[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Architectuul looks back at some highlights from 2019.
• Bad Astronomy looks at the gas cloud, red and green, of RCW 120.
• Crooked Timber looks at the dynamics of identity politics, here.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a NASA statement about the importance of understanding dust dynamics in other solar systems to find Earth analogues.
• Far Outliers looks at the problems pacifying the Chesapeake Bay area in 1813, here.
• Gizmodo looks at the most popular Wikipedia articles for the year 2019.
• io9 shares a video of images from a 1995 Akira cyberpunk computer game that never got finished.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the United States tried to “civilize” the Inupiat of Alaska by giving them reindeer herds.
• Language Hat links to an online atlas of Scots dialects.
• Language Log reports on a 12th century Sanskrit inscription that testifies to the presence of Muslims in Bengal at that point.
• Marginal Revolution notes how much Tuvalu depends on revenue from its .tv Internet domain.
• Drew Rowsome looks at the Duncan Ralston horror novel Salvage, set in small-town Canada.
• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at the strong relationship between wealth and life expectancy in France.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that, in a hypothetical supernova, all life on an Earth-like planet would be boiled alive by neutrinos.
• Strange Maps links to a graphic interface that translates a word into all the languages of Europe.
• Understanding Society looks at the structures of high-reliability organizations.
• Window on Eurasia shares a suggestion that Homer Simpson is actually the US’ version of Russia’s Ivan the Fool.

[NEWS] Seven Christmas links: Bowie and Bing, horror, ghosts, holidays, xenophobia, Elf on the Shelf

• Dangerous Minds shares the story of the remarkable duet between Bing Crosby and David Bowie.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the 1980 horror film To All A Goodnight.
• Strange Company shares a strange story, of a ghostly choir reportedly heard in 1944, here.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog writes about why she and her husband each take Christmas seriously.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the xenophobia behind the idea of a War on Christmas, going back to the anti-Semitism of Henry Ford.
• JSTOR Daily carries suggestions that the idea of the Grinch, from Dr. Seuss, has anti-Semitic origins.
• VICE makes the case for the creepiness of the Elf on the Shelf in the context of a surveillance society, here.

[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.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams links to a paper noting that the interiors of planets play a critical role in determining planetary habitability.
• Belle Waring writes at Crooked Timber about imaginative dream worlds, criticized by some as a sort of maladaptive daydreaming I don’t buy that; I am interested in what she says about hers.
• D-Brief notes the very recent discovery of a small tyrannosaur.
• Dead Things considers the possibility that a new South African hominin, Australopithecus sediba, might actually be the ancestor of Homo sapiens.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how one negative side-effect of the renewable energy boom is the mass mining of rare earth elements.
• Erik Loomis writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the way in which not just history but history fandoms are gendered, the interests of women being neglected or downplayed.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen reports on how a new US-Chinese trade deal will not do much to deal with underlying issues.
• The New APPS Blog notes the great profits made by the gun industry in the United States and the great death toll, too, associated with the guns produced.
• The NYR Daily visits the Northern Ireland town of Carrickfergus, home to Louis MacNeice and made famous by violence as the whole province sits on the edge of something.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the queer horror film The Skin of The Teeth.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains what the technical limits of the Hubble Space Telescope are, and why it needs a replacement.
• Window on Eurasia notes changing patters of population change in the different regions of Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky shares some photos of notable public art in Switzerland, starting with The Caring Hand in his ancestral canton of Glarus.

[BLOG] Some Monday blog links

• Crooked Timber at John Quiggin takes issue with the idea that, now, there are many Republicans who accept Trump only conditionally, for what a Trump presidency could achieve.
• D-Brief notes the XT2 signal, issue of a collision between two magnetars in a galaxy 6.6 billion light-years away.
• Cody Delistraty reports on an exhibit at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris on the history of soccer in world politics.
• Earther reports on a new satellite mission focused on studying solar-induced fluorescence, the glow of plants as they photosynthesize.
• Far Outliers notes how U.S. Grant responded to slaves seeking freedom from the Union Army.
• JSTOR Daily explores Lake Baikal.
• Language Log reports on the multilingualism of Pete Buttigieg.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money gives deserved praise to the Jason Lutes graphic novel Berlin.
• Marginal Revolution looks at the ways in which dense social networks can keep stroke victims from getting quick help.
• The NYR Daily looks at the campaigns and ideas of anti-authoritarian Chinese professor and writer Xu Zhangrun.
• Drew Rowsome gives a largely negative review to the 2014 Easter horror film The Beaster Bunny.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the singularities of black holes have spin.
• Window on Eurasia notes on the report of a Muslim community leader in Norilsk that a quarter of the population of that Russian Arctic city is of Muslim background.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the ways in which flowers and penguins and cuteness can interact, with photos.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes, taking a look past more than a century of images of the famous star J1407 including its planet with massive ring system, the power of big data to reveal important things about the universe.
• D-Brief takes a look at the discoveries of the Hayabusa2 probe at asteroid Ryugu.
• Gizmodo notes that the planned landing of the Hayabusa2 probe on Ryugu has been postponed until 2019 in order to find a safe landing point on the rocky asteroid’s surface.
• Livia Gershon at JSTOR Daily takes a look at how modern Hallowe’en derives from the Celtic day of Samhain.
• Joe. My. God. reports on a Gavin McInnes speech to the Young Republicans Club of New York City in which he says, despite his Proud Boys’ crudity and violence, the two groups have much in common, that they need the Proud Boys even.
• Anne Curzon at Lingua Franca takes a look at the changing definition of “fun” in recent decades.
• The LRB Blog takes a look at the storied destruction by fire of the Soviet steamship Pobeda in the Black Sea in 1948.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution suggests</a. that a strategy for African economic development, with a big push to build basic infrastructure, has not been working in a test site in northern Ghana.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw sees the alt-right being fed by the radicalism of the far left.
• Brittney Cooper at the Planetary Society Blog shares some images of heiligenschein from throughout the solar system.
• Drew Rowsome looks at a recent horror novel by Douglas Clegg, The Infinite.
• Window on Eurasia argues the ethnic distinction confirmed by Stalin between Tatars and Bashkirs has weakened both groups versus wider Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky plays with the idea of the piñata, at multiple levels.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

‘Nathan Smith at Apostrophen points out that claiming to disagree with homosexuality while respecting gay people is nonsensical. https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/queer-isnt-an-opinion/

Centauri Dreams notes the innovative cheap PicSat satellite, currently monitoring Beta Pictoris with its known exoplanet. https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=39109

Corey Robin at Crooked Timber argues that Trump is shaky, weaker than American democracy. (Not that that is going that well, mind.) http://crookedtimber.org/2018/01/13/trumps-power-is-shakier-than-american-democracy/

The Crux points out the sentient, including emotions, of any number of animal species. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2018/01/11/animals-feelings-sentient/

Far Outliers notes some German commanders in western Europe who quickly surrendered to the Allies in the Second World War, and why they did that. http://faroutliers.blogspot.com/2018/01/quick-german-surrenders-in-west.html

Hornet Stories notes how a court decision dealing with a Romanian man and his American husband could lead to European Union-wide recognition of same-sex marriage. https://hornetapp.com/stories/european-union-gay-marriage/

JSTOR Daily notes how air pollution is a human rights issue. https://daily.jstor.org/why-air-pollution-is-a-socioeconomic-issue/

Language Hat notes how the use of the apostrophe in the newly Latin script-using Kazakh language is controversial. http://languagehat.com/apostrophe-catastrophe-in-kazakhstan/

Geoffrey Pullim at Lingua Franca shares a passage from Muriel Spark’s fiction depicting students’ reactions to learning foreign languages. https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2018/01/11/a-foreign-way-which-never-really-caught-on

The LRB Blog tells the story of Omid, an Iranian who managed to smuggle himself from his home country to a precarious life in the United Kingdom. https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/01/15/behzad-yaghmaian/omids-journey/

The Map Room Blog shares a newly-updated map of “Trumpworld” the world as seen by Donald Trump. http://www.maproomblog.com/2018/01/trumpworld/

Marginal Revolution notes research indicating that dolphins have a grasp on economics, and what this indicates about their sentience. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/dolphin-capital-theory.html

The Planetary Society Blog notes how the upcoming Europa Clipper probe will be able to analyze Europa’s oceans without encountering plumes of water. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2018/20180111-no-plumes-no-problem.html

The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer suggests that, with the declining import of informal rules in American politics, a future Democratic-majority Congress might be able to sneak through statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. http://noelmaurer.typepad.com/aab/2018/01/breaking-norms-by-adding-states.html

Rocky Planet reports on the disastrous mudflows that have hit southern California after the fires. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/rockyplanet/2018/01/12/mudflows-devastate-parts-of-southern-california/

Drew Rowsome praises new horror from Matt Ruff. http://drewrowsome.blogspot.com/2018/01/lovecraft-country-matt-ruffs-multi.html

Peter Rukavina talks about his positive experiences with a walk-in mental health clinic on the Island. https://ruk.ca/content/i-went-mental-health-walk-clinic-and-so-can-you

Strange Company talks about the bizarre 1982 disappearance of one Donald Kemp. Did he even die? http://strangeco.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-strange-exit-of-donald-kemp.html

Towleroad notes that Peter Thiel is trying to buy Gawker, perhaps to destroy its archives. http://www.towleroad.com/2018/01/gawker-peter-thiel/