[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at the extreme millisecond pulsar IGR J17062−6143.
• Centauri Dreams looks at a proposal to intercept objects of extrasolar origin like ‘Oumuamua.
• The Crux looks at how researchers are discovering traces of lost hominid populations in the DNA of contemporary humans.
• D-Brief notes a crowdsourcing of a search for intermediate-mass black holes.
• Gizmodo notes the impending production of a new working Commodore 64 clone.
• The Island Review notes people of the Norway island of Sommarøy wish to make their island, home to the midnight sun, a #TimeFreeZone.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the art that has been produced in the era of digital addiction.
• Language Log looks at how, in Iran, the word “Eastoxification” has entered into usage alongside the older “Westoxification.”
• Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money looks at the many likely failings of a Corbyn foreign policy for the United Kingdom.
• The LRB Blog notes that opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu has been re-elected as mayor of Istanbul.
• The Map Room Blog links to various maps of the Moon.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper looking at markets in Lagos, suggesting they are self-regulating to some degree.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains when the earliest sunrise and latest sunset of the year is, and why.
• Towleroad shares an interview with Jack Baker and Mike McConnell, a same-sex couple married for nearly a half-century.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the open approach of the Russian Federation to Russian diasporids is not extended to diasporas of its minority groups, particularly to Muslim ones like Circassians and Tatars.
• Arnold Zwicky considers some Pride fashion, with and without rainbows.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul profiles the construction of the Modern Berlin Temple built to a design by Mies van der Rohe in 1968.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the beauty of galaxy M61.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that Mars sustained rivers on its surface at a surprising late date.
• Gizmodo notes a theory that the oddly shaped ring moons of Saturn might be product of a collision.
• Hornet Stories suggests/u> that recent raids on gay bars in New Orleans might be driven by internecine politics within the LGBTQ community.
• Joe. My. God. notes that a court in the Cayman Islands has recently legalized same-sex marriage there.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the origins of the Chipko activists of 1960s and 1970s India, whose tree-hugging helped save forests there.
• Language Log notes the story of Beau Jessep, who got rich off of a business creating English names for Chinese children.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money, looking at the introduction of public healthcare in Saskatchewan and wider Canada, notes the great institutional differences that do not make that a close model for public healthcare in the US now.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining the close relationship over time between population growth and economic and technological change.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews documentary filmmaker Nadir Bouhmouch about a Amazigh community’s resistance to an intrusive mine on their territory.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes, 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 European states.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that we still do not know why antimatter does not dominate in our universe.
• Understanding Society features a guest post from Indian sociologist V.K. Ramachandran talking about two visits four decades apart to one of his subjects.
• Vintage Space makes a compelling case for people not to be afraid of nuclear rockets in space, like the vintage never-deployed NERVA.
• Window on Eurasia takes issue with the bilingual radio programs aired in Russian republics, which subtly undermine local non-Russian languages.
• Arnold Zwicky starts with lilacs, which include hybrids tolerant of the California climate, and goes on to explore lavender in all of its glories, queer and otherwise.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul looks back at its work over 2018.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait reflects on an odd photo of the odd galaxy NGC 3981.
• The Crux tells the story of how the moons of Jupiter, currently enumerated at 79 and including many oddly-shaped objects in odd orbits, have been found.
• Gizmodo notes how some astronomers have begun to use the precise rotations of neutron stars to calibrate atomic clocks on Earth.
• Keiran Healy shares a literally beautiful chart depicting mortality rates in France over two centuries.
• Hornet Stories notes that, two years after his death, the estate of George Michael is still making donations to the singer’s favoured charities.
• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox celebrates the Ramones song “I Wanna Be Sedated”.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how unauthorized migrants detained by the United States are being absorbed into the captive workforces of prisons.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution approves of the Museum of the Bible, in Washington D.C., as a tourist destination.
• The NYR Daily looks at soccer (or football) in Morocco, as a badge of identity and as a vehicle for the political discussions otherwise repressed by the Moroccan state.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the paiche, a fish that is endangered in Peru but is invasively successful in Bolivia.
• Peter Rukavina makes a good point about the joys of unexpected fun.
• The Signal reports on how the American Folklife Centre processes its audio recordings in archiving them.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel debunks some myths about black holes, notably that their gravity is any more irresistible than that of any other object of comparable mass.
• Strange Company shares the contemporary news report from 1878 of a British man who binge-drank himself across the Atlantic to the United States.
• Window on Eurasia reports on a proposal in the fast-depopulating Magadan oblast of Russia to extend to all long-term residents the subsidies extended to native peoples.
• Arnold Zwicky reports on another Switzerland-like landscape, this one the shoreline around Lake Sevan in Armenia.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams reports on the work of the MASCOT rover on asteroid Ryugu.
• The Crux considers the critical role of the dolphin in the thinking of early SETI enthusiasts.
• D-Brief goes into more detail about the import of the Soyuz malfunction for the International Space Station.
• Dangerous Minds notes an artist who has made classic pop song lyrics, like Blue Monday, into pulp paperback covers.
• Earther is entirely correct about how humans will need to engage in geoengineering to keep the Earth habitable.
• David Finger at The Finger Post describes his visit to Accra, capital of Ghana.
• Gizmodo notes a new paper suggesting that, in some cases where massive moons orbit far from their parent planet, these moons can have their own moons.
• Hornet Stories shares the first look at Ruby Rose at Batwoman.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the image of southern California and Los Angeles changed from a Mediterranean paradise with orange trees to a dystopic urban sprawl.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money imagines what might have happened to the navy of China had it not bought the Ukrainian aircraft carrier Varyag.
• Lingua Franca at the Chronicle reports on how the actual length of “minute”, as euphemism for a short period of time, can vary between cultures.
• The LRB Blog reports on the disaster in Sulawesi, noting particularly the vulnerability of colonial-era port settlements in Indonesia to earthquakes and tsunamis.
• The Map Room Blog shares Itchy Feet’s funny map of every European city.
• The New APPS Blog wonders if the tensions of capitalism are responsible for the high rate of neurological health issues.
• The NYR Daily considers what, exactly, it would take to abolish ICE.
• At the Planetary Society Weblog, Ian Regan talks about how he assembled a photoanimated flyover of Titan using probe data.
• Roads and Kingdoms explores some excellent pancakes in the Malaysian state of Sabah with unusual ingredients.
• Drew Rowsome raves over a new documentary looking at the life of opera star Maria Callas.
• Window on Eurasia notes the continued high rate of natural increase in Tajikistan.

[NEWS] Four Mars links: Phobos and Deimos, meteorites, fossae, life

• D-Brief reports on one new compelling theory suggesting that the Martian moons of Phobos and Deimos are not captured asteroids, but rather debris cast into orbit by a big impact on Mars.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that bits of Mars tossed off by asteroid impacts have made it as far as Earth.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the strange fossae of Mars, mysterious cracks in the planet’s surface.
• D-Brief notes a new paper suggesting that, in Mars’ relatively warm youth, life might well have found a home in its crust for hundreds of millions of years.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links (2)

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait approves of the names of Pluto’s two most recently-discovered moons, Kereberos and Styx.
• Beyond the Beyond’s Bruce Sterling observes that Altavista is set to disappear from the Internet as of the 8th.
• Daniel Drezner notes that the inability of Edward Snowden to find a country to grant him, buster of state secrets, asylum demonstrates that states around the world like keeping their prerogatives and secrets intact.
• Commemorating the accession of Croatia to the European Union, Eastern Approaches visits a Dubrovnik that is virtually an enclave on account of the Bosnian frontier, and, at the other end of the Croatian arc, a Vukovar still caught up by ethnic conflict and the legacies of the Serb war in Slavonia.
• Far Outliers notes the decline of immigrant Japanese Buddhism in Hawaii.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer explains why Uruguay, contrary to the wishes of many Argentines including–apparently–the president, is a country separate from Argentina.
• Registan approves of alumnus Sarah Kendzior’s examination of the plight of Uzbek migrants, stigmatized by the Karimov dictatorship as lazy for trying to earn a living and forced to witness the victimization of their relatives if they do anything wrong.
• Savage Minds quotes from Umberto Eco’s definition of fascism.
• The Tin Man celebrates, as a coupled American gay man, the end of DOMA.
• Torontoist reports that much of the controversy over the Walmart on the fringes of Kensington Market might be–according to the designer–a consequence of a lack of understanding of the design.
• Van Waffle reports on highlights of his 2012 breeding bird survey.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell reports on David Goodhart’s still-dodgy use of statistics.