[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] Some Friday links

(A day late, I know; I crashed after work yesterday.)

• Antipope’s Charlie Stross has a thought experiment: If you were superwealthy and guaranteed to live a long health life, how would you try to deal with the consequence of economic inequality?
• Vikas Charma at Architectuul takes a look at the different factors that go into height in buildings.
• Bad Astronomy notes S5-HVS1, a star flung out of the Milky Way Galaxy by Sagittarius A* at 1755 kilometres per second.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly shares photos from two Manhattan walks of hers, taken in non-famous areas.
• Centauri Dreams looks at habitability for red dwarf exoplanets. Stellar activity matters.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber shares words from a manifesto about data protection in the EU.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos from Los Angeles punks and mods and others in the 1980s.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a ESA report suggesting crew hibernation could make trips to Mars easier.
• Gizmodo notes that the Hayabusa2 probe of Japan is returning from asteroid Ryugu with a sample.
• Imageo shares photos of the disastrous fires in Australia from space.
• Information is Beautiful reports on winners of the Information is Beautiful Awards for 2019, for good infographics.
• JSTOR Daily explains how local television stations made the ironic viewing of bad movies a thing.
• Kotaku reports on the last days of Kawasaki Warehouse, an arcade in Japan patterned on the demolished Walled City of Kowloon.
• Language Hat notes how translation mistakes led to the star Beta Cygni gaining the Arabic name Albireo.
• Language Log reports on a unique Cantonese name of a restaurant in Hong Kong.
• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to an analysis of his suggesting the military of India is increasingly hard-pressed to counterbalance China.
• The LRB Blog notes the catastrophe of Venice.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting states would do well not to place their capitals too far away from major population centres.
• Justin Petrone at North! remarks on a set of old apple preserves.
• The NYR Daily looks at how the west and the east of the European Union are divided by different conceptions of national identity.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reports from his town of Armidale as the smoke from the Australian wildfires surrounds all. The photos are shocking.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog lists some books about space suitable for children.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the Canadian film music Stand!, inspired by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting that, in Switzerland, parenthood does not make people happy.
• The Signal notes that 1.7 million phone book pages have been scanned into the records of the Library of Congress.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains the concept of multi-messenger astronomy and why it points the way forward for studies of astrophysics.
• Strange Maps looks at how a majority of students in the United States attend diverse schools, and where.
• Strange Company explores the mysterious death of Marc-Antoine Calas, whose death triggered the persecution of Huguenots and resulted in the mobilization of Enlightenment figures like Voltaire against the state. What happened?
• Towleroad hosts a critical, perhaps disappointed, review of the major gay play The Inheritance.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at the power of individual people in political hierarchies.
• Window on Eurasia shares an opinion piece noting how many threats to the Russian language have come from its association with unpopular actions by Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky explores queens as various as Elizabeth I and Adore Delano.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer notes the latest news on interstellar comet 2/Borisov.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly emphasizes how every writer does need an editor.
• Centauri Dreams notes how the gas giant GJ 3512 b, half the mass of Jupiter orbiting a red dwarf star closely, is an oddly massive exoplanet.
• Gina Schouten at Crooked Timber looks at inter-generational clashes on parenting styles.
• D-Brief looks at the methods of agriculture that could conceivably sustain a populous human colony on Mars.
• Bruce Dorminey argues that we on Earth need something like Starfleet Academy, to help us advance into space.
• Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how the socio-spatial perspective helps us understand the development of cities.
• Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res listens to the Paul McCartney album Flaming Pie.
• io9 looks at Proxima, a contemporary spaceflight film starring Eva Green.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the intense relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia began in, and reflected, the era of Jim Crow.
• Language Hat notes a report suggesting that multilingualism helps ward off dementia.
• Language Log takes issue with the names of the mascots of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the emergence of a ninth woman complaining about being harassed by Al Franken.
• Marginal Revolution links to a new paper arguing that the Washington Consensus worked.
• The NYR Daily shares an Aubrey Nolan cartoon illustrating the evacuation of war children in the United Kingdom during the Second World War.
• At Out of Ambit, Diane Duane shares a nice collection of links for digital mapmakers.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at how the European Space Agency supports the cause of planetary defense.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Kenyan writer Kevin Mwachiro at length.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on how a mysterious fast radio burst helped illuminate an equally mysterious galactic halo.
• Strange Company reports on the mysterious and unsolved death in 1936 of Canadian student Thomas Moss in an Oxfordshire hayrick.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps notes how Mount Etna is a surpassingly rare decipoint.
• Understanding Society considers the thought of Kojève, after Hegel, on freedom.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the falling numbers of Russians, and of state support for Russian language and culture, in independent Central Asia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how individual consumer responses are much less effective than concerted collective action in triggering change.
• Arnold Zwicky reports on some transgender fashion models.

[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 Thursday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at Abell 30, a star that has been reborn in the long process of dying.
• Centauri Dreams uses the impending launch of LightSail 2 to discuss solar sails in science fiction.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber, as part of a series of the fragility of globalization, considers if migration flows can be reversed. (He concludes it unlikely.)
• The Crux considers if the record rain in the Midwest (Ontario, too, I would add) is a consequence of climate change.
• D-Brief notes that the failure of people around the world to eat enough fruits and vegetables may be responsible for millions of premature dead.
• Dangerous Minds introduces readers to gender-bending Italian music superstar Renato Zero.
• Dead Things notes how genetic examinations have revealed the antiquity of many grapevines still used for wine.
• Gizmodo notes that the ocean beneath the icy crust of Europa may contain simple salt.
• io9 tries to determine the nature of the many twisted timelines of the X-Men movie universe of Fox.
• JSTOR Daily observes that the Stonewall Riots were hardly the beginning of the gay rights movement in the US.
• Language Log looks at the mixed scripts on a bookstore sign in Beijing.
• Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money argues that Jeremy Corbyn has a very strong hold on his loyal followers, perhaps even to the point of irrationality.
• Marginal Revolution observes that people who create public genetic profiles for themselves also undo privacy for their entire biological family.
• Sean Marshall at Marshall’s Musings shares a photo of a very high-numbered street address, 986039 Oxford-Perth Road in Punkeydoodle’s Corners.
• The NYR Daily examines the origins of the wealth of Lehman Brothers in the exploitation of slavery.
• The Planetary Society Blog shares a panorama-style photo of the Apollo 11 Little West Crater on the Moon.
• Drew Rowsome notes that classic documentary Paris Is Burning has gotten a makeover and is now playing at TIFF.
• Peter Rukavina, writing from a trip to Halifax, notes the convenience of the Eduroam procedures allowing users of one Maritime university computer network to log onto another member university’s network.
• Dylan Reid at Spacing considers how municipal self-government might be best embedded in the constitution of Canada.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle pays tribute to the wildflower Speedwell, a name he remembers from Watership Down.
• Strange Maps shares a crowdsourced map depicting which areas of Europe are best (and worst) for hitchhikers.
• Window on Eurasia notes the distribution of native speakers of Russian, with Israel emerging as more Russophone than some post-Soviet states.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul profiles the construction of the Modern Berlin Temple built to a design by Mies van der Rohe in 1968.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the beauty of galaxy M61.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that Mars sustained rivers on its surface at a surprising late date.
• Gizmodo notes a theory that the oddly shaped ring moons of Saturn might be product of a collision.
• Hornet Stories suggests/u> that recent raids on gay bars in New Orleans might be driven by internecine politics within the LGBTQ community.
• Joe. My. God. notes that a court in the Cayman Islands has recently legalized same-sex marriage there.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the origins of the Chipko activists of 1960s and 1970s India, whose tree-hugging helped save forests there.
• Language Log notes the story of Beau Jessep, who got rich off of a business creating English names for Chinese children.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money, looking at the introduction of public healthcare in Saskatchewan and wider Canada, notes the great institutional differences that do not make that a close model for public healthcare in the US now.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining the close relationship over time between population growth and economic and technological change.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews documentary filmmaker Nadir Bouhmouch about a Amazigh community’s resistance to an intrusive mine on their territory.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes, correctly, that one reason why Ukrainians are more prone to emigration to Europe and points beyond than Russians is that Ukraine has long been included, in whole or in part, in European states.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that we still do not know why antimatter does not dominate in our universe.
• Understanding Society features a guest post from Indian sociologist V.K. Ramachandran talking about two visits four decades apart to one of his subjects.
• Vintage Space makes a compelling case for people not to be afraid of nuclear rockets in space, like the vintage never-deployed NERVA.
• Window on Eurasia takes issue with the bilingual radio programs aired in Russian republics, which subtly undermine local non-Russian languages.
• Arnold Zwicky starts with lilacs, which include hybrids tolerant of the California climate, and goes on to explore lavender in all of its glories, queer and otherwise.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Centauri Dreams considers what would be needed, and what would be the use, of a SETI search of Earth’s co-orbitals.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber considers the idea of nature potentially having legal rights in the context of corporations, likewise, actually having such.
• D-Brief reports that the Mars 2020 probe will bring with it a mini-probe built around a helicopter.
• io9 notes that writer Jonathan Hickman will be coming back to Marvel to write two new X-Men books this summer.
• Joe. My. God. notes that a Trump supporter recently arrested for a Mafia slaying had earlier tried to conduct citizen’s arrests of prominent Democrats.
• Language Hat takes a look at obscenities in Russian that do not quite make it over to English.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reacts to the massive anti-Brexit protests in the United Kingdom this past weekend.
• Marginal Revolution discusses just how bad a Brexit is likely to be, or not.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why LIGO and like instruments have not detected gravitational wave sources within our galaxy. (Briefly, they aren’t good enough yet to pick up faint sources.)
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that not much new has come from the release of the Mueller investigation summary.
• Arnold Zwicky builds from a report of a new LGBTQ consumer advocate from Florida, Nik Harris.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes new evidence that the Pathfinder probe landed, on Mars, on the shores of an ancient sea.
• The Crux reports on tholins, the organic chemicals that are possible predecessors to life, now found in abundance throughout the outer Solar System.
• D-Brief reports on the hard work that has demonstrated some meteorites which recently fell in Turkey trace their origins to Vesta.
• Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog explores sociologist Eric Klinenberg’s concept of social infrastructure, the public spaces we use.
• Far Outliers reports on a Honolulu bus announcement in Yapese, a Micronesian language spoken by immigrants in Hawai’i.
• JSTOR Daily considers the import of the autobiography of Catherine the Great.
• Language Hat reports, with skepticism, on the idea of “f” and “v” as sounds being products of the post-Neolithic technological revolution.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen is critical of the idea of limiting the number of children one has in a time of climate change.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reflects on death, close at hand and in New Zealand.
• Strange Company reports on the mysterious disappearance, somewhere in Anatolia, of American cyclist Frank Lenz in 1892, and its wider consequences.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel identifies five types of cosmic events capable of triggering mass extinctions on Earth.
• Towleroad reports on the frustration of many J.K. Rowling fans with the author’s continuing identification of queer histories for characters that are never made explicit in books or movies.
• Window on Eurasia has a skeptical report about a Russian government plan to recruit Russophones in neighbouring countries as immigrants.
• Arnold Zwicky explores themes of shipwrecks and of being shipwrecked.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at planetary nebulas, beautiful byproducts of the ends of stars.
• Centauri Dreams shares an essay by Mark Millis looking at how NASA evaluates proposed new propulsion methods.
• Bruce Dorminey takes a look at some interesting facts about the development of the Boeing 747.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing considers the ways in which deepfakes, allowing for alternate personalities online, evoke the Bunburying of Oscar Wilde.
• Gizmodo notes that neutron star collisions might well reveal mysterious quark matter, if only they occurred within sight of us.
• JSTOR Daily considers the sensuous nature of the Jane Austen novel Persuasion.
• Language Log considers a potential case for Sinitic origins in the Balto-Slavic word for “iron”.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the weakness of the centre as a major pull for American voters.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper concluding that Chinese workers are not being exploited by the manufacturing companies that may employ them.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers how the curvature of space-time under gravity can be measured.
• Window on Eurasia considers two Kazakhstan observers who argue the country should switch from Kazakh-Russian bilingualism to Kazakh-English bilingualism.
• Arnold Zwicky considers, after the Gay & Lesbian Review, the representation of different communities in the LGBT+ acronym, the utility of simple symbols, like “&” or “+”.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a lovely photo of the Earth peeking out from behind the far side of the Moon.
• At the Broadside Blog, Caitlin Kelly shares lovely photos of delicate ice and water taken on a winter’s walk.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the study by Chinese astronomers who, looking at the distribution of Cepheids, figured out that our galaxy’s disk is an S-shaped warp.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that melting of the Greenland ice sheet will disrupt the Gulf Stream.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing takes issue with the uncritical idealization of the present, as opposed to the critical examination of whatever time period we are engaging with.
• Gizmodo notes that an intensive series of brain scans is coming closer to highlighting the areas of the human brain responsible for consciousness.
• Mark Graham links to new work of his, done in collaboration, looking at ways to make the sharing economy work more fairly in low- and middle-income countries.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the mystic Catholicism of the African kingdom of Kongo may have gone on to inspire slave-led revolutions in 18th century North America and Haiti.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at an exhibition examining the ambitious architecture of Yugoslavia.
• The Map Room Blog links to a cartographer’s argument about the continuing importance of paper maps.
• Marginal Revolution shares one commenter’s perception of causes or the real estate boom in New Zealand.
• Neuroskeptic considers the role of the mysterious silent neurons in the human brain.
• At NYR Daily, Guadeloupe writer Maryse Condé talks about her career as a writer and the challenges of identity for her native island.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of ten dishes reflecting the history of the city of Lisbon.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel takes a look at the promise of likely mini-Neptune Barnard’s Star b as a target for observation, perhaps even life.
• Window on Eurasia shares the perfectly plausible argument that, just as the shift of the Irish to the English language did not end Irish identity and nationalism, so might a shift to Russian among Tatars not end Tatar identity.