A Bit More Detail

December 31st, I grabbed a beer
Threw it up, said, "2020 is my year, bitches"
(Three, two, one, Happy New Year)
And I honestly thought that that was true
Until I gave this motherfucker like a month or two
This is getting kind of ridiculous at this point"

Put your hands in the motherfuckin' air
If you kinda hate it here
And you wish that things would
Just like chill for like two minutes

• 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.

• Antipope's Charlie Stross has a thought experiment: If you were superwealthy and guaranteed to live a long health life, how would you try to deal with the consequence of economic inequality?


• Vikas Charma at Architectuul takes a look at the different factors that go into height in buildings.


• Bad Astronomy notes S5-HVS1, a star flung out of the Milky Way Galaxy by Sagittarius A* at 1755 kilometres per second.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly shares photos from two Manhattan walks of hers, taken in non-famous areas.


• Centauri Dreams looks at habitability for red dwarf exoplanets. Stellar activity matters.


• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber shares words from a manifesto about data protection in the EU.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos from Los Angeles punks and mods and others in the 1980s.


• Bruce Dorminey notes a ESA report suggesting crew hibernation could make trips to Mars easier.


• Gizmodo notes that the Hayabusa2 probe of Japan is returning from asteroid Ryugu with a sample.


• Imageo shares photos of the disastrous fires in Australia from space.


• Information is Beautiful reports on winners of the Information is Beautiful Awards for 2019, for good infographics.


• JSTOR Daily explains how local television stations made the ironic viewing of bad movies a thing.


• Kotaku reports on the last days of Kawasaki Warehouse, an arcade in Japan patterned on the demolished Walled City of Kowloon.


• Language Hat notes how translation mistakes led to the star Beta Cygni gaining the Arabic name Albireo.


• Language Log reports on a unique Cantonese name of a restaurant in Hong Kong.


• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to an analysis of his suggesting the military of India is increasingly hard-pressed to counterbalance China.


• The LRB Blog notes the catastrophe of Venice.


• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting states would do well not to place their capitals too far away from major population centres.


• Justin Petrone at North! remarks on a set of old apple preserves.


• The NYR Daily looks at how the west and the east of the European Union are divided by different conceptions of national identity.


• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reports from his town of Armidale as the smoke from the Australian wildfires surrounds all. The photos are shocking.


• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog lists some books about space suitable for children.


• Drew Rowsome reviews the Canadian film music stand, inspired by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.


• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting that, in Switzerland, parenthood does not make people happy.


• The Signal notes that 1.7 million phone book pages have been scanned into the records of the Library of Congress.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains the concept of multi-messenger astronomy and why it points the way forward for studies of astrophysics.


• Strange Maps looks at how a majority of students in the United States attend diverse schools, and where.


• Strange Company explores the mysterious death of Marc-Antoine Calas, whose death triggered the persecution of Huguenots and resulted in the mobilization of Enlightenment figures like Voltaire against the state. What happened?


• Towleroad hosts a critical, perhaps disappointed, review of the major gay play The Inheritance.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little looks at the power of individual people in political hierarchies.


• Window on Eurasia shares an opinion piece noting how many threats to the Russian language have come from its association with unpopular actions by Russia.


• Arnold Zwicky explores queens as various as Elizabeth I and Adore Delano.

• Anthrodendum features a guest post from editors introducing a series on fieldwork and trauma.


• Crooked Timber's John Quiggin takes a stab at trying to define neoliberalism as an ideology, not just a catch-all phrase.


• The Crux looks at desalination, a difficult process that we may need to use regardless of its difficulty.


• D-Brief notes that narcissism is linked to lower levels of stress and depression.


• Jezebel notes the return and legacy of Bratz dolls.


• Joe. My. God. shares the Sam Smith cover of the Donna Summer classic "I Feel Love", along with other versions of that song.


• JSTOR Daily considers if graphene will ever become commercially usable.


• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to an analysis warning about commercial debt. Another 2008?


• Marginal Revolution points to some papers suggesting that cannabis usage does not harm cognition, that the relationship is if anything reversed.


• Daphne Merkin at the NYR Daily looks back at her literary life, noting people now gone.


• Drew Rowsome reviews the new Daniel MacIvor play Let's Run Away.


• The Volokh Conspiracy looks at how the Trump Administration lost two cases against sanctuary cities.


• Window on Eurasia considers, briefly, the idea of Gorbachev giving to Germany Kaliningrad, last remnant of East Prussia.


• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative looks at the rises in health spending directed towards young people. Is this a warning sign of poor health?


• Arnold Zwicky looks at Gaysper, and then at other queer ghosts.

• Jamie Bradburn took a look at now-effaced Toronto cemetery Potter's Field, here.


• Kingston, Ontario's Skeleton Park is a remarkable legacy. Global News reports.


• CBC Saskatoon reports on the origins of Halloween in harvest events.


• The Hong Kong protests took on a new tinge this Halloween. CBC reports.


• The Vancouver tradition of Halloween fireworks may be dying out. The National Post reports.


• Guardian Cities looks around the world, from Derry to West Hollywood, at local celebrations of Halloween.


• Gizmodo shares an image of a ghostly collision of galaxies in deep space.


• Dangerous Minds shared some album covers inspired by Halloween.


• CBC looks at the very low rate of candy tampering in Canada over the past decade.


• JSTOR Daily considers how the Great Pumpkin of Peanuts came to be so great.

• Carl Newport at WIRED argues that past generations have never been as suspicious of technology as we now think, here.


• Anthropologist Darren Byler at The Conversation argues, based on his fieldwork in Xinjiang, how Uighurs became accustomed to the opportunities of new technologies until they were suddenly caught in a trap.


• James Verini at WIRED notes how the fighting around Mosul in the fall of ISIS could be called the first smartphone war.


• National Observer looks at how Québec is so far leading Canada in the development of clean technologies, including vehicles.


• VICE reports on how a Christian rock LP from the 1980s also hosted a Commodore 64 computer program.


• Megan Molteni at WIRED looks at a new, more precise, CRISPR technique that could be used to fix perhaps most genetic diseases.

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


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


• Architectuul reports on an architectural conference in Lisbon.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


• Gizmodo tells how Alexei Leonov survived the first spacewalk.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


• Arnold Zwicky looks at some penguin socks.

• Bad Astronomer notes the latest news on interstellar comet 2/Borisov.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly emphasizes how every writer does need an editor.


• Centauri Dreams notes how the gas giant GJ 3512 b, half the mass of Jupiter orbiting a red dwarf star closely, is an oddly massive exoplanet.


• Gina Schouten at Crooked Timber looks at inter-generational clashes on parenting styles.


• D-Brief looks at the methods of agriculture that could conceivably sustain a populous human colony on Mars.


• Bruce Dorminey argues that we on Earth need something like Starfleet Academy, to help us advance into space.


• Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how the socio-spatial perspective helps us understand the development of cities.

Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res listens to the Paul McCartney album Flaming Pie.

• io9 looks at Proxima, a contemporary spaceflight film starring Eva Green.


• JSTOR Daily looks at how the intense relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia began in, and reflected, the era of Jim Crow.


• Language Hat notes a report suggesting that multilingualism helps ward off dementia.


• Language Log takes issue with the names of the mascots of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the emergence of a ninth woman complaining about being harassed by Al Franken.


• Marginal Revolution links to a new paper arguing that the Washington Consensus worked.


• The NYR Daily shares an Aubrey Nolan cartoon illustrating the evacuation of war children in the United Kingdom during the Second World War.


• At Out of Ambit, Diane Duane shares a nice collection of links for digital mapmakers.


• The Planetary Society Blog looks at how the European Space Agency supports the cause of planetary defense.


• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Kenyan writer Kevin Mwachiro at length.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel reports on how a mysterious fast radio burst helped illuminate an equally mysterious galactic halo.


• Strange Company reports on the mysterious and unsolved death in 1936 of Canadian student Thomas Moss in an Oxfordshire hayrick.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps notes how Mount Etna is a surpassingly rare decipoint.


• Understanding Society considers the thought of Kojève, after Hegel, on freedom.


• Window on Eurasia looks at the falling numbers of Russians, and of state support for Russian language and culture, in independent Central Asia.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how individual consumer responses are much less effective than concerted collective action in triggering change.


• Arnold Zwicky reports on some transgender fashion models.