[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Architectuul looks back at some highlights from 2019.
• Bad Astronomy looks at the gas cloud, red and green, of RCW 120.
• Crooked Timber looks at the dynamics of identity politics, here.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a NASA statement about the importance of understanding dust dynamics in other solar systems to find Earth analogues.
• Far Outliers looks at the problems pacifying the Chesapeake Bay area in 1813, here.
• Gizmodo looks at the most popular Wikipedia articles for the year 2019.
• io9 shares a video of images from a 1995 Akira cyberpunk computer game that never got finished.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the United States tried to “civilize” the Inupiat of Alaska by giving them reindeer herds.
• Language Hat links to an online atlas of Scots dialects.
• Language Log reports on a 12th century Sanskrit inscription that testifies to the presence of Muslims in Bengal at that point.
• Marginal Revolution notes how much Tuvalu depends on revenue from its .tv Internet domain.
• Drew Rowsome looks at the Duncan Ralston horror novel Salvage, set in small-town Canada.
• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at the strong relationship between wealth and life expectancy in France.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that, in a hypothetical supernova, all life on an Earth-like planet would be boiled alive by neutrinos.
• Strange Maps links to a graphic interface that translates a word into all the languages of Europe.
• Understanding Society looks at the structures of high-reliability organizations.
• Window on Eurasia shares a suggestion that Homer Simpson is actually the US’ version of Russia’s Ivan the Fool.

[FORUM] Which failed predictions stand out most in your mind?

Gerry Canavan reminded me most unexpectedly of the classic March 1995 episode of The Simpsons, “Lisa’s Wedding”, which explored Lisa’s wedding on the far-off date of … Sunday, the 1st of August, 2010.

The title of Canavan’s post is “We Are Become Old.”

The above doesn’t count as a serious prediction, but it’s common knowledge that futurologists and ordinary people interested in what the future may bring have made highly specific predictions about future events which almost invariably turned out wrong, often hilariously or thankfully wrong. There hasn’t been a Third World War, for instance, we don’t have lunar resort colonies, and we haven’t run out of food as per the Ehrlichs.

What failed predictions stick out in your mind?

[REVIEW] The Simpsons Movie

Released in 2007, The Simpsons Movie wasn’t as spectacular a movie effort as it might have been had a decade and a half ago. I’m inclined to agree with Jerry–a much bigger fan of The Simpsons than me–in his feeling that the movie wasn’t a movie so much as it was the equivalent of four episodes strung together. Perhaps lagom might be the right word to describe it. That said, even when the The Simpsons are lagom, the show is better than most of what’s on television, and Jerry and I would have to agree with–say–Jaquandor at Byzantium’s Shores that it’s great fun.