[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomer considers how a stellar-mass black hole of 70 solar masses got so unaccountably huge.


• Alex Tolley at Centauri Dreams considers the colours of photosynthesis, and how they might reveal the existence of life on exoplanets.


• The Dragon's Tales shares some links on humans in the Paleolithic.


• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers the scripts of jokes.


• Gizmodo reports on the repurposed China-Netherlands radio telescope operating from an orbit above the far side of the Moon.


• JSTOR Daily considers the political rhetoric of declinism.


• Language Log considers the controversy over the future of the apostrophe.


• James Butler at the LRB Blog notes a YouGov prediction of a Conservative majority in the UK and how this prediction is not value-neutral.


• Marginal Revolution shares a paper from India noting how caste identities do affect the labour supply.


• Ursula Lindsay at the NYR Daily considers if the political crisis in Lebanon, a product of economic pressures and sectarianism, might lead to a revolutionary transformation of the country away from sectarian politics.


• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections looks at some of the many complicated and intermingled issues of contemporary Australia.


• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest projects funded by the ESA.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shares ten beautiful photos taken in 2019 by the Hubble.


• Strange Company reports on the strange unsolved disappearance of Lillian Richey from her Idaho home in 1964.


• Window on Eurasia shares a Russian criticism of the Ukrainian autocephalous church as a sort of papal Protestantism.


• Arnold Zwicky considers the positive potential of homoeros.