[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait tells readers how the orbit of a newly-discovered object, like one of the newly found moons of Saturn, is calculated.
• D-Brief looks at the import of observations of the young HD 163296 system, where gas has been detected flowing onto young planets. Is this where atmospheres come from?
• Gizmodo notes the recent claim by Google to have achieved a quantum computing milestone.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how, in the early 20th century, old unpaved country roads gave way to modern ones.
• The LRB Blog looks at the latest on Brexit and British politics.
• Marginal Revolution notes an article arguing Airbnb has helped undermine trust even in Himalayan villages.
• The NYR Daily looks at a landmark exhibition of the works of William Blake at the Tate Britain.
• Rocky Planet shows how the hyper-precise records of ice cores can be used to identify not just the existence but the locations of volcanic eruptions.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at a newly-founded mysterious dark ancient massive galaxy that may have insights on the processes of the wider universe.
• Window on Eurasia looks at a UN report examining how Russia, occupying Crimea, has promoted demographic transformations.
• Arnold Zwicky tells of his experiences with OUTiL, an organization he helped form in 1991 that brought together out linguists.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Adam Fish at anthro{dendum} compares different sorts of public bathing around the world, from Native America to Norden to Japan.
• Charlie Stross at Antipope is unimpressed by the person writing the script for our timeline.
• Architectuul reports on an architectural conference in Lisbon.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning photos of the eruption of the Raikoke volcano in Kamchatka.
• Centauri Dreams looks at what the Voyager spacecraft have returned about the edge of the solar system.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the idea of bipartisanship if it means compromising on reality, allegorically.
• The Crux counts the number of people who have died in outer space.
• D-Brief notes that the Andromeda Galaxy has swallowed up multiple dwarf galaxies over the eons.
• Dead Things notes the identification of the first raptor species from Southeast Asia, Siamraptor suwati.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes a paper tracing the origins of interstellar comet 2/Borisov from the general area of Kruger 60.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the privilege allowing people access to affordable dental care.
• Gizmodo tells how Alexei Leonov survived the first spacewalk.
• io9 looks at the remarkable new status quo for the X-Men created by Jonathan Hickman.
• Selma Franssen at the Island Review writes about the threats facing the seabirds of the Shetlands.
• JSTOR Daily looks at what led Richard Nixon to make so many breaks from the American consensus on China in the Cold War.
• Language Log notes an undergraduate course at Yale using the Voynich Manuscript as an aid in the study of language.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains her recent experience of the socialized health care system of Israel for Americans.
• The LRB Blog looks at how badly the Fukuyama prediction of an end to history has aged.
• The Map Room Blog shares a few maps of the new Ottawa LRT route.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper establishing a link between Chinese industries undermining their counterparts in Mexico and Mexican social ills including crime.
• Sean Marshall reports from Ottawa about what the Confederation Line looks like.
• Adam Shatz at the NYR Daily looks at the power of improvisation in music.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at South Williamsburg Jewish deli Gottlieb’s.
• Drew Rowsome reviews</a the new Patti Smith book, Year of the Monkey.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking as the factors leading into transnational movements.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the question of the direction(s) in which order in the universe was generated.
• Window on Eurasia shares a report noting the very minor flows of migration from China to Russia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at the politics in the British riding of Keighley.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at some penguin socks.

[NEWS] Five space science links: Mars, Phobos and Deimos, Psyche, GSN O69, galaxies

• Universe Today looks at the explosions of sand which mark spring on Mars, here.
• The Mars moons of Phobos and Deimos are excellent first stops for crewed missions, Universe Today argues here.
• Universe Today notes that, in their hot youth, metal asteroids like Psyche might have had volcanoes ejecting molten iron.
• The supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy GSN 069 is eating something on a 9 hour cycle. Universe Today explains.
• What is killing star formation in the distant galaxies of the Virgo Cluster? The Conversation reports.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that mysterious Boyajian’s Star has nearly two dozen identified analogues, like HD 139139.
• James Bow reports from his con trip to Portland.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog notes the particular pleasure of having old friends, people with long baselines on us.
• Centauri Dreams describes a proposed mission to interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov).
• The Crux notes how feeding cows seaweed could sharply reduce their methane production.
• D-Brief notes that comet C/2019 Q4 is decidedly red.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a claim that water-rich exoplanet K2-18b might well have more water than Earth.
• Gizmodo reports on a claim that Loki, biggest volcano on Io, is set to explode in a massive eruption.
• io9 notes that Warner Brothers is planning a Funko Pop movie.
• Joe. My. God. notes the claim of Donald Trump that he is ready for war with Iran.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how people in early modern Europe thought they could treat wounds with magic.
• Language Hat considers how “I tip my hat” might, translated, sound funny to a speaker of Canadian French.
• Language Log considers how speakers of Korean, and other languages, can find word spacing a challenge.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the partisan politics of the US Supreme Court.
• At the NYR Daily, Naomi Klein makes a case for the political and environmental necessity of a Green New Deal.
• Peter Watts takes apart a recent argument proclaiming the existence of free will.
• Peter Rukavina tells how travelling by rail or air from Prince Edward Island to points of the mainland can not only be terribly inconvenient, but environmentally worse than car travel. PEI does need better rail connections.
• The Russian Demographics Blog examines how different countries in Europe will conduct their census in 2020.
• Window on Eurasia shares the arguments of a geographer who makes the point that China has a larger effective territory than Russia (or Canada).
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at a 1971 prediction by J.G. Ballard about demagoguery and guilt, something that now looks reasonably accurate.
• Arnold Zwicky considers models of segregation of cartoon characters from normal ones in comics.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how the dinosaurs seem to have been killed off 65 million years ago by a combination of geological and astronomical catastrophes.
• Centauri Dreams examines Kepler 1658b, a hot Jupiter in a close orbit around an old star.
• The Crux reports on the continuing search for Planet Nine in the orbits of distant solar system objects.
• D-Brief notes how researchers have begun to study the archaeological records of otters.
• Cody Delistraty profiles author and journalist John Lanchester.
• Far Outliers reports on the terrible violence between Hindus and Muslims preceding partition in Calcutta.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing suggests the carnival of the online world, full of hidden work, is actually an unsatisfying false carnival.
• Hornet Stories reports that São Paulo LGBTQ cultural centre and homeless shelter Casa 1 is facing closure thanks to cuts by the homophobic new government.
• io9 reports on one fan’s attempt to use machine learning to produce a HD version of Deep Space Nine.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the increasing trend, at least in the United States and the United Kingdom, to deport long-term residents lacking sufficiently secure residency rights.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the literally medieval epidemics raging among the homeless of California.
• Marginal Revolution considers how the Book of Genesis can be read as a story of increasing technology driving improved living standards and economic growth.
• The NYR Daily interviews Lénaïg Bredoux about #MeToo in France.
• The Planetary Society Blog considers the subtle differences in colour between ice giants Uranus and Neptune, one greenish and the other a blue, and the causes of this difference.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle shares beautiful photos of ice on a stream as he talks about his creative process.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers what the universe was like back when the Earth was forming.
• Window on Eurasia reports on a statement made by the government of Belarus that the survival of the Belarusian language is a guarantor of national security.
• Arnold Zwicky was kind enough to share his handout for the semiotics gathering SemFest20.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul has an extended long interview with architect Dragoljub Bakić, talking about the innovative architecture of Tito’s Yugoslavia and his experiences abroad.
• Centauri Dreams remarks on how the new maps of Pluto can evoke the worlds of Ray Bradbury.
• The Crux answers an interesting question: What, exactly, is a blazar?
• D-Brief links to a study suggesting that conditions on Ross 128 b, the second-nearest potentially habitable planet, are potentially (very broadly) Earth-like.
• Dangerous Minds shows how John Mellencamp was, in the 1970s, once a glam rocker.
• The Finger Post shares photos from a recent visit to Naypyidaw, the very new capital of Myanmar.
• Gizmodo explains how the detection of an energetic neutrino led to the detection of a distant blazar, marking yet another step forward for multi-messenger astronomy.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the now-overlooked writer of supernatural fiction Vernon Lee.
• Language Log makes an argument that acquiring fluency in Chinese language, including Chinese writing, is difficult, so difficult perhaps as to displace other cultures. Thoughts?
• Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that the decline of the neo-liberal world order is needed. My main concern is that neo-liberalism may well be the least bad of the potential world orders out there.
• Lingua Franca takes a look at how Hindi and Urdu, technically separate languages, actually form two poles of a Hindustani language continuum.
• The Map Room Blog links to a unique map of the London Underground that shows the elevation of each station.
• Rocky Planet notes that the continuing eruption of Kilauea is going to permanently shape the lives of the people of the Big Island of Hawai’i.
• Window on Eurasia notes that the Buddhists of Kalmykia want the Russian government to permit a visit by the Dalai Lama to their republic.
• Writing at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Livio Di Matteo notes that the Trump demand NATO governments spend 4% of their GDP on defense would involve unprecedented levels of spending in Canada.

[NEWS] Five science links: Ukraine in space, Archean Earth, oceans of Mars, looking for life, Icarus

• Ukraine is interested in funding spaceport developments in Australia. Transitions Online reports.
• National Geographic notes evidence that the influx of oxygen into the Archean atmosphere more than two billion years ago was–geologically, at least–quite sudden.
• Universe Today notes that volcanism on early Mars may have helped fill that planet’s primordial oceans.
• National Geographic takes a look at the various strategies hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations could adopt to find life–even us–from a great distance.
• The discovery of Icarus, a discrete blue supergiant star detected nine billion light-years away, is a triumph of modern astronomy. VICE reports.

[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 Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer reports on Kepler-90, now known to have eight planets.
• Centauri Dreams notes a model suggesting low-mass worlds like Mars do not stay very habitable for long at all around red dwarf stars.
• Citizen Science Salon notes how Puerto Ricans are monitoring water quality on their own after Hurricane Maria.
• The Crux notes how climate change played a role in the fall of Rome. We know more about our environment than the Romans did, but we are not much less vulnerable.
• D-Brief notes a feature film that has just been made about Ötzi, the man who body was famously found frozen in the Tyrolean Alps five thousand years ago.
• Daily JSTOR notes how a postage stamp featuring an erupting volcano may have kept Nicaragua from hosting an inter-oceanic canal of its own.
• Hornet Stories reports on some exciting queer musicians.
• Language Hat links to an online dictionary of French slang from the 19th century.
• Language Hat has a post dealing with some controversy created on its author’s perspective on “they” as a singular pronoun. (Language changes, that’s all I have to say on that.)
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes a pretty wrong-headed take from a right-wing news source on sexuality and dating and flirting. Gack.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how the recent Kepler-90 press release shows how Kepler has reached the limit of the exoplanet science it can do. We need to put better technology at work.
• At Whatever, John Scalzi has some interesting non-spoiler thoughts about the direction of The Last Jedi. I must see this, soon.
• Window on Eurasia features a blithe dismissal by Putin of the idea that there is language or ethnic conflict at work. Tatars just need to learn Russian, apparently, though they can also keep Tatar as an extra.

[ISL] Five notes on Islands: Madeira, imaginary places, thylacine, Ōkunoshima rabbit, volcanic Tonga

• JSTOR Daily links to a paper examining how a speculative sugar boom in early modern Madeira was the first of its kind.
• Simon Worrall interviews author Malachy Tallack about the latter’s book of imaginary places, notably islands.
• News that the DNA of a preserved thylacine has been salvaged is fantastic. Besides the scientific interest of this, could this lead to the resurrection of this Tasmanian species?
• Elaina Zachos notes the many problems facing the many cute rabbits product of a recent introduction to the Japanese island of Ōkunoshima.
• A volcanic island that recently emerged from the sea off of Tonga turns out to be much more durable than scientists had expected.