[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait observes that a team may have discovered the elusive neutron star produced by Supernova 1987A, hidden behind a cloud of dust.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber shares a photo he made via the time-consuming 19th century wet-plate collodion method.
• Drew Ex Machina’s Andrew LePage looks at the Apollo 12 visit to the Surveyor 3 site to, among other things, see what it might suggest about future space archeology.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the story of rural poverty facing a family in Waverly, Ohio, observing how it is a systemic issue.
• George Dvorsky at Gizmodo looks at how Mars’ Jezero crater seems to have had a past relatively friendly to life, good for the next NASA rover.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the latest ignorance displayed by Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter, this time regarding HIV.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Climategate was used to undermine popular opinion on climate change.
• Language Hat links to an article explaining why so many works of classical literature were lost, among other things not making it onto school curricula.
• Language Log shares a photo of a Muji eraser with an odd English label.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests Pete Buttigieg faces a campaign-limiting ceiling to his support among Democrats.
• The LRB Blog argues that Macron’s blocking of EU membership possibilities for the western Balkans is a terrible mistake.
• The Map Room Blog shares a map depicting regional variations in Canada towards anthropogenic climate change. Despite data issues, the overall trend of oil-producing regions being skeptical is clear.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining the slowing pace of labour mobility in the US, suggesting that home attachment is a key factor.
• Frederic Wehrey at the NYR Daily tells the story of Knud Holmboe, a Danish journalist who came to learn about the Arab world working against Italy in Libya.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why thermodynamics does not explain our perception of time.
• Understanding Society’s Dan Little looks at Electronic Health Records and how they can lead to medical mistakes.
• Whatever’s John Scalzi shares a remarkable photo of the night sky he took using the astrophotography mode on his Pixel 4 phone.
• Window on Eurasia shares an opinion that the Intermarium countries, between Germany and Russia, can no longer count on the US and need to organize in their self-defense.
• Arnold Zwicky shares a photo of his handsome late partner Jacques Transue, taken as a college student.

[AH] Five r/imaginarymaps #alternatehistory maps: Turks, Prussia, Prussia-Poland, Austria, Bavaria

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines the creation, via migration in the 13th century, of a Turkic Christian minority akin to the Gagauz concentrated in northwestern Germany. Nice map, if questionable borders.
• What would have happened if, as nearly occurred in 1762, Prussia was crushed by its neighbours and divided? r/imaginarymaps shows the outcome.
• Could there ever have emerged, after the partitions of Poland, a dual-nation kingdom of Prussia-Poland? r/imaginarymaps shows this country.
• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a southern Germany unified under Austria, separate from the sphere of Prussia in the north.
• Could a union of Bavaria with the German-speaking lands of Austria after 1919 have worked? r/imaginarymaps shows it.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait shares images of Jupiter, imaged in infrared by ALMA.
• Centauri Dreams looks at ocean upwelling on one class of super-habitable exoplanet.
• D-Brief looks at how the Komodo dragon survived the threat of extinction.
• Far Outliers reports on a mid-19th century slave raid in the Sahel.
• Gizmodo notes that the secret US Air Force spaceplane, the X-37B, has spent two years in orbit. (Doing what?)
• JSTOR Daily looks at the economic underpinnings of medieval convents.
• Dave Brockington writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the continuing meltdown of the British political system in the era of Brexit, perhaps even of British democracy.
• The LRB Blog looks at the impact of Brexit on the Common Travel Area.
• Marginal Revolution reports on how Poland has tried to deter emigration by removing income taxes on young workers.
• Carole Naggar writes at the NYR Daily about the photography of women photographers working for LIFE, sharing examples of their work.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why time has to be a dimension of the universe, alongside the three of space.
• Frank Jacobs of Strange Maps shares NASA images of the forest fires of Amazonia.
• Window on Eurasia notes that many Russophones of Ukraine are actually strongly opposed to Russia, contrary Russian stereotypes of language determining politics.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait reports on the fragility of asteroid Ryugu.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the JUICE probe, planned to explore the three icy moons of Jupiter.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber reports on the fact that Jimmy Carter was warned in the 1970s about the possibility of global warming.
• D-Brief notes that the Earth might not be the best world for life, that watery worlds with dense atmospheres and long days might be better.
• Jessica Poling at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the construction of gender.
• Far Outliers looks at the Nigerian city of Agadez, at one point a sort of port city of the Sahel.
• Gizmodo asks a variety of experts their opinion on which species is likely to be next in developing our sort of intelligence. (Primates come up frequently, though I like the suggestion of bacterial colonies.)
• JSTOR Daily looks/a> at the genderless Quaker prophet Publick Universal Friend.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money comments on the interview of Amy Wax with The New Yorker.
• Marginal Revolution shares the enthusiasm of Tyler Cowen for Warsaw and Poland.
• Peter Pomerantsev writes at the NYR Daily about how the alt-right has taken to culture-jamming.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the exceptional power of cosmic rays.
• Window on Eurasia shares the lament of a Chuvash writer about the decline of her people’s language.

[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.

[AH] Seven #alternatehistory r/imaginarymaps maps: Vinland, Mali, Korea, Poland, Balkans …

• This r/imaginarymaps map traces a slow diffusion of Christianity westwards from a Vinland colony.
• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a transatlantic empire based in Africa, with the late 15th century Mali Empire extending its rule to Brazil and elsewhere.
• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a Joseon Korea that becomes the seat of a transpacific empire.
• What if, this r/imaginarymaps map imagines, instead of turning east to Lithuania Poland turned west towards Czechia?
• What if, this r/imaginarymaps map imagines, the Balkans retained a substantially larger Muslim population?
• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a Greater Denmark, expanding east and south.
• Could Scotland ever have become, as this r/imaginarymaps map imagines, a maritime mercantile power?

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at the German city of Nordlingen, formed in a crater created by the impact of a binary asteroid with Earth.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the possibility that the farside of the Moon might bear the imprint of an ancient collision with a dwarf planet the size of Ceres.
• D-Brief notes that dredging for the expansion of the port of Miami has caused terrible damage to corals there.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the last appearances of David Bowie and Iggy Pop together on stage.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that China is on track to launch an ambitious robotic mission to Mars in 2020.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog talks about what sociological research actually is.
• Gizmodo reports on the discovery of a torus of cool gas circling Sagittarius A* at a distance of a hundredth of a light-year.
• io9 reports about Angola Janga, an independent graphic novel by Marcelo D’Salete showing how slaves from Africa in Brazil fought for their freedom and independence.
• The Island Review shares some poems of Matthew Landrum, inspired by the Faroe Islands.
• Joe. My. God. looks at how creationists are mocking flat-earthers for their lack of scientific knowledge.
• Language Hat looks at the observations of Mary Beard that full fluency in ancient Latin is rare even for experts, for reasons I think understandable.
• Melissa Byrnes wrote at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the meaning of 4 June 1989 in the political transitions of China and Poland.
• Marginal Revolution notes how the New York Times has become much more aware of cutting-edge social justice in recent years.
• The NYR Daily looks at how the memories and relics of the Sugar Land prison complex outside of Houston, Texas, are being preserved.
• Jason C Davis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the differences between LightSail 1 and the soon-to-be-launched LightSail 2.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer looks in detail at the high electricity prices in Argentina.
• Peter Rukavina looks at the problems with electric vehicle promotion on PEI.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at when the universe will have its first black dwarf. (Not in a while.)
• Window on Eurasia suggests that Belarusians are not as interested in becoming citizens of Russia as an Internet poll suggests.
• Arnold Zwicky highlights a Pride Month cartoon set in Antarctica featuring the same-sex marriage of two penguins.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Hobart, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Wroclaw

• La Presse considers some different strategies to keep rue Saint-Denis in Montréal a healthy thoroughfare and neighbourhood.
• Atlas Obscura explains how the upstate New York town of Hobart made itself as a home for a used book store cluster.
• Guardian Cities explains why anti-gentrirfication activists in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin are fighting to keep their local Aldi, to continue to have low-cost food locally.
• Window on Eurasia notes a poll of immigrant workers in St. Petersburg that finds most quite like their new home.
• CityLab looks at Polish architect Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak, whose brutalism played a key role in the reconstruction of the Poland city of Wroclaw from the ruins of old German Breslau.

[AH] Five alternate history maps from r/imaginarymaps (#alternatehistory)

Reddit’s imaginarymaps forum has a lot of great alternate history maps.

• This r/imaginarymaps map depicts a Dutch Formosa crica 1900.
• This creation imagines a joint German-Polish invasion of the Soviet Union.
• this map imagines a different Cold War, with a largely Communist Germany opposed by a Franco-British Union.
• This map of an alternate Cold War circa 1960 that actually made it into a history book as our timeline
• This map shows the remarkably fragmented Central America of Marvel Comics’s famous Earth-616.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Architectuul celebrates the life and achievements of furniture designer Florence Basset Knoll.
• Bad Astronomy notes the remarkably detailed 3d simulation of a solar flare.
• At Crooked Timber, John Holbo engages with Corey Robin’s article in The New Yorker on the question of why people moving politically from right to left are less prominent than counterparts moving from left to right.
• Far Outliers takes a look at the rise and the fall of the international silk trade of China, from Roman times to the 20th century.
• At The Frailest Thing, L.M. Sacasas writes about the importance of listening to observers at the “hinges”, at the moments when things are changing.
• Internet geographer Mark Graham links to a new chapters making the argument that cyberspace is not a novel new territory.
• Language Log takes a look at a possible change in the representation of vocal fry as demonstrated in Doonesbury.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the background to the possible 2020 presidential bid of ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
• Marginal Revolution’s Alex Tabarrok looks at a history of Aleppo that emphasizes the ancient city’s history of catastrophes.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw takes issue with an online map highlighting factory farmers created by pressure group Aussie Farms. How meaningful is it, for starters?
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the timetable of the introduction of syphillis to Poland-Lithuania in the 1490s.
• Window on Eurasia looks at Russian population prospects, noting the low fertility among the small cohort of women born in the 1990s.
• Arnold Zwicky starts by sharing beautiful paintings and photos of tulips, and ends with a meditation on Crimean Gothic.