[BLOG] Some Monday links

• At anthro{dendum}, Amarilys Estrella writes about the aftermath of a car accident she experienced while doing fieldwork.
• Architectuul notes at a tour of Berlin looking at highlights from an innovative year for architecture in West Berlin back in 1987.
• Bad Astronomer notes that interstellar comet 2/Borisov is behaving surprisingly normally.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes briefly about the difficulty, and the importance, of being authentic.
• Centauri Dreams shares some of the recent findings of Voyager 2 from the edge of interstellar space.
• Crooked Timber shares a photo of a courtyard in Montpellier.
• D-Brief notes a study of the genetics of ancient Rome revealing that the city once was quite cosmopolitan, but that this cosmopolitanism passed, too.
• Dangerous Minds notes a 1972 single where Marvin Gaye played the Moog.
• Cody Delistraty looks at Degas and the opera.
• Bruce Dorminey makes a case, scientific and otherwise, against sending animals into space.
• Far Outliers looks at a 1801 clash between the American navy and Tripoli pirates.
• Gizmodo notes a theory that ancient primates learned to walk upright in trees.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the Cayman Islands overturned a court ruling calling for marriage equality.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the experience of women under Reconstruction.
• Language Hat notes the exceptional multilingualism of the Qing empire.
• Language Log looks at circumstances where the Roman alphabet is used in contemporary China.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the forced resignation of Evo Morales in Bolivia, and calls for readers to take care with their readings on the crisis and the country.
• Marginal Revolution considers a new sociological theory suggesting that the medieval Christian church enacted policy which made the nuclear family, not the extended family, the main structure in Europe and its offshoots.
• Sean Marshall takes a look at GO Transit fare structures, noting how users of the Kitchener line may pay more than their share.
• Neuroskeptic takes a look at the contradictions between self-reported brain activity and what brain scanners record.
• Alex Hutchinson writes at the NYR Daily about human beings and their relationship with wilderness.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the impact of drought in Australia’s New England, and about the need for balances.
• The Planetary Society Blog offers advice for people interested in seeing today’s transit of Mercury across the Sun.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer suggests Argentines may not have cared about their national elections as much as polls suggested.
• Peter Rukavina shares an image of an ancient Charlottetown traffic light, at Prince and King.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the significant convergence, and remaining differences, between East and West Germany.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at some of the backstory to the Big Bang.
• The Volokh Conspiracy suggests the Paris Accords were never a good way to deal with climate change.
• Window on Eurasia shares someone arguing the policies of Putin are simple unoriginal Bonapartism.
• Worthwhile Canadian Economy makes the case that slow economic recoveries are deep economic recoveries.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how the failure of the media to serve as effective critics of politics has helped lead, in the UK of Brexit, to substantial political change.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the idea, first expressed in comics, of Russian sardines.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer notes the latest news on interstellar comet 2/Borisov.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly emphasizes how every writer does need an editor.
• Centauri Dreams notes how the gas giant GJ 3512 b, half the mass of Jupiter orbiting a red dwarf star closely, is an oddly massive exoplanet.
• Gina Schouten at Crooked Timber looks at inter-generational clashes on parenting styles.
• D-Brief looks at the methods of agriculture that could conceivably sustain a populous human colony on Mars.
• Bruce Dorminey argues that we on Earth need something like Starfleet Academy, to help us advance into space.
• Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how the socio-spatial perspective helps us understand the development of cities.
• Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res listens to the Paul McCartney album Flaming Pie.
• io9 looks at Proxima, a contemporary spaceflight film starring Eva Green.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the intense relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia began in, and reflected, the era of Jim Crow.
• Language Hat notes a report suggesting that multilingualism helps ward off dementia.
• Language Log takes issue with the names of the mascots of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the emergence of a ninth woman complaining about being harassed by Al Franken.
• Marginal Revolution links to a new paper arguing that the Washington Consensus worked.
• The NYR Daily shares an Aubrey Nolan cartoon illustrating the evacuation of war children in the United Kingdom during the Second World War.
• At Out of Ambit, Diane Duane shares a nice collection of links for digital mapmakers.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at how the European Space Agency supports the cause of planetary defense.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Kenyan writer Kevin Mwachiro at length.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on how a mysterious fast radio burst helped illuminate an equally mysterious galactic halo.
• Strange Company reports on the mysterious and unsolved death in 1936 of Canadian student Thomas Moss in an Oxfordshire hayrick.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps notes how Mount Etna is a surpassingly rare decipoint.
• Understanding Society considers the thought of Kojève, after Hegel, on freedom.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the falling numbers of Russians, and of state support for Russian language and culture, in independent Central Asia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how individual consumer responses are much less effective than concerted collective action in triggering change.
• Arnold Zwicky reports on some transgender fashion models.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the newly-named Neptune moon of Hippocamp, and how it came about as product of a massive collision with the larger moon of Proteus.
• Centauri Dreams also reports on the discovery of the Neptune moon of Hippocamp.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes how the attempt to revoke the citizenship of Shamima Begum sets a terribly dangerous precedent for the United Kingdom.
• D-Brief notes new evidence suggesting the role of the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions in triggering the Cretaceous extinction event, alongside the Chixculub asteroid impact.
• Far Outliers notes the problems of Lawrence of Arabia with Indian soldiers and with Turks.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing takes issue with the state of philosophical contemplation about technology, at least in part a structural consequence of society.
• Hornet Stories shares this feature examining the future of gay porn, in an environment where amateur porn undermines the existing studios.
• JSTOR Daily considers the spotty history of casting African-American dancers in ballet.
• Language Hat suggests that the Académie française will soon accept for French feminized nouns of nouns links to professionals (“écrivaine” for a female writer, for instance).
• The LRB Blog considers the implications of the stripping of citizenship from Shamima Begum. Who is next? How badly is citizenship weakened in the United Kingdom?
• Marginal Revolution notes the upset of Haiti over its banning by Expedia.
• The NYR Daily notes the tension in Turkey between the country’s liberal laws on divorce and marriage and rising Islamization.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the moment, in the history of the universe, when dark energy became the dominant factors in the universe’s evolution.
• Towleroad remembers Roy Cohn, the lawyer who was the collaborator of Trump up to the moment of Cohn’s death from AIDS.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little takes a look at Marx’s theories of how governments worked.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the existential pressures facing many minority languages in Russia.

[ISL] Five #islands links: Nantucket, Newfoundland, Scotland, South Goulburn, Toronto Islands

• JSTOR Daily notes</u. the unorthodox and generally unacknowledged truce struck between Nantucket Island and the British Empire in 1814, during the War of 1812.
• A visit by Anthony Bourdain had lasting effects on the culinary scene on Newfoundland. Global News reports.
• The Island Review reports on the different plans of the different islands of Scotland to commemorate the end of the First World War.
• Michael Erard at The Atlantic writes about the remarkable South Goulburn Island, an island off the coast of Australia where speakers of nine different languages co-exist in a shared passive multilingualism.
• Richard Longley wrote at NOW Toronto about the challenges faced by the Toronto Islands in the era of climate change and instability.

[MUSIC] Five music links: Québec, multilingual pop, Paul Simon, streaming, Troye Sivan w/ Kim Petras

• Luke Ottenhof writes at MacLean’s about how English Canadians miss out on the thriving Québécois popular music scene, one enormously successful and engaging with the world nicely.
• This article at Noisey looks at how global pop music is becoming increasingly multilingual, Spanish and Korean being specifically noted here.
• Daniel Drake wrote a touching essay last month about Paul Simon and his father over at the NYR Daily.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution reports on how streaming as a technology for music distribution altered the nature of songcraft.
• This NOW Toronto review by Natalia Manzocco of the performance by Troye Sivan at the local stop of his Bloom tour, backed by Kim Petras, still startles me. That this is mainstream pop is amazing.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares photos of a dust storm over Greenland.
• The Crux looks at the hypervelocity stars of the Milky Way Galaxy, stars flung out towards intergalactic space by close encounters with the galactic core.
• D-Brief notes a study suggesting that the gut bacteria of immigrants to the United States tends to Americanize over time, becoming less diverse.
• Joe. My. God. notes yet another homophobe–this time, an ex-gay “therapist”–who has been outed as actively seeking gay sex.
• JSTOR Daily notes that bears preparing to build up their fat stores for hibernation really have to work hard at this task.
• Language Hat notes, after Elias Canetti, a benefit of being multilingual: You can find out if people near you are planning to kill you.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money recounts an anecdote from the 1980s revealing the great racism on the part of Donald Trump.
• Sadakat Kadri at the LRB Blog notes a gloomy celebration in Prague of the centenary of the 1918 foundation of Czechoslovakia, gloomy not just because of the weather but because of the rhetoric of Czechia’s president.
• The Map Room Blog notes a new book examining the political and military import of mapmaking in Scotland.
• Cheryl Thompson at Spacing writes about the long history of blackface in Canadian popular culture, looking at the representations it made and the tensions that it hid.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at how new technologies are allowing astronomers to overcome the distorting effects of the atmosphere.
• Frances Woolley at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, looking at female employment in Canada, finds the greatest potential for further growth in older women. (Issues, including the question of how to include these women and how to fight discrimination, need to be dealt with first.)

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Architectuul talks about the remarkable and distinctive housing estates of south London, like Alexandra Road, currently under pressure from developers and unsympathetic governments.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at Bennu, set to be visited by the OSIRIS-REx probe.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly talks about meeting people you’ve met online via social networks, making friends even. Myself, I’ve done this all the time: Why not use these networks to their fullest in a fragmented vast world?
• Centauri Dreams celebrates the now-completed mission of the exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope.
• D-Brief looks at the distinctive seasons of Triton, and the still-open questions surrounding Neptune’s largest moon.
• At JSTOR Daily, Nancy Bilyeau writes about the import of the famous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, something often underplayed despite its potential for huge change and its connection to wider conflicts.
• Language Hat notes the name of God in the Hebrew tradition, Yahweh. Where did it come from?
• Language Log shares an interesting idea for helping to preserve marginalized languages: Why not throw a language party celebrating the language?
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the question of what historical general or military leader would do best leading the armies of the living dead.
• The NYR Daily looks at the problems with Erdogan’s big investments in public infrastructure in Turkey, starting with the new Istanbul airport.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the possibility of life in the very early universe. Earth-like life could have started within a billion years of the Big Bang; Earth life might even have begun earlier, for that matter.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shows a map of Europe identifying which countries are the more chauvinistic in the continent.
• Window on Eurasia notes the strength of the relatively recent division between Tatars and Bashkirs, two closely related people with separate identities grown strong in the Soviet era.

[NEWS] Five notes on language in French Canada

• Ostensibly bilingual New Brunswick is not having a French-language leaders’ debate this election because of the weak language skills of the PC leader. Global News reports.
• A man from Québec was able to hitchhike across Canada, as far as Alberta even, using only his French. The Toronto Star ,a href=”https://www.thestar.com/edmonton/2018/08/22/quebec-man-hitchhikes-across-canada-speaking-only-french.html”&gt;reports.
• Québec Solidaire created a minor political storm over a tweet regarding the official languages of the province. The Montreal Gazette reports.
• Québec Solidaire also wants to give Quebec Sign Language official status. The Huffington Post reports.
• Amazon is working hard to give its Alexa Canadian French language support, making the device fluent in the local dialect. IT World Canada reports.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly talks about what goes into her creation of comfortable outdoor spaces. (I approve of the inclusion of blue; green is also nice.)
• D-Brief notes that the strong stellar winds of TRAPPIST-1 means that the outermost worlds are best suited to retain their atmospheres and host Earth-like environments.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that Russia has shown video of its latest crop of doomsday weapons.
• Joe. My. God. notes the duet of a German astronaut on board the ISS with Kraftwerk.
• JSTOR Daily considers if fear of race mixing, and of venereal disease, were important factors in the British Empire’s abolition of slavery in 1833.
• Language Log notes differential censorship in China aimed at minority languages, using some books to be shipped from Inner Mongolia as an example.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that Russian support for Trump was less a well-thought plan and more a desperate gamble with unpredictable and largely negative consequences for Russia.
• The LRB Blog notes the perception by Proust of time as a dimension.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Apollo missions helped clear up the mystery of the origins of the Moon.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the Donbas republics are inching away from Ukraine by seeking associations with adjacent Russian regions.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares the latest images of asteroid Ryugu.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the equal-mass near-Earth asteroid binary 2017 YE5.
• Far Outliers notes how corrosive fake news and propaganda can be, by looking at Orwell’s experience of the Spanish Civil War.
• The Frailest Thing’s L.M. Sacasas looks at swarms versus networks, in the light of Bauman’s thinking on freedom/security.
• Joe. My. God. reports on how American pharmacy chain PVS fired a man–a Log Cabin Republican, no less–for calling the police on a black customer over a coupon.
• JSTOR Daily links to a paper making the case that national service plays a useful role in modern countries.
• Language Hat quotes from a beautiful Perry Anderson essay at the LRB about Proust.
• Jeffey Herlihy-Mera writes/u> at Lingua Franca about his first-hand experiences of the multilingualism of Ecuador.
• The NYR Daily takes a look at the art created by the prominent members of the Romanov dynasty.
• The Power and Money’s Noel Maurer has reposted a blog post from 2016 considering the question of just how much money the United States could extract, via military basing, from Germany and Japan and South Korea
• Window on Eurasia suggests a new Russian language law that would marginalize non-Russian languages is provoking a renaissance of Tatar nationalism.