[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomy notes the remarkably eccentric orbit of gas giant HR 5138b.
• Centauri Dreams notes the impact that large-scale collisions have on the evolution of planets.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber noted yesterday that babies born on September 11th in 2001 are now 18 years old, adults.
• The Crux notes that some of the hominins in the Sima de los Huesos site in Spain, ancestors to Neanderthals, may have been murdered.
• D-Brief reports on the cryodrakon, a pterosaur that roamed the skies above what is now Canada 77 million years ago.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the political artwork of Jan Pötter.
• Gizmodo notes a poll suggesting a majority of Britons would support actively seeking to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations.
• io9 has a loving critical review of the first Star Trek movie.
• JSTOR Daily shares, from April 1939, an essay by the anonymous head of British intelligence looking at the international context on the eve of the Second World War.
• Language Log notes a recent essay on the mysterious Voynich manuscript, one concluding that it is almost certainly a hoax of some kind.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the future of the labour movement in the United States.
• Marginal Revolution considers what sort of industrial policy would work for the United States.
• Yardena Schwartz writes at NYR Daily about the potential power of Arab voters in Israel.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections explains why, despite interest, Australia did not launch a space program in the 1980s.
• Drew Rowsome provides a queer review of It: Chapter Two.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how government censorship of science doomed the Soviet Union and could hurt the United States next.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, in the Volga republics, recent educational policy changes have marginalized non-Russian languages.
• Arnold Zwicky shares a glossy, fashion photography-style, reimagining of the central relationship in the James Baldwin classic Giovanni’s Room, arranged by Hilton Als.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Anthropology.net reports on the discovery of footprints of a Neanderthal band in Le Rozel, Normandy, revealing much about that group’s social structure.
• Bad Astronomer’s Phil Plait explains why standing at the foot of a cliff on Mars during local spring can be dangerous.
• Centauri Dreams shares a suggestion that the lakes of Titan might be product of subterranean explosions.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber considers how, and when, anger should be considered and legitimated in discussions of politics.
• The Crux looks at the cement mixed successfully in microgravity on the ISS, as a construction material of the future.
• D-Brief looks at what steps space agencies are considering to avoid causing harm to extraterrestrial life.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes new evidence that the Anthropocene, properly understood, actually began four thousand years ago.
• Jonathan Wynn writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about how many American universities have become as much lifestyle centres as educational communities.
• Far Outliers reports on how, in the 13th century, the cultural differences of Wales from the English–including the Welsh tradition of partible inheritance–caused great instability.
• This io9 interview with the creators of the brilliant series The Wicked and the Divine is a must-read.
• JSTOR Daily looks at a paper considering how teachers of German should engage with the concept of Oktoberfest.
• Language Hat looks at a new study examining the idea of different languages being more efficient than others. (They are not, it turns out.)
• Language Log looks at the history of translating classics of Chinese literature into Manchu and Mongolian.
• Erik Loomis considers the problems the collapse of local journalism now will cause for later historians trying to do research in the foreseeable future.
• Marginal Revolution reports on research suggesting that markets do not corrupt human morality.
• Neuroskeptic looks in more detail at the interesting, and disturbing, organized patterns emitted by organoids built using human brain cells.
• Stephen Baker at The Numerati writes, with photos, about what he saw in China while doing book research. (Shenzhen looks cool.)
• The NYR Daily notes the import of the working trip of Susan Sontag to Sarajevo in 1993, while that city was under siege.
• Robert Picardo at the Planetary Society Blog shares a vintage letter from Roddenberry encouraging Star Trek fans to engage with the Society.
• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money looks at the economy of Argentina in a pre-election panic.
• Strange Company looks at the life of Molly Morgan, a British convict who prospered in her exile to Australia.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, in 1939, many Soviet citizens recognized the import of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; they knew their empire would expand.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the treatment of cavemen, as subjects and providers of education, in pop culture.

[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.

[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.

[URBAN NOTE] Five notes about smart animals: bees, wolves/dogs, cetaceans, Denisovans, Neanderthals

• The Conversation notes how urban beekeepers can play a key role in saving bees from extinction.
• Motherboard looks at the comparative intelligence, and generosity, of wolves versus their domesticated dog counterparts.
• National Geographic looks at how marine mammals, particularly cetaceans, have been used in different militaries.
• Smithsonian Magazine looks at how recent studies have demonstrated the diversity among Denisovan populations.
• Smithsonian Magazine looks at the new consensus about the remarkable capabilities of Neanderthals.

[NEWS] Five science links: global warming, bees, Balsillie, backups, Neanderthals

• New estimates suggest the costs of global warming will be in the tens of trillions of dollars, with warmer countries taking a particularly big hit. Motherboard reports.
• Indigenous bumblebee populations in Canada are fast approaching extinction, with a certainty of major negative environmental effects. CBC reports.
• MacLean’s reports on the return to prominence of Jim Balsillie, this time not so much as a tech mogul as a sort off tech skeptic.
• This Motherboard article makes a somewhat far-fetched argument that Game of Thrones demonstrates the need for human civilization to have backups.
• The Conversation reports on the recent discovery, in Serbia by a joint Serbian-Canadian team, of a Neanderthal tooth, and what this discovery means for our understanding of the deep past of humanity.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomy shares Hubble images of asteroid 6478 Gault, seemingly in the process of dissolving.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the experience of living in a body one knows from hard experience to be fallible.
• Gizmodo notes new evidence that environmental stresses pushed at least some Neanderthals to engage in cannibalism.
• Hornet Stories notes the 1967 raid by Los Angeles police against the Black Cat nightclub, a pre-Stonewall trigger of LGBTQ organization.
• Imageo notes the imperfect deal wrought by Colorado Basin states to minimize the pain felt by drought in that river basin.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the cinema of Claire Denis.
• Language Log reports on the work of linguist Ghil’ad Zuckermann, a man involved in language revival efforts in Australia after work in Israel with Hebrew.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders if the Iran-Contra scandal will be a precedent for the Mueller report, with the allegations being buried by studied inattention.
• Marginal Revolution makes a case for NIMBYism leading to street urination.
• Justin Petrone at North! looks at a theatrical performance of a modern Estonian literary classic, and what it says about gender and national identity.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw makes the case for a treaty with Australian Aborigines, to try to settle settler-indigenous relations in Australia.
• John Quiggin looks at the factors leading to the extinction of coal as an energy source in the United Kingdom.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that we are not yet up to the point of being able to detect exomoons of Earth-like planets comparable to our Moon.
• Window on Eurasia notes the occasion of the last singer in the Ket language.
• Arnold Zwicky shares some cartoon humour, around thought balloons.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul looks at the divided cities of the divided island of Cyprus.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares an image of a galaxy that actually has a tail.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber talks about her pain as an immigrant in the United Kingdom in the era of Brexit, her pain being but one of many different types created by this move.
• The Crux talks about the rejected American proposal to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon, and the several times the United States did arrange for lesser noteworthy events there (collisions, for the record).
• D-Brief notes how the innovative use of Curiosity instruments has explained more about the watery past of Gale Crater.
• Bruce Dorminey notes one astronomer’s theory that Venus tipped early into a greenhouse effect because of a surfeit of carbon relative to Earth.
• Far Outliers looks at missionaries in China, and their Yangtze explorations, in the late 19th century.
• Gizmodo notes evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans cohabited in a cave for millennia.
• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox writes about his exploration of the solo music of Paul McCartney.
• io9 looks at what is happening with Namor in the Marvel universe, with interesting echoes of recent Aquaman storylines.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the Beothuk of Newfoundland and their sad fate.
• Language Hat explores Patagonian Afrikaans.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on how mindboggling it is to want to be a billionaire. What would you do with that wealth?
• The Map Room Blog shares a visualization of the polar vortex.
• Marginal Revolution reports on the career of a writer who writes stories intended to help people fall asleep.
• The New APPS Blog reports on the power of biometric data and the threat of its misuse.
• Neuroskeptic takes a look at neurogenesis in human beings.
• Out There notes the import, in understanding our solar system, of the New Horizons photos of Ultima Thule.
• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes that OSIRIS-REx is in orbit of Bennu and preparing to take samples.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of 21 things that visitors to Kolkata should know.
• Mark Simpson takes a critical look at the idea of toxic masculinity. Who benefits?
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why global warming is responsible for the descent of the polar vortex.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the pro-Russian Gagauz of Moldova are moving towards a break if the country at large becomes pro-Western.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the art of Finnish painter Hugo Simberg.

[NEWS] Five D-Brief links: Small Magellanic Cloud, Pluto, Neanderthals, Atacama, rogues

• D-Brief notes that the Small Magellanic Cloud is losing gas, diminishing its future capacity for starbirth.
• D-Brief notes evidence that the strange ridges of Pluto are legacies of glaciers.
• Neanderthals, a new analysis shared by D-Brief suggests, suffered from head trauma at rates similar to that of Homo sapiens.
• D-Brief notes how recent heavy rain in the Atacama Desert of Chile killed many of the local extremophile microbes adapted to desert conditions, with obvious implications for life on Mars.
• D-Brief notes the discovery of two rogue planets, OGLE-2012-BLG-1323 and OGLE-2017-BLG-0560.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait goes into more detail about the Milky Way Galaxy’s ancient collision with and absorption of dwarf galaxy Gaia-Enceladus.
• Centauri Dreams considers SETI in the infrared, looking at the proposal to use a laser to signal our existence to observers of our sun.
• D-Brief notes a study of Neanderthal children’s teeth that documents their hazardous environment, faced with cold winters and lead contamination.
• The Island Review shares three lovely islands-related poems by writer Naila Moreira.
• JSTOR Daily asks an important question: Can the United States and China avoid the Thucydides trap, a war of the rising power with the falling one? Things seems uncertain at this point.
• Mark Liberman at Language Log looks at the continuing lack of progress of machine translation.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at a recent discussion on the Roman Republic, noting how imperialism and inequality led to that polity’s transformation into an empire. Lessons for us now?
• The Map Room Blog shares a Canadian Geographic map describing the different, declining, populations of caribou in the north of Canada.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting that global pandemics will not necessarily kill us all off, that high-virulence infections might be outcompeted and, even, controllable.
• The NYR Daily takes a look at historical reasons for the prominence of Rembrandt in the British artistic imagination.
• Towleroad notes that Massachusetts voted to keep transgender rights protected.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that the quality of Russian taught in schools in Uzbekistan is declining. I wonder: Is this a matter of a Central Asian variety emerging, perhaps?
• Livio di Matteo at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative takes a look at the long-run economic growth of Australia, contrasting it with the past and with other countries. In some ways, Canada (among others) is a stronger performer.