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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that Betelgeuse is very likely not on the verge of a supernova, here.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the mapping of asteroid Bennu.

  • Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber reposted, after the election, a 2013 essay looking at the changes in British society from the 1970s on.

  • The Dragon's Tales shares a collection of links about the Precambrian Earth, here.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about fear in the context of natural disasters, here.

  • Far Outliers reports on the problems of privateers versus regular naval units.

  • Gizmodo looks at galaxy MAMBO-9, which formed a billion years after the Big Bang.

  • io9 writes about the alternate history space race show For All Mankind.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the posters used in Ghana in the 1980s to help promote Hollywood movies.

  • Language Hat links to a new book that examines obscenity and gender in 1920s Britain.

  • Language Log looks at the terms used for the national language in Xinjiang.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with Jeff Jacoby's lack of sympathy towards people who suffer from growing inequality.

  • Marginal Revolution suggests that urbanists should have an appreciation for Robert Moses.

  • Sean Marshall writes, with photos, about his experiences riding a new Bolton bus.

  • Caryl Philips at the NYR Daily writes about Rachmanism, a term wrongly applied to the idea of avaricious landlords like Peter Rachman, an immigrant who was a victim of the Profumo scandal.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking at the experience of aging among people without families.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why the empty space in an atom can never be removed.

  • Strange Maps shares a festive map of London, a reindeer, biked by a cyclist.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how Mongolia twice tried to become a Soviet republic.

  • Arnold Zwicky considers different birds with names starting with x.

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  • Charlie Stross at Antipope shares an essay he recently presented on artificial intelligence and its challenges for us.

  • P. Kerim Friedman writes at {anthro}dendum about the birth of the tea ceremony in the Taiwan of the 1970s.

  • Anthropology net reports on a cave painting nearly 44 thousand years old in Indonesia depicting a hunting story.

  • Architectuul looks at some temporary community gardens in London.

  • Bad Astronomy reports on the weird history of asteroid Ryugu.

  • The Buzz talks about the most popular titles borrowed from the Toronto Public Library in 2019.

  • Caitlin Kelly talks at the Broadside Blog about her particular love of radio.

  • Centauri Dreams talks about the role of amateur astronomers in searching for exoplanets, starting with LHS 1140 b.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber looks at what is behind the rhetoric of "virtue signalling".

  • Dangerous Minds shares concert performance from Nirvana filmed the night before the release of Nevermind.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes new evidence that, even before the Chixculub impact, the late Cretaceous Earth was staggering under environmental pressures.

  • Myron Strong at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about how people of African descent in the US deal with the legacies of slavery in higher education.

  • Far Outliers reports on the plans in 1945 for an invasion of Japan by the US.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing gathers together a collection of the author's best writings there.

  • Gizmodo notes the immensity of the supermassive black hole, some 40 billion solar masses, at the heart of galaxy Holm 15A 700 million light-years away.

  • Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res writes about the issue of how Wichita is to organize its civic politics.

  • io9 argues that the 2010s were a decade where the culture of the spoiler became key.

  • The Island Review points readers to the podcast Mother's Blood, Sister's Songs, an exploration of the links between Ireland and Iceland.

  • Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of the lawyer of the killer of a mob boss that the QAnon conspiracy inspired his actions. This strikes me as terribly dangerous.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at a study examining scholarly retractions.

  • Language Hat shares an amusing cartoon illustrating the relationships of the dialects of Arabic.

  • Language Log lists ten top new words in the Japanese language.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the dissipation of American diplomacy by Trump.

  • The LRB Blog looks at the many problems in Sparta, Greece, with accommodating refugees, for everyone concerned.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting the decline of the one-child policy in China has diminished child trafficking, among other crimes.

  • Sean Marshall, looking at transit in Brampton, argues that transit users need more protection from road traffic.

  • Russell Darnley shares excerpts from essays he wrote about the involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War.

  • Peter Watts talks about his recent visit to a con in Sofia, Bulgaria, and about the apocalypse, here.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the corporatization of the funeral industry, here.

  • Diane Duane writes, from her own personal history with Star Trek, about how one can be a writer who ends up writing for a media franchise.

  • Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the job of tasting, and rating, different cuts of lamb.

  • The Planetary Society Blog looks at a nondescript observatory in the Mojave desert of California that maps the asteroids of the solar system.

  • Roads and Kingdoms interviews Eduardo Chavarin about, among other things, Tijuana.

  • Drew Rowsome loves the SpongeBob musical.

  • Peter Rukavina announces that Charlottetown has its first public fast charger for electric vehicles.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog considers the impact of space medicine, here.

  • The Signal reports on how the Library of Congress is making its internet archives more readily available, here.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers how the incredibly isolated galaxy MCG+01-02-015 will decay almost to nothing over almost uncountable eons.

  • Strange Company reports on the trial and execution of Christopher Slaughterford for murder. Was there even a crime?

  • Strange Maps shares a Coudenhove-Kalergi map imagining the division of the world into five superstates.

  • Understanding Society considers entertainment as a valuable thing, here.

  • Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine announces his new book, Où va l'argent des pauvres?

  • John Scalzi at Whatever looks at how some mailed bread triggered a security alert, here.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on the massive amount of remittances sent to Tajikistan by migrant workers, here.

  • Arnold Zwicky notes a bizarre no-penguins sign for sale on Amazon.

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  • The Map Room Blog links to some old maps of Montréal.

  • Major English-language newspapers in Montréal, including the Montreal Gazette, are no longer being distributed to Québec City clients. CBC reports.

  • Radio-Canada employees' union is concerned over cost overruns in the construction of a new headquarters for the French-language chain. CTV NEws reports.

  • La Presse notes how the to-be-demolished Champlain Bridge is a home for, among others, falcons.

  • The Bibliothèque Saint-Sulpice, after the latest delay, will have been closed for nearly two decades. La Presse reports.

  • The Montreal Children's Library is celebrating its 90th anniversary with a fundraiser. CBC reports.

  • CBC Montreal looks at how, even without a stadium, legendary mayor Jean Drapeau brought major league baseball to his city.

  • The anti-gentrification University of the Streets group has some interesting ideas. CBC reports.

  • The city government of Montréal is looking into the issue of the high retail vacancy rates in parts of the city. CBC reports.

  • At CBC Montreal, Ontario-born Jessica Brown writes about her struggles with employment in her adopted city.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the findings that the LISA Pathfinder satellite was impacted by hypervelocity comet fragments.

  • Centauri Dreams reports on what we have learned about interstellar comet Borisov.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes the ESA's Matisse instrument, capable of detecting nanodiamonds orbiting distant stars.

  • Gizmodo reports a new study of the great auk, now extinct, suggesting that humans were wholly responsible for this extinction with their hunting.

  • The Island Review links to articles noting the existential vulnerability of islands like Venice and Orkney to climate change.

  • Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of Tucker Carlson--perhaps not believably retracted by him--to be supporting Russia versus Ukraine.

  • Language Hat reports on the new Indigemoji, emoji created to reflect the culture and knowledge of Aboriginal groups in Australia.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes one of the sad consequences of the American president being a liar.

  • James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the optimism of the spending plans of Labour in the UK, a revived Keynesianism.

  • Marginal Revolution notes the exceptional cost of apartments built for homeless people in San Francisco.

  • Strange Maps looks at some remarkable gravity anomalies in parts of the US Midwest.

  • Towleroad notes the support of Jamie Lee Curtis for outing LGBTQ people who are homophobic politicians.

  • Understanding Society looks at organizations from the perspective of them as open systems.

  • Whatever's John Scalzi gives a generally positive review of the Pixel 4.

  • Arnold Zwicky notes the irony of sex pills at an outpost of British discount chain Poundland.

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  • Centauri Dreams notes how gas giants on eccentric orbits can easily disrupt bodies on orbits inwards.

  • Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber suggests that the political culture of England has been deformed by the trauma experienced by young children of the elites at boarding schools.

  • Dangerous Minds looks at the haunting art of Paul Delvaux.

  • The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the work of Tressie McMillan Cottom in investigating for-profit higher education.

  • Far Outliers looks at Tripoli in 1801.

  • Gizmodo shares the Boeing design for the moon lander it proposes for NASA in 2024.

  • io9 shares words from cast of Terminator: Dark Fate about the importance of the Mexican-American frontier.

  • JSTOR Daily makes a case against killing spiders trapped in one's home.

  • Language Hat notes a recovered 17th century translation of a Dutch bible into the Austronesian language of Siraya, spoken in Taiwan.

  • Language Log looks at the origin of the word "brogue".

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the payday lender industry.

  • Marginal Revolution notes a new biography of Walter Raleigh, a maker of empire indeed.

  • The NYR Daily looks at a new dance show using the rhythms of the words of writer Robert Walser.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at how, in a quantum universe, time and space could still be continuous not discrete.

  • Strange Company looks at a court case from 1910s Brooklyn, about a parrot that swore.

  • The Volokh Conspiracy notes an affirmative action court case in which it was ruled that someone from Gibraltar did not count as Hispanic.

  • Window on Eurasia notes rhetoric claiming that Russians are the largest divided people on the Earth.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at lizards and at California's legendary Highway 101.

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  • Bad Astronomy notes a new detailed study suggesting that asteroid Hygeia is round. Does this mean it is a dwarf planet?

  • The Buzz notes that the Toronto Public Library has a free booklet on the birds of Toronto available at its branches.

  • Crooked Timber looks forward to a future, thanks to Trump, without the World Trade Organization.

  • D-Brief notes how the kelp forests off California were hurt by unseasonal heat and disease.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes an impending collision of supergalactic clusters.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how judgement can complicate collective action.

  • Language Hat looks at the different definitions of the word "mobile".

  • Language Log looks at the deep influence of the Persian language upon Marathi.
    https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=44807
  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how, if anything, climate scientists make conservative claims about their predictions.

  • Marginal Revolution wonders if planned power outages are a good way to deal with the threat of wildfires in California.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the ethnic cleansing being enabled by Turkey in Kurdish Syria.

  • Corey S. Powell at Out There interviews archeologist Arthur Lin about his use of space-based technologies to discovery traces of the past.

  • The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks at the staggering inequality in Chile, driver of the recent protests.

  • At Roads and Kingdoms, Anthony Elghossain reports from the scene of the mass protests in Lebanon.

  • Drew Rowsome tells how his balcony garden fared this year.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at stellar generations in the universe. (Our sun is a third-generation star.)

  • Strange Company looks at the murder of a girl five years old in Indiana in 1898. Was the neighbor boy twelve years old accused of the crime the culprit?

  • Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine takes a look at social mobility in France.

  • Understanding Society's Daniel Little considers economic historians and their study of capitalism.

  • Window on Eurasia looks at the pro-Russian policies of the Moldova enclave of Gagauzia, and draws recommendations for Ukraine re: the Donbas.

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  • Adam Fish at anthro{dendum} compares different sorts of public bathing around the world, from Native America to Norden to Japan.

  • Charlie Stross at Antipope is unimpressed by the person writing the script for our timeline.

  • Architectuul reports on an architectural conference in Lisbon.

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning photos of the eruption of the Raikoke volcano in Kamchatka.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at what the Voyager spacecraft have returned about the edge of the solar system.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the idea of bipartisanship if it means compromising on reality, allegorically.

  • The Crux counts the number of people who have died in outer space.

  • D-Brief notes that the Andromeda Galaxy has swallowed up multiple dwarf galaxies over the eons.

  • Dead Things notes the identification of the first raptor species from Southeast Asia, Siamraptor suwati.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes a paper tracing the origins of interstellar comet 2/Borisov from the general area of Kruger 60.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the privilege allowing people access to affordable dental care.

  • Gizmodo tells how Alexei Leonov survived the first spacewalk.

  • io9 looks at the remarkable new status quo for the X-Men created by Jonathan Hickman.

  • Selma Franssen at the Island Review writes about the threats facing the seabirds of the Shetlands.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at what led Richard Nixon to make so many breaks from the American consensus on China in the Cold War.

  • Language Log notes an undergraduate course at Yale using the Voynich Manuscript as an aid in the study of language.

  • Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains her recent experience of the socialized health care system of Israel for Americans.

  • The LRB Blog looks at how badly the Fukuyama prediction of an end to history has aged.

  • The Map Room Blog shares a few maps of the new Ottawa LRT route.

  • Marginal Revolution notes a paper establishing a link between Chinese industries undermining their counterparts in Mexico and Mexican social ills including crime.

  • Sean Marshall reports from Ottawa about what the Confederation Line looks like.

  • Adam Shatz at the NYR Daily looks at the power of improvisation in music.

  • Roads and Kingdoms looks at South Williamsburg Jewish deli Gottlieb's.

  • Drew Rowsome reviews the new Patti Smith book, Year of the Monkey.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking as the factors leading into transnational movements.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the question of the direction(s) in which order in the universe was generated.

  • Window on Eurasia shares a report noting the very minor flows of migration from China to Russia.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at the politics in the British riding of Keighley.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at some penguin socks.

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  • Bad Astronomy notes the remarkably eccentric orbit of gas giant HR 5138b.

  • Centauri Dreams notes the impact that large-scale collisions have on the evolution of planets.

  • Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber noted yesterday that babies born on September 11th in 2001 are now 18 years old, adults.

  • The Crux notes that some of the hominins in the Sima de los Huesos site in Spain, ancestors to Neanderthals, may have been murdered.

  • D-Brief reports on the cryodrakon, a pterosaur that roamed the skies above what is now Canada 77 million years ago.

  • Dangerous Minds looks at the political artwork of Jan Pötter.

  • Gizmodo notes a poll suggesting a majority of Britons would support actively seeking to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations.

  • io9 has a loving critical review of the first Star Trek movie.

  • JSTOR Daily shares, from April 1939, an essay by the anonymous head of British intelligence looking at the international context on the eve of the Second World War.

  • Language Log notes a recent essay on the mysterious Voynich manuscript, one concluding that it is almost certainly a hoax of some kind.

  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the future of the labour movement in the United States.

  • Marginal Revolution considers what sort of industrial policy would work for the United States.

  • Yardena Schwartz writes at NYR Daily about the potential power of Arab voters in Israel.

  • Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections explains why, despite interest, Australia did not launch a space program in the 1980s.

  • Drew Rowsome provides a queer review of It: Chapter Two.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how government censorship of science doomed the Soviet Union and could hurt the United States next.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how, in the Volga republics, recent educational policy changes have marginalized non-Russian languages.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares a glossy, fashion photography-style, reimagining of the central relationship in the James Baldwin classic Giovanni's Room, arranged by Hilton Als.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait looks at Westerlund-1, a massive star cluster with many bright stars in our galaxy.

  • Centauri Dreams notes a finding that giant planets like Jupiter are less likely to be found around Sun-like stars.

  • D-Brief notes how, in a time of climate change, birds migrated between Canada and the equator.

  • Bruce Dorminey lists five overlooked facts about the Apollo 11 mission.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that the US House of Representatives has approved the creation of a US Space Corps analogous to the Marines.

  • JSTOR Daily considers tactics to cure groupthink.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, looking at the experience of Hong Kong, observes how closely economic freedoms depend on political freedom and legitimacy.

  • Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog explains his rationale for calculating that the Apollo project, in 2019 dollars, cost more than $US 700 billion.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the star R136a1, a star in the 30 Doradus cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud that is the most massive star known to exist.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how Circassians in Syria find it very difficult to seek refuge in their ancestral lands in the North Caucasus.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks, in occasionally NSFW detail, at the importance of June the 16th for him as a date.

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  • JSTOR Daily looks at how early 20th century Americans facing underemployment and persecution under vagrancy laws organized themselves, ultimately creating the Hobo College of Chicago.

  • JSTOR Daily explains how the green that we think we see in the feathers of some birds actually is not really there.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how the Napoleonic Wars helped transform the linen industry in Ireland, not least by drawing women into the workforce.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how Frank Lloyd Wright was decidedly unhappy with the mass produced Taliesin Line of homewares made in the 1950s.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the amazing potential of artificial photosynthesis, particularly as a source of fuel.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at the German city of Nordlingen, formed in a crater created by the impact of a binary asteroid with Earth.

  • Centauri Dreams reports on the possibility that the farside of the Moon might bear the imprint of an ancient collision with a dwarf planet the size of Ceres.

  • D-Brief notes that dredging for the expansion of the port of Miami has caused terrible damage to corals there.

  • Dangerous Minds looks at the last appearances of David Bowie and Iggy Pop together on stage.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that China is on track to launch an ambitious robotic mission to Mars in 2020.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog talks about what sociological research actually is.

  • Gizmodo reports on the discovery of a torus of cool gas circling Sagittarius A* at a distance of a hundredth of a light-year.

  • io9 reports about Angola Janga, an independent graphic novel by Marcelo D'Salete showing how slaves from Africa in Brazil fought for their freedom and independence.

  • The Island Review shares some poems of Matthew Landrum, inspired by the Faroe Islands.

  • Joe. My. God. looks at how creationists are mocking flat-earthers for their lack of scientific knowledge.

  • Language Hat looks at the observations of Mary Beard that full fluency in ancient Latin is rare even for experts, for reason I think understandable.

  • Melissa Byrnes wrote at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the meaning of 4 June 1989 in the political transitions of China and Poland.

  • Marginal Revolution notes how the New York Times has become much more aware of cutting-edge social justice in recent years.

  • The NYR Daily looks at how the memories and relics of the Sugar Land prison complex outside of Houston, Texas, are being preserved.

  • Jason C Davis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the differences between LightSail 1 and the soon-to-be-launched LightSail 2.

  • The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks in detail at the high electricity prices in Argentina.

  • Peter Rukavina looks at the problems with electric vehicle promotion on PEI.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at when the universe will have its first black dwarf. (Not in a while.)

  • Window on Eurasia suggests that Belarusians are not as interested in becoming citizens of Russia as an Internet poll suggests.

  • Arnold Zwicky highlights a Pride Month cartoon set in Antarctica featuring the same-sex marriage of two penguins.

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The scene of a robin with its caught worm dangling from its beak as it patrolled the lawn of CAMH on Spadina caught my attention Sunday morning. Our contemporary dinosaurs continue to live up to their great ancestors.

Robin with worm on the lawn (1) #toronto #spadinaavenue #camh #birds #robin #worm #green #grass #latergram


Robin with worm on the lawn (2) #toronto #spadinaavenue #camh #birds #robin #worm #green #grass #latergram


Robin with worm on the lawn (3) #toronto #spadinaavenue #camh #birds #robin #worm #green #grass #latergram
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  • Bad Astronomy identifies the most distant globular cluster known to exist around the Milky Way Galaxy, PSO J174.0675-10.8774 some 470 thousand light-years away.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the strange ring of the Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Haumea.

  • Crooked Timber looks at an ill-constructed biography of Eric Hobsbawm.

  • D-Brief notes an experiment that proves antimatter obeys the same laws of quantum mechanics as regular matter, at least insofar as the double-slit experiment is concerned.

  • Earther notes that life in Antarctica depends critically on the presence of penguin feces.

  • Imageo looks at awesome satellite imagery of spring storms in North America.

  • The Island Review interviews Irene de la Torre, a translator born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, about her experiences and thoughts on her insular experiences.

  • Joe. My. God. notes a new deal between Gilead Pharmaceuticals and the American government to make low-cost PrEP available to two hundred thousand people.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which The Great Gatsby reflects the norms of the Jazz Age.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money is rightly critical of the Sam Harris suggestion that white supremacism is not an ideology of special concern, being only a fringe belief.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution solicits questions for an upcoming interview with demographer of religion Eric Kaufmann.

  • Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares cute video of otters frolicking on the Singapore River.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel asks when the universe became transparent to light.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares photos of his blooming flower gardens.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes how the warp in space-time made by the black hole in V404 Cygni has been detected.

  • The Crux reports on the discovery of the remains of a chicha brewery in pre-Columbian Peru.

  • D-Brief notes a new model for the creation of the Moon by impact with primordial Earth that would explain oddities with the Earth still being molten, having a magma ocean.

  • Bruce Dorminey shares the idea that extraterrestrial civilizations might share messages with posterity through DNA encoded in bacteria set adrift in space.

  • The Dragon's Tales reports on progress in drones and UAVs made worldwide.

  • Gizmodo notes some of the privacy issues involved with Alexa.

  • JSTOR Daily explains how some non-mammals, including birds and fish, nurse their young.

  • Language Hat reports on the latest studies in the ancient linguistic history of East Asia, with suggestions that Old Japanese has connections to the languages of the early Korean states of Silla and Paekche but not to that of Koguryo.

  • Language Log considers the issues involved with the digitization of specialized dictionaries.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money remembers the start of the Spanish Civil War.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points towards his recent interview with Margaret Atwood.

  • The NYR Daily reports on a remarkable new play, Heidi Schreck's What The Constitution Means To Me.

  • Towleroad reports on what Hunter Kelly, one of the men who operatives tried to recruit to spread slander against Pete Buttigieg, has to say about the affair.

  • Window on Eurasia suggests that a Russian annexation of Belarus would not be an easy affair.

  • Arnold Zwicky reports on the latest signs of language change, this time in the New Yorker.

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  • In an extended meditation, Antipope's Charlie Stross considers what the domestic architecture of the future will look like. What different technologies, with different uses of space, will come into play?

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the new SPECULOOS exoplanet hunting telescope, specializing in the search for planets around the coolest stars.

  • The Crux looks at the evolutionary origins of hominins and chimpanzees in an upright walking ape several million years ago.

  • D-Brief notes the multiple detections of gravitational waves made by LIGO.

  • The Dragon's Tales looks at the development of laser weapons by China.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the gap between social theory and field research.

  • Gizmodo shares an interesting discussion with paleontologists and other dinosaur experts: What would the dinosaurs have become if not for the Chixculub impact?

  • Hornet Stories notes the ways in which the policies of the Satanic Temple would be good for queer students.

  • io9 notes how the Deep Space 9 documentary What We Leave Behind imagines what a Season 8 would have looked like.

  • Joe. My. God. reports that activist Jacob Wohl is apparently behind allegations of a sexual assault by Pete Buttigieg against a subordinate.

  • JSTOR Daily takes a look at the uses of the yellow ribbon in American popular culture.
  • Language Hat shares an account of the life experiences of an Israeli taxi driver, spread across languages and borders.

  • Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money makes deserved fun of Bret Easton Ellis for his claims to having been marginalized.

  • Marginal Revolution considers, briefly, the idea that artificial intelligence might not be harmful to humans. (Why would it necessarily have to be?)

  • The NYR Daily considers a British exhibition of artworks by artists from the former Czechoslovakia.

  • Peter Rukavina looks at gender representation in party caucuses in PEI from the early 1990s on, noting the huge surge in female representation in the Greens now.

  • The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress is preserving Latin American monographs.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how Einstein knew that gravity must bend light.

  • Window on Eurasia explains the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s.

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  • Urban Toronto looks at the excavation site of Liberty Market Tower in Liberty Village.

  • blogTO notes that the Canada Goose has returned to Toronto, and that some geese have begun to defend their reclaimed territories.

  • This Heather Mallick column at the Toronto Star about her accidental (and unsuccessful) impromptu stabbing of an errant raccoon is just bizarre.

  • Many of the witnesses of the Yonge Street van attack last year are still struggling. Global News reports.

  • The Katherine Laidlaw profileat Toronto Life of Alek Minassian, perpetrator of last year's van attack on Yonge Street, is timely. Still: How did he come to that point in his life where that atrocity made sense?

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  • Crooked Timber at John Quiggin takes issue with the idea that, now, there are many Republicans who accept Trump only conditionally, for what a Trump presidency could achieve.

  • D-Brief notes the XT2 signal, issue of a collision between two magnetars in a galaxy 6.6 billion light-years away.

  • Cody Delistraty reports on an exhibit at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris on the history of soccer in world politics.

  • Earther reports on a new satellite mission focused on studying solar-induced fluorescence, the glow of plants as they photosynthesize.

  • Far Outliers notes how U.S. Grant responded to slaves seeking freedom from the Union Army.

  • JSTOR Daily explores Lake Baikal.

  • Language Log reports on the multilingualism of Pete Buttigieg.

  • Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money gives deserved praise to the Jason Lutes graphic novel Berlin.

  • Marginal Revolution looks at the ways in which dense social networks can keep stroke victims from getting quick help.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the campaigns and ideas of anti-authoritarian Chinese professor and writer Xu Zhangrun.

  • Drew Rowsome gives a largely negative review to the 2014 Easter horror film The Beaster Bunny.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why the singularities of black holes have spin.

  • Window on Eurasia notes on the report of a Muslim community leader in Norilsk that a quarter of the population of that Russian Arctic city is of Muslim background.

  • Arnold Zwicky considers the ways in which flowers and penguins and cuteness can interact, with photos.

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  • Circumstellar habitable zones may be much narrower than previously hoped, Universe Today notes.

  • NOW Toronto notes changes in Ontario law that might expose endangered species like cormorants to hunting.

  • The world's glaciers have lost more than nine trillion tons of ice in the past century, Universe Today reports.

  • Politico Europe notes that Spain is at particular risk of desertification as climate change proceeds.

  • The Smithsonian Magazine notes that, as growing seasons extend thanks to global warming, so do allergy-causing pollen counts.

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