[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross bets that barring catastrophe, the US under Trump will dispatch crewed circumlunar flights.


• D-Brief takes a look at the evolution of birds, through speculation on how the beak formed.


• Language Log looks at the ways Trump is represented, and mocked, in the languages of East Asia.


• Noting the death toll in a Mexico City sweatshop, Lawyers, Guns and Money reiterates that sweatshops are dangerous places to work.


• The NYR Daily notes the many structural issues likely to prevent foreign-imposed fixes in Afghanistan.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports from a seemingly unlikely date festival held in the depths of the Saudi desert.


• Rocky Planet reports that Mount Agung, a volcano in Indonesia, is at risk of imminent eruption.


• Drew Rowsome notes a new stage adaptation in Toronto of the Hitchcock classic, North by Northwest.


• Strange Company reports on how the Lonergans disappeared in 1998 in a dive off the Great Barrier Reef. What happened to them?


• Towleroad notes how Chelsea Manning was just banned from entering Canada.


• Window on Eurasia claims that the Russian language is disappearing from Armenia.


• Arnold Zwicky maps the usage of "faggot" as an obscenity in the United States.