[CAT] Shakespeare, posed as if for a webcam

[CAT] Five #caturday links: maps, Grumpy Cat, Bangladesh, Swiss cat ladders, video

• I have no idea how accurate this r/mapporn map charting the changing ratio of cats to dogs across the United States is, but I love it anyway.


• This Wired obituary for Grumpy Cat, tracing in that feline's death not only the death of a cute cat but the death of hope for the Internet as a source of fun, rings true to me.


• Atlas Obscura notes how Bangladesh has successfully reduced the poaching of tigers.


• Atlas Obscura takes a look at the many cat ladders of the Swiss city of Bern.


• David Grimm at Science Magazine reports on an innovative research project that attached video cameras to cats to see what they actually did.

[PHOTO] Young irises, in bud and in bloom

[PHOTO] Clear electric blue sky, near night

The sky last night as I exited Spadina station a bit before 9:30, at the last of twilight, was a gorgeous perfect electric blue.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul looks at some architecturally innovative pools.


• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait looks at Wolf 359, a star made famous in Star Trek for the Starfleet battle there against the Borg but also a noteworthy red dwarf star in its own right.


• Centauri Dreams looks at how the NASA Deep Space Atomic Clock will play a vital role in interplanetary navigation.


• The Crux considers the "drunken monkey" thesis, the idea that drinking alcohol might have been an evolutionary asset for early hominids.


• D-Brief reports on what may be the next step for genetic engineering beyond CRISPR.


• Bruce Dorminey looks at how artificial intelligence may play a key role in searching for threat asteroids.


• The Island Review shares some poetry from Roseanne Watt, inspired by the Shetlands and using its dialect.


• Livia Gershon writes at JSTOR Daily about how YouTube, by promising to make work fun, actually also makes fun work in psychologically problematic ways.


• Marginal Revolution notes how the relatively small Taiwan has become a financial superpower.


• Janine di Giovanni at the NYR Daily looks back at the 2000 intervention in Sierra Leone. Why did it work?


• Jamais Cascio at Open the Future looks back at a 2004 futurological exercise, the rather accurate Participatory Panopticon. What did he anticipate correctly? How? What does it suggest for us now to our world?


• The Planetary Society Blog notes that LightSail 2 will launch before the end of June.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at how the discovery of gas between galaxies helps solve a dark matter question.


• Strange Company shares a broad collection of links.


• Window on Eurasia makes the obvious observation that the West prefers a North Caucasus controlled by Russia to one controlled by Islamists.


• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at American diner culture, including American Chinese food.

[BLOG] Five D-Brief links: microbiome, genetic engineering, elephant ivory, Moon, O'Neill colonies

• D-Brief examines the importance of the microbiome in human beings.


• D-Brief observes that the genetic engineering of two twins in China to make them resistant to HIV might also shorten their lifespans.


• The poaching of elephants, happily, is decreasing as demand for ivory goes down worldwide. D-Brief reports.


• D-Brief takes a look at the history of imagined landings on the Moon.


• D-Brief looks at the long history of O'Neill colonies in popular culture, as imagined settlements in space itself.

[NEWS] Five JSTOR Daily links: hobos, bird green, Ireland linen, Frank Lloyd Wright, photosynthesis

• JSTOR Daily looks at how early 20th century Americans facing underemployment and persecution under vagrancy laws organized themselves, ultimately creating the Hobo College of Chicago.


• JSTOR Daily explains how the green that we think we see in the feathers of some birds actually is not really there.


• JSTOR Daily looks at how the Napoleonic Wars helped transform the linen industry in Ireland, not least by drawing women into the workforce.


• JSTOR Daily looks at how Frank Lloyd Wright was decidedly unhappy with the mass produced Taliesin Line of homewares made in the 1950s.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the amazing potential of artificial photosynthesis, particularly as a source of fuel.