[BLOG] Some Friday links

• The Big Picture shares shocking photos of the Portuguese forest fires.
• blogTO notes that, happily, Seaton Village’s Fiesta Farms is apparently not at risk of being turned into a condo development site.
• Centauri Dreams notes a new starship discussion group in Delft. Shades of the British Interplanetary Society and the Daedalus?
• D-Brief considers a new theory explaining why different birds’ eggs have different shapes.
• The Frailest Thing’s Michael Sacasas commits himself to a new regimen of blogging about technology and its imports. (There is a Patreon.)
• Language Hat notes the current Turkish government’s interest in purging Turkish of Western loanwords.
• Language Log’s Victor Mair sums up the evidence for the diffusion of Indo-European languages, and their speakers, into India.
• The LRB Blog notes the Theresa May government’s inability post-Grenfell to communicate with any sense of emotion.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen wonders if the alt-right more prominent in the Anglophone world because it is more prone to the appeal of the new.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw wonders if Brexit will result in a stronger European Union and a weaker United Kingdom.
• Seriously Science reports a study suggesting that shiny new headphones are not better than less flashy brands.
• Torontoist reports on the anti-Muslim hate groups set to march in Toronto Pride.
• Understanding Society considers the subject of critical realism in sociological analyses.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Russia’s call to promote Cyrillic across the former Soviet Union has gone badly in Armenia, with its own script.