A Bit More Detail

• Charlie Stross hosts at Antipope another discussion thread examining Brexit.


• Architectuul takes a look at five overlooked mid-20th century architects.


• Bad Astronomy shares a satellite photo of auroras at night over the city lights of the Great Lakes basin and something else, too.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the directions love has taken her, and wonders where it might have taken her readers.


• Centauri Dreams reports on the Hayabusa 2 impactor on asteroid Ryugu.


• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the claims of Steven Pinker about nuclear power.


• D-Brief notes the detection, in remarkable detail, of a brilliant exocomet at Beta Pictoris.


• The Dragon's Tales considers the possibility that China might be building a military base in Cambodia.


• Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about the importance of small social cues, easily overlookable tough they are.


• Far Outliers notes the role of Japan's imperial couple, Akihito and Michiko, in post-war Japan.


• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing writes about the potential inadequacy of talking about values.


• Gizmodo notes a new study suggesting the surprising and potentially dangerous diversity of bacteria present on the International Space Station.


• Mark Graham shares a link to a paper, and its abstract, examining what might come of the creation of a planetary labour market through the gig economy.


• Hornet Stories takes a look at Red Ribbon Blues, a 1995 AIDS-themed film starring RuPaul.


• io9 notes that Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke are co-writing a Pan's Labyrinth novel scheduled for release later this year.


• Joe. My. God. notes a new study suggesting 20% of LGBTQ Americans live in rural areas.


• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the Bluestockings, the grouping of 18th century women in England who were noteworthy scholars and writers.


• Language Hat notes an ambitious new historical dictionary of the Arabic language being created by the emirate of Sharjah.


• Language Log examines, in the aftermath of a discussion of trolls, different cultures' terms for different sorts of arguments.


• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how early forestry in the United States was inspired by socialist ideals.


• The Map Room Blog links to a map showing the different national parks of the United Kingdom.


• Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, noting the new findings from the Chixculub impact, notes how monitoring asteroids to prevent like catastrophes in the future has to be a high priority.


• The New APPS Blog explains how data, by its very nature, is so easily made into a commodity.


• The NYR Daily considers the future of the humanities in a world where higher education is becoming preoccupied by STEM.


• Corey S. Powell at Out There interviews Bear Grylls about the making of his new documentary series Hostile Planet.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw considers the pleasures of birds and of birdwatching.


• Jason C. Davis at the Planetary Society Blog noted the arrival of the Beresheet probe in lunar orbit.


• Drew Rowsome reviews the new amazing-sounding play Angelique at the Factory Theatre.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes a paper that makes the point of there being no automatic relationship between greater gender equality and increases in fertility.


• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress has made use of the BagIt programming language in its archiving of data.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel comes up with questions to ask plausible visitors from other universes.


• Strange Company notes the mysterious deaths visited on three members of a British family in the early 20th century. Who was the murderer? Was there even a crime?


• Towleroad notes the activists, including Canadian-born playwright Jordan Tannahill, who disrupted a high tea at the Dorchester Hotel in London over the homophobic law passed by its owner, the Sultan of Brunei.


• Window on Eurasia notes rising instability in Ingushetia.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes that the British surveillance of Huawei is revealing the sorts of problems that must be present in scrutiny-less Facebook, too.

• This CBC feature on the apparent loss of a quarter-billion dollars via the Quadriga cryptocurrency makes the whole business look incredibly sketchy to me. Why would anyone rational take such risks?


• At Open Democracy, Christine Berry suggests that after the Grenfell Tower catastrophe the idea of using Brexit to deregulate has become impossible. Is this a wedge issue?


• Vox notes the effort of Facebook to try to hold itself accountable for providing a platform for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.


• Inverse has a positive account of the guaranteed minimum income experiment in Finland, emphasizing the improved psychological state of recipients.


• The Atlantic notes that one major impact of Facebook is that, through its medium, friendships can never quite completely die.

• Centauri Dreams considers the possible roles and threats posed by artificial intelligence for interstellar missions.


• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber makes the point that blaming Facebook for the propagation of fake news misses entirely the motives of the people who spread these rumours, online or otherwise.


• The Crux looks at the factors which led to the human species' diversity of skin colours.


• Dangerous Minds reports on a new collection of early North American electronica.


• Far Outliers reports on the salt extraction industry of Sichuan.


• JSTOR Daily notes how inbreeding can be a threat to endangered populations, like gorillas.


• Language Log examines the connection of the Thai word for soul with Old Sinitic.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at divisions on the American left, including pro-Trump left radicals.


• Caitlin Chandler at the NYR Daily reports on the plight of undocumented immigrants in Rome, forced from their squats under the pressure of the new populist government of Italy.


• Spacing takes a look at the work of Acton Ostry Architects.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the ten largest non-planetary bodies in the solar system.


• Strange Company looks at the very strange 1997 disappearance of Judy Smith from Philadelphia and her latest discovery in the North Carolina wilderness. What happened to her?


• Strange Maps looks at the worrisome polarization globally between supporters and opponents of the current government in Venezuela. Is this a 1914 moment?


• Window on Eurasia suggests that Russia and Venezuela share a common oil-fueled authoritarian fragility.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at the camelids of Peru, stuffed toys and llamas and more.

• 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.

• Atlas Obscura notes, unsurprisingly, that some cemeteries in the United States were used as parks. Why not? These can be lovely green spaces. Just look at Toronto's Mount Pleasant and Prospect cemeteries.


• Meg Holden at The Conversation takes a look at the language, the grammar of thought, used to praise cities this day. Have we gone too far away from the skepticism of earlier decades?


• The Guardian Cities reports on NUMTOTs, "New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens", the Facebook group oriented to young urbanist fans that is hugely popular. (I've joined, I admit.)


• Open Democracy carries French-Iranian sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar article on "jihadogenous urban structures", on neighbourhoods which can alienate young people to the point of supporting Islamist terror.


• Guardian Cities shares photos of some of the bold concrete architecture developed in Yugoslavia.

• Kambiz Kamrani at Anthropology.net notes that the more Neanderthal DNA gets sequenced, the more we know of this population's history.


• Anthro{dendum} takes a look at anthropologists who use their knowledge and their access to other cultures for purposes of espionage.


• Crooked Timber tackles the question of immigration from another angle: do states have the authority to control it, for starters?


• Dangerous Minds shares a fun video imagining Netflix as it might have existed in 1995.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog considers how the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico is an instance of American state failure.


• The Frailest Thing's L.M. Sacasas considers is vows to abandon Facebook are akin to a modern-day vow of poverty.


• JSTOR Daily looks at Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and why it still matters.


• Language Log considers the naming practices of new elements like Nihonium.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that, based on the stagnation of average incomes in the US as GDP has growth, capitalism can be said to have failed.


• Lingua Franca considers the origin of the phrase "bad actor."


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that the American opioid epidemic is not simply driven by economic factors.


• The NYR Daily considers how Poland's new history laws do poor service to a very complicated past.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw has an interesting post examining the settlement of Australisa's inland "Channel Country" by cattle stations, chains to allow herds to migrate following the weather.


• The Planetary Science Blog's Emily Lakdawalla takes a look at the latest science on famously volcanic Io.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel examines how the Milky Way Galaxy is slowly consuming its neighbours, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at how contemporary lunar probes are prospecting for ice deposits on the dry Moon.


• Centauri Dreams notes new models for the evolution of the orbit of the early Moon, and how this could well have influence the environment of the young Earth.


• Crooked Timber takes issue with the idea that sponsoring women's entrepreneurship, rooted in the belief that women are limited by their income, is enough to deal with deeper gender inequity.


• D-Brief notes that a brain implant--specifically, one making use of deep brain stimulation--actually can significantly improve memory in implantees.


• Gizmodo notes that extrasolar objects like 'Oumuamua may well have played a significant role in interstellar panspermia, introducing life from one system to another.


• At In A State of Migration, Lyman Stone does the work and finds out that the Amish are not, in fact, destined to eventually repopulate the US, that despite high fertility rates Amish fertility rates have consistently fell over time, influenced by external issues like the economy.


• JSTOR Daily has a thought-provoking essay taking a look at the feedback loops between envy and social media. Does social media encourage too narrow a realm of human achievements to be valued?


• Language Hat notes a new book, Giorgio Van Straten's In Search of Lost Books, noting all those texts which once existed but have since gone missing.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money, noting the strongly negative reaction to Katie Roiphe's essay in Harper's against feminism, takes care to note that "disagreement" is not at all the same thing as "silencing".


• The NYR Daily looks at the many ways in which Sweden has been taken as a symbol for progressivism, and the reasons why some on the right look so obsessively for signs that it is failing.


• At the Planetary Society Blog, Casey Dreier writes about the ways in which the Falcon Heavy, if it proves to be as inexpensive as promised, could revolutionize the exploration of (for instance) outer system ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus.


• Drew Rowsome quite likes Rumours, a performance of the famous Fleetwood Mac album of that name, at Toronto's Coal Mine Theatre.

• Daily JSTOR considers, in the aftermath of Blade Runner: 2049, the question of extending rights to robots. What do we owe them?


• CBC notes that, using passive housing technology, some Canadian groups have built extraordinarily energy-efficient apartment houses with rather low ongoing costs for (among others) tenants.


• Nick Zarzycki makes the obvious point that, for the good of democracy, trusting Facebook to regulate itself is foolish. External review and control is needed. MacLean's has it.


• Hamish Stewart at the National Observer considers what it would take for the Bank of Canada to have authentically "green" policies.

When [Kevin O’Leary] trash-talks Ontario, it’s music to [Kathleen Wynne's] well-worn ears — those ears having been bent out of shape by angry voters, and pinched by her provincial opponents.

The premier can’t push back against senior citizens with quavering voices, and it’s tough to pin down her invisible opposition rivals — akin to fighting phantoms.

O’Leary, however, is right out of central casting. The long-running TV personality is now running for the federal Tory leadership, but he went off script by taking a run at Ontario with the usual pot shots.

Not just high hydro bills, but high taxes allegedly driving away auto plants.

Which is why the premier couldn’t resist engaging him — not on a Tory campaign stage, but on the Facebook platform that now hosts fake news and faux debates. The better to bend our ears and bait our eyeballs.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he is to spend 2017 travelling to every U.S. state he has not yet visited, in a personal challenge that is fuelling speculation he plans to enter politics.

The Facebook CEO has set himself various challenges in recent years, such as learning to speak Mandarin. But, writing on Facebook, he said his new aim was to visit and meet people in every state. “I’ve spent significant time in many states already, so I’ll need to travel to about 30 states this year to complete this challenge,” he wrote.

“After a tumultuous last year, my hope for this challenge is to get out and talk to more people about how they’re living, working and thinking about the future.”

The tech mogul’s decision to sit out a high-profile meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and other Silicon Valley bosses in mid-December also fuelled speculation about a possible run for office.

When 13 tech bosses, among them some of the world’s richest entrepreneurs, were summoned for the meeting with Trump, Zuckerberg was conspicuously absent.

Instead, he sent his trusted deputy and chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, making Facebook the only company at the meeting without its CEO in attendance.