[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomy notes the new X-ray telescope eROSITA.
• Centauri Dreams notes evidence of a recent collision between planets in the system of BD +20 307.
• D-Brief notes the appearance of a strange new sort of storm on Saturn.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the discovery by astronomers of a set of orbits that can direct comets into the inner solar system.
• Drew Ex Machina’s Andrew LePage shares some vintage Skylab photos of his native Massachusetts.
• Far Outliers notes how, in 1786, the United states was uninclined to pay tribute to the Barbary States.
• Gizmodo’s George Dvorsky reports on a new fossil discovery showing how quickly mammals took over after the Cretaceous.
• The Island Review shares an essay by photographer Alex Boyd about his new book Isles of Rust, drawing from Lewis & Harris.
• JSTOR Daily looks at sustainable butchery.
• Language Hat notes that Sumerian cuneiform is now in Unicode.
• Victor Mair at Language Log notes how the Indo-Iranian “don” so commonly forms part of the hydronyms for major European rivers.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money calls for an in-depth investigation of Donald Trump, not necessarily an impeachment.
• The LRB Blog examines the background of the mass protests in Santiago and wider Chile.
• The Map Room Blog shares an illuminating cartogram depicting the #elxn43 results in Canada.
• Marginal Revolution looks at how the government of China has been using the NBA to buy social peace.
• The NYR Daily interviews Naomi Oreskes about her campaign to have the science behind global warming, and the actions of the scientists involved, understood.
• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper concluding that traditional gender specializations in British families no longer provide a reproductive advantage.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the speed of gravity must equal the speed of light, if general relativity is to work.
• Window on Eurasia examines the rapid and uncontrolled growth of urban populations in Kazakhstan.

[NEWS] Five language links: Cantonese, Arabic, Gaelic, French, Sumerian

• The Cantonese language, the SCMP reports, is falling out of use among young people in Guangzhou.
• The Muslim Hui, living outside of Xinjiang, are being pressured to shut down Arabic-medium schools. The SCMP reports.
• The Scottish government has received only two complaints about Gaelic on bilingual road signs in the past seventeen years. The National reports.
• HuffPost Québec notes that the French language has been displaced as the chief language of wine by English.
• Advanced artificial intelligence has the potential to aid in the translation of ancient languages like Sumerian, with stockpiles of untranslated material just waiting for an eye’s attention. The BBC explains.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at stellar nursery NGC 604 in the Triangulum Galaxy.
• Centauri Dreams considers what the rings of Saturn indicate about the inner structure, and formation, of Saturn.
• The Crux looks at the exciting steam-based robot WINE, capable of travelling between asteroids and hopping around larger worlds like Ceres and Europa with steam.
• D-Brief looks at how the colours of the ocean will change over time, some parts becoming bluer and others greener as phytoplankton populations change.
• Gizmodo deals critically with the idea that “permatripping” on LSD is possible. At most, the drug might expose underlying issues.
• Imageo notes that, even with the polar vortex, cold snaps in North America under global warming have been becoming less cold over time.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Cutex, in the early 1910s, created a new market for manicures.
• Language Hat mourns linguist, and fluent speaker of Sumerian, Miguel Civil.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how there is not a centre in American politics to be exploited by the likes of Howard Schultz, that if anything there is an unrepresented left.
• Marginal Revolution shares a commenter’s argument–misguided, I think–that a wealth tax would represent a violation of privacy rights.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog notes that the InSight probe on Mars has placed the Wind and Thermal Shield above its seismometer.
• At Une heure de peine …, Denis Colombi takes issue with the use of statistics without a deeper understanding as to what they represent.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that, while a report that Belarus is investigating the possibility of autocephaly for its national church on the Ukrainian model is likely fake news, it may reflect underlying trends.
• Arnold Zwicky points readers towards the enjoyable music of Americana/folk duo Mandolin Orange.