A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports suggestions the bizarre happenings at Boyajian's Star could be explained by an evaporating exomoon.


• Centauri Dreams looks at how the crowdsourced evScope telescope is being used to support the Lucy mission to the Jupiter Trojans.


• The Crux explains the phenomenon of misophobia.


• D-Brief shares suggestions that an asteroid collision a half-billion years ago released clouds of dust that, reaching Earth, triggered the mid-Ordovician ice age.


• Dangerous Minds shares video of a perhaps underwhelming meeting of William Burroughs with Francis Bacon.


• io9 makes the case for more near-future space exploration movies like Ad Astra.


• Joe. My. God. notes a Trump retweeting of the lie that Ilham Omar celebrated on 9/11.


• JSTOR Daily notes how fire could destroy the stressed rainforest of the Amazon.


• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how few judges in the US have been impeached.


• The LRB Blog looks at how the already tenuous position of Haitians in the Bahamas has been worsened by Dorian.


• The Map Room Blog looks at the importance of the integrity of official maps in the era of Trump.


• Marginal Revolution looks at the political importance of marriage ceremonies in Lebanon and Gaza.


• Drew Rowsome interviews the Zakar Twins on the occasion of their new play Pray the Gay Away, playing in Toronto in October.


• The Russian Demographic Blog shares statistics on birthrates in the different provinces of the Russian Empire circa 1906.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel reports on the first experiment done on the photoelectric effect, revealing quantum mechanics.


• Window on Eurasia looks at growing anti-Chinese sentiments in Central Asia.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at "The Hurtful Dog", a Cyanide and Happiness cartoon.

• Tracey Lindeman writes at CityLab about how Montréal is trying to keep the redevelopment of the Molson-Coors Brewery site from killing the Centre-Sud.


• In the Montréal neighbourhood of Park-Extension, evictions--renovictions, even--are on the rise. Global News reports.


• Lac-Mégantic now has a train depot that bypasses the heart of this traumatized community. CBC Montreal reports.


• Halifax is now celebrating the Mosaic Festival, celebrating its diversity. Global News reports.


• Jill Croteau reports for Global News about Club Carousel, an underground club in Calgary that played a vital role in that city's LGBTQ history.


• This business plan, aiming to bypass long lineups at the Edmonton outpost of the Jollibee chain, is ingenious. Global News reports.


• The Iowa town of Pacific Junction, already staggering, may never recover from a recent bout of devastating flooding. VICE reports.


• Avery Gregurich writes for CityLab about the Illinois town of Atlas, a crossroads seemingly on the verge of disappearing from Google Maps.


• The proposal for Metropica, a new sort of suburb in Florida, certainly looks interesting. VICE reports.


• Guardian Cities shares a cartoon looking affectionately at Lisbon.

• Bad Astronomy shares Hubble images of asteroid 6478 Gault, seemingly in the process of dissolving.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the experience of living in a body one knows from hard experience to be fallible.


• Gizmodo notes new evidence that environmental stresses pushed at least some Neanderthals to engage in cannibalism.


• Hornet Stories notes the 1967 raid by Los Angeles police against the Black Cat nightclub, a pre-Stonewall trigger of LGBTQ organization.


• Imageo notes the imperfect deal wrought by Colorado Basin states to minimize the pain felt by drought in that river basin.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the cinema of Claire Denis.


• Language Log reports on the work of linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, a man involved in language revival efforts in Australia after work in Israel with Hebrew.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders if the Iran-Contra scandal will be a precedent for the Mueller report, with the allegations being buried by studied inattention.


• Marginal Revolution makes a case for NIMBYism leading to street urination.


• Justin Petrone at North! looks at a theatrical performance of a modern Estonian literary classic, and what it says about gender and national identity.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw makes the case for a treaty with Australian Aborigines, to try to settle settler-indigenous relations in Australia.


• John Quiggin looks at the factors leading to the extinction of coal as an energy source in the United Kingdom.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that we are not yet up to the point of being able to detect exomoons of Earth-like planets comparable to our Moon.


• Window on Eurasia notes the occasion of the last singer in the Ket language.


• Arnold Zwicky shares some cartoon humour, around thought balloons.

• Architectuul takes a look at a new exhibition exploring women architects in Bauhaus.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a photo of Chang'e-4 taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.


• Centauri Dreams notes the power of perspective, demonstrated by photos taken in space far from the Earth.


• Far Outliers notes the role of the Indian army, during the Raj, in engaging and mobilizing peasants while allowing recruits to maintain village traditions.


• Joe. My. God. notes a new study from the Netherlands suggesting the children of same-sex parents do better in school than children of opposite-sex parents.


• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the astonishing plagiarism and sloppy writing of former NYT editor Jill Abramson.


• Michael Hofman at the LRB Blog takes a look at the mindset producing the Brexit catastrophe.


• Marginal Revolution takes a look at the decline of the wealth tax in recent decades in high-income countries. Apparently the revenues collected were often not substantial enough.


• The Planetary Society Blog shares missions updates from Chang'e-4 on the Moon.


• Drew Rowsome reviews the Cirque Éloize show Hotel.


• Window on Eurasia notes one call for Tatarstan, and Tatar nationalists, to abandon a territorial model of identity focused on the republic, seeing as how so many Tatars live outside of Tatarstan.


• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the play in language involved in a recent Bizarro comic.

Art Spiegelman’s reputation doesn’t do him justice. Most people will recognize his name from his Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel Maus, a devastating, multi-layered account of the Holocaust. But Spiegelman produced iconic work before and after that work was published—though many people won’t have made the connections. He’s a shape-shifter, comfortable in many different styles and formats, so it’s easy to overlook the range of his accomplishments.

The retrospective of Spiegelman’s work now on at the AGO does a fine job of showcasing all the varied parts of his career, from his invention of the Garbage Pail Kids as a young graphic artist to his many memorable covers for the New Yorker later in life. But Spiegelman’s lecture “What the %@&*! Happened to Comics,” hosted by the Koffler Center of the Arts at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on January 26, dealt with an equally relevant aspect of his life’s work: namely, his advocacy for free speech in an age when cartoonists are being gunned down at their desks.

The talk began with a short introduction to the essence of the comic-book style, exemplified by the redacted expletive in the title: little abstract symbols that take on meaning because we invest them with meaning. Spiegelman asserts that comics are a “co-mix” of art and commerce—which seems like a coded way of saying that comics aren’t as pretentious as fine art (what art isn’t mixed with commerce?). The AGO exhibit is preoccupied with this aspect of his work, and the way he uses comics to blend high and low art.

But the most important thing about comics, in Spiegelman’s formulation, is that they get straight into the brain, moving faster than we can think about them. Comics are so condensed that we can understand them instantly, the way a baby recognizes the symbol of a smiley face before it can distinguish even its own mother’s face. And therein lies their power—and their threat.

Woven in with his broader history of the medium was Spiegelman’s story of his own love affair with comics. He described how he taught himself to read while trying to figure out if Batman was good or bad (“Maybe if I understand these words, I’ll find out,” he said), how he learned about sex from contemplating Betty and Veronica, and how he discovered philosophy from Peanuts. Most important to his development, though, was Mad Magazine, which he says taught him about ethics, aesthetics, and everything else.

• Al Jazeera notes that Tunisia is still on the brink, looks at the good relations between Indians and Pakistanis outside of South Asia, suspects that a largely Armenian-populated area in Georgia might erupt, and reports on satellite imagery of Boko Haram's devastation in Nigeria.


• Bloomberg notes that a North Korean camp survivor caught in lies might stop his campaign, reports on Arab cartoonists' fears in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo, notes the consequences on Portugal of a slowdown in Angola's economy, and notes that the shift in the franc's value has brought shoppers from Switzerland to Germany while devastating some mutual funds.


• Bloomberg View warns about anti-immigrant movements in Europe and notes that Turkey's leadership can't claim a commitment to freedom of the press.


• The Inter Press Service notes Pakistani hostility to Afghan migrants, notes disappearances of Sri Lankan cartoonists, and looks at HIV among Zimbabwe's children.


• Open Democracy is critical of the myth of Irish slavery, notes the uses of incivility, and observes that more French Muslims work for French security than for Al-Qaeda.


• Wired looks at life in the coldest town in the world, and notes another setback in the fight for primate rights.