rfmcdonald | Entries tagged with blogging

I've a post up at Demography Matters noting the all-encompassing impact of COVID-19 on the world and its demographics, and promising that Demography Matters will persist in some form to address the different changes this virus has imposed on us all.

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.

{anthro}dendum features a post by Kimberly J. Lewis about stategies for anthropologists to write, and be human, after trauma.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on exoplanet LHC 3844b, a world that had its atmosphere burned away by its parent star.

Centauri Dreams looks at Neptune from the perspective of exoplanets discovered near snow lines.

D-Brief reports on the new Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, installed at Kitt Peak to help map galaxies and dark energy.

Gizmodo
looks at how Airbnb is dealing with party houses after a fatal mass shooting.

The Island Review shares some drawings by Charlotte Watson, inspired by the subantarctic Auckland Islands.

JSTOR Daily looks at the late 19th century hit novel Ramona, written by Helen Hunt Jackson to try to change American policy towards indigenous peoples.

Language Hat looks at how, until recently, the Faroese language had taboos requiring certain words not to be used at sea.

Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at a proposal to partially privatize American national parks.

The LRB Blog looks at what Nigel Farage will be doing next.

Marginal Revolution looks at a speculative theory on the origins of American individualism in agrarian diversity.

The NYR Daily looks at an exhibition of the artwork of John Ruskin.

Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw remarks on a connection between Arthur Ransome and his region of New England.

Drew Rowsome shares an interview with folk musician Michelle Shocked.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel emphasizes the importance of the dark energy mystery.

Towleroad notes a posthumous single release by George Michael.

Daniel Little at Understanding Society celebrates the 12th anniversary of his blog, and looks back at its history.

Window on Eurasia looks at Ingushetia after 1991.

Arnold Zwicky looks at All Saints Day.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how a photo of the Large Magellanic Cloud makes him recognize it as an irregular spiral, not a blob.

Centauri Dreams celebrates the life of cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with one particular claim about the benefits of war and empire.

The Crux looks at fatal familial insomnia, a genetic disease that kills through inflicting sleeplessness on its victims.

D-Brief looks at suggestions that magnetars are formed by the collisions of stars.

Dangerous Minds introduces readers to the fantasy art of Arthur Rackham.

Cody Delistraty considers some evidence suggesting that plants have a particular kind of intelligence.

The Dragon's Tales notes the expansion by Russia of its airbase in Hneymim, Syria.

Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about the critical and changing position of libraries as public spaces in our cities.

Gizmodo looks at one marvelous way scientists have found to cheat quantum mechanics.

Information is Beautiful outlines a sensible proposal to state to cultivate seaweed a as source of food and fuel.

io9 notes that, in the exciting new X-Men relaunch, immortal Moira MacTaggart is getting her own solo book.

JSTOR Daily notes how the now-defunct Thomas Cook travel agency played a role in supporting British imperialism, back in the day.

Language Log notes that the Oxford English Dictionary is citing the blog on the use of "their" as a singular.

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the grounds for impeaching Donald Trump.

The LRB Blog looks at the politics of Mozambique at the country approaches dangerous times.

Sean Marshall notes the southern Ontario roads that run to Paris and to London.

Neuroskeptic notes a problematic scientific study that tried to use rabbits to study the female human orgasm.

Steve Baker at The Numerati looks at a new book on journalism by veteran Peter Copeland.

The NYR Daily makes the point that depending on biomass as a green energy solution is foolish.

The Planetary Science Blog notes a 1983 letter by then-president Carl Sagan calling for a NASA mission to Saturn and Titan.

Roads and Kingdoms interviews photojournalist Eduardo Leal on his home city of Porto, particularly as transformed by tourism.

Drew Rowsome notes the book Dreamland, an examination of the early amusement park.

The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper considering, in broad detail, how the consequence of population aging could be mitigated in the labour market of the European Union.

Strange Company reports on a bizarre poltergeist in a British garden shed.

Window on Eurasia notes the new strength of a civic national identity in Kazakhstan, based on extensive polling.

Arnold Zwicky, surely as qualified a linguist as any, examines current verb of the American moment, "depose".

I know for a fact there are only dozens of links here. Still, I want to work the title.

* * *

https://anthrodendum.org/2019/08/05/humanizing-fieldwork/

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/a-very-dense-oasis-in-the-brown-dwarf-desert
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/astronomers-are-watching-a-star-die-in-real-time
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/where-do-the-big-moons-of-big-kuiper-belt-objects-come-from

https://broadsideblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/04/learning-to-say-no/

http://crookedtimber.org/2019/08/02/right-absolutely-not/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2019/08/06/meet-homo-naledi-the-mysterious-human-cousin/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/07/30/crab-nebula-photons-light-highest-energy-gamma-rays/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/07/26/ancient-mars-tsunami-raises-questions-about-a-surprisingly-wet-world/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2019/07/29/searches-for-alien-technosignatures-remain-hamstrung-by-a-lack-of-federal-funding-says-paper/

http://thedragonstales.blogspot.com/2019/08/nasa-sole-sources-gateway-habitation.html

https://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2019/07/social-isolation-living-alone-and-aging.html

http://faroutliers.blogspot.com/2019/08/wordcatcher-tales-from-kyoto.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2019/08/01/10-billion-tons-of-meltwater-pours-off-greenland-in-a-day-but-are-things-as-bad-as-the-twittersphere-says/

https://daily.jstor.org/the-invention-of-journalistic-objectivity/
https://daily.jstor.org/chinas-new-silk-road/
https://daily.jstor.org/speaking-for-rural-america-100-years-ago/
https://daily.jstor.org/how-janet-flanners-high-class-gossip-changed-america/

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=43847

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/07/amy-waxs-mexican-problem

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/august/in-trinidad
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/july/feelings-of-inertia-and-dread

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/open-borders-in-svalbard.html
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/highly-decentralized-solar-geoengineering.html

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/06/toni-morrison-in-the-review/
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/06/america-is-not-rome-it-just-thinks-it-is/
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07/25/worlds-apart-sci-fi-visions-of-altered-reality/
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/03/casablancas-gift-to-marrakech-and-the-birth-of-moroccos-modern-art-movement/
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07/30/an-iranian-dissidents-tale/
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/05/the-utopian-promise-of-adornos-open-thinking-fifty-years-on/

http://russiandemographix.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-russians-are-coming.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/25/general-relativity-rules-einstein-victorious-in-unprecedented-gravitational-redshift-test/

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2019/longjiang-2-impacts-moon.html

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/europes-refugees

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/08/05/if-cosmology-is-in-crisis-then-these-are-the-19-most-important-galaxies-in-the-universe/

https://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2019/07/soviet-nuclear-disasters-kyshtym.html

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/07/520-parishes-of-moscow-church-have-now.html

http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2019/07/28/round-and-round-the-ooda-loop-folk-boyd-and-the-brexiters/

https://arnoldzwicky.org/2019/08/05/legally-contested-liverwurst/

https://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/weblog/2019/07/26-metrolinx_.shtml
https://globalnews.ca/news/5713738/ontario-government-looks-to-sell-naming-rights-for-gta-transit-stations/
https://globalnews.ca/news/5713268/yyz-why-guild-park-gardens/
https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/07/toronto-overcrowding-dufferin-bus/
https://www.blogto.com/real-estate-toronto/2019/07/toronto-church-condo-development/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-long-weekend-gun-violence-1.5237108?cmp=rss
https://torontolife.com/city/life/threw-grandmother-assisted-suicide-party/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/aging-gayfully-working-to-shatter-lgbtq-taboos-in-quebec-retirement-homes-1.5236794?cmp=rss

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/07/amsterdam-travel-tourism-red-light-safety-sex-workers-laws/593524/?utm_source=feed
https://globalnews.ca/news/5705470/50k-reward-25-year-old-cold-case/
https://nowtoronto.com/news/parliament-hill-indigenous-remains/
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/steeltown-or-hatetown-hamilton-tops-country-in-hate-crime-reports
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/regional/201908/03/01-5236171-saint-hyacinthe-une-ville-a-la-rescousse-de-ses-joyaux.php
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/29/london-property-crisis-canal-narrowboat-gentrification
https://globalnews.ca/news/5724352/kingstons-princess-street-promenade/
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/aug/05/suburb-in-the-sky-how-jakartans-built-an-entire-village-on-top-of-a-mall
https://globalnews.ca/news/5728142/mexico-el-paso-shooting-terrorism/
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/toronto-montreal-high-frequency-rail-line-more-effective-without-quebec-city-memo-1.4527012
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-flooding-demolition-saint-marie-1.5236763?cmp=rss

https://www.macleans.ca/history/the-long-history-of-go-back-to-where-you-came-from-in-canada/
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/its-not-about-reaching-europe-but-fleeing-libya-accounts-from-a-mediterranean-rescue-ship/
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/the-left-will-be-international-or-it-wont-be-at-all-lesson-from-greece/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/great-lakes-water-problems-1.5230158?cmp=rss
https://www.wired.com/story/communist-housing-blocks-gallery/
https://nowtoronto.com/news/canada-cannabis-legalization-dispensaries-canntrust/

https://www.universetoday.com/143071/snowball-exoplanets-might-be-better-for-life-than-we-thought/

http://www.heavymetal.com/news/please-kill-us-jean-grey-and-sue-storm-as-rebels-with-no-future/

http://fusion.net/this-104-year-old-blogger-is-keeping-the-dying-art-aliv-1793863951

JSTOR Daily links to a selection of past posts relating to Black History Month.

JSTOR Daily answers the question of why the TSA cannot go on strike easily.

JSTOR Daily takes a look at the life of Vannevar Bush, the man who triggered the United States' building of the nuclear bomb and contributed much else, too.

JSTOR Daily looks back to the 1920s, when jazz music began to be seen as a public health crisis by many.

JSTOR Daily considers the extent to which the Great Migration of African-Americans was a forced migration, driven not just by poverty but by systemic anti-black violence.

CityLab takes a look at Geocities, one of the first online platforms for websites, looking at how it tried to create and maintain online neighbourhoods.

Ars Technica looks at the promise--sadly unfulfilled--of pioneering blogging platform Livejournal. It really could have been a contender.

Think Progress notes, more than a month after the purge by Tumblr of NSFW blogs, the far right remains active there.

This Huffington Post India article looks at the rising presence of pro-Hindutva answers put forth by Indian users on Quora.

Ars Technica notes that researchers can now, even if you do not actively participate on social media, predict what your content would likely be.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning photos of the Triangulum galaxy.

The Crux notes how innovative planning and recovery missions helped many NASA missions, like the Hubble and Kepler telescopes, improve over time.

Sea stars on the Pacific coast of North America, D-Brief notes, are starting to die out en masse.

David Finger at the Finger Post shows his readers his recent visit to the Incan ruins at Ollantaytambo, in Peru.

Gizmodo notes how astronomers accidentally found the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Bedin I a mere 30 million light years away.

JSTOR Daily notes the new evidence supporting the arguments of W.E.B. Dubois that black resistance under slavery helped the Confederacy lose the US Civil War.

Language Hat notes the discovery of a new trilingual inscription in Iran, one combining the Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian languages.

Language Log notes the impending death of the Arabic dialect of old Mosul, and notes what its speakers are said to talk like birds.

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money thinks that if Cary Booker does not win the Democratic nomination for 2020, he will at least push the discourse leftwards.

Marginal Revolution notes new evidence that the post-1492 depopulation of the Americas led directly to the global cooling of the Little Ice Age.

Neuroskeptic considers the ways in which emergence, at different levels, could be a property of the human brain.

The NYR Daily features an excerpt from the new Édouard Louis book, Who Killed My Father, talking about the evolution relationship with his father over time.

Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw muses on the potential for a revival of print journalism in Australia.

Roads and Kingdoms interviews journalist Jason Rezaian on the subject of his new book about his long imprisonment in Iran.

Drew Rowsome writes about how censorship, on Facebook and on Blogspot, harms his writing and his ability to contribute to his communities.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel writes about how galaxy clusters lead to the premature death of stellar formation in their component galaxies.

Window on Eurasia notes a new poll from Ukraine suggesting most Orthodox Christians there identify with the new Ukrainian national church, not the Russian one.

Arnold Zwicky talks about language, editing, and error.

Architectuul looks at some examples of endangered architecture in the world, in London and Pristina and elsewhere.

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait examines a bizarre feature on the Moon's Lacus Felicitatus.

The Big Picture shares photos exploring the experience of one American, Marie Cajuste, navigating the health care system as she sought cancer treatment.

Centauri Dreams looks at a new proposal for an interstellar craft making use of neutral particle beam-driven sails.

Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber writes about the question of what individual responsibility people today should take for carbon emissions.

The Crux takes a look at what the earliest (surviving) texts say about the invention of writing.

D-Brief notes an interesting proposal to re-use Christmas trees after they are tossed out.

The Dragon's Tales notes that India has approved funding for crewed spaceflight in 2022, in the Gaganyaan program.

Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the Apollo 8 mission.

Far Outliers looks at the experiences of British consuls in isolated Kashgar, in what is now Xinjiang.

L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing argues that it can take time to properly see things, that speed can undermine understanding.

JSTOR Daily notes how people with depression use language, opting to use absolute words more often than the norm.

Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how the Bolsonario government in Brazil has set to attacking indigenous people.

Marginal Revolution links to a paper arguing that Greek life in the colleges of the United States, the fraternity system, has a negative impact on the grades of participants.

George Hutchinson writes at the NYR Daily about how race, of subjects and of the other, complicates readings of Louisiana-born author Jean Toomey and his novel Cane, about life on sugar cane plantations in that state.

Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw reflects on his Christmas reading, including a new history of Scandinavia in the Viking age told from their perspective.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the Milky Way Galaxy in its formative years. What did it look like?

Strange Company highlights its top 10 posts over the past year.

Window on Eurasia wonders at reports the Uniate Catholics of Ukraine are seeking a closer alliance with the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Arnold Zwicky reports on the nearly iconic and ubiquitous phalluses of Bhutan, as revealed by a trip by Anthony Bourdain.

Slate notes that the example of LiveJournal, a popular social networking site that went under when its owners cracked down on fandom, should concern the owners of Tumblr.

Hornet Stories notes that the crackdown on NSFW work on Tumblr will impact LGBTQ people disproportionately.

Nathalie Graham at the Stranger notes what the crackdown on NSFW content on Tumblr might indicate about the future of the Internet, among other things.

Sean Captain at Fast Company looks at the desperate efforts of archivists to preserve some 700 thousand NSFW Tumblr blogs for posterity.

This Wired article looks at alternatives to Tumblr, like Dreamwidth and Pillowfort. Each is promising but each lacks some of the specific advantages of Tumblr.

My own Tumblr, incidentally, is A Bit More Detail. It will still be online: I still find it useful, and do not find a need to abandon this community as I did LiveJournal.

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber suggests that the planet Earth, judging by the progress of space travel to date, is going to be the only planet our species will ever inhabit.

D-Brief notes surprising new evidence that maize was domesticated not in Mesoamerica, but rather in the southwest of the Amazon basin.

Dangerous Minds notes the penalties proposed by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia for buggery, sodomy, and bestiality.

Earther considers the extent to which Thanos' homeworld of Titan, whether the Saturnian moon or lookalike world, could ever have been habitable, even with extensive terraforming.

Hornet Stories notes the interesting light that a study of ideal penis sizes among heterosexual women sheds on studies of sexuality generally.

JSTOR Daily takes an extended look at how the sharing economy, promoted by people like Lawrence Lessig and businesses like Airbnb, turned out to be dystopian not utopian, and why this was the case.

Victor Mair at Language Log reports on controversy over bread made by a Taiwanese baker, and at the language used.

Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the latest proof of the decline of Harper's as a meaningful magazine. (Myself, I lost respect for them when they published an extended AIDS denialist article in 2006.)

Allan Metcalfe at Lingua Franca celebrates, using the example of lexicographer Kory Stamper's new book, how the blog helped him connect with the stars of linguistics.

Katherine Franke at the NYR Daily notes pressure from Israel directed against academic critics in the United States.

Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog notes how the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has picked up InSight hardware on the surface of Mars below.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how NASA is running short of Plutonium-238, the radioactive isotope that it needs to power spacecraft like the Voyagers sent on long-duration missions and/or missions far from the sun.

Window on Eurasia notes how, based on an excess of deaths over births, the population of Crimea will decline for the foreseeable future.

Arnold Zwicky takes a look at some examples of the anaphora, a particular kind of rhetorical structure.

Anthro{dendum} considers ways to simulate urgency in simulations of climate change.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers what could possibly have led to a Mars crater near Biblis Patera, on Tharsis, having such a flat bottom.

Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog gives readers some tips as to what they should see in New York City.

Centauri Dreams notes some of the early returns sent back by the OSIRIS-REx probe from asteroid Bennu.

The Crux notes the limits of genetic determinism in explaining human behaviour, given the huge influence of the environment on the expression of genes and more.

D-Brief suggests that the rapid global dispersion of the domestic chicken, a bird visibly distinct from its wild counterparts, might make an excellent marker of the Anthropocene millions of years hence.

Bruce Dorminey notes that Comet 46 P/Wirtanen is set to come within a bit more than eleven million kilometres of the Earth next week, and that astronomers are ready.

L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing suggests that the Internet, by exposing everything, makes actual innovation difficult.

JSTOR Daily takes a look at the innovative art of early 20th century Expressionist Charlotte Salomon, a person not only groundbreaking with her autobiographical painting series but linked to a murder mystery, too.

Anne Curzan writes at Lingua Franca about what she has learned in six years about blogging there abut language.

Sara Jayyousi writes at the LRB Blog about her experiences over time with a father imprisoned for nearly a decade and a half on false charges of supporting terrorism.

Marginal Revolution shares Tyler Cowen's argument that Macron's main problem is that he lacks new ideas, something to appeal to the masses.

Sylvain Cypel at the NYR Daily argues that Macron, arguably never that popular, is facing a Marie Antoinette moment, the Yellow Jackets filling the place of the sans culottes.

Drew Rowsome rightly laments the extent to which social media, including not just Facebook but even Tumblr, are currently waging a war against any visible sex in any context.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how, in 2019, astronomers will finally have imaged the event horizon around the black hole Sagittarius A* at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Window on Eurasia reports on polls which suggest that young Belarusians are decidedly apolitical.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the remarkable amount of information produced by a study of globular clusters in the Coma cluster of galaxies.

Crooked Timber notes the decision of British prosecutors to charge the Stansted 15, people who prevented a flight from taking off with reject asylum claimants, with terrorism-related offenses.

The Crux notes some of the remarkable evolutionary tricks that let different insects develop ears and the sense of hearing.

D-Brief notes that the Voyager 2 probe has exited the heliosphere, arguably leaving the solar system.

L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing notes how digital media accentuate the modern world's fragmentation and exhaustion of time.

Information is Beautiful shares the results of this year's Information is Beauty awards, sharing all sorts of impressive data visualization products including the winner.

JSTOR Daily notes some lessons about monks' organization of time; productivity improvements, with better technology, were used not to increase production but rather to free up time for other uses.

Language Hat links to a BBC article noting the potential that machine translation offers for the understanding of Sumerian cuneiform tablets, most of which are untranslated.

Rose Jacobs at Lingua Franca announces that, after years of operation, this blog will be closed before the end of the month.

The Planetary Society Blog's Jason Davis announces that the OSIRIS-REx probe has detected water on asteroid 101955 Bennu.

Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw notes the death of his Canadian relative, the anthropologist Cyril Belshaw.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why we have not yet found Earth analog planets.

Window on Eurasia notes how the leadership of Chechnya has been criticizing neighbouring Dagestan for its treatment of Chechens there.

Urban Toronto notes that it will be bringing back its Growth to Watch For series in 2019.

The Province of Ontario has made a formal request for the TTC's data to determine the organization's worth, preparing for a takeover. The Globe and Mail reports.

The trial of the Church and Wellesley serial killer is expected to start in 2020. The Globe and Mail reports.

What happened to the body of young pioneer girl Stella Vanzant, buried in a location now somewhere in the Financial District? The Globe and Mail looks at the question.

blogTO takes a look at Viryl Technology, a local manufacturer of vinyl pressing plant equipment, with photos, here.

The other week, someone on Facebook shared an infographic cartoon that really grabbed me.

One of the earliest blog-like postings I've ever written, and argably my biggest still, was my 2004 post "France, its Muslims, and the Future". In that essay, dashed out in the space of a couple of days in the spring of my grad school year at Queen's, I put paid to the Eurabia conspiracy theory. There was simply no plausible way that Muslims were on a trajectory to becoming the majority population in France, never mind Europe, in anything like a human lifetime; there were simply not enough Muslims, not a large enough difference in fertility, and not enough interest among the diverse Muslim populations of France in an unprecedented merger. That done, I ended my essay on an optimistic note: "Now, on to issues worth real debate, like how to best integrate French Muslims into wider French society."

Now, anyone who has followed the Western discourse about Muslims and their numbers in the West in the intervening fourteen and a half years should know that this did not happen. If anything, the prevalence of Eurabian conspiracy theories has grown, not just becoming mainstream throughout the West but finding strong echoes elsewhere in the world, in South and Southeast Asia for instance. Muslim demographic conspiracy theories have become more normal.

I am not saying that my one blog post alone, mind, could have done it. I used facts that were publicly available, using arguments that were reasonable, joining as any number of people better positioned than I ever was who also made and shared these facts and arguments. These have been shared again and again, seemingly to no avail. Why? The belief in a Muslim conspiracy, aided by decadent traitors, has nothing to do with facts, is not disprovable, is not meant to be disproved. Rather, this belief is a matter of a political stance.

After I saw that cartoon at the start of this post, I was reminded of a passage from Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 Anti-Semite and Jew, in which Sartre talks about the fundamental lack of good faith in the bigot, how their very arguments are used to justify their prejudice without regards to actual facts.

Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

As I concluded in a recent Quora answer, it is really not worth debating anything with these people. People who will believe whatever the hell they want to believe will do so regardless of how much truth you give them. If it's worthwhile continuing the debate, it is for the sake of other people looking at the debate, to prove to these others that you at least are not acting from the position of the prejudiced bigot looking to justify untrue things. If no one is watching, at least no one who is uncommitted, I would recommend discontinuing the debate. Life is too brief to waste in sterile discussions.

Of late, I've really been thinking a lot about why I might want to write non-fiction. (Fiction is another issue entirely; more on that later.) I really, really am tired of getting involved in sterile dialogues. I've been writing on the Internet for two decades, starting back on Usenet in 1997, and I have grown so tired of the greater-than sign ">", metaphorically and otherwise; I have grown very tired of the proliferation of unending and sterile exchanges that the greater-than sign indicates, growing in number with each exchange to the point of pushing the text that passes for dialogue far to the right, far away. I am tired of only replying and counter-replying; I only want to write new things, highlight new issues and new connections, engage with people who are actually interested in real dialogue and learning new things.

(Is this a manifesto? There have been worse.)

Architectuul talks about the remarkable and distinctive housing estates of south London, like Alexandra Road, currently under pressure from developers and unsympathetic governments.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at Bennu, set to be visited by the OSIRIS-REx probe.

The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about meeting people you've met online via social networks, making friends even. Myself, I've done this all the time: Why not use these networks to their fullest in a fragmented vast world?

Centauri Dreams celebrates the now-completed mission of the exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope.

D-Brief looks at the distinctive seasons of Triton, and the still-open questions surrounding Neptune's largest moon.

At JSTOR Daily, Nancy Bilyeau writes about the import of the famous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, something often underplayed despite its potential for huge change and its connection to wider conflicts.

Language Hat notes the name of God in the Hebrew tradition, Yahweh. Where did it come from?

Language Log shares an interesting idea for helping to preserve marginalized languages: Why not throw a language party celebrating the language?

Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the question of what historical general or military leader would do best leading the armies of the living dead.

The NYR Daily looks at the problems with Erdogan's big investments in public infrastructure in Turkey, starting with the new Istanbul airport.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the possibility of life in the very early universe. Earth-like life could have started within a billion years of the Big Bang; Earth life might even have begun earlier, for that matter.

Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shows a map of Europe identifying which countries are the more chauvinistic in the continent.

Window on Eurasia notes the strength of the relatively recent division between Tatars and Bashkirs, two closely related people with separate identities grown strong in the Soviet era.

David Price at {anthro}dendum considers, going through archival material from the 1950s, the number of radical anthropologists in the US as yet little known or unknown who were marginalized by the Red Scare.

Centauri Dreams ruminates on a paper examining 'Oumuamua that considers radiation pressure as a factor in its speed. Might it work as--indeed, be?--a lightsail?

D-Brief notes the various reasons why the Chinese proposal for an artificial moon of sorts, to illuminate cities at night, would not work very well at all.

The Dragon's Tales touches on the perhaps hypocritical anger of Russia at the United States' departure from the INF treaty.

Far Outliers notes the sharp divides among Nazi prisoners of war in a camp in Texas, notably between pro- and anti-Nazi prisoners.

L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing revisits the original sin of the Internet culture, its imagining of a split between an individual's virtual life and the remainder of their life.

The Island Review welcomes, and interviews, its new editor C.C. O'Hanlon.

JSTOR Daily explores the reasons for considering climate change to be a national security issue.
Language Hat is enthused by the recent publication of a new dictionary of the extinct Anatolian languages of the Indo-European family.

Language Log examines the existence of a distinctive, even mocked, southern French accent spoken in and around (among other cities) Toulouse.

Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the rise of fascism in Brazil with Bolsonaro.

Roger Shuy at Lingua Franca writes about the power of correspondence, of written letters, to help language learners. (I concur.)

At the LRB Blog, Jeremy Bernstein writes about anti-Semitism in the United States, in the 1930s and now.

The NYR Daily examines the life of writer, and long-time exile from her native Portugal, Maria Gabriela Llansol.

Haley Gray at Roads and Kingdoms reports on the life and work of Mark Maryboy, a Navajo land rights activist in Utah.

Window on Eurasia looks at the Russian urban myth of blonde Baltic snipers from the Baltic States who had been enlisted into wars against Russia like that of Chechnya in the 1990s.

Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the classic red phone booths of the United Kingdom, now almost all removed from the streets of the country and sent to a graveyard in a part of rural Yorkshire that has other claims to fame.

Centauri Dreams notes the lack of evidence for heat plumes around the Europan crater of Pwyll.

Patrick Nunn at The Crux writes about the new evidence for the millennias-long records preserved remarkably well in oral history.

D-Brief notes the discovery of a two-year cycle in gamma ray output in blazar PG 1553+113.

Bruce Dorminey notes a proposal from French astronomer Antoine Labeyrie to create a low-cost hypertelescope in nearby space.

Gizmodo interviews experts on the possibility of whether people who are now cryogenically frozen will be revived. (The consensus is not encouraging for current cryonicists.)

JSTOR Daily notes how, looking back at old records, we can identify many veterans of the US Civil War suffering from the sorts of psychological issues we know now that military veterans suffer from.

Language Hat notes the beauty of two stars' Arabic names, Zubeneschamali and Zubenelgenubi, beta and alpha Librae.

The LRB Blog takes a look at the encounters of Anthony Burgess with the Russian language.

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution is surprised that Canada has allowed China to add deep-sea sensors to its deep-sea observatories in the Pacific, in a geopolitically-concerned American way.

Tim Parks at the NYR Daily talks about the importance of translation, as a career that needs to be supported while also needing critiques.

Drew Rowsome takes a look at two shows on young people coming out, the web series It's Complicated and the documentary Room to Grow.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that the evidence of the existence of a potential Planet Nine in our solar system is not necessarily that strong.

Strange Maps shares a map of Europe in 1920, one oriented towards Americans, warning of famine across a broad swathe of the continent including in countries now no longer around.

Window on Eurasia notes that, in multiethnic Dagestan, Russian has displaced other local languages as a language of interethnic communication.

Arnold Zwicky announces the creation, at his blog via the sharing of a Liz Climo cartoon, of a new category at his blog relating to pandas.

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Assorted Personal Notations, Essays, and Other Jottings

Entries tagged with blogging

[DM] "A brief note on the blog and on COVID-19"

[BLOG] Some Friday links

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[BLOG] Some Friday links

[META] Hundreds upon hundreds of links, part 3

[META] Hundreds upon hundreds of links, part 2

[META] Hundreds upon hundreds of links

[NEWS] Five JSTOR Daily links: Black History Month, TSA, Vannevar Bush, jazz, Great Migration

[NEWS] Five Internet links: Geocities, Livejournal, Tumblr, Quora, predictions

[BLOG] Some Monday links

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

[NEWS] Six links about the decline of Tumblr (#tumblr)

[BLOG] Some Friday links

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: #GrowthtoWatchFor, TTC, serial killer, Stella Vanzant, Viryl vinyl

[WRITING] Thoughts on debunking and writing and educating and creating

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

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February 2021

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