[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Architectuul looks at the history of brutalism in late 20th century Turkey.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the evidence for the Milky Way Galaxy having seen a great period of starburst two billion years ago, and notes how crowded the Milky Way Galaxy is in the direction of Sagittarius.
• Centauri Dreams considers if astrometry might start to become useful as a method for detecting planets, and considers what the New Horizons data, to Pluto and to Ultima Thule, will be known for.
• Belle Waring at Crooked Timber considers if talk of forgiveness is, among other things, sound.
• D-Brief considers the possibility that the differing natures of the faces of the Moon can be explained by an ancient dwarf planet impact, and shares images of dust-ringed galaxy NGC 4485.
• Dead Things notes the discovery of fossil fungi one billion years old in Nunavut.
• Far Outliers looks at how, over 1990, Russia became increasingly independent from the Soviet Union, and looks at the final day in office of Gorbachev.
• Gizmodo notes the discovery of literally frozen oceans of water beneath the north polar region of Mars, and looks at an unusual supernova, J005311 ten thousand light-years away in Cassiopeia, product of a collision between two white dwarfs.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the colour of navy blue is a direct consequence of slavery and militarism, and observes the historical influence, or lack thereof, of Chinese peasant agriculture on organic farming in the US.
• Language Log considers a Chinese-language text from San Francisco combining elements of Mandarin and Cantonese.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the terrible environmental consequences of the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia, and Shakezula at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at how, and perhaps why, Sam Harris identifies milkshake-throwing at far-right people as a form of “mock assassination”.
• The Map Room Blog shares a personal take on mapmaking on the Moon during the Apollo era.
• Marginal Revolution observes a paper suggesting members of the Chinese communist party are more liberal than the general Chinese population. The blog also notes how Soviet quotas led to a senseless and useless mass slaughter of whales.
• Russell Darnley writes about the complex and tense relationship between Indonesia and Australia, each with their own preoccupations.
• Martin Filler writes at the NYR Daily about I.M. Pei as an architect specializing in an “establishment modernism”. The site also takes a look at Orientalism, as a phenomenon, as it exists in the post-9/11 era.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw reflects on the meaning of Australia’s New England.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes how Hayabusa 2 is having problems recovering a marker from asteroid Ryugu.
• Peter Rukavina reports on an outstanding Jane Siberry concert on the Island.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map of homophobia in Europe.
• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress makes use of wikidata.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle reports, with photos, from his latest walks this spring.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers what the Earth looked like when hominids emerged, and explains how amateur astronomers can capture remarkable images.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a controversial map depicting the shift away from CNN towards Fox News across the United States.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society examines the Boeing 737 MAX disaster as an organizational failure.
• Window on Eurasia looks why Turkey is backing away from supporting the Circassians, and suggests that the use of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Russian state as a tool of its rule might hurt the church badly.
• Arnold Zwicky takes apart, linguistically and otherwise, a comic playing on the trope of Lassie warning about something happening to Timmy. He also
  reports on a far-removed branch of the Zwicky family hailing from Belarus, as the Tsvikis.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the evidence for the massive collision that left exoplanet Kepler 107c an astoundingly dense body.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly tells her readers the secrets of the success of her relationship with her husband, Jose.
• Centauri Dreams notes what the New Horizons probe has found out, of Ultima Thule and of Pluto, by looking back.
• The Crux shares the obituaries of scientists from NASA for the Opportunity rover.
• D-Brief reports that NASA has declared the Opportunity rover’s mission officially complete.
• Dead Things introduces its readers to Mnyamawamtuka, a titanosaur from Tanzania a hundred million years ago.
• Drew Ex Machina shares a stunning photo of Tropical Cyclone Gita, taken from the ISS in 2018.
• Far Outliers notes how the Indian Army helped save the British army’s positions from collapse in the fall of 1914.
• Joe. My. God. notes a Christian group in the United States trying to encourage a boycott of supposedly leftist candy manufacturers like Hershey’s.
• JSTOR Daily looks at why covenant marriage failed to become popular.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains the hatred for new Congressperson Ilham Omar.
• The Planetary Society Blog links to ten interesting podcasts relating to exploration, of Earth and of space.
• Drew Rowsome interviews Tobias Herzberg about Feygele, his show in the Rhubarb festival at Buddies in Bad Times.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps looks at the evidence, presented by (among others) Geneviève von Petzinger, suggesting that forty thousand years ago cave artists around the world may have shared a common language of symbols.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that the policies of Putin are contributing to a growing sense of nationalism in Belarus.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the import of the discovery of asteroid 2019 AQ3, a rare near-Venus asteroid.
• Centauri Dreams notes the how the choice of language used by SETI researchers, like the eye-catching “technosignatures”, may reflect the vulnerability of the field to criticism on Earth.
• John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers what is to be done about Virginia, given the compromising of so many of its top leaders by secrets from the past.
• The Crux notes how the imminent recovery of ancient human DNA from Africa is likely to lead to a revolution in our understanding of human histories there.
• D-Brief notes how astronomers were able to use the light echoes in the accretion disk surrounding stellar-mass black hole MAXI J1820+070 to map its environment.
• JSTOR Daily considers the snow day as a sort of modern festival.
• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to his consideration of the plans of the German Empire to build superdreadnoughts, aborted only by defeat. Had Germany won the First World War, there surely would have been a major naval arms race.
• The NYR Daily looks at two exhibitions of different photographers, Brassaï and Louis Stettner.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares an evocative crescent profile of Ultima Thule taken by New Horizons, and crescent profiles of other worlds, too.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the mystery of why there is so little antimatter in the observable universe.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map exploring the dates and locations of first contact with aliens in the United States as shown in film.
• Window on Eurasia notes a new push by Circassian activists for the Circassian identity to be represented in the 2020 census.

[NEWS] Five space science links: Planet Nine, Ultima Thule, Orion Nebula, Sag A*, SN 1987A

• This article by Shannon Stirone at Longreads takes a look at the long, lonely search for Planet Nine from the top of Mauna Kea.
• Universe Today shares a high-resolution photograph of Ultima Thule.
• Universe Today explains how the new crop of young stars in the Orion Nebula disrupt the formation of other stellar bodies.
• Phys.org shares this amazing photograph of Sagittarius A* at the heart of our galaxy.
• The shockwaves from Supernova 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud, Universe Today notes, are still crashing into the neighbouring interstellar medium, revealing more secrets to astronomers.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul looks at the divided cities of the divided island of Cyprus.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares an image of a galaxy that actually has a tail.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber talks about her pain as an immigrant in the United Kingdom in the era of Brexit, her pain being but one of many different types created by this move.
• The Crux talks about the rejected American proposal to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon, and the several times the United States did arrange for lesser noteworthy events there (collisions, for the record).
• D-Brief notes how the innovative use of Curiosity instruments has explained more about the watery past of Gale Crater.
• Bruce Dorminey notes one astronomer’s theory that Venus tipped early into a greenhouse effect because of a surfeit of carbon relative to Earth.
• Far Outliers looks at missionaries in China, and their Yangtze explorations, in the late 19th century.
• Gizmodo notes evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans cohabited in a cave for millennia.
• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox writes about his exploration of the solo music of Paul McCartney.
• io9 looks at what is happening with Namor in the Marvel universe, with interesting echoes of recent Aquaman storylines.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the Beothuk of Newfoundland and their sad fate.
• Language Hat explores Patagonian Afrikaans.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on how mindboggling it is to want to be a billionaire. What would you do with that wealth?
• The Map Room Blog shares a visualization of the polar vortex.
• Marginal Revolution reports on the career of a writer who writes stories intended to help people fall asleep.
• The New APPS Blog reports on the power of biometric data and the threat of its misuse.
• Neuroskeptic takes a look at neurogenesis in human beings.
• Out There notes the import, in understanding our solar system, of the New Horizons photos of Ultima Thule.
• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes that OSIRIS-REx is in orbit of Bennu and preparing to take samples.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of 21 things that visitors to Kolkata should know.
• Mark Simpson takes a critical look at the idea of toxic masculinity. Who benefits?
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why global warming is responsible for the descent of the polar vortex.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the pro-Russian Gagauz of Moldova are moving towards a break if the country at large becomes pro-Western.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the art of Finnish painter Hugo Simberg.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that Israeli non-profit SpaceIL plans to launch a lander to the Moon in February.
• Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber writes about the material power of ideas and knowledge in 2019.
• D-Brief shares the latest images from Ultima Thule.
• Earther notes that temperatures in the Arctic have been higher than they have been for more than one hundred thousand years, with moss spores hidden by ice caps for millennia sprouting for the first time.
• Far Outliers notes the economic importance, in the early 20th century, of exports of tung oil for China.
• JSTOR Daily notes the uneasy relationship of many early psychoanalysts with the occult.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes an alarming report from California showing how the police have been deeply compromised by support for the far right.
• Gillian Darley at the LRB Blog writes about a now-forgotten Tolstoyan community in Essex.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution notes a new book by Kevin Erdmann arguing that the United States has been experiencing not a housing bubble but a housing shortage.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the Boomerang Nebula, a nebula in our galaxy colder than intergalactic space.
• Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy looks at libel law as it relates to the Covington schoolboys’ confrontation.
• Window on Eurasia notes a window, in the early 1990s, when the independence of the republic of Karelia from Russia was imaginable.
• Arnold Zwicky free-associates around blue roses, homoerotic and otherwise.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait explains the potential discovery of an ancient rock from Earth among the Moon rocks collected by Apollo.
• Centauri Dreams looks at what will be coming next from the New Horizons probe after its Ultima Thule flyby.
• The Crux looks at the genetic library of threatened animals preserved cryogenically in a San Diego zoo.
• Far Outliers looks at the drastic, even catastrophic, population changes of Sichuan over the past centuries.
• Language Hat looks at translations made in the medieval Kingdom of Jerusalem.
• Language Log tries to translate a possibly Indo-European sentence preserved in an ancient Chinese text.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the complexity of the crisis in Venezuela.
• The LRB Blog looks at the Mexican-American border in this era of crisis.
• Marginal Revolution notes a spike in unsolved shootings in Baltimore following protests against police racism.
• Noah Smith reviews the new Tyler Cowen book, Stubborn Attachments.
• Adam Shatz at the NYR Daily reviews what sounds like a fantastic album of anti-colonial Francophone music inspired by Frantz Fanon and assembled by French rapper Rocé.
• The Planetary Society Blog takes a look what is next for China as it continues its program to explore the Moon.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Monique Jaques about her new photo book looking at the lives of girls growing up in Gaza.
• Rocky Planets takes a look at how rocks can form political boundaries.
• Drew Rowsome interviews choreographer Christopher House about his career and the next shows at the Toronto Dance Theatre.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel takes a look at the seeming featurelessness of Uranus.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps looks at a controversial swap of land proposed between Serbia and Kosovo.
• Window on Eurasia notes the controversial possibility of China contracting Russia to divert Siberian rivers as a water supply.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the origins of Uri and Avi, a photo of apparently showing two men, one Palestinian and one Israeli, kissing.

[NEWS] Ten D-Brief links

• Did extraterrestrial sugars seed life on Earth? D-Brief reports.
• A detailed simulation suggests how black holes can function as natural particle accelerators. D-Brief reports.
• This trompe l’oeil photo seemingly combines the two Saturnian moons of Dione and Rhea. D-Brief shares this.
• Evidence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars is strangely lacking. D-Brief reports.
• Astronomers found, with help from a quasar, a patch of gas in deep intergalactic space apparently a pure sampling from the Big Bang. D-Brief reports.
• A species of midge has become an invasive species in Antarctica. D-Brief reports.
• Plants have been made to grow in space. D-Brief reports.
• These remarkable images of Ultima Thule from New Horizons shows a two-lobed world. D-Brief shares them.
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, the effect of climate change could lead to greater electricity consumption in China. D-Brief reports.
• Congratulations are due to China for the successful landing of the Chang’e-4 probe on the far side of the Moon.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams celebrates the arrival, and successful data collection, of New Horizons at Ultima Thule, as does Joe. My. God., as does
  Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog. Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explained, before the New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule, why that Kuiper Belt object was so important for planetary science.
• In advance of the New Year’s, Charlie Stross at Antipope asked his readers to let him know what good came in 2018.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber makes the argument that, in the event of a Brexit bitterly resented by many Labour supporters, the odds that they will support a post-Brexit redistributionist program that would aid predominantly pro-Brexit voters are low.
• Bruce Dorminey notes that many Earth-like worlds might be made uninhabitable over eons by the steady warming of their stars, perhaps dooming any hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations on these planets.
• Far Outliers looks at the patterns of early Meiji Japan relations with Korea, noting an 1873 invasion scare.
• L.M. Sacasas writes at The Frailest Thing, inspired by the skepticism of Jacques Ellul, about a book published in 1968 containing predictions about the technological world of 2018. Motives matter.
• Imageo looks at the evidence from probes and confirms that, yes, it does in fact snow (water) on Mars.
• The Island Review interviews author Adam Nicolson about his family’s ownership of the Hebridean Shiant Isles. What do they mean for him, as an author and as someone experience with the sea?
• JSTOR Daily looks at the long history of the human relationship with leather, as a pliable material for clothing of all kinds.
• Language Hat considers the possibility that the New Year’s greeting “bistraynte”, used in Lebanon and by Christians in neighbouring countries, might come from the Latin “strenae”.
• Language Log notes the pressure being applied against the use of Cantonese as a medium of instruction in Hong Kong.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the many reasons why a considerable number of Latinos support Donald Trump.
• Bernard Porter at the LRB Blog comes up with an explanation as to Corbyn’s refusal to oppose Brexit.
• Marginal Revolution notes the many problems involved with the formation of supply chains in Africa, including sheer distance.
• The NYR Daily has a much-needed reevaluation of the Jonestown horror as not simply a mass suicide.
• Author Peter Watts writes about a recent trip to Tel Aviv.
• At Out There, Corey Powell writes about how planetary scientists over the decades have approached their discipline, expecting to be surprised.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel shared some top images collected by Hubble in 2018.
• Strange Company looks at the strange 1953 death of young Roman woman Wilma Montesi. How did she die, leaving her body to be found on a beach?
• Window on Eurasia notes how Circassian refugees in Syria are asking for the same expedited status that Ukrainian refugees have received.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell takes an extended look at the politics of 4G and Huawei and the United Kingdom and transatlantic relations over the past decade.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look, in language and cartoons, at “Jesus fuck”.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Anthrodendum reviews the book Fistula Politics, the latest from the field of medical anthropology.
• Architectuul takes a look at post-war architecture in Germany, a country where the devastation of the war left clean slates for ambitious new designers and architects.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at newly discovered Kuiper Belt object 2008 VG 18.
• Laura Agustín at Border Thinking takes a look at the figure of the migrant sex worker.
• Centauri Dreams features an essay by Al Jackson celebrating the Apollo 8 moon mission.
• D-Brief notes how physicists manufactured a quark soup in a collider to study the early universe.
• Dangerous Minds shares some photos of a young David Bowie.
• Angelique Harris at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at what the social sciences have to say about sexuality and dating among millennial Americans.
• Gizmodo notes the odd apparent smoothness of Ultima Thule, target of a very close flyby by New Horizons on New Year’s Day.
• Hornet Stories notes the censorship-challenging art by Slava Mogutin available from the Tom of Finland store.
• Imageo shares orbital imagery of the eruption of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia, trigger of a devastating volcanic tsunami.
• Nick Stewart at The Island Review writes beautifully about his experience crossing the Irish Sea on a ferry, from Liverpool to Belfast.
• Lyman Stone at In A State of Migration shares the story, with photos, of his recent whirlwind trip to Vietnam.
• JSTOR Daily considers whether or not fan fiction might be a useful tool to promote student literacy.
• Language Hat notes a contentious reconstruction of the sound system of obscure but fascinating Tocharian, an extinct Indo-European language from modern XInjiang.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the irreversible damage being caused by the Trump Administration to the United States’ foreign policy.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting users of Facebook would need a payment of at least one thousand dollars to abandon Facebook.
• Lisa Nandy at the NYR Daily argues that the citizens of the United Kingdom need desperately to engage with Brexit, to take back control, in order to escape catastrophic consequences from ill-thought policies.
• Marc Rayman at the Planetary Society Blog celebrates the life and achievements of the Dawn probe.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that so many Venezuelans are fleeing their country because food is literally unavailable, what with a collapsing agricultural sector.
• The Russian Demographics Blog breaks down polling of nostalgia for the Soviet Union among Russians.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that simply finding oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet is not by itself proof of life.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy reports on how the United States is making progress towards ending exclusionary zoning.
• Whatever’s John Scalzi shares an interview with the lawyer of Santa Claus.
• Window on Eurasia reports on a fascinating paper, examining how some Russian immigrants in Germany use Udmurt as a family language.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the lives of two notable members of the Swiss diaspora in Paris’ Montmartre.