[BLOG] Five Window on Eurasia links

• Window on Eurasia notes the post-Soviet collapse of the numbers of learners of the Russian language, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports the claim of a Russian politician that in 1991, securing the nuclear arsenal of Ukraine was a bigger priority than trying for borders changes, here.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Belarus cannot protect itself from Russia, here.
• Window on Eurasia explains why the Soviet Union let the Armenians and Georgians keep their alphabets, here.
• Window on Eurasia explains how Russia’s naval and marine power is not doing well, here.

[BLOG] Five Marginal Revolution links

• Marginal Revolution considers if the CFA franc system is dying out, here.
• Marginal Revolution shares a link to a paper quantifying the effects of the old boys club, here.
• Marginal Revolution contrasts and compares the old NAFTA and the new USMCA, here.
• Marginal Revolution notes how Germany has access to nuclear weapons, here.
• Marginal Revolution looks at the high rate of consainguineous marriage in Saudi Arabia, here.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the Elon Musk proposal to terraform Mars by dropping nuclear weapons on the planet’s ice caps is a bad idea.
• James Bow writes about how the introduction of faeries saved his novel The Night Girl.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the storms of Jupiter.
• The Crux explains the mystery of a village in Poland that has not seen the birth of a baby boy for nearly a decade.
• D-Brief looks at the exoplanets of nearby red dwarf Gliese 1061.
• Cody Delisraty talks of Renaissance painter Fra Angelico.
• Drew Ex Machina commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares links to some papers about the Paleolithic.
• JSTOR Daily hosts an essay by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger suggesting that Internet rot might be good since it could let people start to forget the past and so move on.
• Language Hat questions whether the phrase “free to all” has really fallen out of use.
• Language Log takes a look about immigration to the United States and Emma Lazarus’ famous poem.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with the suggestion of, among other, Henry Farrell, that we are headed away from globalization towards fortress economies. Redundancy, he suggests, will be more important.
• Marginal Revolution links to a disturbing paper suggesting users of opioids use them in part for social reasons.
• The NYR Daily features an exchange on a new law in Singapore seeking to govern fake news.
• The Power and the Money features a guest post from Leticia Arroyo Abad looking at Argentina before the elections.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at a new play by Raymond Helkio examining the life of out boxer Mark Leduc.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers if we can test gravitational waves for wave-particle duality.
• Arnold Zwicky shares photos of the many flowers of Gamble Garden, in Palo Alto.

[NEWS] Five JSTOR Daily links: Black History Month, TSA, Vannevar Bush, jazz, Great Migration

• JSTOR Daily links to a selection of past posts relating to Black History Month.
• JSTOR Daily answers the question of why the TSA cannot go on strike easily.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the life of Vannevar Bush, the man who triggered the United States’ building of the nuclear bomb and contributed much else, too.
• JSTOR Daily looks back to the 1920s, when jazz music began to be seen as a public health crisis by many.
• JSTOR Daily considers the extent to which the Great Migration of African-Americans was a forced migration, driven not just by poverty but by systemic anti-black violence.

[NEWS] Five politics links: Ai Weiwei on China, nuclear weapons, British navy, Venezuela oil, Iran

• Ai Weiwei is reported as noting at NOW Toronto the role of Western governments in enabling the rise of the People’s Republic of China.
• Business Insider argues that, in terms of numbers, technology, and strategy, the nuclear arsenal of China is the best thought-out of any of the nine nuclear weapons states.
• SCMP notes how the naval ambitions of Britain in the Pacific make little military sense but perhaps some economic sense.
• Foreign Policy looks at how oil, in Venezuela, did not guarantee that country’s indefinite prosperity.
• Open Democracy hosts an article suggests that monarchism, in the form of the Shah’s son and heir Reza Pahlavi, actually has a chance of opposing the Islamic Republic.

[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.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• David Price at {anthro}dendum considers, going through archival material from the 1950s, the number of radical anthropologists in the US as yet little known or unknown who were marginalized by the Red Scare.
• Centauri Dreams ruminates on a paper examining ‘Oumuamua that considers radiation pressure as a factor in its speed. Might it work as–indeed, be?–a lightsail?
• D-Brief notes the various reasons why the Chinese proposal for an artificial moon of sorts, to illuminate cities at night, would not work very well at all.
• The Dragon’s Tales touches on the perhaps hypocritical anger of Russia at the United States’ departure from the INF treaty.
• Far Outliers notes the sharp divides among Nazi prisoners of war in a camp in Texas, notably between pro- and anti-Nazi prisoners.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing revisits the original sin of the Internet culture, its imagining of a split between an individual’s virtual life and the remainder of their life.
• The Island Review welcomes, and interviews, its new editor C.C. O’Hanlon.
• JSTOR Daily explores the reasons for considering climate change to be a national security issue.
• Language Hat is enthused by the recent publication of a new dictionary of the extinct Anatolian languages of the Indo-European family.
• Language Log examines the existence of a distinctive, even mocked, southern French accent spoken in and around (among other cities) Toulouse.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the rise of fascism in Brazil with Bolsonaro.
• Roger Shuy at Lingua Franca writes about the power of correspondence, of written letters, to help language learners. (I concur.)
• At the LRB Blog, Jeremy Bernstein writes about anti-Semitism in the United States, in the 1930s and now.
• The NYR Daily examines the life of writer, and long-time exile from her native Portugal, Maria Gabriela Llansol.
• Haley Gray at Roads and Kingdoms reports on the life and work of Mark Maryboy, a Navajo land rights activist in Utah.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the Russian urban myth of blonde Baltic snipers from the Baltic States who had been enlisted into wars against Russia like that of Chechnya in the 1990s.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the classic red phone booths of the United Kingdom, now almost all removed from the streets of the country and sent to a graveyard in a part of rural Yorkshire that has other claims to fame.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers nearby galaxy NGC 6744, a relatively nearby spiral galaxy that may look like the Milky Way.
• D-Brief notes the remarkable ceramic spring that gives the mantis shrimp its remarkably powerful punch.
• Far Outliers notes how the north Korean port of Hamhung was modernized in the 1930s, but also Japanized, with few legacies of its Korean past remaining.
• Joe. My. God. notes how the Trump administration plans to define being transgender out of existence. Appalling.
• Alexandra Samuel at JSTOR Daily notes the ways in which the Internet has undermined the traditions which support American political institutions. Can new traditions be made?
• Lawyers, Guns, and Money notes how the Trump’s withdrawal from the INF treaty with Russia on nuclear weapons harms American security.
• Rose Jacobs at Lingua Franca writes about ways in which derision, specifically of other nationalities, enters into English slang.
• Marginal Revolution notes that, in an article surveying the Icelandic language, a report that sales of books in Iceland have fallen by nearly half since 2010.
• The NYR Daily looks at two recent movies, one autobiographical and one fictional, looking at dads in space.
• Jason Perry at the Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest imagery of the volcanoes of Io.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the possibility that time travel might not destroy the universe via paradoxes.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that the experience of post-Soviet Estonia with its two Orthodox churches might be a model for Ukraine.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Adam Fish at Anthro{dendum} takes a look at the roles of drones in capitalism, here.
• Bad Astronomy talks about the discovery of a nascent planet in orbit of young star PDS 70.
• Centauri Dreams notes what the discovery of a Charon eclipsing its partner Pluto meant, for those worlds and for astronomy generally.
• D-Brief notes a demographic study of Italian centenarians suggesting that, after reaching the age of 105, human mortality rates seem to plateau. Does this indicate the potential for further life expectancy increases?
• Dead Things shares the result of a genetics study of silkworms. Where did these anchors of the Silk Road come from?
• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers the role of the side hustle in creative professions.
• Far Outliers reports on the time, in the 1930s, when some people in Second Republic Poland thought that the country should acquire overseas colonies.
• Hornet Stories reports on how, in earlier centuries, the English word “pinke” meant a shade of yellow.
• JSTOR Daily reports on how, nearly two decades later, Sex and the City is still an influential and important piece of pop culture.
• Language Hat links to Keith Gessen’s account, in The New Yorker, about how he came to teach his young son Russian.
• Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle of Higher Education, reports on the decent and strongly Cuban Spanish spoken by Ernest Hemingway.
• The NYR Daily looks at the mystique surrounding testosterone, the powerful masculinizing hormone.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer shares his thoughts on the election, in Mexico, of left-leaning populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Worst-case scenarios aren’t likely to materialize in the short and medium terms, at least.
• Vintage Space notes how, at the height of the Cold War, some hoped to demonstrate American strength by nuking the Moon. (Really.)
• Window on Eurasia links to an essayist who suggests that Russia should look to America as much as to Europe for models of society.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• ‘Nathan Burgoine at Apostrophen links to a giveaway of paranormal LGBT fiction.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares some stunning photos of Jupiter provided by Juno.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly looks at the desperate, multi-state strike of teachers in the United States. American education deserves to have its needs, and its practitioners’ needs, met.
• Centauri Dreams looks at PROCSIMA, a strategy for improving beamed propulsion techniques.
• Crooked Timber looks at the history of the concept of the uncanny valley. How did the concept get translated in the 1970s from Japan to the wider world?
• Dangerous Minds shares a 1980s BBC interview with William Burroughs.
• The Dragon’s Tales links to a paper tracing the origin of the Dravidian language family to a point in time 4500 years ago.
• JSTOR Daily notes Phyllis Wheatley, a freed slave who became the first African-American author in the 18th century but who died in poverty.
• Language Hat notes the exceptional importance of the Persian language in early modern South Asia.
• Language Log looks at the forms used by Chinese to express the concepts of NIMBY and NIMBYism.
• Language Hat notes the exceptional importance of the Persian language in early modern South Asia.
• The NYR Daily notes that, if the United States junks the nuclear deal with Iran, nothing external to Iran could realistically prevent the country’s nuclearization.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at the latest findings from the Jupiter system, from that planet’s planet-sized moons.
• Roads and Kingdoms notes that many Rohingya, driven from their homeland, have been forced to work as mules in the illegal drug trade.
• Starts With A Bang considers how early, based on elemental abundances, life could have arisen after the Big Bang. A date only 1 to 1.5 billion years after the formation of the universe is surprisingly early.
• Strange Maps’ Frank Jacobs notes how the centre of population of different tree populations in the United States has been shifting west as the climate has changed.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little takes a look at mechanisms and causal explanations.
• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative’s Frances Woolley takes a look at an ECON 1000 test from the 1950s. What biases, what gaps in knowledge, are revealed by it?