[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the dusty spiral of galaxy M81, here.
• Crooked Timber reacts positively to the Astra Taylor short film What Is Democracy?
• D-Brief notes that, in the South Atlantic, one humpback whale population has grown from 440 individuals to 25 thousand, nearly completing its recovery from whaling-era lows.
• Dangerous Minds looks at The Iguanas, first band of Iggy Pop.
• The Dragon’s Tales looks at consideration in South Korea at building an aircraft carrier.
• Todd Schoepflin at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the division of labour within his family.
• Far Outliers looks at 17th century clashes between England and Barbary Pirates.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how antibiotics are getting everywhere, contaminating food chains worldwide.
• Victor Mair at Language Log looks at the evidence not only for an ancient Greek presence in Central Asia, but for these Greeks’ contact with China.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that the attempt by Trump to get Ukraine to spy on his enemies was driven by what Russia and Hungary alleged about corruption in Ukraine.
• The LRB Blog looks at the transnational criminal network of the Hernandez brothers in Honduras, a source of a refugee diaspora.
• Marginal Revolution shares an argument suggesting that marriage is useful for, among other things, encouraging integration between genders.
• Sean Marshall looks at how the death of the Shoppers World in Brampton heralds a new urbanist push in that city.
• At the NYR Daily, Helen Joyce talks of her therapeutic experiences with psychedelic drugs.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the Toronto play The Particulars.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers if inflation came before, or after, the Big Bang.
• John Scalzi at Whatever has a short discussion about Marvel films that concludes they are perfectly valid.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that central Ukraine has emerged as a political force in post-1914 Ukraine.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the Indian pickle.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Architectuul notes the recent death of I.M. Pei.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes what, exactly, rubble-pile asteroids are.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about definitions of home.
• Centauri Dreams considers white dwarf planets.
• The Crux notes how ultra-processed foods are liked closely to weight gain.
• D-Brief observes that a thin layer of insulating ice might be saving the subsurface oceans of Pluto from freezing out.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the critical role played by Apollo 10 in getting NASA ready for the Moon landings.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes the American government’s expectation that China will seek to set up its own global network of military bases.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the Soviet Union’s Venera 5 and 6 missions to Venus.
• Far Outliers looks at the visit of U.S. Grant to Japan and China.
• Gizmodo notes a recent analysis of Neanderthal teeth suggesting that they split with Homo sapiens at a date substantially earlier than commonly believed.
• io9 notes the sheer scale of the Jonathan Hickman reboots for the X-Men comics of Marvel.
• Joe. My. God. shares the argument of Ted Cruz that people should stop making fun of his “space pirate” suggestion.I am inclined to think Cruz more right than not, actually.
• JSTOR Daily notes the wave of anti-black violence that hit the United States in 1919, often driven by returned veterans.
• Language Hat shares a recognizable complaint, written in ancient Akkadian, of bad customers.
• Language Log shares a report of a village in Brittany seeking people to decipher a mysterious etching.
• This Scott Lemieux report at Lawyers, Guns and Money about how British conservatives received Ben Shapiro is a must-read summary.
• Benjamin Markovits at the LRB Blog shares the reasons why he left his immigrant-heavy basketball team in Germany.
• Marginal Revolution looks at one effort in Brazil to separate people from their street gangs.
• The NYR Daily looks at how ISIS, deprived of its proto-state, has managed to thrive as a decentralized network.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw tells of his experiences and perceptions of his native region of New England, in southeastern Australia.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Chang’e 4 rover may have found lunar mantle on the surface of the Moon.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that while Argentine president Mauricio Macri is polling badly, his opponents are not polling well.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of things to do in see in the Peru capital of Lima.
• The Signal examines how the Library of Congress engages in photodocumentation.
• Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal explains how he is helping native insects by planting native plants in his garden.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how scientific illiteracy should never be seen as cool.
• Towleroad notes the questions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as to why Truvada costs so much in the United States.
• Window on Eurasia notes how family structures in the North Caucasus are at once modernizing and becoming more conservative.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the distribution of US carriers and their fleets at present does not support the idea of a planned impending war with Iran.
• Arnold Zwicky examines the tent caterpillar of California.

[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.

[ISL] Five #PEI links: Biovectra, Syrian refugees, Crapaud vs Kinkora, telehealth, Jed Mackay

• The nearly forty million dollars of federal government investment promised for PEI biotech firm Biovectra is a substantial investment indeed. The Guardian reports.
• The Guardian reports the reunification of a family of Syrian refugees on the Island.
• Peter Rukavina notes and explains the significant differences, cultural and religious, between the neighbouring PEI communities of Crapaud and Kinkora.
• The western PEI community of Alberton, faced with doctor shortages, has been experimenting with telehealth. The National Post explains.
• CBC Prince Edward Island reports on Jed Mackay, an Islander currently writing for Marvel’s Daredevil.

[CAT] Five cat links: AI, psychology, Captain Marvel, Ancient Egypt, New York City

• Fast Company reports on NVIDIA’s StyleGAN AI, an engine that cannot generate convincing images of cats.
• PsyPost reports on a PLOS One study suggesting that the cats of owners experiencing psychological stress are influenced negatively by this.
• In the new Captain Marvel movie, the titular character’s pet cat Goose is played by a team of four cats.
• David Anderson looks at the representation of the cat in the art of ancient Egypt, in scenes both divine and domestic.
• The Guardian reports on a new book by Peggy Gavan, looking at evidence of how the men of New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries loved their cats.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: pro-Trump gays, Gregg Gonsalves, computer games, haircut, mutants

• This infuriating New York Times Magazine article by Benoit Denizet-Lewis takes a look at the minority of pro-Trump gay conservatives, and looks at their wider import on the American political scene.
• This Queerty interview with brilliant guerrilla researcher Gregg Gonsalves makes for excellent reading.
• The Guardian takes a look at Rainbow Arcade, an exhibition by the Berlin Schwules Museum that examines LGBTQ representation in the computing gaming world.
• Chris Belcher writes at them about the import of getting a stereotypically lesbian haircut for the first time.
• Mashable notes that Iceman writer Sina Grace has introduced a drag queen mutant to Marvel, the teleporting Shade.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the black hole-powered “cooling flows” of galaxy cluster Abell 2597.
• D-Brief notes that astronomers have, at last, measured the total number of photos emitted by stars in the universe. (Roughly.)
• Dead Things notes the discovery of a tool and butchery site of ancient hominids in Algeria, at Ain Boucherit, dating back 2.4 million years.
• Far Outliers looks at a Japanese-American’s interrogation of old Okinawan classmates.
• JSTOR Daily looks at 19th century woman astronomers like Elizabeth Campbell who played a critical role in supporting their husbands’ astronomy but were overlooked.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the victims of voter fraud, the members of stigmatized minorities.
• Marginal Revolution takes a look at the doctrine of double effect as shown in the TV series Daredevil.
• The NYR Daily notes how the language of Trump reflects and fuels the fascist right.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel states the obvious: Science is not fake news.
• Window on Eurasia notes five reasons why the Russian’s military-industrial complex cannot easily catch up to the United States’.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the history of Swiss Tasmania, a region in the center of the island including the Swiss-themed town of Grindelwald.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Ryan Anderson at Anthrodendum takes a look at how the threat posed to coastal properties by sea level rise reveals much about how human beings assign value.
• A BCer in Toronto’s Jeff Jedras writes about the food at a Newfoundlander party in Ottawa.
• D-Brief considers how past ice ages might have been caused by the shifting poles.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the work of Michelle Pannor Silver, looking at how retirement can influence the identities of individuals.
• Far Outliers notes that, in its first major wars, Japan treated prisoners of war well.
• JSTOR Daily examines a paper that takes a look at how the X-Men have achieved such resonance in pop culture, such power as symbols of minorities’ persecution and survival.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money is critical of the effusive press coverage of Mitt Romney, new Republican senator.
• Geoffrey Pullum at Lingua Franca shares, for other English speakers, a lexicon of specialized words from the United Kingdom regarding Brexit.
• At the LRB Blog, Hyo Yoon Kang takes a look at a series of legal hearings investigating the possibility of assigning legal responsibility for global warming to “carbon majors” like big oil.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution shares his argument that the history of the 21st century United States might look like that of the 19th century, with progress despite political disarray.
• The NYR Daily shares the arguments of scholar of populism, Jan-Werner Müller, looking at what Cold War liberalism has to say now.
• Peter Rukavina shares the story of his two visits to relatives around the Croatian city of Kutina, with photos.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at how astronomers solved the mystery of the “Zone of Avoidance”, the portions of space blotted out by the dense plane of our galaxy.
• Window on Eurasia reports from a conference on minority languages where speakers complain about Russian government pressures against their languages.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at tea, starting with tea-time aphorisms and going further afield.

[NEWS] FIve LGBTQ links: Pride in Antarctica, Marvel, Edmonton, movies, HIV/AIDS

• National Geographic let us know that, this year, Pride was celebrated around the world, even in Antarctica.
• What was the gayest Marvel movie to date? I do think Thor: Ragnarok has a good claim, myself. Vulture ranks them.
• Daily Xtra notes how queer rights–specifically, the rights of students–became a big political issue in Edmonton.
• The stories of the first movies to come out in the 1980s dealing with the AIDS crisis do need to be told. The Guardian reports.
• I entirely agree with the opinion of this Advocate writer that we need to think smartly about HIV/AIDS, especially in light of continuing technologies and new safer-sex techniques like PrEP.

[NEWS] Five language links: Inuktitut, Icelandic, Ladino, Spanish, isiXhosa

• I entirely agree with the argument of Aluki Kotierk, writing at MacLean’s, who thinks the Inuit of Nunavut have been entirely too passive, too nice, in letting Inuktitut get marginalized. Making it a central feature in education is the least that can be done. (Québec-style language policies work.)
• Although ostensibly a thriving language in many domains of life, the marginalization of the Icelandic language in the online world could be an existential threat. The Guardian reports.
• As part of a bid to keep alive Ladino, traditional language of the Sephardic Jews, Spain has extended to the language official status including support and funding. Ha’aretz reports.
• A new set of policies of Spain aiming at promoting the Spanish language have been criticized by some in Hispanic American states, who call the Spanish moves excessively unilateral. El Pais reports.
• isiXhosa, the language of the Xhosa people of South Africa, is getting huge international attention thanks to its inclusion in Black Panther. The Toronto Star reports.