[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that the galaxy’s stores of star-forming gas are running low, here.
• Centauri Dreams notes the next generation of gravitational wave detectors could detect exoplanets, massive worlds orbiting binary white dwarfs.
• The Crux reports on what is known about Homo naledi.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the risks of social isolation.
• Far Outliers reports on three enclaves of Arab culture encountered by early Western explorers in 19th century East Africa.
• Gizmodo notes the steady progress made by LightSail 2 in its travel around the world.
• The Island Review shares the Phillip Miller poem “Biennale”, inspired by Venice.
• Marginal Revolution looks at how the Norwegian Arctic island of Svalbard works without border controls.
• The NYR Daily notes that while America is not Rome, it thinks it is.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains some oddities of Higgs bosons.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at how the Kyshtym nuclear disaster occurred.
• Window on Eurasia notes that 5% of Russian Orthodox parishes in Ukraine have defected so far to the Ukrainian church.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell applies information and management theory to Brexit.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomy Phil Plait notes that the location of the Apollo 12 Ascent Module on the Moon may have been found.
• Kieran Healy writes about how he uses scripts to produce animated graphics illustrating charging patterns of baby names over the 20th century in the United States.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Japan has been cleaning up Tohoku after the Fukushima disaster.
• Language Hat looks at an upcoming book project taking a look at how different languages written in the Arabic script interact with each other.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money, looking at “The Bells”, makes the case that this episode’s solution to the issues of Daenerys was probably the best one that could be devised within Game of Thrones’ self-imposed limitations.
• The NYR Daily looks at the trial in Israeli military courts of Palestinian activist Issa Amro.
• Jason C. Davis notes at the Planetary Society Blog that the Lightsail 2 spacecraft is scheduled for a June launch.
• Peter Rukavina reacts, with eventual cool printings, to the Fluxus movement in mid-20th century art.
• Strange Company shares the story of pioneering Edwardian parachustist Dolly Shepherd.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society shares his 1970s proposal for a Marxist philosophy of the social sciences.
• Window on Eurasia notes that the GULAG system was a net loss for the Soviet economy, costly and employing workers at low productivity levels. (Bringing it back would be a mistake, then.)
• Arnold Zwicky shares some wonderful photos of some remarkable lilies.

[NEWS] Ten links about politics and culture and the future

• The Conversation looks at how the past religious homogeneity of Québec influences contemporary secularism.
• Scott Gilmore at MacLean’s writes, correctly, about how Canadians in different provinces are deeply disconnected from each other.
• Shannon Proudfoot writes at MacLean’s about how physicist Philippe J. Fournier ended up developing a second career as a predictor of Canadian elections.
• Are legal battles between different levels of Canadian government the new normal? CBC considers.
• The Conversation notes that most rural areas in the United States are bound to decline for structural reasons.
• This Guardian article looks at how a high-profile gang rape in Spain helped drive the growth of the far-right Vox Party via anti-feminism and misogyny.
• Jezebel looks at the foolish and shortsighted alliance between transphobic feminists and right-wing groups.
• Buzzfeed shares the story of how former alt-right activist Katie McHugh is trying to rebuild her life, and her plea to her fellows to leave before they get sucked in.
• Paul Salvatori writes at NOW Toronto about how the algorithms of major social networking platforms suck people into becoming consumers of inflammatory content.
• Maggie Hennefeld at Open Democracy considers if “clownish outsiders” are going to be the leaders of the democracies of the future.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Larry Claes at Centauri Dreams considers the issues of the alien featuring in the title of the classic The Thing, facing human persecution.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber starts a debate about past blogging and conventional wisdom.
• The Crux reports on a mass rescue of orphaned flamingo chicks in South Africa.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that asteroids provided perhaps half of the Earth’s current supply of water.
• Cody Delistraty looks at how the far-right in Germany is appropriating artworks to support its view of history.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that China may be hoping to build a base at the Moon’s south pole by 2029.
• Far Outliers reports on the 1865 collapse of the Confederacy.
• Gizmodo reports on how astronomers have identified the approximate location of a kilonova that seeded the nascent solar system with heavy elements.
• Joe. My. God. shares the news from yet another study demonstrating that HIV cannot be transmitted by HIV-undetectable people. U=U.
• JSTOR Daily notes how, via Herb Caen, the Beat Generation became known as Beatniks.
• Language Hat shares and comments upon a passage from Dostoevsky noting how an obscenity can be stretched out into an entire conversation.
• Language Log considers a peculiarity of the Beijing dialect.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how statehood has been used to game the American political system.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that countries with greater levels of gender inequality are more likely to produce female chess grandmasters.
• Justin Petrone at North!, considering the history of writers in Estonia, considers what the mission of the writer should be.
• The NYR Daily examines the black people once miners in the Kentucky town of Lynch, remembering and sharing their experiences.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw considers what he has learned from a recent research and writing contract.
• Jason C. Davis at the Planetary Society Blog reports in greater detail on the crater Hayabusa 2 made in asteroid Ryugu.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how the Event Horizon Telescope acts like a mirror.
• Strange Company shares an impressively diverse collection of links.
• Towleroad talks with writer Tim Murphy about his new novel, Correspondents.
• Window on Eurasia considers future directions for Ukrainian language policy.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the artistic riches horded by the Nazis in the Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein.

[NEWS] Five links about populations: Franco-Ontarians, Acadians, American whites, Brexit, Belgium

• CBC reports from a Franco-Ontarian youth gathering, in Ontario’s easternmost and Francophone-majority Prescott-Russell, where young Francophones are responding with defiance.
• This Acadie Nouvelle opinion piece suggests that, to deal with the problems of the Acadians of the Maritimes, they should collectively seek some sort of autonomy across provincial frontiers.
• This New York Times article noting the questionable nature of the census estimate that white Americans were bound to be a minority soon, and this projection’s political consequences, is worth reading.
• Brexit is incompatible with a liberalized immigration policy in the United Kingdom; left-wing Brexiters should know better. Politics.co.uk has it.
• CBC notes how Belgium, dealing with the election of its first black mayor and a revamping of a museum devoted to Central Africa, is starting to deal with its racist past.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Andrew Barton quite approves of the Helsinki Metro.
• Anthropology.net notes the complexity of the peopling of Eurasia, over hundreds of thousands of years and with multiple human populations.
• Daily JSTOR has an insightful take on the fiction of the free market, looking back to Peter Drucker.
• Far Outliers notes that the role missionaries played in the development of area studies.
• At A Fistful of Euros, Alex Harrowell takes a look at the complexities of the latest Brexit negotiations, concentrating on the DUP and Ireland.
• At The Frailest Thing, Michael Sacasas notes the addition of a Paypal option alongside Patreon and asks for feedback.
• Hornet Stories notes that the Gengoroh Tagame manga My Brother’s Husband is set for a television adaptation.
• Language Log takes a look at the complexities surrounding a piece of Maoist rhetoric. Did Mao actually say that the Chinese people stood up at Tiannamen in 1949?
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the rhetoric surrounding parkland in Utah. Who is it being protected for, and what do these people have to gain from the despoliation?
• Marginal Revolution looks at a study of Switzerland suggesting that clear boundaries have helped maintain communal peace there.
• At the NYR Daily, Tim Parks has a lovely essay exploring the importance of the translator as a sort of secondary creator.
• Window on Eurasia looks at Tatarstan, and argues post-Soviet governments there made a mistake by concentrating on parallel Tatar and Russian cultures, as opposed to propagating Tatar language and culture for all.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell suggests that, in British political life, there are two working cultures, politicians who derive authority from merit and politicians who derive authority from brilliance. Guess who fares worse?

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Dangerous Minds shares some of the exotic space music of composer Pauline Anna Strom.
• The Dragon’s Gaze links to a paper examining the effect of in-system super-Earth on asteroid impacts upon terrestrial planets.
• Hornet Stories, for ones, notes that Cards Against Humanity has bought up a stretch along the US-Mexican border to prevent the construction of a border wall.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reminds people–sad that it has to be done–that, even in Trump outposts like Johnstown in Pennsylvania where racism has replaced reason among too many, there still are good things in this and other like communities.
• The LRB Blog considers the plight of British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose plight in Iranian custody has been worsened by her government. What can be done for her?
• Marginal Revolution notes how, in the early 20th century as in the early 21st century, substantial immigration to the US became politically controversial despite its benefits.
• The NYR Daily takes a look at the art of Tove Jansson, beyond the Moomins.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer takes a look at the slow emergence of Canadian citizenship distinct from the British over the 20th century.
• Roads and Kingdoms takes</u. a look at the grape-crashing of the vineyards of Oliver, British Columbia.
• Peter Rukavina describes the origin of the theme music of CBC classic show The Friendly Giant in the 18th century English folk tune “Early One Morning.”
• Seriously Science notes that oysters can apparently hear sound.
• Window on Eurasia notes that the autonomy enjoyed by Puerto Rico was one source of inspiration for the nationalists of Tatarstan in the early 1990s.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Anthrodendum takes an extended look at sexual harassment in anthropology, drawing from #metoo.
• Crooked Timber considers the so-called Amazon-Facebook-Google “trinet” set to take over from the free Internet.
• Dead Things considers if the Americas could have been populated by early migration down the coast, the “kelp route”.
• Samuel Hatmaker’s Lego portrait of RuPaul is profiled in Hornet Stories.
• Language Hat considers an untranslatable poem of Pasternak.
• Language Log notes how Manafort’s legal team confused “Cyprus” with “cypress”.
• Robert Farley of Lawyers, Guns and Money shares an interview of his with the Indian consul-general in Houston on the nature of the latter’s work.
• Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution argues blaming Facebook for electoral manipulation overlooks the responsibility of individual voters.
• The NYR Daily notes that the Kurds have paid the price for Trump’s dealings with Iran.
• Roads and Kingdoms explores the surprisingly living Central Cemetery of Vienna.
• Drew Rowsome explores the literature of horror writer Robert Sherman.
• Towleroad notes BPM, the Oscar-contending French film about the AIDS crisis in that country.
• Window on Eurasia notes the oddness of a pledge by China to fight illegal migration by Chinese into Russia.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Anthropology.net notes that interbreeding with Neanderthals restored ancient hominin DNA to homo sapiens.
• Centauri Dreams looks at signs of planetary formation in cometary rings.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a theory that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations could manipulate pulsars as beacons.
• Hornet Stories explains what “intersex” means.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the perhaps baffling appeal of Florida real estate at a time of climate change.
• The LRB Blog considers the radical potential of asteroid mining. Could it help free us from resource scarcity? How should we manage it?
• Marginal Revolution shares an argument that humans, through transporting life, are increasing biodiversity.
• The NYR Daily argues that China has too many illusions over its “New Silk Road” initiatives.
• Peter Rukavina examines the changing shades of green used by GO Transit.
• Drew Rowsome really likes Toronto musical Bat Out of Hell.
• Window on Eurasia looks at how different non-Russian languages are present on the streets of St. Petersburg.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Centauri Dreams considers the potentially habitability of planets made mostly of garnet.
• D-Brief notes a new technique that can use stem cells to regenerate teeth.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos of a man who makes sweaters of place and takes photos of himself wearing the sweater at these places.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog considers the hookup culture of universities.
• Language Hat looks at how different languages name different colours over time.
• Language Log looks at teachers of Cantonese who teach it using Mandarin grammar rules.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money examines the fake news of Muslims destroying an old church in Germany.
• The NYRB Daily makes the case for the importance of Black Mirror.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw shares a photo and a story from his holiday trip to Denmark.
• The Russian Demographics Blog charts birth and fertility rates in the United States over the past hundred years.
• The Volokh Conspiracy takes issue with the idea that Chicago’s rate is record-setting.
• Window on Eurasia warns of potential instability in Russia’s Caucasian republic of Dagestan.