brief suggests that, in an era of climate change, waves of simultaneous wildfires may be the new normal in California.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares some news items looking at the history of the Precambrian Earth and of ancient life.
• The Island Review shares some Greenland-themed poems by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the introduced Callery pear tree has become invasive in North America.
• Language Log considers language as a self-regulating system.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw notes his new magpie friend. What name should he have?
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that the democracy of Mexico is in such poor shape that, even now, the democracies of Poland and Hungary despite far-right subversion are better off.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the 1993 novel The Night of the Moonbow by Thomas Tryon.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the falling fertility rates in Syria, and takes issue with one statistical claim.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that gravitational waves are affected by gravity, and looks at what this implies for physics.
• Towleroad reports that Sarah Silverman has rethought her use of the word “gay” in her comedy routines.
• Vintage Space notes the evidence confirming that many–most, even–Apollo astronauts had tattoos.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the boundaries of the “Russian world” continue to contract, with the status of the Russian language receding in the education and the media and the public life of neighbouring countries.
• Arnold Zwicky considers which part of Europe Switzerland lies in. Is it central European, or western European?

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait reports on the black hole collisions recently identified in a retrospective analysis of data from gravitational-wave detector LIGO, while Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel also writes about the LIGO black hole collision discoveries.
• Centauri Dreams suggests that a slowing rate of star formation might be necessary for a galaxy to support life like ours.
• Crooked Timber reports on the outcome of a sort of live-action philosophy experiment, recruiting people to decide on what would be a utopia.
• The Crux reports on the challenges facing developers of a HIV vaccine.
• D-Brief notes the circumstances in which men can pass on mitochondrial DNA to their children.
• Far Outliers notes the fates of some well-placed Korean-Japanese POWs in India.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing wonders if the existential questions about human life raised by genetic engineering can even be addressed by the liberal-democratic order.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the worrying possibility of a Bernie Sanders presidential run in 2020.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the art and the politics of Chinese provocateur Ai Weiwei.
• Language Hat looks at the smart ways in which the film adaptation of My Brilliant Friend has made use of Neapolitan dialect, as a marker of identity and more.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at what a new Chinese blockbuster film, Operation Red Sea, does and does not say about how Chinese think they could manage the international order.
• Geoffrey Pullum at Lingua Franca considers the logical paradox behind the idea of a webpage that has links to all other webpages which do not link to themselves.
• Anna Badhken at the NYR Daily uses Olga Tokarczuk’s new novel Flights and her own experience as an airline passenger to consider the perspectives offered and lost by lofty flight.
• The Planetary Society Blog’s Jason Davis notes the successful launch of a Soyuz spacecraft two months after October’s abort, carrying with it (among others) Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques.
• Strange Company notes the 1736 Porteous riot in Edinburgh, an event that began with a hanging of a smuggler and ended with a lynching.
• Towleroad notes that André Aciman is working on a sequel to his novel Call Me By Your Name.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society takes a look at the organizational issues involved with governments exercising their will.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy makes a good case as to why a second referendum on Brexit would be perfectly legitimate.
• Window on Eurasia suggests expanding Russian-language instruction in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan has more to deal with the needs of labour migrants.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell responds to Feng Jicai’s book on the Cultural Revolution, Ten Years of Madness.
• Arnold Zwicky reports on Swiss food, starting with the McRaclette.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Kambiz Kamrani at Anthropology.net notes new findings suggesting that the creation of cave art by early humans is product of the same skills that let early humans use language.
• Davide Marchetti at Architectuul looks at some overlooked and neglected buildings in and around Rome.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait explains how Sirius was able to hide the brilliant Gaia 1 star cluster behind it.
• Centauri Dreams looks at new procedures for streamlining the verification of new exoplanet detections.
• Crooked Timber notes the remarkably successful and once-controversial eroticization of plant reproduction in the poems of Erasmus Darwin.
• Dangerous Minds notes how an errant Confederate flag on a single nearly derailed the career of Otis Redding.
• Detecting biosignatures from exoplanets, Bruce Dorminey notes, may require “fleets” of sensitive space-based telescopes.
• Far Outliers looks at persecution of non-Shi’ite Muslims in Safavid Iran.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the history of the enslavement of Native Americans in early colonial America, something often overlooked by later generations.
• This video shared by Language Log, featuring two Amazon Echos repeating texts to each other and showing how these iterations change over time, is oddly fascinating.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis is quite clear about the good sense of Will Wilkinson’s point that controversy over “illegal” immigration is actually deeply connected to an exclusivist racism that imagines Hispanics to not be Americans.
• Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle of Higher Education, looks at the uses of the word “redemption”, particularly in the context of the Olympics.
• The LRB Blog suggests Russiagate is becoming a matter of hysteria. I’m unconvinced, frankly.
• The Map Room Blog shares a map showing global sea level rise over the past decades.
• Marginal Revolution makes a case for Americans to learn foreign languages on principle. As a Canadian who recently visited a decidedly Hispanic New York, I would add that Spanish, at least, is one language quite potentially useful to Americans in their own country.
• Drew Rowsome writes about the striking photographs of Olivier Valsecchi.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that, in the 2030s, gravitational wave observatories will be so sensitive that they will be able to detect black holes about to collide years in advance.
• Towleroad lists festival highlights for New Orleans all over the year.
• Window on Eurasia notes how recent changes to the Russian education system harming minority languages have inspired some Muslim populations to link their language to their religion.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell makes the case that Jeremy Corbyn, through his strength in the British House of Commons, is really the only potential Remainder who is in a position of power.