[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 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 Sunday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how TESS detected a star being torn apart by a distant black hole.
• Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster looks at the past and future of the blog.
• Crooked Timber takes on the sensitive issue of private schools in the United Kingdom.
• The Crux considers the question of why women suffer from Alzheimer’s at a higher frequency than men.
• D-Brief notes a study suggesting that saving the oceans of the Earth could reduce the effects of global warming by 20%.
• Bruce Dorminey considers a paper suggesting that, if not for its volcanic resurfacing, Venus could have remained an Earth-like world to this day.
• The Dragon’s Tale notes that NASA will deploy a cubesat in the proposed orbit of the Lunar Gateway station to make sure it is a workable orbit.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at Soyuz T-10a, the first crewed mission to abort on the launch pad.
• Gizmodo reports on a paper arguing that we should intentionally contaminate Mars (and other bodies?) with our world’s microbes.
• io9 looks at how Warner Brothers is trying to control, belatedly, the discourse around the new Joker movie.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how, in industrializing London, women kidnapped children off the streets.
• Language Hat links to a page examining the Arabic and Islamic elements in Dune.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at a new documentary examining the life of Trump mentor Roy Cohn.
• The LRB Blog looks at how BBC protocols are preventing full discussion of public racism.
• The Map Room Blog looks at different efforts to reimagining the subway map of New York City.
• Marginal Revolution shares a paper claiming that increased pressure on immigrants to assimilate in Italy had positive results.
• The NYR Daily looks at the background to George Washington’s statements about the rightful place of Jews in the United States.
• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the political explanation of the massive increase in the planetary defense budget of NASA.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the Rocky Horror Show, with its celebration of sexuality (among other things).
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers why there are so many unexpected black holes in the universe.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps examines why Google Street View is not present in Germany (and Austria).
• The Volokh Conspiracy reports on a ruling in a UK court that lying about a vasectomy negates a partner’s consent to sex.
• Window on Eurasia notes the controversy about some Buryat intellectuals about giving the different dialects of their language too much importance.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Buzz shares a TIFF reading list, here.
• Centauri Dreams notes the growing sensitivity of radial velocity techniques in finding weird exoplanet HR 5183 b, here.
• The Crux reports on circumgalactic gas and the death of galaxies.
• Dead Things notes the import of the discovery of the oldest known Australopithecine skull.
• Dangerous Minds reports on pioneering 1930s queer artist Hannah Gluckstein, also known as Gluck.
• Gizmodo notes that, for an unnamed reason, DARPA needs a large secure underground testing facility for tomorrow.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Jim Crow laws affected Mexican immigrants in the early 20th century US.
• Language Hat looks at a new project to study Irish texts and language over centuries.
• Language Log shares some Chinglish signs from a top university in China.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money shares an interview with Jeffrey Melnick suggesting Charles Manson was substantially a convenient boogeyman.
• Marginal Revolution shares a paper suggesting marijuana legalization is linked to declining crime rates.
• Susan Neiman at the NYR Daily tells how she began her life as a white woman in Atlanta and is ending it as a Jewish woman in Berlin.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at Hayabusa2 at Ryugu.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel celebrated the 230th anniversary of Enceladus, the Saturn moon that might harbour life.
• Window on Eurasia notes how global warming is harming the rivers of Siberia, causing many to run short.

[DM] Some links: immigration, cities, small towns, French Canada, Eurasia, China, Brexit, music

Another links post is up over at Demography Matters!

• Skepticism about immigration in many traditional receiving countries appeared. Frances Woolley at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative took issue with the argument of Andray Domise after an EKOS poll, that Canadians would not know much about the nature of migration flows. The Conversation observed how the rise of Vox in Spain means that country’s language on immigration is set to change towards greater skepticism. Elsewhere, the SCMP called on South Korea, facing pronounced population aging and workforce shrinkages, to become more open to immigrants and minorities.
• Cities facing challenges were a recurring theme. This Irish Examiner article, part of a series, considers how the Republic of Ireland’s second city of Cork can best break free from the dominance of Dublin to develop its own potential. Also on Ireland, the NYR Daily looked at how Brexit and a hardened border will hit the Northern Ireland city of Derry, with its Catholic majority and its location neighbouring the Republic. CityLab reported on black migration patterns in different American cities, noting gains in the South, is fascinating. As for the threat of Donald Trump to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities in the United States has widely noted., at least one observer noted that sending undocumented immigrants to cities where they could connect with fellow diasporids and build secure lives might actually be a good solution.
• Declining rural settlements featured, too. The Guardian reported from the Castilian town of Sayatón, a disappearing town that has become a symbol of depopulating rural Spain. Global News, similarly, noted that the loss by the small Nova Scotia community of Blacks Harbour of its only grocery store presaged perhaps a future of decline. VICE, meanwhile, reported on the very relevant story about how resettled refugees helped revive the Italian town of Sutera, on the island of Sicily. (The Guardian, to its credit, mentioned how immigration played a role in keeping up numbers in Sayatón, though the second generation did not stay.)
• The position of Francophone minorities in Canada, meanwhile, also popped up at me.
• This TVO article about the forces facing the École secondaire Confédération in the southern Ontario city of Welland is a fascinating study of minority dynamics. A brief article touches on efforts in the Franco-Manitoban community of Winnipeg to provide temporary shelter for new Francophone immigrants. CBC reported, meanwhile, that Francophones in New Brunswick continue to face pressure, with their numbers despite overall population growth and with Francophones being much more likely to be bilingual than Anglophones. This last fact is a particularly notable issue inasmuch as New Brunswick’s Francophones constitute the second-largest Francophone community outside of Québec, and have traditionally been more resistant to language shift and assimilation than the more numerous Franco-Ontarians.
• The Eurasia-focused links blog Window on Eurasia pointed to some issues. It considered if the new Russian policy of handing out passports to residents of the Donbas republics is related to a policy of trying to bolster the population of Russia, whether fictively or actually. (I’m skeptical there will be much change, myself: There has already been quite a lot of emigration from the Donbas republics to various destinations, and I suspect that more would see the sort of wholesale migration of entire families, even communities, that would add to Russian numbers but not necessarily alter population pyramids.) Migration within Russia was also touched upon, whether on in an attempt to explain the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s or in the argument of one Muslim community leader in the northern boomtown of Norilsk that a quarter of that city’s population is of Muslim background.
• Eurasian concerns also featured. The Russian Demographics Blog observed, correctly, that one reason why Ukrainians are more prone to emigration to Europe and points beyond than Russians is that Ukraine has long been included, in whole or in part, in various European states. As well, Marginal Revolution linked to a paper that examines the positions of Jews in the economies of eastern Europe as a “rural service minority”, and observed the substantial demographic shifts occurring in Kazakhstan since independence, with Kazakh majorities appearing throughout the country.
• JSTOR Daily considered if, between the drop in fertility that developing China was likely to undergo anyway and the continuing resentments of the Chinese, the one-child policy was worth it. I’m inclined to say no, based not least on the evidence of the rapid fall in East Asian fertility outside of China.
• What will Britons living in the EU-27 do, faced with Brexit? Bloomberg noted the challenge of British immigrant workers in Luxembourg faced with Brexit, as Politico Europe did their counterparts living in Brussels.
• Finally, at the Inter Press Service, A.D. Mackenzie wrote about an interesting exhibit at the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris on the contributions made by immigrants to popular music in Britain and France from the 1960s to the 1980s.

[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.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul writes</u about the pioneering women architects of the United Kingdom.
• Bad Astronomy reports on a marvelous mosaic assembled by amateur astronomers of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog notes how college debts in the United States hinder social mobility.
• The Crux considers how the antibiotic-resistant fungus C. auris can be treated.
• D-Brief looks at the archaeological studies of graves in the forest islands of Bolivia that have revealed remarkable things about the settlement of ancient Amazonia.
• Far Outliers looks at how U.S. Grant built a pontoon bridge across the James River in Virginia.
• Gizmodo notes the big crater created by Hayabusa 2 in the surface of Ryugu, suggesting that body’s loose composition.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the plan of Denmark to build a border fence to protect its pig populations against wild boars might be flawed.
• Language Hat looks at the South Arabian languages, non-Arabic Semitic languages spoken in the south of the Arabian peninsula.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the growing role of women in the American labour movement.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the new urgency of the Extinction Rebellion in this era of climate change and threatened apocalypse.
• Marginal Revolution considers a paper claiming that intergenerational social mobility in much of Canada is no higher than in most of the neighbouring United States.
• The NYR Daily examines the democracy of Indonesia.
• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money looks at how a particular reading of international law was used in Bolivia to justify a violation of the national constitution.
• Peter Rukavina shares an insightful map looking at the election results from PEI. One thing brought out by the map is the strength of the Greens across the Island.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle looks at the useful Ontario shrub of leatherwood.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the discovery of carbon-60 buckyballs in the far reaches of our galaxy by Hubble.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that the president and the prime minister of Ukraine are both Jews.
• Towleroad notes the new video by Willie Tay, a Singapore music star who was dropped by his label for being gay and has responded by coming out and releasing a video for his song “Open Up Babe”.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the Ingermanlanders, also known as Ingrians or Ingrian Finns, a Finnic people in the hinterland of St. Petersburg who suffered horrifically under Communism.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how computers, originally imagined to function in certain specific ways, are being reimagined and reused in ways which do not quite suit them (and us).
• Arnold Zwicky finds a stock photo used to represent art stolen by the Nazis and uses it to explore issues of recovery and loss and mistake.

[NEWS] Five JSTOR Daily links: doctors & drugs, horses & war, JFK, raisin wine, Irish & Ireland

• JSTOR Daily notes how early doctors used to party with drugs as a matter of course.
• JSTOR Daily notes the experiences of horses and donkeys in the US Civil War.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the disaster of the Bay of Pigs changed the decision-making of JFK.
• JSTOR Daily notes how early 19th century American Jews made use of raisin wine in Passover, and how this changed.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the revival of the Irish language, connecting Ireland to the rest of Europe, played a key role in leading to independence for Ireland.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait argues that the new American plan to put people on the Moon in 2024 is unlikely to succeed in that timeframe.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly considers whether or not women should travel alone, for safety reasons. (That choice is one I’ve not had to make myself, thanks to my male privilege; I’m very sorry others have to consider this.)
• Centauri Dreams shares the thinking of Gregory Benford on Lurkers, self-replicating probes produced by another civilization not signaling their existence to Earth.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber argues that policy-making these days is often fundamentally ill-conceived, closing off possibilities for the future.
• The Crux notes the remarkable powers of beet juice, as a tonic for athletes for instance.
• D-Brief looks at the slot canyons of Titan, bearing similarities in structure and perhaps origin to like structures in Utah.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina, celebrating five years of blogging, links to his ten most popular posts.
• Gizmodo notes the creation for a list of nearly two thousand nearby stars that the TESS planet-hunter might target for a search for Earth-like worlds.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the Austrian president has confirmed the New Zealand shooter has made a financial donation to a far-right group in Austria.
• JSTOR Daily looks at Inge Lehmann, the scientist who determined the nature of the inner core of the Earth.
• Language Hat reports on a new scholarly publication, hundreds of pages long, gathering together the curses and profanities of the Middle East and North Africa.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money does not seem impressed by the argument of Mike Lee that pronatalism is a good response to global warming.
• The Map Room Blog notes the impressive maps of Priscilla Spencer, created for fantasy books.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper that examines the positions of Jews in the economies of eastern Europe, as a “rural service minority”.
• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper noting the ways in which increased human development has, and has not, led to convergence in family structures around the world.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how, despite the expanding universe, we can still see very distant points.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps reports on the recent mistakes made by Google Maps in Japan.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alexander Harrowell explains why the United Kingdom, after Brexit, does not automatically become a member of the European Economic Area.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the different factors, often unrecognized, going onto the formation of nonsense names, like those of the characters from Lilo and Stitch.

[NEWS] Five social science links: Canadian Jews, US mafia, Miles O’Brien, online fandoms, Monopoly

• The Conversation hosts an article looking at the evolution of Jewish identity in Canada from something religious to something cultural.
• The state of the American mafia, so thoroughly Americanized, is remarkable in a lot of ways. VICE reports.
• There is definitely something to be said for the idea that Star Trek’s Chief Miles O’Brien is one of the best representations of someone Irish and of Irish culture in popular culture. entertainment.ie has it.
• This Wired article takes a look at the online interactions, positive and malign both, that have complicated so many fandoms like that of Harry Potter.
• Monopoly, this article reminds us at The Conversation, was a board game invented to remind people about the pitfalls of capitalism.