[BLOG] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares photos of rings around a distant galaxy's central black hole.


• Inspired by Finland's Olympic team, the Toronto Public Library's The Buzz shares some interesting books on knitting and for knitters.


• Centauri Dreams notes the surprising news that the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies actually have the same mass. This changes everything about what was thought about the future of the Local Group. D-Brief also reports on this news.


• JSTOR Daily notes how the conversion of tobacco fields into solar farms is not just potentially life-saving but economically viable, too.


• Language Hat rounds up links relevant to the discovery, by field linguists, of the Malaysian language of Jedek.


• Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle of Higher Education, shares a story from Lucy Ferris of Paris of old and the bookstore Shakespeare and Company.


• The LRB Blog notes that the privatization of military officers' housing in the United Kingdom was another disaster.


• Marginal Revolution considers if Los Angeles is the most right-wing major American city, and what that actually means.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that, even in the face of subsidence in Groningen around gas fields and cheap wind energy, even the Netherlands is not moving away from oil and gas.


• Drew Rowsome reports on porn star/actor Chris Harder and his new show, Porn To Be A Star. (NSFW.)


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel examines the factors which distinguish a good scientific theory from a bad one.


• The Volokh Conspiracy makes a decent argument that the politicized pop culture fandom around supreme court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg is not good for the future of jurisprudence.


• John Scalzi, at Whatever, reviews the new Pixel Buds from Google.