[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Anthro{dendum} links to a roundup of anthropology-relevant posts and news items.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shows how the impending collision of galaxies NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 has created spectacular scenes of starbirth.
• Centauri Dreams notes the upcoming stream of new observatories and satellites that will enable better charting of exoplanets.
• Kieran Healy shares a cool infographic depicting the scope of the British baby boom.
• Hornet Stories shares the amazing video for the fantastic new song by Janelle Monáe, “Pynk.”
• JSTOR Daily notes what happens when you send Frog and Toad to a philosophy class.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money makes the obvious point that abandoning civil rights of minorities is a foolish strategy for American liberals.
• The LRB Blog shares a reflection on Winnie Mandela, and the forces she led and represents.
• The Map Room Blog links to detailed maps of the Rohingya refugee camps.
• Marginal Revolution takes issue with a proposal by Zeynep Tufekci for a thorough regulation of Facebook.
• The NYR Daily notes how Israel is making full use of the law to enable its colonization of the West Bank.
• The Planetary Society Blog’s Emily Lakdawalla reports from inside a NASA clean room where the new InSight Mars rover is being prepared.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer talks about what is really wrong with a Trump Organization letter to the president of Panama regarding a real estate development there.
• Strange Company looks at the life of 19th century fraudster and murdering John Birchall.

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[BLOG] Some Monday links

• ‘Nathan Burgoine at Apostrophen links to a giveaway of paranormal LGBT fiction.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares some stunning photos of Jupiter provided by Juno.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly looks at the desperate, multi-state strike of teachers in the United States. American education deserves to have its needs, and its practitioners’ needs, met.
• Centauri Dreams looks at PROCSIMA, a strategy for improving beamed propulsion techniques.
• Crooked Timber looks at the history of the concept of the uncanny valley. How did the concept get translated in the 1970s from Japan to the wider world?
• Dangerous Minds shares a 1980s BBC interview with William Burroughs.
• The Dragon’s Tales links to a paper tracing the origin of the Dravidian language family to a point in time 4500 years ago.
• JSTOR Daily notes Phyllis Wheatley, a freed slave who became the first African-American author in the 18th century but who died in poverty.
• Language Hat notes the exceptional importance of the Persian language in early modern South Asia.
• Language Log looks at the forms used by Chinese to express the concepts of NIMBY and NIMBYism.
• Language Hat notes the exceptional importance of the Persian language in early modern South Asia.
• The NYR Daily notes that, if the United States junks the nuclear deal with Iran, nothing external to Iran could realistically prevent the country’s nuclearization.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at the latest findings from the Jupiter system, from that planet’s planet-sized moons.
• Roads and Kingdoms notes that many Rohingya, driven from their homeland, have been forced to work as mules in the illegal drug trade.
• Starts With A Bang considers how early, based on elemental abundances, life could have arisen after the Big Bang. A date only 1 to 1.5 billion years after the formation of the universe is surprisingly early.
• Strange Maps’ Frank Jacobs notes how the centre of population of different tree populations in the United States has been shifting west as the climate has changed.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little takes a look at mechanisms and causal explanations.
• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative’s Frances Woolley takes a look at an ECON 1000 test from the 1950s. What biases, what gaps in knowledge, are revealed by it?

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Kambiz Kamrani at Anthropology.net notes new research suggesting that all modern Australian Aborigine languages descend from a single ancestor more than ten thousands years ago.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly considers the search for one’s spiritual home.
• Centauri Dreams notes the planned ESA ARIEL mission, intended to study exoplanet formation and atmospheres.
• Crooked Timber considers the prospects for the university in the United Kingdom, post-strike.
• D-Brief notes a study suggesting the worlds of TRAPPIST-1 might be too wet, too water-rich, to sustain life.
• Cody Delistraty shares an interview with Nancy Jo Sales on everything from childhood to Facebook.
• Dead Things notes the discovery of human footprints on the seafloor off of British Columbia, predating the Ice Age.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the possibility that ocean worlds in the “ice cap zone” could manage to support life
• Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the observations to date of near-Jovian analogue world Epsilon Indi Ab.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes ambitious plans by one private space development company to set up a functioning cislunar economy.
• Hornet Stories notes the upcoming re-release of Garbage’s second album, Version 2.0.
• In A State of Migration’s Lyman Stone takes a look at the regional origins of German immigrants to the US in the mid-19th century.
• Joe. My. God. notes that Grindr shares private user data with third parties that, among other things, would allow them to determine the HIV status of different individuals.
• JSTOR Daily notes the struggle for equal civil rights in Alaska, as indigenous people fought for equality.
• The NYR Daily reports on an interesting exhibit of post-Second World War modern art from Germany.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Kambiz Kamrani at Anthropology.net notes that the more Neanderthal DNA gets sequenced, the more we know of this population’s history.
• Anthro{dendum} takes a look at anthropologists who use their knowledge and their access to other cultures for purposes of espionage.
• Crooked Timber tackles the question of immigration from another angle: do states have the authority to control it, for starters?
• Dangerous Minds shares a fun video imagining Netflix as it might have existed in 1995.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog considers how the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico is an instance of American state failure.
• The Frailest Thing’s L.M. Sacasas considers is vows to abandon Facebook are akin to a modern-day vow of poverty.
• JSTOR Daily looks at Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and why it still matters.
• Language Log considers the naming practices of new elements like Nihonium.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that, based on the stagnation of average incomes in the US as GDP has growth, capitalism can be said to have failed.
• Lingua Franca considers the origin of the phrase “bad actor.”
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that the American opioid epidemic is not simply driven by economic factors.
• The NYR Daily considers how Poland’s new history laws do poor service to a very complicated past.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw has an interesting post examining the settlement of Australisa’s inland “Channel Country” by cattle stations, chains to allow herds to migrate following the weather.
• The Planetary Science Blog’s Emily Lakdawalla takes a look at the latest science on famously volcanic Io.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel examines how the Milky Way Galaxy is slowly consuming its neighbours, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Anthropology.net shares in the debunking of the Toba catastrophe theory.
• Architectuul features Mirena Dunu’s exploration of the architecture of the Black Sea coastal resorts of Romania, built under Communism.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the importance of sleep hygiene and of being well-rested.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the filaments of Orion, indicators of starbirth.
• Centauri Dreams notes how solar sails and the Falcon Heavy can be used to expedite the exploration of the solar system.
• D-Brief notes the discovery of debris marking the massive flood that most recently refilled the Mediterranean on the seafloor near Malta.
• Lucy Ferriss at Lingua Franca uses a recent sickbed experience in Paris to explore the genesis of Bemelmans’ Madeline.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money noted recently the 15th anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, trigger of a world-historical catastrophe.
• The LRB Blog hosts Sara Roy’s defense of UNRWA and of the definition of the Palestinians under its case as refugees.
• The NYR Daily notes how the regnant conservative government in Israel has been limiting funding to cultural creators who dissent from the nationalist line.
• Roads and Kingdoms uses seven food dishes to explore the history of Malta.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why, even though dark matter is likely present in our solar system, we have not detected signs of it.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society examines the field of machine learning, and notes the ways in which its basic epistemology might be flawed.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the dropping of the ethnonym “Mongol” from the title of the former Buryat-Mongol autonomous republic sixty years ago still makes some Buryats unhappy.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Anthropology.net’s Kambiz Kamrani notes evidence that environmental change in Kenya may have driven creativity in early human populations there.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shows how astronomers use stellar occultations to investigate the thin atmosphere of Neptune’s moon Triton.
• Centauri Dreams notes how melting ice creates landscape change on Ceres.
• D-Brief suggests that supervolcanoes do not pose such a huge risk to the survival of humanity, in the past or the future, as we thoughts.
• Dangerous Minds shares Paul Bowles’ recipe for a Moroccan love charm.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog investigates the transformation of shopping malls and in the era of Amazon Prime.
• At In Medias Res, Russell Arben Fox engages with Left Behind and that book’s portrayal of rural populations in the United States which feel left behind.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Roman Catholic nuns on the 19th century American frontier challenged gender norms.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money is critical of Tex-Mex cuisine, calling it an uncreative re-presentation of Mexican cuisine for white people in high-calorie quantities.
• The NYR Daily shared this thought-provoking article noting how Irish America, because of falling immigration from Ireland and growing liberalism on that island, is diverging from its ancestral homeland.
• Drew Rowsome reviews The Monument, a powerful play currently on in Toronto that engages with the missing and murdered native women.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes, in a photo-heavy post, how galaxies die (or at least, how they stop forming stars).
• Towleroad shares a delightful interview with Adam Rippon conducted over a plate of hot wings.
• Window on Eurasia shares an alternate history article imagining what would have become of Russia had Muscovy not conquered Novgorod.
• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative notes the very sharp rise in public debt held by the province of Ontario, something that accelerated in recent years.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell suggests, in the era of Cambridge Analytica and fake news, that many journalists seem not to take their profession seriously enough.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• At Anthrodendum, Elizabeth Marino takes issue with what she identifies as the naively and fiercely neoliberal elements of Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now.
• Anthropology.net’s Kambiz Kamrani takes a look at an innovative study of the Surinamese creole of Sranan Tongo that uncovers that language’s linguistic origins in remarkably fine detail.
• Architectuul examines the architecture of Communist-era Hungarian architect István Szábo
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the nearly naked black hole at the heart of galaxy ZwCl 8193, 2.2 billion light-years away.
• The Big Picture shares photos from the 2018 Paralympics in South Korea.
• Gerry Canavan has an interesting critical take on Star Trek: Discovery. Is it really doing new things, or is its newness just superficial?
• Centauri Dreams considers the impact the spectra of red dwarfs would have on biosignatures from their worlds.
• Russell Darnley takes a look at Australia’s Darling River, a critical watercourse threatened by extensive water withdrawals.
• Inkfish notes that patterns of wear on the tusks of elephants indicate most are right-handed.
• Joe. My. God. links to a study suggesting a relationship between Trump rallies and violent assaults.
• JSTOR Daily links to a paper examining why people drink Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day.
• Language Hat takes a look at the use of Xhosa as the language of Wakanda.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money mourns Alfred Crosby, the historian whose work examined the epidemiological and ecological changes wrought by contact with the Americas.
• The Map Room Blog links to a map showing indigenous placenames in Canada.
• In the aftermath of the death of Stephen Hawking, Out There had a lovely idea: what nearby major stars emitted life than arrive at the moment of his birth? Hawking’s star is Regulus, and mine was (nearly) Arcturus.
• Marginal Revolution suggests AI will never be able to centrally plan an economy because the complexity of the economy will always escape it.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel examines Stephen Hawking’s contribution to the study of black holes.
• Supernova Condensate shares a list of moons, fictional and otherwise, from Endor on down.