[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Anthropology.net notes a remarkably thorough genetic analysis of a piece of chewing gum 5700 years old that reveals volumes of data about the girl who chew it.
• ‘Nathan Burgoine at Apostrophen writes an amazing review of Cats that actually does make me want to see it.
• Bad Astronomy reports on galaxy NGC 6240, a galaxy produced by a collision with three supermassive black holes.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog writes about the mechanics of journalism.
• Centauri Dreams argues that the question of whether humans will walk on exoplanets is ultimately distracting to the study of these worlds.
• Crooked Timber shares a Sunday morning photo of Bristol.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that India has a launch date of December 2021 for its first mission in its Gaganyaan crewed space program.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the Saturn C-1 rocket.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers if the vogue for minimalism meets the criteria to be considered a social movement.
• Far Outliers ?notes how, in the War of 1812, some in New England considered the possibility of seceding from the Union.
• Gizmodo looks at evidence of the last populations known of Homo erectus, on Java just over a hundred thousand years ago.
• Mark Graham links to a new paper co-authored by him looking at how African workers deal with the gig economy.
• io9 announces that the Michael Chabon novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is set to become a television series.
• Joe. My. God. shares a report that Putin gave Trump anti-Ukrainian conspiracy theories.
• JSTOR Daily considers what a world with an economy no longer structured around oil could look like.
• Language Hat takes issue with the latest talk of the Icelandic language facing extinction.
• Language Log shares a multilingual sign photographed in Philadelphia’s Chinatown.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the document release revealing the futility of the war in Afghanistan.
• The LRB Blog looks at class identity and mass movements and social democracy.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution suggests that, even if the economy of China is larger than the United States, Chinese per capita poverty means China does not have the leading economy.
• Diane Duane at Out of Ambit writes about how she is writing a gay sex scene.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reflects on “OK Boomer”.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Mexican chef Ruffo Ibarra.
• Peter Rukavina shares his list of levees for New Year’s Day 2020 on PEI.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map indicating fertility rates in the different regions of the European Union.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how quantum physics are responsible for vast cosmic structures.
• Charles Soule at Whatever explains his reasoning behind his new body-swap novel.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Paris show the lack of meaningful pro-Russian sentiment there.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell talks about his lessons from working in the recent British election.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at a syncretic, Jewish-Jedi, holiday poster.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Charlie Stross at Antipope shares an essay he recently presented on artificial intelligence and its challenges for us.
• P. Kerim Friedman writes at {anthro}dendum about the birth of the tea ceremony in the Taiwan of the 1970s.
• Anthropology net reports on a cave painting nearly 44 thousand years old in Indonesia depicting a hunting story.
• Architectuul looks at some temporary community gardens in London.
• Bad Astronomy reports on the weird history of asteroid Ryugu.
• The Buzz talks about the most popular titles borrowed from the Toronto Public Library in 2019.
• Caitlin Kelly talks at the Broadside Blog about her particular love of radio.
• Centauri Dreams talks about the role of amateur astronomers in searching for exoplanets, starting with LHS 1140 b.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber looks at what is behind the rhetoric of “virtue signalling”.
• Dangerous Minds shares concert performance from Nirvana filmed the night before the release of Nevermind.
• Bruce Dorminey notes new evidence that, even before the Chixculub impact, the late Cretaceous Earth was staggering under environmental pressures.
• Myron Strong at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about how people of African descent in the US deal with the legacies of slavery in higher education.
• Far Outliers reports on the plans in 1945 for an invasion of Japan by the US.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing gathers together a collection of the author’s best writings there.
• Gizmodo notes the immensity of the supermassive black hole, some 40 billion solar masses, at the heart of galaxy Holm 15A 700 million light-years away.
• Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res writes about the issue of how Wichita is to organize its civic politics.
• io9 argues that the 2010s were a decade where the culture of the spoiler became key.
• The Island Review points readers to the podcast Mother’s Blood, Sister’s Songs, an exploration of the links between Ireland and Iceland.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of the lawyer of the killer of a mob boss that the QAnon conspiracy inspired his actions. This strikes me as terribly dangerous.
• JSTOR Daily looks at a study examining scholarly retractions.
• Language Hat shares an amusing cartoon illustrating the relationships of the dialects of Arabic.
• Language Log lists ten top new words in the Japanese language.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the dissipation of American diplomacy by Trump.
• The LRB Blog looks at the many problems in Sparta, Greece, with accommodating refugees, for everyone concerned.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting the decline of the one-child policy in China has diminished child trafficking, among other crimes.
• Sean Marshall, looking at transit in Brampton, argues that transit users need more protection from road traffic.
• Russell Darnley shares excerpts from essays he wrote about the involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War.
• Peter Watts talks about his recent visit to a con in Sofia, Bulgaria, and about the apocalypse, here.
• The NYR Daily looks at the corporatization of the funeral industry, here.
• Diane Duane writes, from her own personal history with Star Trek, about how one can be a writer who ends up writing for a media franchise.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the job of tasting, and rating, different cuts of lamb.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at a nondescript observatory in the Mojave desert of California that maps the asteroids of the solar system.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Eduardo Chavarin about, among other things, Tijuana.
• Drew Rowsome loves the SpongeBob musical.
• Peter Rukavina announces that Charlottetown has its first public fast charger for electric vehicles.
• The Russian Demographics Blog considers the impact of space medicine, here.
• The Signal reports on how the Library of Congress is making its internet archives more readily available, here.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers how the incredibly isolated galaxy MCG+01-02-015 will decay almost to nothing over almost uncountable eons.
• Strange Company reports on the trial and execution of Christopher Slaughterford for murder. Was there even a crime?
• Strange Maps shares a Coudenhove-Kalergi map imagining the division of the world into five superstates.
• Understanding Society considers entertainment as a valuable thing, here.
• Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine announces his new book, Où va l’argent des pauvres?
• John Scalzi at Whatever looks at how some mailed bread triggered a security alert, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports on the massive amount of remittances sent to Tajikistan by migrant workers, here.
• Arnold Zwicky notes a bizarre no-penguins sign for sale on Amazon.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Adam Fish at anthro{dendum} compares different sorts of public bathing around the world, from Native America to Norden to Japan.
• Charlie Stross at Antipope is unimpressed by the person writing the script for our timeline.
• Architectuul reports on an architectural conference in Lisbon.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning photos of the eruption of the Raikoke volcano in Kamchatka.
• Centauri Dreams looks at what the Voyager spacecraft have returned about the edge of the solar system.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the idea of bipartisanship if it means compromising on reality, allegorically.
• The Crux counts the number of people who have died in outer space.
• D-Brief notes that the Andromeda Galaxy has swallowed up multiple dwarf galaxies over the eons.
• Dead Things notes the identification of the first raptor species from Southeast Asia, Siamraptor suwati.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes a paper tracing the origins of interstellar comet 2/Borisov from the general area of Kruger 60.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the privilege allowing people access to affordable dental care.
• Gizmodo tells how Alexei Leonov survived the first spacewalk.
• io9 looks at the remarkable new status quo for the X-Men created by Jonathan Hickman.
• Selma Franssen at the Island Review writes about the threats facing the seabirds of the Shetlands.
• JSTOR Daily looks at what led Richard Nixon to make so many breaks from the American consensus on China in the Cold War.
• Language Log notes an undergraduate course at Yale using the Voynich Manuscript as an aid in the study of language.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains her recent experience of the socialized health care system of Israel for Americans.
• The LRB Blog looks at how badly the Fukuyama prediction of an end to history has aged.
• The Map Room Blog shares a few maps of the new Ottawa LRT route.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper establishing a link between Chinese industries undermining their counterparts in Mexico and Mexican social ills including crime.
• Sean Marshall reports from Ottawa about what the Confederation Line looks like.
• Adam Shatz at the NYR Daily looks at the power of improvisation in music.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at South Williamsburg Jewish deli Gottlieb’s.
• Drew Rowsome reviews</a the new Patti Smith book, Year of the Monkey.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking as the factors leading into transnational movements.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the question of the direction(s) in which order in the universe was generated.
• Window on Eurasia shares a report noting the very minor flows of migration from China to Russia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at the politics in the British riding of Keighley.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at some penguin socks.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul notes a bike tour of Bauhaus architecture in Berlin.
• Bad Astronomy Phil Plait notes the discovery of Beta Pictoris c, a second super-Jovian planet in that young system.
• Centauri Dreams notes that the NASA Europa Clipper is moving ahead.
• Crooked Timber shares a gorgeous night photo of San Giorgio Maggiore, in Venice.
• The Crux notes what we are learning about the Denisovans.
• D-Brief notes that Neanderthals were prone to swimmer’s ear.
• Dangerous Minds looks at some of the pop culture likes of Karl Marx.
• Drew Ex Machina’s Andrew LePage looks at the exoplanets of GJ 1061.
• Earther notes how Icelanders mourned the loss of a glacier in a ceremony.
• Whitney Kimball at Gizmodo looks at what the mass data loss of more than a decade’s worth of music at Myspace means for our Internet era.
• Imageo shares photos of spiraling cloud formations photographed at night from space.
• Ian Humberstone at The Island Review writes about his witnessing of the bonxies, birds of the Shetlands.
• Joe. My. God. notes a report suggesting Trump joked about swapping Greenland for Puerto Rico.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the rhythmic dancing of the Shakers in 18th century America marked that sect as different.
• Language Hat considers the humour of some philosophers.
• Language Log notes the oblique commentaries of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing on his city-state’s protests.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the idiocy of the Trump fetish for Greenland.
• The Map Room Blog notes how astronomers have mapped the Local Void, of deep intergalactic space.
• Marginal Revolution wonders if the future of Venice might be found in its becoming a Chinese portal into Europe.
• Sean Marshall notes how the Ford government is undermining conservation in Ontario.
• The NYR Daily shares some of the New York City photography of Phil Penman.
• Starts With A Bang’s notes the immense storms of Saturn.
• Strange Company shares a weekend collection of links.
• Window on Eurasia looks at how Belarus plans on reorganizing its internal structures to try to minimize rural depopulation.
• Nick Rowe at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative talks about monetary policy in metaphors.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at some penguins from around the world.

[NEWS] Five language links: Armenian, Icelandic, Irish, Ladino, Scots

• This r/unresolvedmysteries thread asks the question of where the Armenian language, a unique Indo-European language, came from.
• This Ragnar Jónasson article in The Guardian asks the question of how long the Icelandic language, with relatively few speakers and facing a tidal wave of influence from English, can outlast this competition.
• The Irish Times notes that the Irish language was heard in the British House of Commons for the first time in a century, spoken by a Plaid Cymru MP asking why this language has so little institutional support in Northern Ireland.
• Over at the BBC, Susanna Zaraysky takes a look at the Ladino language–a Spanish variant–traditionally used by the Sephardic Jews of Bosnia, and how this language is declining here as elsewhere among the Sephardim.
• Atlas Obscura takes a look at the Scots language, a distinctive Germanic language that was never quite broken away from English, and how this language persists despite everything.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at the unusual object BST1047+1156, possibly a gas cloud or a faint galaxy.
• Keith Kintigh at The Crux takes a look at the poor preservation of critical archeological data, the sort of basic information that would allow much to be reconstructed by future generations.
• D-Brief notes that, with global warming, tropical cyclones are moving poleward.
• Dead Things notes how the diversity of some styles of ancient tools found in Texas hint at possible pre-Clovis migrations to the Americas.
• JSTOR Daily makes the case for lowering the voting age in the United States to 16, on the grounds of the reality of the many 16- and 17-year-olds who prove they can engage with the political process.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis takes a look at the importance of fire as an element of the environment in the western United States, something at once feared and appreciated.
• The Map Room Blog highlights Navigating New York, an exhibition of ephemera (maps, tools, and others) relating to the New York City transit system running at the excellent New York Transit Museum.
• Scientist Conor Nixon writes at the Planetary Society Blog about a recent expedition to the glaciers of Iceland, looking for environments analogous to Europa’s.
• Drew Rowsome reviews, and praises, the new LGBTQ anthology, Dark Rainbow: Queer Erotic Horror.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the early universe, where supermassive stars led to the formation of supermassive black holes.
• Window on Eurasia shares an argument that, after about 2000, the lived experience of millions of Russians with life elsewhere in Europe made it impossible to continue to imagine “Europe” as separate from Russia, even contrasting with Russia.
• Nick Rowe at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative considers the extent to which a job seeming to be useful would have greater appeal than a less useful but higher-paying job.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the origins of the Turkish taffy of his youth.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers nearby galaxy NGC 6744, a relatively nearby spiral galaxy that may look like the Milky Way.
• D-Brief notes the remarkable ceramic spring that gives the mantis shrimp its remarkably powerful punch.
• Far Outliers notes how the north Korean port of Hamhung was modernized in the 1930s, but also Japanized, with few legacies of its Korean past remaining.
• Joe. My. God. notes how the Trump administration plans to define being transgender out of existence. Appalling.
• Alexandra Samuel at JSTOR Daily notes the ways in which the Internet has undermined the traditions which support American political institutions. Can new traditions be made?
• Lawyers, Guns, and Money notes how the Trump’s withdrawal from the INF treaty with Russia on nuclear weapons harms American security.
• Rose Jacobs at Lingua Franca writes about ways in which derision, specifically of other nationalities, enters into English slang.
• Marginal Revolution notes that, in an article surveying the Icelandic language, a report that sales of books in Iceland have fallen by nearly half since 2010.
• The NYR Daily looks at two recent movies, one autobiographical and one fictional, looking at dads in space.
• Jason Perry at the Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest imagery of the volcanoes of Io.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the possibility that time travel might not destroy the universe via paradoxes.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that the experience of post-Soviet Estonia with its two Orthodox churches might be a model for Ukraine.

[ISL] Five islands links: Reykjavik, Skye, Mayotte, Wailingding, Tangier

• Hornet Stories looks at the gay nightlife in Reykjavik, capital of Iceland.
• Writer Anna Mazzola writes at The Island Review about the factors behind her selection of the Scottish island of Skye as the environment for her new novel, the gothic The Story Keeper.
• VICE reports on how, on the French overseas department and island of Mayotte, massive immigration from the non-French remainder of the Comoros archipelago is a real problem.
• The SCMP, based in Hong Kong, introduces its readers to the sights of Wailingding island just a couple dozen kilometres away from their city.
• For Politico, Earl Swift revisits Tangier Island, an island in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay famous not only for its steady erosion under rising sea levels but for its profoundly pro-Trump attitudes.

[NEWS] Five Canada links: Refus global, Gimli, refugees, right to roam, beavers

• Anne-Marie Bouchard wrote at Huffington Post Québec on the 9th about the anniversary of the publication in 1948 of Refus global, the artistic manifesto that changed Québec.
• Global News reported on Gimli, Manitoba, as its Islendingadagurinn–the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba–approached.
• The fact that Canada is managing the refugee crisis on its southern border so well is something Canadians should take pride in. CBC has it.
• The introduction of the right to roam to Canada, as suggested at The Conversation, does make some sense to me.
• The beaver, introduced to Patagonia in 1945, has shown itself to be so prolific and ecologically disruptive that Argentina and Chile are planning a massive cull. The National Post reports.

[ISL] Five islands links: Toronto Islands, Cape Verde, Iceland, Ireland, Hainan

• blogTO shares ten facts about the Toronto Islands.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the experience of eating Cape Verdean cachupa in Lisbon.
• The SBS reports on the facts making Iceland arguably the best country on the Earth in which to be a woman.
• This extended Politico Europe article examining the consequences of a united Ireland, and the lack of preparation for such a now imaginable possibility, is still worth reading.
• Is Hainan emerging as a test-bed for more liberal policies for China? QZ reports.