[BLOG] Five LRB Blog links (#lrbblog)

• Daniel Trilling at the LRB Blog writes about a visit to the House of European History museum in Brussels.
• The LRB Blog explores Australia at a time of fire, here.
• What is going on, the LRB Blog considers, in Algeria?
• Giving birth in France at a time of mass strikes, the LRB Blog suggests, is certainly an interesting experience.
• James Butler writes at the LRB Blog about what Labour has to do after its stunning electoral defeat.

[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 Saturday links

• Bad Astronomy notes the new X-ray telescope eROSITA.
• Centauri Dreams notes evidence of a recent collision between planets in the system of BD +20 307.
• D-Brief notes the appearance of a strange new sort of storm on Saturn.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the discovery by astronomers of a set of orbits that can direct comets into the inner solar system.
• Drew Ex Machina’s Andrew LePage shares some vintage Skylab photos of his native Massachusetts.
• Far Outliers notes how, in 1786, the United states was uninclined to pay tribute to the Barbary States.
• Gizmodo’s George Dvorsky reports on a new fossil discovery showing how quickly mammals took over after the Cretaceous.
• The Island Review shares an essay by photographer Alex Boyd about his new book Isles of Rust, drawing from Lewis & Harris.
• JSTOR Daily looks at sustainable butchery.
• Language Hat notes that Sumerian cuneiform is now in Unicode.
• Victor Mair at Language Log notes how the Indo-Iranian “don” so commonly forms part of the hydronyms for major European rivers.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money calls for an in-depth investigation of Donald Trump, not necessarily an impeachment.
• The LRB Blog examines the background of the mass protests in Santiago and wider Chile.
• The Map Room Blog shares an illuminating cartogram depicting the #elxn43 results in Canada.
• Marginal Revolution looks at how the government of China has been using the NBA to buy social peace.
• The NYR Daily interviews Naomi Oreskes about her campaign to have the science behind global warming, and the actions of the scientists involved, understood.
• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper concluding that traditional gender specializations in British families no longer provide a reproductive advantage.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the speed of gravity must equal the speed of light, if general relativity is to work.
• Window on Eurasia examines the rapid and uncontrolled growth of urban populations in Kazakhstan.

[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.

[CAT] Five links about cats: Peter Watts and Minion, Toronto, Alberta, sea lions, Marrakech

• Author Peter Watts bids farewell to his noble companion cat, Minion.
• Narcity notes that Toronto Animal Services is offering cats (and dogs) at a discount.
• An Alberta organization aiming to rehouse cats from older owners has found itself overwhelmed. CBC reports.
• A parasite spread by housecats, Smithsonian reports, is responsible for mass deaths in sea lion colonies in California.
• The suffering of the stray cats of Marrakech, Morocco, prone to all sorts of illness and cruelty, sounds terrible. Morocco World News has it.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait considers the question of where, exactly, the dwarf galaxy Segue-1 came from.
• Centauri Dreams considers the import of sodium chloride for the water oceans of Europa, and for what they might hold.
• D-Brief wonders if dark matter punched a hole in the Milky Way Galaxy.
• JSTOR Daily warns that the increasing number of satellites in orbit of Earth might hinder our appreciation of the night sky.
• The LRB Blog looks at the complications of democracy and politics in Mauritania.
• Marginal Revolution wonders about the nature of an apparently very decentralized city of Haifa.
• Corey S. Powell at Out There notes that, while our knowledge of the Big Bang is certainly imperfect, the odds of it being wrong are quite, quite low.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at the Hayabusa 2 exploration of asteroid Ryugu.
• Vintage Space examines how Apollo astronauts successfully navigated their way to the Moon.
• Window on Eurasia looks at press discussion in Russia around the decriminalization of soft drugs like marijuana.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at a comic depicting a “mememobile.”

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly considers the importance of complete rest.
• Citizen Science Salon looks at the contributions of ordinary people to Alzheimer’s research.
• The Crux notes how recent planetary scientists acknowledge Venus to be an interestingly active world.
• D-Brief notes the carnivorous potential of pandas.
• Cody Delistraty considers a British Library exhibit about writing.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the possibility that, in red giant systems, life released from the interiors of thawed outer-system exomoons might produce detectable signatures in these worlds’ atmospheres.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares reports of some of the latest robot developments from around the world.
• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers the concepts of gentrification and meritocracy.
• Gizmodo notes a running dinosaur robot that indicates one route by which some dinosaurs took to flight.
• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox talks about bringing some principles of Wendell Berry to a town hall discussion in Sterling, Kansas.
• io9 notes that a reboot of Hellraiser is coming from David S. Goyer.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how museums engage in the deaccessioning of items in their collections.
• Language Log examines the Mongolian script on the renminbi bills of China.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how Volkswagen in the United States is making the situation of labour unions more difficult.
• Marginal Revolution notes the effective lack of property registration in the casbah of Algiers.
• The NYR Daily notes the Afrofuturism of artist Devan Shinoyama.
• Strange Company examines the trial of Jane Butterfield in the 1770s for murdering the man who kept her as a mistress with poison. Did she do it? What happened to her?
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps notes a controversial map identifying by name the presidents of the hundred companies most closely implicated in climate change.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the Russian Orthodox Church, retaliating against the Ecumenical Patriarchy for its recognition of Ukrainian independence, is moving into Asian territories outside of its purview.
• Arnold Zwicky starts a rumination by looking at the sportswear of the early 20th century world.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul features a photo essay made by Evan Panagopoulos in the course of a hurried three-hour visit to the Socialist Modernist and modern highlights of 20th century Kiev architecture.
• Bad Astrronomer Phil Plait notes how the latest planet found in the Kepler-47 circumbinary system evokes Tatooine.
• Centauri Dreams looks at tide and radiation, and their impacts on potential habitability, in the TRAPPIST-1 system.
• Citizen Science Salon looks at how the TV show Cyberchase can help get young people interested in science and math.
• Crooked Timber mourns historian David Brion Davis.
• The Crux looks at how the HMS Challenger pioneered the study of the deeps of the oceans, with that ship’s survey of the Mariana Trench.
• D-Brief looks at how a snowball chamber using supercooled water can be used to hunt for dark matter.
• Earther shares photos of the heartbreaking and artificial devastation of the Amazonian rainforest of Brazil.
• Gizmodo shares a beautiful Hubble photograph of the southern Crab Nebula.
• Information is Beautiful shares a reworked version of the Julia Galef illustration of the San Francisco area meme space.
• io9 notes that, fresh from being Thor, Jane Foster is set to become a Valkyrie in a new comic.
• JSTOR Daily explains the Victorian fondness for leeches, in medicine and in popular culture.
• Language Hat links to an interview with linguist Amina Mettouchi, a specialist in Berber languages.
• Language Log shares the report of a one-time Jewish refugee on changing language use in Shanghai, in the 1940s and now.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the horror of self-appointed militias capturing supposed undocumented migrants in the southwestern US.
• Marginal Revolution reports on the circumstances in which volunteer militaries can outperform conscript militaries.
• At the NYR Daily, Christopher Benfey reports on the surprisingly intense connection between bees and mourning.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw, responding to Israel Folau, considers free expression and employment.
• The Planetary Society Blog shares a guest post from Barney Magrath on the surprisingly cheap adaptations needed to make an iPhone suitable for astrophotography.
• Peter Rukavina reports on the hotly-contested PEI provincial election of 1966.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains what the discovery of helium hydride actually means.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little praises the Jill Lepore US history These Truths for its comprehensiveness.
• Window on Eurasia reports on the growing divergences in demographics between different post-Soviet countries.
• Arnold Zwicky starts with another Peeps creation and moves on from there.

[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 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.