[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how the dinosaurs seem to have been killed off 65 million years ago by a combination of geological and astronomical catastrophes.
• Centauri Dreams examines Kepler 1658b, a hot Jupiter in a close orbit around an old star.
• The Crux reports on the continuing search for Planet Nine in the orbits of distant solar system objects.
• D-Brief notes how researchers have begun to study the archaeological records of otters.
• Cody Delistraty profiles author and journalist John Lanchester.
• Far Outliers reports on the terrible violence between Hindus and Muslims preceding partition in Calcutta.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing suggests the carnival of the online world, full of hidden work, is actually an unsatisfying false carnival.
• Hornet Stories reports that São Paulo LGBTQ cultural centre and homeless shelter Casa 1 is facing closure thanks to cuts by the homophobic new government.
• io9 reports on one fan’s attempt to use machine learning to produce a HD version of Deep Space Nine.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the increasing trend, at least in the United States and the United Kingdom, to deport long-term residents lacking sufficiently secure residency rights.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the literally medieval epidemics raging among the homeless of California.
• Marginal Revolution considers how the Book of Genesis can be read as a story of increasing technology driving improved living standards and economic growth.
• The NYR Daily interviews Lénaïg Bredoux about #MeToo in France.
• The Planetary Society Blog considers the subtle differences in colour between ice giants Uranus and Neptune, one greenish and the other a blue, and the causes of this difference.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle shares beautiful photos of ice on a stream as he talks about his creative process.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers what the universe was like back when the Earth was forming.
• Window on Eurasia reports on a statement made by the government of Belarus that the survival of the Belarusian language is a guarantor of national security.
• Arnold Zwicky was kind enough to share his handout for the semiotics gathering SemFest20.

[NEWS] Five space science links: Neptunian Trojans, FarFarOut, Planet 9, black holes, M31N 2008-12a

• What is up with the unexpectedly colourful Neptunian Trojan asteroids? Scientific American reports.
• Universe Today notes the very recent discovery of outer system body FarFarOut, 140 astronomical units away.
• Universe Today looks at the latest evidence for the existence of Planet Nine, in the twisted orbits of outer solar system bodies.
• Daily Galaxy notes that a hundred million black holes, almost all of them unknown to us, likely exist in the Milky Way Galaxy.
• Evan Gough at Universe Today reports on the mysterious recurring nova M31N 2008-12a, exploding once a year off in the Andromeda Galaxy.

[NEWS] Five space science links: Moon, Mars, Planet Nine, ‘Oumuamua, dark matter

• This Universe Today article takes a look at the idea of building basic installations, the most ambitious like the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, on the Moon.
• Scientific American reports that NASA is preparing to declare the mission of the Mars Opportunity rover, active for 15 years, at an end.
• Popular Science looks at the likely procedures by which Planet Nine, if found, would be given a name.
• Universe Today considers the possibility that ‘Oumuamua might be part of the debris cloud of a disintegrated interstellar comet.
• Scientific American notes the important discovery of two nearby galaxies apparently lacking in dark matter.

[NEWS] Five space science links: Planet Nine, Ultima Thule, Orion Nebula, Sag A*, SN 1987A

• This article by Shannon Stirone at Longreads takes a look at the long, lonely search for Planet Nine from the top of Mauna Kea.
• Universe Today shares a high-resolution photograph of Ultima Thule.
• Universe Today explains how the new crop of young stars in the Orion Nebula disrupt the formation of other stellar bodies.
• Phys.org shares this amazing photograph of Sagittarius A* at the heart of our galaxy.
• The shockwaves from Supernova 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud, Universe Today notes, are still crashing into the neighbouring interstellar medium, revealing more secrets to astronomers.

[NEWS] Six D-Brief links: Sagittarius A*, GRBs, Saturn, Planet Nine, Earth, starlight

• Are the radio jets of Sagittarius A* at the heart of our galaxy pointed directly at Earth? D-Brief reports reports.
• Astronomers might finally have established a firm connection between supernovas and gamma-ray bursts. D-Brief reports reports.
• The length of a day on Saturn has finally been established, at just over 10 hours and 33 minutes. D-Brief reports reports.
• The supposed signature of Planet Nine might be a creation not of a ninth planet but rather by a thick distant belt of objects. D-Brief reports reports.
• Did the collision of protoplanet Theia with the young Earth seen the subsequent world with the materials needed for life? D-Brief reports reports.
• The very idea of an encyclopedia of galactic starlight is profoundly poetic, to say nothing of its scientific uses. D-Brief reports reports.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Architectuul interviews Vladimir Kulić, curator of the MoMA exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, about the history of innovative architecture in Yugoslavia.
• The Crux takes a look at the long search for hidden planets in the solar system, starting with Neptune and continuing to Tyche.
• D-Brief notes that ISRO, the space agency of India, is planning on launching a mission to Venus, and is soliciting outside contributions.
• Drew Ex Machina’s Andrew LePage writes about his efforts to photograph, from space, clouds over California’s Mount Whitney.
• Earther notes that geoengineering is being considered as one strategy to help save the coral reefs.
• Gizmodo takes a look at the limits, legal and otherwise, facing the Internet Archive in its preservation of humanity’s online history.
• JSTOR Daily explains why the Loch Ness monster has the scientific binominal Nessiteras rhombopteryx.
• Language Hat links to “The Poor Man of Nippur”, a short film by Cambridge academic Martin Worthington that may be the first film in the Babylonian language.
• The LRB Blog notes the conflict between West Bank settlers and Airbnb. Am I churlish to wish that neither side wins?
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper noting how quickly, after Poland regained its independence, human capital differences between the different parts of the once-divided country faded.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel takes a look at what it takes, in terms of element abundance and galactic structure, for life-bearing planets to form in the early universe, and when they can form.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes the lack of evidence for heat plumes around the Europan crater of Pwyll.
• Patrick Nunn at The Crux writes about the new evidence for the millennias-long records preserved remarkably well in oral history.
• D-Brief notes the discovery of a two-year cycle in gamma ray output in blazar PG 1553+113.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a proposal from French astronomer Antoine Labeyrie to create a low-cost hypertelescope in nearby space.
• Gizmodo interviews experts on the possibility of whether people who are now cryogenically frozen will be revived. (The consensus is not encouraging for current cryonicists.)
• JSTOR Daily notes how, looking back at old records, we can identify many veterans of the US Civil War suffering from the sorts of psychological issues we know now that military veterans suffer from.
• Language Hat notes the beauty of two stars’ Arabic names, Zubeneschamali and Zubenelgenubi, beta and alpha Librae.
• The LRB Blog takes a look at the encounters of Anthony Burgess with the Russian language.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution is surprised that Canada has allowed China to add deep-sea sensors to its deep-sea observatories in the Pacific, in a geopolitically-concerned American way.
• Tim Parks at the NYR Daily talks about the importance of translation, as a career that needs to be supported while also needing critiques.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at two shows on young people coming out, the web series It’s Complicated and the documentary Room to Grow.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that the evidence of the existence of a potential Planet Nine in our solar system is not necessarily that strong.
• Strange Maps shares a map of Europe in 1920, one oriented towards Americans, warning of famine across a broad swathe of the continent including in countries now no longer around.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, in multiethnic Dagestan, Russian has displaced other local languages as a language of interethnic communication.
• Arnold Zwicky announces the creation, at his blog via the sharing of a Liz Climo cartoon, of a new category at his blog relating to pandas.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes that far-orbiting body 2015 TC387 offers more indirect evidence for Planet Nine, as does D-Brief.
• Centauri Dreams notes that data from the Gaia astrometrics satellite finds traces of past collisions between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy.
• The Crux takes a look at the long history of human observation of the Crab Nebula.
• Sujata Gupta at JSTOR Daily writes about the struggle of modern agriculture with the pig, balancing off concerns for animal welfare with productivity.
• Language Hat shares a defensive of an apparently legendarily awful novel, Marguerite Young’s Miss Macintosh, My Darling.
• Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle, takes a look at the controversy over the name of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, going up to the recent referendum on North Macedonia.
• The LRB Blog reports on the high rate of fatal car accidents in the unrecognized republic of Abkhazia.
• Reddit’s mapporn shares an interesting effort to try to determine the boundaries between different regions of Europe, stacking maps from different sources on top of each other.
• Justin Petrone at North! writes about how the northern wilderness of Estonia sits uncomfortably with his Mediterranean Catholic background.
• Peter Watts reports from a book fair he recently attended in Lviv, in the west of Ukraine.
• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes the new effort being put in by NASA into the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports on some beer in a very obscure bar in Shanghai.
• Drew Rowsome reports on the performance artist Lukas Avendano, staging a performance in Toronto inspired by the Zapotech concept of the muxe gender.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps examines the ocean-centric Spielhaus map projection that has recently gone viral.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the question of whether or not the Big Rip could lead to another Big Bang.
• Window on Eurasia notes the harm that global warming will inflict on the infrastructures of northern Siberia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell considers the ecological fallacy in connection with electoral politics. Sometimes there really are not niches for new groups.
• Arnold Zwicky takes part in the #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob meme, this time looking at images of linguists.

[NEWS] Five space science links: Moon, Mars, Planet Nine, white dwarfs, black holes

• Quanta Magazine looks at the latest theories seeking to explain the origins of the Moon. (At the very least, the collision that did form the Moon may have ben much more violent than originally thought.)
• Mars may be smaller than Venus and Earth because, in the early solar system, much mass was directed away from its orbit by the gas and ice giants. Universe Today reports.
• Gizmodo notes the discovery of another Kuiper Belt object with a strange orbit pointing to the possibility of Planet Nine.
• The Gaia satellite has turned up evidence for nearly fourteen thousand white dwarfs within 100 parsecs of our sun, a huge increase in numbers. Universe Today reports.
• The work and the thinking that went into proving the idea of thousands of black holes in close orbit of Sagittarius A* at the heart of our galaxy is impressive. Universe Today reports.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Anthro{dendum} examines the politics and the problems involved with accurately representing the history of Taiwan to the world.
• Centauri Dreams notes a paper suggesting not only that it is possible for a pulsar to have a circumstellar habitable zone, but that the known worlds of PSR B1257+12 might well fall into this zone. (!) D-Brief also looks at the topic of pulsar planets and circumstellar habitable zones.
• The Crux reports on how some students are making the case that robotic cricket farming could help feed the world.
• Dangerous Minds shares some Carlo Farneti illustrations for an edition of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal.
• Cody Delistraty writes about the last days of a Paris store, Colette.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that an infrared search for Planet Nine, using WISE and NEOWISE, has turned up nothing.
• JSTOR Daily talks about how the spectre of “white slavery” was used a century ago, in the United States, to justify Progressive reformers.
• Language Hat reports on a former diplomat’s efforts to translate the traditional poetry of Najd, in central Saudi Arabia.
• Language Log takes a look at the ways in which zebra finches learn song, when raised in isolation and otherwise.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money argues in favour of putting up new monuments, to better people, in place of old Confederate memorials.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that the food desert effect is limited, that if poor people choose not to eat healthy foods this relates to their choice not to a lack of options for buying said.
• The Planetary Society Blog reports on China’s interest in a Mars sample return mission.
• Seriously Science reports a paper claiming straight women tend to prefer to get dating advice from gay men to getting it from other women.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel makes the point that, without much more funding for NASA, there is going to be no American return to the Moon.
• Window on Eurasia notes that Tatarstan will no longer be providing Tatar inserts for Russian passport users, a sign of Tatarstan’s drifting towards the Russian mainstream.