[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait tells readers how the orbit of a newly-discovered object, like one of the newly found moons of Saturn, is calculated.
• D-Brief looks at the import of observations of the young HD 163296 system, where gas has been detected flowing onto young planets. Is this where atmospheres come from?
• Gizmodo notes the recent claim by Google to have achieved a quantum computing milestone.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how, in the early 20th century, old unpaved country roads gave way to modern ones.
• The LRB Blog looks at the latest on Brexit and British politics.
• Marginal Revolution notes an article arguing Airbnb has helped undermine trust even in Himalayan villages.
• The NYR Daily looks at a landmark exhibition of the works of William Blake at the Tate Britain.
• Rocky Planet shows how the hyper-precise records of ice cores can be used to identify not just the existence but the locations of volcanic eruptions.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at a newly-founded mysterious dark ancient massive galaxy that may have insights on the processes of the wider universe.
• Window on Eurasia looks at a UN report examining how Russia, occupying Crimea, has promoted demographic transformations.
• Arnold Zwicky tells of his experiences with OUTiL, an organization he helped form in 1991 that brought together out linguists.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait reports on a dwarf galaxy collision with galaxy NGC 1232, producing waves of X-rays.
• The Toronto Library’s The Buzz highlights a collection of books on LGBTQ themes for Pride month.
• Centauri Dreams looks at studies of the circumstellar disk of HD 163296.
• D-Brief reports that plastic debris may have contributed to a die-off of puffins by the Bering Sea.
• Bruce Dorminey shares an image of a rich star-forming region in Cepheus taken by the Spitzer telescope.
• Imageo reports how smoke from wildfires in Canada have covered literally millions of square kilometres of North America in smoke.
• io9 notes how, in the limited series Doomsday Clock, Doctor Manhattan has come to a new realization about Superman and the DC multiverse.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Luddites are now fashionable again, with their critiques of technology.
• Language Log reports on a unique whistled version of the Turkish language.
• Lawyers Guns and Money takes a look its different writers’ production over its 15 years.
• Emannuel Iduma writes at the NRY Daily about the young people, lives filled with promise, killed in the Biafran War.
• Corey S. Powell at Out There has an interesting idea: What items of food do the different planets of the solar system resemble?
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer looks at the many stupidities of the new Trump tariffs against Mexico.
• Peter Rukavina celebrates the 20th anniversary of his blog.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on the exceptionally isolated galaxy MCG+01-02-015, in a void a hundred million light-years away from any other.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the changing politics and scholarship surrounding mass deaths in Soviet Kazakhstan in the 1930s. https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/05/debate-on-mass-deaths-in-kazakhstan.html
• Arnold Zwicky looks at flowers coloured magenta in his California.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Charlie Stross at Antipope asks his readers an interesting question: What are the current blind spots of science fiction? What issues and themes need to be addresses by contemporary writers?
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the discovery of three planets around young star HD 163296, and his role in the identification of one as a possibility.
• Crooked Timber notes the strange ways in which the predictive text function of Gmail echoes the all-quotations language of the Ascians of Gene Wolfe.
• D-Brief notes an ambitious plan to survey the Andromeda Galaxy for signs of powerful laser beams used by extraterrestrial intelligences for communications or transport.
• Joe. My. God. notes the plan of China to launch an artificial mirrored satellite into orbit to provide night-time light for the city of Chengdu.
• Allan Metcalfe at Lingua Franca considers some of the words candidate to be considered the best word for 2018.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that global economic divergence ended, after a century and a quarter, in 1990, and that there has been subsequently rapid economic convergence in the globalized neo-liberal era.
• Alex Carp at the NYR Daily reviews Jill Lepore’s new book, These Truths: A History of the United States, examining the importance of fact and of narrative in forming identities.
• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the challenges involved in returning a sample from asteroid Ryugu.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the recent books of Raziel Reid and Jesse Trautmann, noting how each delineates some of the contours of contemporary queer male life.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how we can estimate that there are two trillion galaxies in the universe.
• Window on Eurasia notes the various inter-ethnic disputes over interpretations of ancient history in the North Caucasus.