[BLOG] Five Starts With A Bang links (@startswithabang)

• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the question of Betelgeuse going supernova, here.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers how black holes might, or might not, spit matter back out, here.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes a report suggesting the local excess of positrons is product not of dark matter but of nearby pulsar Geminga, here.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel lists some of the most distant astronomical objects so far charted in our universe, here.
• The question of whether or not a god did create the universe, Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang suggests, remains open.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at the extreme millisecond pulsar IGR J17062−6143.
• Centauri Dreams looks at a proposal to intercept objects of extrasolar origin like ‘Oumuamua.
• The Crux looks at how researchers are discovering traces of lost hominid populations in the DNA of contemporary humans.
• D-Brief notes a crowdsourcing of a search for intermediate-mass black holes.
• Gizmodo notes the impending production of a new working Commodore 64 clone.
• The Island Review notes people of the Norway island of Sommarøy wish to make their island, home to the midnight sun, a #TimeFreeZone.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the art that has been produced in the era of digital addiction.
• Language Log looks at how, in Iran, the word “Eastoxification” has entered into usage alongside the older “Westoxification.”
• Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money looks at the many likely failings of a Corbyn foreign policy for the United Kingdom.
• The LRB Blog notes that opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu has been re-elected as mayor of Istanbul.
• The Map Room Blog links to various maps of the Moon.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper looking at markets in Lagos, suggesting they are self-regulating to some degree.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains when the earliest sunrise and latest sunset of the year is, and why.
• Towleroad shares an interview with Jack Baker and Mike McConnell, a same-sex couple married for nearly a half-century.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the open approach of the Russian Federation to Russian diasporids is not extended to diasporas of its minority groups, particularly to Muslim ones like Circassians and Tatars.
• Arnold Zwicky considers some Pride fashion, with and without rainbows.

[NEWS] Five D-Brief links: brains and marrow, dinosaurs, PSR J0002+6216, Teacup Galaxy, Anatolia

• D-Brief notes a theory that human brains grew so large fueled by a diet of bone marrow.
• Alligators provide scientists with invaluable models of how dinosaurs heard sound. D-Brief reports.
• D-Brief examines pulsar PSR J0002+6216, a body ejected from its prior orbit so violently by its formative supernova that it is now escaping the Milky Way Galaxy.
• D-Brief notes the remarkable glow emanating from the quasar in the Teacup Galaxy 1.1 billion light-years away.
• D-Brief notes genetic evidence suggesting that Anatolian hunter-gatherers, far from being replaced by migrants, adopted agriculture on their own.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about eight of her favourite places, most but not all still around for others to enjoy.
• Centauri Dreams responds to the vast ancient proto-supercluster Hyperion, dating to a point in time just 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang.
• The Crux considers the advent of light in the very early universe, with the emergence of the first supermassive stars just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
• D-Brief notes the discovery of the youngest pulsar yet found in our galaxy, Kes 75 just 19 thousand light-years away and five hundred years old.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the history of explorer James Cook’s ship, the HMS Endeavour.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution links to his latest Bloomberg View column about Saudi Arabia, about how the very weakness of the Saudi state makes Saudi Arabia appeal to the United States as a partner in a way that a solider Iran cannot.
• Matthew Phelan at the NYR Daily writes about the menace of ecofascism, of a sort of localist environmentalism that crosses over into nationalism and even militant xenophobia.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares images of the newly-launched BepiColombo probe to Mercury, including some selfies.
• Drew Rowsome reports on A Night at the Bronze, a live version of the fame Buffy episode “Once More With Feeling” that will be staged Hallowe’en night at Buddies in Bad Times.
• Strange Company reports on the mysterious 1910 murder of actor Weldon Atherstone.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Moldova’s Orthodox Christians are torn between rival national churches based in Romania and Russia.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

Anand Pandian at anthro{dendum} considers Ursula K Le Guin from the perspective of an anthropology doing fieldwork in cultures very different from their own.

Anthropology.net notes the discovery, in India, of Levallois stone tools dating 385 thousand years, long before the entry of Homo sapiens into the area.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares video, assembled by an amateur astronomer, of the ongoing expansion of debris around the Crab Pulsar.

Centauri Dreams reports on the discovery of organic molecules in the Magellanic Clouds.

D-Brief describes the orca Wikie, who learned six words, while Language Log is skeptical of the idea that Wikie’s ability demonstrates anything about the orca capacity for language.

Cody Delistraty links</a. to an essay of his considering the extent to which we can separate the works of artists from the artists themselves.

Drew Ex Machina describes the politics and technology that went into the launch of Explorer 1, the United States’ first satellite.

JSTOR Daily examines the question of why children and teens in the United States convicted of crimes can face such long periods of imprisonment in jail.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that, sometimes, dialogue is not enough to reach one’s opponents.

The LRB Blog considers the apocalyptic imagery tied up in the flooding of the Seine, in Paris.

The Planetary Society Blog celebrates the 14 years of operation of the Mars rover Opportunity, and the science that has come from it.

At Speed River Journal, Van Waffle celebrates the many things that we can learn from trees.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly talks about her love for New York’s famous, dynamic, Hudson River.
• Centauri Dreams notes the amazing potential for pulsar navigation to provide almost absolutely reliable guidance across the space of at least a galaxy.
• Far Outliers notes the massive scale of German losses in France after the Normandy invasion.
• Hornet Stories looks at the latest on theories as to the origin of homosexuality.
• Joe. My. God remembers Dr. Mathilde Krim, dead this week at 91, one of the early medical heroes of HIV/AIDS in New York City.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at what, exactly, is K-POP.
• Language Log notes that, in Xinjiang, the Chinese government has opted to repress education in the Mongolian language.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that the risk of war in Korea is less than the media suggests.
• At Chronicle’s Lingua Franca, Ben Yagoda looks at redundancy in writing styles.
• The NYR Daily looks at the complex relationship of French publishing house Gallimard to Céline and his Naziphile anti-Semitism.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at the latest images of Venus from Japan’s Akatsuki probe.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes the apparent willingness of Trump to use a wall with Mexico–tariffs, particularly–to pay for the wall.
• Spacing reviews a new book examining destination architecture.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers what I think is a plausible concept: Could be that there are plenty of aliens out there and we are just missing them?
• At Strange Maps, Frank Jacobs shares a map of “Tabarnia”, the region of Catalonia around Barcelona that is skeptical of Catalonian separatism and is being positioned half-seriously as another secessionist entity.
• Window on Eurasia notes that an actively used language is hardly the only mechanism by which a separatist identity can exist.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers the real possibility that extrasolar visitor ‘Oumuamua may have been ejected from the system of a dying star.
• Centauri Dreams notes new efforts to determine brown dwarf demographics.
• Crooked Timber shares some research on the rise and fall of Keynesianism after the financial crisis.
• Hornet Stories shares a decidedly NSFW article about gay sex in Berlin.
• JSTOR Daily notes the surprisingly high frequency of interspecies sex in the wild.
• Language Hat notes new efforts to promote the status of the Luxembourgish language in the grand duchy.
• The LRB Blog notes how a chess tournament hosted in Saudi Arabia has failed badly from the PR perspective.
• What role does the novelist have in a world where the television serial is moving in on the territory of literature? The NYR Daily considers.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw reflects on John Lyons’ book Balcony over Jerusalem, the controversy over the book, and the Middle East generally.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes the ominous import of the decent drone attack in Syria against Russian forces.
• Drew Rowsome praises the 2016 play Mustard, currently playing again at the Tarragon, as a modern-day classic.
• Spacing features a review of a fantastic-sounding book about the architecture of Las Vegas.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the impact of the very rapid rotation of pulsars about their very shape.

[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.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Anthropology.net notes that interbreeding with Neanderthals restored ancient hominin DNA to homo sapiens.
• Centauri Dreams looks at signs of planetary formation in cometary rings.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a theory that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations could manipulate pulsars as beacons.
• Hornet Stories explains what “intersex” means.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the perhaps baffling appeal of Florida real estate at a time of climate change.
• The LRB Blog considers the radical potential of asteroid mining. Could it help free us from resource scarcity? How should we manage it?
• Marginal Revolution shares an argument that humans, through transporting life, are increasing biodiversity.
• The NYR Daily argues that China has too many illusions over its “New Silk Road” initiatives.
• Peter Rukavina examines the changing shades of green used by GO Transit.
• Drew Rowsome really likes Toronto musical Bat Out of Hell.
• Window on Eurasia looks at how different non-Russian languages are present on the streets of St. Petersburg.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• The anthropology group blog Savage Minds now has a new name, Anthrodendum.
• Anthropology.net reports on the first major study of ancient African human DNA. New history is revealed.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on how gravitational lensing led to the identification of a single star nine billion light-years away. (This is a record.)
• Centauri Dreams reports the possible detection of a debris disk around pulsar Geminga, augury of future planets perhaps?
• Dangerous Minds reports on Seoul’s Haesindang Park, a park literally full of penises–phallic symbols, at least.
• The Dragon’s Gaze notes one analysis arguing for the plausibility of unmanned probes using imaginable technology reaching the ten nearest stars in a century.
• Imageo shares photos from space of the southern California wildfires.
• Language Hat shares some stirring poetry in Scots.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the scale of child labour in North Carolina’s farm sector.
• Marginal Revolution thinks that American observers of Putin think, far too much, that he actually has a plan. The degree of chaos in Russia’s affairs is apparently being underestimated.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw notes the unsettling rural Americana of photographer Gregory Crewdson.
• Window on Eurasia notes Zhirinovsky’s plan for a sweeping Russian annexation of Ukraine, leaving only the northwest independent.