[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul looks at the Portuguese architectural cooperative Ateliermob, here.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at how white dwarf WD J091405.30+191412.25 is literally vapourizing a planet in close orbit.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog explains</a< to readers why you really do not want to have to look for parking in New York City.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the slowing of the solar wind far from the Sun.
• John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers the gap between ideals and actuals in the context of conspiracies and politics.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on how the ESA is trying to solve a problem with the parachutes of the ExoMars probe.
• Far Outliers reports on what Harry Truman thought about politicians.
• Gizmodo reports on a new method for identifying potential Earth-like worlds.
• io9 pays tribute to legendary writer, of Star Trek and much else, D.C. Fontana.
• The Island Review reports on the football team of the Chagos Islands.
• Joe. My. God. reports that gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy will compete for the United Kingdom in 2020.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how early English imperialists saw America and empire through the lens of Ireland.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money does not like Pete Buttigieg.
• The LRB Blog looks at the London Bridge terrorist attack.
• The Map Room Blog shares a map of Prince William Sound, in Alaska, that is already out of date because of global warming.
• Marginal Revolution questions if Cebu, in the Philippines, is the most typical city in the world.
• The NYR Daily looks at gun violence among Arab Israelis.
• The Planetary Society Blog considers what needs to be researched next on Mars.
• Roads and Kingdoms tells the story of Sister Gracy, a Salesian nun at work in South Sudan.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting continued population growth expected in much of Europe, and the impact of this growth on the environment.
• Strange Maps shares a map of fried chicken restaurants in London.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why a 70 solar mass black hole is not unexpected.
• John Scalzi at Whatever gives</a his further thoughts on the Pixel 4.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, last year, 37 thousand Russians died of HIV/AIDS.
• Arnold Zwicky starts from a consideration of the 1948 film Kind Hearts and Coronets.

[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

• 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 Tuesday links

• Architectuul notes the recent death of I.M. Pei.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes what, exactly, rubble-pile asteroids are.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about definitions of home.
• Centauri Dreams considers white dwarf planets.
• The Crux notes how ultra-processed foods are liked closely to weight gain.
• D-Brief observes that a thin layer of insulating ice might be saving the subsurface oceans of Pluto from freezing out.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the critical role played by Apollo 10 in getting NASA ready for the Moon landings.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes the American government’s expectation that China will seek to set up its own global network of military bases.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the Soviet Union’s Venera 5 and 6 missions to Venus.
• Far Outliers looks at the visit of U.S. Grant to Japan and China.
• Gizmodo notes a recent analysis of Neanderthal teeth suggesting that they split with Homo sapiens at a date substantially earlier than commonly believed.
• io9 notes the sheer scale of the Jonathan Hickman reboots for the X-Men comics of Marvel.
• Joe. My. God. shares the argument of Ted Cruz that people should stop making fun of his “space pirate” suggestion.I am inclined to think Cruz more right than not, actually.
• JSTOR Daily notes the wave of anti-black violence that hit the United States in 1919, often driven by returned veterans.
• Language Hat shares a recognizable complaint, written in ancient Akkadian, of bad customers.
• Language Log shares a report of a village in Brittany seeking people to decipher a mysterious etching.
• This Scott Lemieux report at Lawyers, Guns and Money about how British conservatives received Ben Shapiro is a must-read summary.
• Benjamin Markovits at the LRB Blog shares the reasons why he left his immigrant-heavy basketball team in Germany.
• Marginal Revolution looks at one effort in Brazil to separate people from their street gangs.
• The NYR Daily looks at how ISIS, deprived of its proto-state, has managed to thrive as a decentralized network.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw tells of his experiences and perceptions of his native region of New England, in southeastern Australia.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Chang’e 4 rover may have found lunar mantle on the surface of the Moon.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that while Argentine president Mauricio Macri is polling badly, his opponents are not polling well.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of things to do in see in the Peru capital of Lima.
• The Signal examines how the Library of Congress engages in photodocumentation.
• Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal explains how he is helping native insects by planting native plants in his garden.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how scientific illiteracy should never be seen as cool.
• Towleroad notes the questions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as to why Truvada costs so much in the United States.
• Window on Eurasia notes how family structures in the North Caucasus are at once modernizing and becoming more conservative.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the distribution of US carriers and their fleets at present does not support the idea of a planned impending war with Iran.
• Arnold Zwicky examines the tent caterpillar of California.

[NEWS] Five space science links: red dwarfs, zombie stars, LMC, M94, dark matter

• Evan Gough at Universe Today, looking at a study of nearby young red dwarf AU Microscopii, points to findings suggesting that red dwarfs quickly lose volatiles like water in their protoplanetary disks, leaving their worlds sterile.
• Paul Sutter at Universe Today looks at zombie stars, white dwarfs which underwent Type 1a supernovas which did not totally destroy them.
• The SCMP notes a new study suggesting that the Large Magellanic Cloud, the largest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, will collide with our galaxy in a mere 2.5 billion years.
• IFLScience notes that nearby spiral galaxy M94 is unusually lacking in satellites, leaving interesting hints about the nature of dark matter and its distribution.
• New models of dwarf galaxy formation suggest dark matter can be heated, driven away from a galaxy’s core by–for instance–active star formation. Scitech Daily reports.

[NEWS] Five D-Brief links: white dwarfs, FRBs, Barnard’s Star b, AT2018cow, termites

• A new study by astronomers suggests that white dwarfs evolve over eons as they cool into immense crystals. D-Brief reports.
• Canadian astronomers have found a second mysterious repeating fast radio burst. D-Brief reports.
• Subsurface environments suitable for life could conceivably exist at Barnard’s Star b. D-Brief reports.
• Astronomers observing the mysterious AT2018cow event in nearby dwarf galaxy CGCG 137-068t may have witnessed the formation of a compact object, a black hole or a neutron star. D-Brief reports.
• The turning of the earth wrought by termite hives in tropical rainforests may help protect these environments from drought. D-Brief reports.

[NEWS] Five space science links: Moon, Mars, Planet Nine, white dwarfs, black holes

• Quanta Magazine looks at the latest theories seeking to explain the origins of the Moon. (At the very least, the collision that did form the Moon may have ben much more violent than originally thought.)
• Mars may be smaller than Venus and Earth because, in the early solar system, much mass was directed away from its orbit by the gas and ice giants. Universe Today reports.
• Gizmodo notes the discovery of another Kuiper Belt object with a strange orbit pointing to the possibility of Planet Nine.
• The Gaia satellite has turned up evidence for nearly fourteen thousand white dwarfs within 100 parsecs of our sun, a huge increase in numbers. Universe Today reports.
• The work and the thinking that went into proving the idea of thousands of black holes in close orbit of Sagittarius A* at the heart of our galaxy is impressive. Universe Today reports.

[NEWS] Five science links: Chixculub, Venus probes, HS 2231+2441, iPTF14hls, China and SETI

• It was the dinosaurs’ bad luck that Chixculub had oil-rich sands, making a bad impact a mass extinction. National Geographic reports.
• Universe Today takes a look at the challenge of designing electronics capable of surviving the environment of Venus.
• HS 2231+2441 is a HW Vir-type binary where a brown dwarf sapped the life of its now white dwarf partner. Universe Today reports.
• CBC reports on puzzling iPTF14hls, a bizarrely recurring supernova. Is it a pulsational pair instability supernova?
• Will China’s new Tianyan radiotelescope give it an edge in SETI? This is a great article, on China and SETI both. The Atlantic reports.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how evidence of exoplanets can be found in a spectrum of Van Maanen’s Star taken in 1917.
• blogTO notes that Michelle Obama is coming to visit Toronto.
• Dangerous Minds notes that someone has scanned in the copies of 1980s periodical The Twilight Zone Magazine.
• D-Brief notes the tens of thousands of genders of fungus.
• The Dragon’s Gaze notes a paper calculating circumstellar habitable zones and orbits for planets of binary stars.
• The Frailest Thing’s Michael Sacasas argues it is much too late to retroactively add ethical concerns to new technologies.
• Language Log notes the struggle of many to pronounce the name of the president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes an alarming increase in mass shootings in the US over the past decades.
• The LRB Blog argues that a moral panic over “pop-up brothels” helps no one involved.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports</u. on Zubaida Tariq, the Martha Stewart of Pakistan.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel likes the new Discovery episode. I wonder, though: hasn’t Trek always been a bit science fantasy?
• Window on Eurasia argues Russian policies which marginalize non-Russian languages in education may produce blowback.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Antipope Charlie Stross takes a look at the parlous state of the world, and imagines what if the US and UK went differently.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at Sirius, including white dwarf Sirius B.
• Centauri Dreams considers Cassini’s final function, as a probe of Saturn’s atmosphere.
• D-Brief notes the discovery that diamonds rain deep in Neptune (and Uranus).
• Bruce Dorminey reports on a NASA scientist’s argument that we need new interstellar probes, not unlike Voyager 1.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the way a course syllabus is like a Van Halen contract rider.
• Language Hat takes a look at the palimpsests of St. Catherine’s Monastery, deep in the Sinai.
• Language Log looks at the etymology, and the history, of chow mein.
• The LRB Blog recounts a visit to Mount Rushmore in the era of Trump.
• Marginal Revolution takes a look at the question of why Mexico isn’t enjoying higher rates of economic growth.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw considers the extent to which politics these days is just sound and fury, meaning nothing.
• Mark Simpson links to an essay of his explaining why we should be glad the Smiths broke up in 1987.
• Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle considers the import, to him and the environment, of a spring near his cottage.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the abundance of black holes in our galaxy, more than one hundred million.
• Unicorn Booty notes that smoking marijuana might–might–have sexual benefits.
• Window on Eurasia shares an argument that ethnic Russians in Russia share issue in common with whites in America, and reports on an argument made by one man that ethnic Russians in republics need not learn local languages.