rfmcdonald | Entries tagged with homo sapiens

Anthropology.net notes a remarkably thorough genetic analysis of a piece of chewing gum 5700 years old that reveals volumes of data about the girl who chew it.

'Nathan Burgoine at Apostrophen writes an amazing review of Cats that actually does make me want to see it.

Bad Astronomy reports on galaxy NGC 6240, a galaxy produced by a collision with three supermassive black holes.

Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog writes about the mechanics of journalism.

Centauri Dreams argues that the question of whether humans will walk on exoplanets is ultimately distracting to the study of these worlds.

Crooked Timber shares a Sunday morning photo of Bristol.

The Dragon's Tales notes that India has a launch date of December 2021 for its first mission in its Gaganyaan crewed space program.

Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the Saturn C-1 rocket.

Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers if the vogue for minimalism meets the criteria to be considered a social movement.

Far Outliers ?notes how, in the War of 1812, some in New England considered the possibility of seceding from the Union.

Gizmodo looks at evidence of the last populations known of Homo erectus, on Java just over a hundred thousand years ago.

Mark Graham links to a new paper co-authored by him looking at how African workers deal with the gig economy.

io9 announces that the Michael Chabon novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is set to become a television series.

Joe. My. God. shares a report that Putin gave Trump anti-Ukrainian conspiracy theories.

JSTOR Daily considers what a world with an economy no longer structured around oil could look like.

Language Hat takes issue with the latest talk of the Icelandic language facing extinction.

Language Log shares a multilingual sign photographed in Philadelphia's Chinatown.

Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the document release revealing the futility of the war in Afghanistan.

The LRB Blog looks at class identity and mass movements and social democracy.

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution suggests that, even if the economy of China is larger than the United States, Chinese per capita poverty means China does not have the leading economy.

Diane Duane at Out of Ambit writes about how she is writing a gay sex scene.

Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reflects on "OK Boomer".

Roads and Kingdoms interviews Mexican chef Ruffo Ibarra.

Peter Rukavina shares his list of levees for New Year's Day 2020 on PEI.

The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map indicating fertility rates in the different regions of the European Union.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how quantum physics are responsible for vast cosmic structures.

Charles Soule at Whatever explains his reasoning behind his new body-swap novel.

Window on Eurasia notes how the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Paris show the lack of meaningful pro-Russian sentiment there.

Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell talks about his lessons from working in the recent British election.

Arnold Zwicky looks at a syncretic, Jewish-Jedi, holiday poster.

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

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

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

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

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

JSTOR Daily considers the political rhetoric of declinism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arnold Zwicky considers the positive potential of homoeros.

The Crux looks at the australopiths, not-so-distant ancestors of modern humans.

Bruce Dorminey notes the interest of NASA in exploring the lunar subsurface, including lava tubes.

Far Outliers looks at the politicking of mid-19th century European explorers in the Sahel.

io9 notes that the new Joker film is getting stellar reviews, aided by the performance of Joaquin Phoenix.

JSTOR Daily explores how, to meet censors' demands, Betty Boop was remade in the 1930s from sex symbol into housewife.

Language Log reports on an utter failure in bilingual Irish/English signage.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money shows that a history of slavery in the US (Canada too, I would add) must not neglect the enslavement of indigenous peoples.

Marginal Revolution notes a paper studying San Francisco looking at how rent control did not work.

The NYR Daily considers growing protest against air travel for its impact on global climate.

Drew Rowsome reviews the queer romance film Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots.

Window on Eurasia notes how the influence of Russia in the former Soviet Union is undone by Russian imperialism.

Arnold Zwicky considers the striking imagery--originally religious--of "carnal weapons".

The Conversation notes how urban beekeepers can play a key role in saving bees from extinction.

Motherboard looks at the comparative intelligence, and generosity, of wolves versus their domesticated dog counterparts.

National Geographic looks at how marine mammals, particularly cetaceans, have been used in different militaries.

Smithsonian Magazine looks at how recent studies have demonstrated the diversity among Denisovan populations.

Smithsonian Magazine looks at the new consensus about the remarkable capabilities of Neanderthals.

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.

New estimates suggest the costs of global warming will be in the tens of trillions of dollars, with warmer countries taking a particularly big hit. Motherboard reports.

Indigenous bumblebee populations in Canada are fast approaching extinction, with a certainty of major negative environmental effects. CBC reports.

MacLean's reports on the return to prominence of Jim Balsillie, this time not so much as a tech mogul as a sort off tech skeptic.

This Motherboard article makes a somewhat far-fetched argument that Game of Thrones demonstrates the need for human civilization to have backups.

The Conversation reports on the recent discovery, in Serbia by a joint Serbian-Canadian team, of a Neanderthal tooth, and what this discovery means for our understanding of the deep past of humanity.

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.

The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the importance of seeing the world from new angles.

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber suggests that, worldwide, coal is becoming increasingly closely associated with corruption.

D-Brief looks at a study drawing on Twitter that suggests people will quickly get used to changing weather in the era of climate change.

Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about a family trip during which he spent time listening to sociology-related podcasts.

Far Outliers notes the life-determining intensity of exam time for young people in Calcutta.

io9 notes that, finally, the classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Once More, With Feeling" is being released on vinyl.

JSTOR Daily looks at how medieval Europe regulated the sex trade.

Language Hat looks at how anthropologists have stopped using "hominid" and started using "hominin", and why.

Language Log considers the difficulty of talking about "Sinophone" given the unrepresented linguistic diversity included in the umbrella of "Chinese".

Marginal Revolution suggests there are conflicts between NIMBYism and supporting open immigration policies.

At Out There, Corey S. Powell interviews astronomer Slava Turyshev about the possibility not only of interstellar travel but of exploiting the Solar Gravity Lens, 550 AU away.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 9 mission.

Towleroad notes that Marvel Comics is planning to make its lead character in the Eternals gay.

Daniel Little at Understanding Society examines how the human body and its physical capacities are represented in sociology.

Window on Eurasia notes the growth of the Volga Tatar population of Moscow, something hidden by the high degree of assimilation of many of its members.

Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes, in connection to Huawei, the broad powers allotted to the British government under existing security and communications laws.

Arnold Zwicky looks at anteaters and antedaters.

Quanta Magazine notes that the deep learning offered by new artificial intelligences can help pick out traces of non-homo sapiens ancestry in our current gene pool.

This sensitive article in The Atlantic examines the extent to which consciousness and emotion are ubiquitous in the world of animals.

NASA notes evidence of the great greening of China and India, associated not only with agriculture in both countries but with the commitment of China to reforestation projects.

Mashable examines the fundamental brittleness of closed systems that will likely limit the classical generation starship.

SciTechDaily notes new observations of SN 1987A revealing a much greater prediction of dust than previously believed.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the import of the discovery of asteroid 2019 AQ3, a rare near-Venus asteroid.

Centauri Dreams notes the how the choice of language used by SETI researchers, like the eye-catching "technosignatures", may reflect the vulnerability of the field to criticism on Earth.

John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers what is to be done about Virginia, given the compromising of so many of its top leaders by secrets from the past.

The Crux notes how the imminent recovery of ancient human DNA from Africa is likely to lead to a revolution in our understanding of human histories there.

D-Brief notes how astronomers were able to use the light echoes in the accretion disk surrounding stellar-mass black hole MAXI J1820+070 to map its environment.

JSTOR Daily considers the snow day as a sort of modern festival.

Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to his consideration of the plans of the German Empire to build superdreadnoughts, aborted only by defeat. Had Germany won the First World War, there surely would have been a major naval arms race.

The NYR Daily looks at two exhibitions of different photographers, Brassaï and Louis Stettner.

Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares an evocative crescent profile of Ultima Thule taken by New Horizons, and crescent profiles of other worlds, too.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the mystery of why there is so little antimatter in the observable universe.

Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map exploring the dates and locations of first contact with aliens in the United States as shown in film.

Window on Eurasia notes a new push by Circassian activists for the Circassian identity to be represented in the 2020 census.

Architectuul looks at the modernist works of Spanish Antonio Lamela, building after the Second World War under Franco.

Centauri Dreams considers the possibility of life-supporting environments on Barnard's Star b, a frozen super-Earth.

The Crux takes a look at how, and when, human beings and their ancestors stopped being as furry as other primates.

D-Brief notes the Russian startup that wants to put advertisements in Earth orbit.

Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the Soyuz 4 and 5 missions, the first missions to see two crewed craft link up in space.

Far Outliers notes
L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing notes the ironies of housing a state-of-the-art supercomputers in the deconsecrated Torre Girona Chapel in Barcelona.

Gizmodo notes a new study claiming that the rings of Saturn may be less than a hundred million years old, product of some catastrophic obliteration of an ice moon perhaps.

Joe. My. God. notes the death of Pulitzer-winning lesbian poet Mary Oliver.

JSTOR Daily takes a look at the rising prominence of hoarding as a psychological disorder.

Language Hat shares a manuscript more than a hundred pages long, reporting on terms relating to sea ice used in the Inupiaq language spoken by the Alaska community of Kifigin, or Wales.

Language Log examines the etymology of "slave" and "Slav". (Apparently "ciao" is also linked to these words.)

Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that Buzzfeed was right to claim that Trump ordered his lawyer to lie to Congress about the Moscow Trump Tower project.

Marginal Revolution notes a serious proposal in the Indian state of Sikkim to set up a guaranteed minimum income project.

Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps links to a map showing visitations of the Virgin Mary worldwide, both recognized and unrecognized by the Vatican.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes the continuing controversy over the identity of AT2018cow.

Window on Eurasia suggests that Russians have more to fear from a Sino-Russian alliance than Americans, on account of the possibility of a Chinese takeover of Russia enabled by this alliance.

D-Brief notes that the Small Magellanic Cloud is losing gas, diminishing its future capacity for starbirth.

D-Brief notes evidence that the strange ridges of Pluto are legacies of glaciers.

Neanderthals, a new analysis shared by D-Brief suggests, suffered from head trauma at rates similar to that of Homo sapiens.

D-Brief notes how recent heavy rain in the Atacama Desert of Chile killed many of the local extremophile microbes adapted to desert conditions, with obvious implications for life on Mars.

D-Brief notes the discovery of two rogue planets, OGLE-2012-BLG-1323 and OGLE-2017-BLG-0560.

Centauri Dreams looks at the latest images of asteroid Bennu provided by the OSIRIS-REx probe.

The Crux notes the impact of genetic research on theories of language among the Neanderthals. If they were, as seems very likely, users of language, did their language use differ from that of homo sapiens sapiens?

D-Brief notes that climate change leads to changes in the microbiology of soils. (What effect would this have on the environment? Unknown, as of yet.)

The Dragon's Tales notes that the Indian aircraft Vikramaditya has just had its second refit completed.

Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the social construction of geography. How are categories created, for instance?

Far Outliers looks at efforts to educate prisoners of war in the Second World War-era United States, to use them even as test-beds for a wider reeducation of their societies.

L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing, considering the idea of the society of the spectacle of Debord after the thoughts of Foucault, notes the early prediction of a fusion between surveillance and spectacle, of a fusion between the two.

Hornet Stories notes the anti-gay policies of the government of Tanzania government, arguing that country cannot be allowed to be a second Chechnya.

JSTOR Daily notes how the rhetoric of Richard Nixon helped pave the way for Donald Trump.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that even if the Democratic Party loses today's elections in the United States, Americans should still have hope, should still work for a better future. I wish you all luck, myself.

The Map Room Blog looks at Stanford University's archive of the Maps of the Office of Strategic Studies.

Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining immigrant success in Sweden, noting the complicating picture of general success: Children of more deprived refugees do better than more favoured ones.

The NYR Daily looks at early feminist Ernestine Rose.

Roads and Kingdoms looks at the work of Cambodian architect Dy Preoung, who during the Khmer Rouge era managed to preserve his work on Angkor Wat.

Drew Rowsome looks at the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, focusing on its queer elements.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel examines how black holes actually do evaporate.

Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy notes the signal flaws with the argument that migrants should stay at home and fix their country. (What if they have no chance to, for instance?)

Window on Eurasia notes that the West has a vested interest in the survival of Lukashenka in Belarus, if only because a sudden liberalization could well lead to a Russian invasion.

Nick Rowe at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative takes a look at "bicycle disequilibrium theory".

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at the question of how far, exactly, the Pleiades star cluster is from Earth. It turns out this question breaks down into a lot of interesting secondary issues.

The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly starts an interesting discussion around the observation that so many people are uncomfortable with the details of their body.

Centauri Dreams reports on the exciting evidence of cryovolcanism at Ceres.

The Crux reports on new suggestions that, although Neanderthals had bigger brains than Homo sapiens, Neanderthal brains were not thereby better brains.

D-Brief notes evidence that the ability of bats and dolphins to echolocate may ultimate derive from a shared gene governing their muscles.

Bruce Dorminey notes that astronomers have used data on the trajectory of 'Oumuamua to suggest it may have come from one of four stars.

Far Outliers explores the Appalachian timber boom of the 1870s that created the economic preconditions for the famed feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Language Hat notes the unique whistling language prevailing among the Khasi people living in some isolated villages in the Indian state of Meghalaya.

Lingua Franca, at the Chronicles, notes that the fastest-growing language in the United States is the Indian language of Telugu.

Jeremy Harding at the LRB Blog writes about the import of the recognition, by Macron, of the French state's involvement in the murder of pro-Algerian independence activist Maurice Audin in 1958.

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution praises the diaries of Mihail Sebastian, a Romanian Jewish intellectual alive during the Second World War

The New APPS Blog takes a look at the concept of the carnival from Bakhtin.

Gabrielle Bellot at NYR Daily considers the life of Elizabeth Bishop and Bishop's relationship to loneliness.

Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog describes how CubeSats were paired with solar sails to create a Mars probe, Mars Cube One.

The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer considers some possible responses from the left to a conservative Supreme Court in the US.

Roads and Kingdoms takes a look at the challenges facing the street food of Xi'an.

Rocky Planet examines why, for decades, geologists mistakenly believed that the California ground was bulging pre-earthquake in Palmdale.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel examines how some objects called stars, like neutron stars and white dwarfs and brown dwarfs, actually are not stars.

Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps notes how China and Europe stand out as being particularly irreligious on a world map of atheism.

Window on Eurasia notes the instability that might be created in the North Caucasus by a border change between Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Arnold Zwicky shares some beautiful pictures of flowers from a garden in Palo Alto.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how the recently-charted orbit of S2 around Sagittarius A* in the heart of our galaxy proves Einstein's theory of relativity right.

D-Brief notes a recent NASA study of Mars concluding that, because of the planet's shortfalls in conceivably extractable carbon dioxide, terraforming Mars is impossible with current technology.

Dead Things suggests that one key to the rise of Homo sapiens may be the fact that we are such good generalists, capable of adapting to different environments and challenges with speed even if we are not optimized for them. (Poor Neanderthals.)

At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Karen Sternheimer examines how individuals' identities shift as they engage, encountering new problems.

Hornet Stories notes that Thailand may well beat Taiwan in creating civil unions for same-sex couples.

JSTOR Daily examines the famed, nay iconic, baobab tree of Africa.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders about how, as the centennial of the introduction of women's suffrage approaches, the white racism of many suffragettes will be dealt with.

The Map Room Blog reports on Michael Plichta's very impressed hand-crafted globe of the Moon.

Russell Darnley at Maximos' Blog reports on the massive forest fires in Indonesia's Jambi Province.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait suggests that strange markings in the upper atmosphere of Venus might well be evidence of life in that relatively Earth-like environment.

The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly raves over Babylon Berlin.

Centauri Dreams considers, fifty years after its publication, Clarke's 2001.

Crooked Timber considers Kevin Williamson in the context of conservative intellectual representation more generally.

D-Brief considers "digisexuality", the fusion of the digital world with sexuality. (I think we're quite some way off, myself.)

The Dragon's Tales considers evidence suggesting that the agricultural revolution in ancient Anatolia was achieved without population replacement from the Fertile Crescent.

Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the flight of Apollo 6, a flight that helped iron out problem with the Saturn V.

The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas is not impressed by the idea of the trolley problem, as something that allows for the displacement of responsibility.

Gizmodo explains why the faces of Neanderthals were so different from the faces of modern humans.

JSTOR Daily considers if volcano-driven climate change helped the rise of Christianity.

Language Log considers, after Spinoza, the idea that vowels are the souls of consonants.

Lawyers, Guns and Money engages in a bit of speculation: What would have happened had Clinton won? (Ideological gridlock, perhaps.)

Lovesick Cyborg explores how the advent of the cheap USB memory stick allowed North Koreans to start to enjoy K-Pop.

Russell Darnley considers the transformation of the forests of Indonesia's Riau forest from closed canopy forest to plantations.

The Map Room Blog shares some praise of inset maps.

Neuroskeptic considers how ketamine may work as an anti-depressant.

The NYR Daily considers student of death, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

Justin Petrone of north! shares an anecdote from the Long Island coastal community of Greenport.

Personal Reflection's Jim Belshaw considers the iconic Benjamin Wolfe painting The Death of General Wolfe.

The Planetary Society Blog's Casey Dreier notes cost overruns for the James Webb Space Telescope.

pollotenchegg maps recent trends in natural increase and decrease in Ukraine.

Roads and Kingdoms talks about a special Hverabrauð in Iceland, baked in hot springs.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shares his own proposal for a new Drake Equation, revised to take account of recent discoveries.

Vintage Space considers how the American government would have responded if John Glenn had died in the course of his 1962 voyage into space.

Window on Eurasia considers the belief among many Russians that had Beria, not Khrushchev, succeeded Stalin, the Soviet Union might have been more successful.

Anthropology.net's Kambiz Kamrani notes evidence that environmental change in Kenya may have driven creativity in early human populations there.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shows how astronomers use stellar occultations to investigate the thin atmosphere of Neptune's moon Triton.

Centauri Dreams notes how melting ice creates landscape change on Ceres.

D-Brief suggests
Dangerous Minds shares Paul Bowles' recipe for a Moroccan love charm.

The Everyday Sociology Blog investigates the transformation of shopping malls and in the era of Amazon Prime.

At In Medias Res, Russell Arben Fox engages with Left Behind and that book's portrayal of rural populations in the United States which feel left behind.

JSTOR Daily looks at how Roman Catholic nuns on the 19th century American frontier challenged gender norms.

Lawyers, Guns and Money is critical of Tex-Mex cuisine, calling it an uncreative re-presentation of Mexican cuisine for white people in high-calorie quantities.

The NYR Daily shared this thought-provoking article noting how Irish America, because of falling immigration from Ireland and growing liberalism on that island, is diverging from its ancestral homeland.

Drew Rowsome reviews The Monument, a powerful play currently on in Toronto that engages with the missing and murdered native women.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes, in a photo-heavy post, how galaxies die (or at least, how they stop forming stars).

Towleroad shares a delightful interview with Adam Rippon conducted over a plate of hot wings.

Window on Eurasia shares an alternate history article imagining what would have become of Russia had Muscovy not conquered Novgorod.

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative notes the very sharp rise in public debt held by the province of Ontario, something that accelerated in recent years.

Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell suggests, in the era of Cambridge Analytica and fake news, that many journalists seem not to take their profession seriously enough.

At Anthropology.net, Kamzib Kamrani looks at the Yamnaya horse culture of far eastern Europe and their connection to the spread of the Indo-Europeans.
Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the predicted collision of China's Tiangong-1 space station. Where will it fall?

James Bow notes a Kickstarter funding effort to revive classic Canadian science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.

Centauri Dreams notes the impending retirement of the pioneering Kepler telescope, and what's being done in the time before this retirement.

D-Brief notes how nanowires made of gold and titanium were used to restore the sight of blind mice.

Russell Darnley takes a look at the indigenous people of Riau province, the Siak, who have been marginalized by (among other things) the Indonesian policy of transmigration.

Dead Things reports on more evidence of Denisovan ancestry in East Asian populations, with the suggestion that the trace of Denisovan ancestry in East Asia came from a different Denisovan population than the stronger traces in Melanesia.

Hornet Stories paints a compelling portrait of the West Texas oasis-like community of Marfa.

JSTOR Daily notes how indigenous mythology about illness was used to solve a hantavirus outbreak in New Mexico in the 1990s.

Language Log praises the technical style of a Google Translate translation of a text from German to English.

Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that, under the Shah, Iran was interested in building nuclear plants. Iranian nuclear aspirations go back a long way.

The LRB Blog looks at the unsettling elements of the literary, and other, popularity of Jordan Peterson.

Marginal Revolution notes the continuing existence of a glass ceiling even in relatively egalitarian Iceland.

The NYR Daily looks at the unsettling elements behind the rise of Xi Jinping to unchecked power. Transitions from an oligarchy to one-man rule are never good for a country, never mind one as big as China.

Drew Rowsome writes about Love, Cecil, a new film biography of photographer Cecil Beaton.

Peter Rukavina celebrates the 25th anniversary of his move to Prince Edward Island. That province, my native one, is much the better for his having moved there. Congratulations!

Window on Eurasia looks at a strange story of Russian speculation about Kazakh pan-Turkic irredentism for Orenburg that can be traced back to one of its own posts.

At Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Frances Woolley takes the time to determine that Canadian university professors tend to be more left-wing than the general Canadian population, and to ask why this is the case.

The suggestion that there is a relationship between the acoustics of particular caves and the art that early humans painted on those cave walls is fascinating. National Geographic reports.

The Neanderthals, archeologists working in Spain have determined, created art. The idea of a significant gap between their cognition and ours seems less and less likely. CBC reports.

It turns out that the grey squirrels of North America may be smarter than the red squirrels of Great Britain. This may explain much about the greys' success in the reds' homeland. National Geographic reports.

The idea of there being secret, easily overlooked, yet powerful communications networks connecting trees fascinates me. Vaster than empires and more slow, indeed. Quartz reports.

Back in 2016, through sheer luck and an excellent amateur model, Argentine amateur astronomer Victor Buso happened to catch supernova SN 2016gkg in NGC 613 from the very start of the visible explosion. Popular Science reports.

The displays at the AMNH's Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins are amazing, doing a good job of placing Homo sapiens in the much deeper and broader context of our primate kin. This includes Neanderthals, of course, as well as the newly-discovered Homo floresiensis. Who else will be added to our family tree, I wonder, as science progresses?

John Noble Wilford's 2007 review of the hall for The New York Times does a good job of capturing the glory of this hall.