[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Anthropology.net's Kambiz Kamrani looks at the classical Mayan trade in pets, dogs and cats particularly.


• Dangerous Minds shares some vintage cheesecake ads for video and arcade games from 1980s Japan.


• Dead Things considers an examination of the thesis that the fabulous horns of some dinosaurs were used as sexual signals.


• Hornet Stories nominates some queer people to get stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


• JSTOR Daily tells the story of Bobbi Gibb, the woman who in 1966 crashed the Boston Marathon.


• Language Hattells of Toty Samed, an Angolan musician who writes songs not in the now-dominant Portuguese but in his ancestral Kimbundu.


• Steven Attewell at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the ways in which the metaphor of mutants has been used by Marvel Comics to explore themes of racism and marginalization.


• At the LRB Blog, Matthew Porges notes how European Union opposition to the annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco is counterbalanced by the need to keep Morocco as a partner.


• r/mapporn shared a beautiful map of the Great Lakes, Nayanno-Nibiimaang Gichigamiin or “The Five Freshwater Seas”, from the Ojibwe perspective.


• The Map Room Blog shares Christian Tate's transit-style map of Middle Earth.


• Marginal Revolution links to an essay arguing against the United States' dropping the penny and the nickel, on the grounds that these expensive coins are loss-leaders for currency generally.


• The NYR Daily takes a look at early 20th century Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyan, a man whose influence is visible in the Putin era.


• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the eye-catching male photography of Ekaterina Zakharova.


• David Post's analysis at the Volokh Conspiracy of the contract between Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump is a must-read.


• Window on Eurasia notes how the Russian government has failed to cultivate soft power, or wider influence, in the West.