[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• At Apostrophen, author 'Nathan Smith shares some of his favourite LGBTQ reads from the past year.


• At the Broadside Blog, Caitlin Kelly asks her readers where their deepest roots lie.


• Missing persons blog Charley Ross celebrates its 11th anniversary.


• At Crooked Timber, Corey Robin takes issue with some attitudes of Democrats post-Alabama, especially regarding African-American voters.


• D-Brief notes that the icy rings of Saturn apparently influence that planet's ionosphere.


• Imageo shares satellite photos of the Thomas wildfire in California, apparently worsened by climate change.


• JSTOR Daily links to ten beautiful poems of winter.


• Language Hat links to an interesting-looking thesis examining non-Indo-European words in proto-Indo-European.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at the underlying cycles leading to the speedy extinction of the passenger pigeon.


• Lingua Franca takes a look at the modern use of the word "even" as a sort of intensifier. Tina Fey's Mean Girls seems to be the source.


• In the aftermath of the "Oumuamua scan, Marginal Revolution takes a look at the Fermi paradox. Where is everyone?


• Neuroskeptic examines the universe of papers lacking citations, apparently only 10% of the total published.


• Drew Rowsome shares some ideas for last-minute Christmas gifts, some naughty and some nice.


• The blog Savage Minds is dead, long live its successor anthro(dendum)!


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shows readers ways they can pick up traces of the quantum universe safely at home.


• Towleroad has a queer take on the new Star Wars. (No spoilers, please--I think there are spoilers in the link.)


• Window on Eurasia suggests language issues in Gaugazia, a Turkic enclave in Moldova, might trigger another bout of separatism there.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell has a new take on the cloud of bizarre videos that is #elsagate, introducing readers to the idea of algorithmic kitsch.