[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul looks at the Portuguese architectural cooperative Ateliermob, here.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at how white dwarf WD J091405.30+191412.25 is literally vapourizing a planet in close orbit.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog explains</a< to readers why you really do not want to have to look for parking in New York City.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the slowing of the solar wind far from the Sun.
• John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers the gap between ideals and actuals in the context of conspiracies and politics.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on how the ESA is trying to solve a problem with the parachutes of the ExoMars probe.
• Far Outliers reports on what Harry Truman thought about politicians.
• Gizmodo reports on a new method for identifying potential Earth-like worlds.
• io9 pays tribute to legendary writer, of Star Trek and much else, D.C. Fontana.
• The Island Review reports on the football team of the Chagos Islands.
• Joe. My. God. reports that gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy will compete for the United Kingdom in 2020.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how early English imperialists saw America and empire through the lens of Ireland.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money does not like Pete Buttigieg.
• The LRB Blog looks at the London Bridge terrorist attack.
• The Map Room Blog shares a map of Prince William Sound, in Alaska, that is already out of date because of global warming.
• Marginal Revolution questions if Cebu, in the Philippines, is the most typical city in the world.
• The NYR Daily looks at gun violence among Arab Israelis.
• The Planetary Society Blog considers what needs to be researched next on Mars.
• Roads and Kingdoms tells the story of Sister Gracy, a Salesian nun at work in South Sudan.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting continued population growth expected in much of Europe, and the impact of this growth on the environment.
• Strange Maps shares a map of fried chicken restaurants in London.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why a 70 solar mass black hole is not unexpected.
• John Scalzi at Whatever gives</a his further thoughts on the Pixel 4.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, last year, 37 thousand Russians died of HIV/AIDS.
• Arnold Zwicky starts from a consideration of the 1948 film Kind Hearts and Coronets.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul profiles architectural photographer Lorenzo Zandri, here.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes a new study suggesting red dwarf stars, by far the most common stars in the universe, have plenty of planets.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly shares 11 tips for interviewers, reminding me of what I did for anthropology fieldwork.
• Centauri Dreams notes how water ice ejected from Enceladus makes the inner moons of Saturn brilliant.
• The Crux looks at the increasingly complicated question of when the first humans reached North America.
• D-Brief notes a new discovery suggesting the hearts of humans, unlike the hearts of other closely related primates, evolved to require endurance activities to remain healthy.
• Dangerous Minds shares with its readers the overlooked 1969 satire Putney Swope.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that the WFIRST infrared telescope has passed its first design review.
• Gizmodo notes how drought in Spain has revealed the megalithic Dolmen of Guadalperal for the first time in six decades.
• io9 looks at the amazing Jonathan Hickman run on the X-Men so far, one that has established the mutants as eye-catching and deeply alien.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the Pentagon has admitted that 2017 UFO videos do, in fact, depict some unidentified objects in the air.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the origin of the equestrian horseback statue in ancient Rome.
• Language Log shares a bilingual English/German pun from Berlin.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money reflects on the legacy of Thomas Jefferson at Jefferson’s grave.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution looks at a new book arguing, contra Pinker perhaps, that the modern era is one of heightened violence.
• The New APPS Blog seeks to reconcile the philosophy of Hobbes with that of Foucault on biopower.
• Strange Company shares news clippings from 1970s Ohio about a pesky UFO.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the idea of shooting garbage from Earth into the sun does not work.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps explains the appearance of Brasilia on a 1920s German map: It turns out the capital was nearly realized then.
• Towleroad notes that Pete Buttigieg has taken to avoiding reading LGBTQ media because he dislikes their criticism of his gayness.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at diners and changing menus and slavery.

[NEWS] Five links about politics: pro-Bernier billboard, elx2019, Alberta, #mayorpete, Andrew Yang

• The way this pro-Maxine Bernier anti-immigrant billboard campaign ended up collapsing so completely pleases me. Global News reports.
• The CBC polls different experts to see if the unpopularity of Doug Ford in Ontario will undermine the Conservatives across Canada.
• I will be interested to see if separatism in Alberta will take off. The National Post reports.
• The proposal of Pete Buttigieg to get mental health care funded by insurance makes sense to me. VICE has it.
• Michael Kruse writes at POLITICO about the growing appeal of Andrew Yang to many voters in the US.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams notes a strange corridor of ice beneath the surface of Titan, a possible legacy of an active cryovolcanic past.
• D-Brief notes one study suggesting that, properly designed, air conditioners could convert carbon dioxide in the air into carbon fuels.
• Dead Things reports on the discovery of an unusual human skull three hundred thousand years old in China, at Hualongdong in the southeast.
• Gizmodo notes the identification of a jawbone 160 thousand years old, found in Tibet, with the Denisovans. That neatly explains why the Denisovans were adapted to Tibet-like environments.
• JSTOR Daily examines Ruth Page, a ballerina who integrated dance with poetry.
• Language Hat shares a critique of a John McWhorter comment about kidspeak.
• Victor Mair at Language Log shares a well-researched video on the Mongolian language of Genghis Khan.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how Donald Trump, in his defiance of investigative findings, is worse than Richard Nixon.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the bombing of London gay bar Admiral Duncan two decades ago, relating it movingly to wider alt-right movements and to his own early coming out.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen notes a recent review article making the case for open borders, disproving many of the claims made by opponents.
• Paul Mason at the NYR Daily explains why the critique by Hannah Arendt of totalitarianism and fascism can fall short, not least in explaining our times.
• Corey S. Powell at Out There explains how, and why, the Moon is starting to get serious attention as a place for long-term settlement, even.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog explores the fund that she had in helping design a set of scientifically-accurate building blocks inspired by the worlds of our solar system.
• Drew Rowsome reports on the new restaging of the classic queer drama Lilies at Buddies in Bad Times by Walter Borden, this one with a new racially sensitive casting.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the massive boom of diversity at the time of the Cambrian Explosion.
• Towleroad features the remarkable front cover of the new issue of Time, featuring Pete Buttigieg together with his husband Chasten.
• Window on Eurasia considers if the new Russian policy of handing out passports to residents of the Donbas republics is related to a policy of trying to bolster the population of Russia, whether fictively or actually.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the various flowers of May Day.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes how the warp in space-time made by the black hole in V404 Cygni has been detected.
• The Crux reports on the discovery of the remains of a chicha brewery in pre-Columbian Peru.
• D-Brief notes a new model for the creation of the Moon by impact with primordial Earth that would explain oddities with the Earth still being molten, having a magma ocean.
• Bruce Dorminey shares the idea that extraterrestrial civilizations might share messages with posterity through DNA encoded in bacteria set adrift in space.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on progress in drones and UAVs made worldwide.
• Gizmodo notes some of the privacy issues involved with Alexa.
• JSTOR Daily explains how some non-mammals, including birds and fish, nurse their young.
• Language Hat reports on the latest studies in the ancient linguistic history of East Asia, with suggestions that Old Japanese has connections to the languages of the early Korean states of Silla and Paekche but not to that of Koguryo.
• Language Log considers the issues involved with the digitization of specialized dictionaries.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money remembers the start of the Spanish Civil War.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points towards his recent interview with Margaret Atwood.
• The NYR Daily reports on a remarkable new play, Heidi Schreck’s What The Constitution Means To Me.
• Towleroad reports on what Hunter Kelly, one of the men who operatives tried to recruit to spread slander against Pete Buttigieg, has to say about the affair.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that a Russian annexation of Belarus would not be an easy affair.
• Arnold Zwicky reports on the latest signs of language change, this time in the New Yorker.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• In an extended meditation, Antipope’s Charlie Stross considers what the domestic architecture of the future will look like. What different technologies, with different uses of space, will come into play?
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the new SPECULOOS exoplanet hunting telescope, specializing in the search for planets around the coolest stars.
• The Crux looks at the evolutionary origins of hominins and chimpanzees in an upright walking ape several million years ago.
• D-Brief notes the multiple detections of gravitational waves made by LIGO.
• The Dragon’s Tales looks at the development of laser weapons by China.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the gap between social theory and field research.
• Gizmodo shares an interesting discussion with paleontologists and other dinosaur experts: What would the dinosaurs have become if not for the Chixculub impact?
• Hornet Stories notes the ways in which the policies of the Satanic Temple would be good for queer students.
• io9 notes how the Deep Space 9 documentary What We Leave Behind imagines what a Season 8 would have looked like.
• Joe. My. God. reports that activist Jacob Wohl is apparently behind allegations of a sexual assault by Pete Buttigieg against a subordinate.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the uses of the yellow ribbon in American popular culture.
• Language Hat shares an account of the life experiences of an Israeli taxi driver, spread across languages and borders.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money makes deserved fun of Bret Easton Ellis for his claims to having been marginalized.
• Marginal Revolution considers, briefly, the idea that artificial intelligence might not be harmful to humans. (Why would it necessarily have to be?)
• The NYR Daily considers a British exhibition of artworks by artists from the former Czechoslovakia.
• Peter Rukavina looks at gender representation in party caucuses in PEI from the early 1990s on, noting the huge surge in female representation in the Greens now.
• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress is preserving Latin American monographs.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how Einstein knew that gravity must bend light.
• Window on Eurasia explains the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that methane hydrates on the ocean floor will only pose a catastrophic risk of climate change if we do nothing about climate change generally.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the massive flare detected on L-dwarf ULAS J224940.13-011236.9.
• Crooked Timber considers a philosophical conundrum: What should individuals do to combat climate change? What are they responsible for?
• The Crux considers a few solar system locations that future generations of hikers might well want to explore on foot.
• Joe. My. God. notes that Pete Buttigieg is becoming a big star in his father’s homeland of Malta.
• Language Log considers the idea of learning Cantonese as a second language.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the policy innovations of Elizabeth Warren.
• The Map Room Blog looks at how the Russian government is apparently spoofing GPS signals.
• Marginal Revolution reports a claim by Peter Thiel that the institutionalization of science since the Manhattan Project is slowing down technological advances. Is this plausible?
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog notes that the Mars InSight probe has detected marsquakes.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that, finally, astronomers have found the first cold gas giants among the exoplanets, worlds in wide orbits like Jupiter and Saturn.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy notes how some of the praise for Daenerys Targaryen by Elizabeth Warren reveals interesting and worrisome blind spots. (Myself, I fear a “Dark Dany” scenario.)
• Window on Eurasia suggests that Russia is not over the fact that Ukraine is moving on.
• Frances Woolley at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative takes issue with the argument of Andray Domise after an EKOS poll, that Canadians would not know much about the nature of migration flows.
• For Easter, Arnold Zwicky considered red and white flowers, bearing the colours of the season.

[BLOG] Some Monday blog links

• Crooked Timber at John Quiggin takes issue with the idea that, now, there are many Republicans who accept Trump only conditionally, for what a Trump presidency could achieve.
• D-Brief notes the XT2 signal, issue of a collision between two magnetars in a galaxy 6.6 billion light-years away.
• Cody Delistraty reports on an exhibit at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris on the history of soccer in world politics.
• Earther reports on a new satellite mission focused on studying solar-induced fluorescence, the glow of plants as they photosynthesize.
• Far Outliers notes how U.S. Grant responded to slaves seeking freedom from the Union Army.
• JSTOR Daily explores Lake Baikal.
• Language Log reports on the multilingualism of Pete Buttigieg.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money gives deserved praise to the Jason Lutes graphic novel Berlin.
• Marginal Revolution looks at the ways in which dense social networks can keep stroke victims from getting quick help.
• The NYR Daily looks at the campaigns and ideas of anti-authoritarian Chinese professor and writer Xu Zhangrun.
• Drew Rowsome gives a largely negative review to the 2014 Easter horror film The Beaster Bunny.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the singularities of black holes have spin.
• Window on Eurasia notes on the report of a Muslim community leader in Norilsk that a quarter of the population of that Russian Arctic city is of Muslim background.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the ways in which flowers and penguins and cuteness can interact, with photos.

[NEWS] Five politics links: Ontario, Québec, California, Buttigieg, Brazil

• The shameful cuts to the Ontario public library system speak volumes about the attitude of Doug Ford towards education. The Toronto Star reports.
• Will this spring’s flooding change the relationship of people in Québec to waterways like the St. Lawrence? CTV reports.
• That the failures of infrastructure of Pacific Gas and Electric can be linked to so many catastrophic wildfires in California, and that nothing has been done despite this, shocks me. VICE reports.
• This Olivia Nuzzi profile of Pete Buttigieg and his presidential campaign at New York Magazine makes me like him all the more.
• This Open Democracy analysis of the amendment to the constitution of Brazil that sharply limits government expenditures, requiring unthinking austerity for the next two decades, is compelling.

[NEWS] Five culture links: AO3, dating apps, mainstream Islamophobia, Notre Dame, Buttigieg

• That Archive Of Our Own has won a Hugo nomination is surprising, but deserved, news. Motherboard reports.
• CityLab notes that people interested in opposite-sex dating, when they make use of apps, look for people near them geographically.
• NOW Toronto looks at the extent to which anti-Muslim sentiment has made it into mainstream journalistic discourse in Canada.
• Adam Rogers writes movingly at Wired about the extent to which Notre Dame, for all of its age, is also constantly changing.
• Vox suggests that Pete Buttigieg, with his rhetoric full of hope, is trying to mobilize the same coalition of voters that saw Obama elected.