[NEWS] Five NYR Daily links: Colombia, slavery, churches, journalism, Shakespeare&Co (@nyr_daily)

• The NYR Daily shares a report from Colombia, about the ways in which the filling of the Hidroituango Dam interacts with Colombia’s other social and political issues, here.
• Sean Wilentz makes the compelling argument at the NYR Daily that the young United States was a critical venue for antislavery movements, here.
• The NYR Daily tells the stories of two churches, one white and one black, as they merge, here.
• The NYR Daily shares the stories of a half-dozen pioneering, but overlooked, black woman journalists in the United States, here.
• Caitlin O’Keefe tells at the NYR Daily of how Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company played a key role in the growth of feminism, here.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Architectuul looks at the Porto architectural project Critical Concrete, here.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares the evidence for our galaxy having experienced a phase as a quasar a quarter-million years long some 3.5 million years ago.
• Author James Bow celebrates the end of his publicity tour for The Night Girl, including a controversy over cover art featuring the CN Tower.
• Robert Zubrin at Centauri Dreams considers how we could detect energy from artificial singularities used for power and propulsion. (Is this how we find the Romulans?)
• The Crux considers whether or not the new proposals for more powerful supercolliders in China and Europe are likely to produce new discoveries.
• D-Brief explains why older generations so often look down on the young: The elders idealize their younger selves too much.
• Dead Things notes new evidence, in the tracks of trilobites moving in line 480 million years ago, for early life being able to engage in collective behaviour.
• io9 interviews Kami Garcia about her new YA book featuring venerable DC character Raven, remaking her for new readers.
• The Island Review interviews David Gange about The Frayed Atlantic Edge, his book account of his kayak trip down the western coasts of Britain and Ireland.
• JSTOR Daily explains why Martin Luther King Jr. thought so highly of jazz.
• Eleanor Penny argues at the LRB Blog against taking Malthus, with his pessimism trending towards a murderous misanthropy, as a prophet for our times.
• The NYR Daily looks at the play American Moor, which touches on the efforts of black actors to engage with Shakespeare.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the new film The Flick, an old to old-style movies and theatres.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map depicting Hutterite migrations across early modern Europe.
• Starts With A Bang shares new speculation that some evidence for dark matter might actually be a mistake in measurement.
• Strange Maps notes the now mostly submerged continent of Greater Adria.
• Window on Eurasia shares a suggestion that the deep Russophilia of many ordinary people in Belarus might support union with Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the different meanings of “unaccompanied”.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Montréal, Lorain, Buenos Aires, Jakarta

• Tensions between the LGBTQ communities of Hamilton and the police remain high. Global News reports.
• The federal government will be providing funding for the new Great West Park of Montréal. CTV News reports.
• CityLab looks at the hometown of Toni Morrison, the Ohio community of Lorain, here.
• Guardian Cities looks at the question of how, or whether, a Buenos Aires slum should become an official neighbourhood, here.
• Guardian Cities reports on a small neighbourhood, Cosmo Park, built on top of a shopping mall in Jakarta, here.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Saira Mehmood blogs at {anthro}dendum about her experiences as an ethnographer in her New Orleans community.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait blogs about Supernova 2016iet, a rare example of a pair-instability supernova.
• At the Broadside Blog, Caitlin Kelly writes about the need of people to avoid isolation.
• Centauri Dreams notes that future astronomers might be able to detect the fluorescence of life on exoplanets during flares.
• Why, Crooked Timber asks, shouldn’t children be given the vote?
• D-Brief notes scientists have manufactured a ring of carbon atoms.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the complexities of #VanLife in the United States, at once a lifestyle choice in the US and a response to poverty.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money is decidedly unimpressed by the recent rewriting of the Statue of Liberty.
• Neuroskeptic looks at how neuroimaging studies study surprisingly few left-handers, and how this is a problem.
• The NYR Daily looks at how Big Data in China is enhancing state power, concentrating on the situation in Xinjiang.
• Drew Rowsome looks at a new documentary on the genesis of Fiddler on the Roof, Fiddler: Miracle of Miracles.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at how dark matter and black holes can interact.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at coded anti-black racism in the 1937 United States.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Architectuul notes the recent death of I.M. Pei.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes what, exactly, rubble-pile asteroids are.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about definitions of home.
• Centauri Dreams considers white dwarf planets.
• The Crux notes how ultra-processed foods are liked closely to weight gain.
• D-Brief observes that a thin layer of insulating ice might be saving the subsurface oceans of Pluto from freezing out.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the critical role played by Apollo 10 in getting NASA ready for the Moon landings.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes the American government’s expectation that China will seek to set up its own global network of military bases.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the Soviet Union’s Venera 5 and 6 missions to Venus.
• Far Outliers looks at the visit of U.S. Grant to Japan and China.
• Gizmodo notes a recent analysis of Neanderthal teeth suggesting that they split with Homo sapiens at a date substantially earlier than commonly believed.
• io9 notes the sheer scale of the Jonathan Hickman reboots for the X-Men comics of Marvel.
• Joe. My. God. shares the argument of Ted Cruz that people should stop making fun of his “space pirate” suggestion.I am inclined to think Cruz more right than not, actually.
• JSTOR Daily notes the wave of anti-black violence that hit the United States in 1919, often driven by returned veterans.
• Language Hat shares a recognizable complaint, written in ancient Akkadian, of bad customers.
• Language Log shares a report of a village in Brittany seeking people to decipher a mysterious etching.
• This Scott Lemieux report at Lawyers, Guns and Money about how British conservatives received Ben Shapiro is a must-read summary.
• Benjamin Markovits at the LRB Blog shares the reasons why he left his immigrant-heavy basketball team in Germany.
• Marginal Revolution looks at one effort in Brazil to separate people from their street gangs.
• The NYR Daily looks at how ISIS, deprived of its proto-state, has managed to thrive as a decentralized network.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw tells of his experiences and perceptions of his native region of New England, in southeastern Australia.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Chang’e 4 rover may have found lunar mantle on the surface of the Moon.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that while Argentine president Mauricio Macri is polling badly, his opponents are not polling well.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of things to do in see in the Peru capital of Lima.
• The Signal examines how the Library of Congress engages in photodocumentation.
• Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal explains how he is helping native insects by planting native plants in his garden.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how scientific illiteracy should never be seen as cool.
• Towleroad notes the questions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as to why Truvada costs so much in the United States.
• Window on Eurasia notes how family structures in the North Caucasus are at once modernizing and becoming more conservative.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the distribution of US carriers and their fleets at present does not support the idea of a planned impending war with Iran.
• Arnold Zwicky examines the tent caterpillar of California.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber takes us from her son’s accidental cut to the electronic music of Røbic.
• D-Brief explains what the exceptional unexpected brightness of the first galaxies reveals about the universe.
• Far Outliers looks at how President Grant tried to deal with the Ku Klux Klan.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the surprising influence of the Turkish harem on the fashion, at least, of Western women.
• This Kotaku essay arguing that no one should be sitting on the Iron Throne makes even better sense to me now.
• Language Hat looks at the particular forms of French spoken by the famously Francophile Russian elites of the 19th century.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how teaching people to code did not save the residents of an Appalachia community.
• Marginal Revolution notes how, in the early 19th century, the young United States trading extensively with the Caribbean, even with independent Haiti.
• At the NYR Daily, Colm Tóibín looks at the paintings of Pat Steir.
• Peter Rukavina writes about how he has been inspired by the deaths of the Underhays to become more active in local politics.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society shares his research goals from 1976.
• Window on Eurasia notes the conflicts between the Russian Orthodox Church and some Russian nationalists over the latter’s praise of Stalin.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at dragons in history, queer and otherwise.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Larry Claes at Centauri Dreams considers the issues of the alien featuring in the title of the classic The Thing, facing human persecution.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber starts a debate about past blogging and conventional wisdom.
• The Crux reports on a mass rescue of orphaned flamingo chicks in South Africa.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that asteroids provided perhaps half of the Earth’s current supply of water.
• Cody Delistraty looks at how the far-right in Germany is appropriating artworks to support its view of history.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that China may be hoping to build a base at the Moon’s south pole by 2029.
• Far Outliers reports on the 1865 collapse of the Confederacy.
• Gizmodo reports on how astronomers have identified the approximate location of a kilonova that seeded the nascent solar system with heavy elements.
• Joe. My. God. shares the news from yet another study demonstrating that HIV cannot be transmitted by HIV-undetectable people. U=U.
• JSTOR Daily notes how, via Herb Caen, the Beat Generation became known as Beatniks.
• Language Hat shares and comments upon a passage from Dostoevsky noting how an obscenity can be stretched out into an entire conversation.
• Language Log considers a peculiarity of the Beijing dialect.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how statehood has been used to game the American political system.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that countries with greater levels of gender inequality are more likely to produce female chess grandmasters.
• Justin Petrone at North!, considering the history of writers in Estonia, considers what the mission of the writer should be.
• The NYR Daily examines the black people once miners in the Kentucky town of Lynch, remembering and sharing their experiences.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw considers what he has learned from a recent research and writing contract.
• Jason C. Davis at the Planetary Society Blog reports in greater detail on the crater Hayabusa 2 made in asteroid Ryugu.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how the Event Horizon Telescope acts like a mirror.
• Strange Company shares an impressively diverse collection of links.
• Towleroad talks with writer Tim Murphy about his new novel, Correspondents.
• Window on Eurasia considers future directions for Ukrainian language policy.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the artistic riches horded by the Nazis in the Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein.

[DM] Some links: immigration, cities, small towns, French Canada, Eurasia, China, Brexit, music

Another links post is up over at Demography Matters!

• Skepticism about immigration in many traditional receiving countries appeared. Frances Woolley at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative took issue with the argument of Andray Domise after an EKOS poll, that Canadians would not know much about the nature of migration flows. The Conversation observed how the rise of Vox in Spain means that country’s language on immigration is set to change towards greater skepticism. Elsewhere, the SCMP called on South Korea, facing pronounced population aging and workforce shrinkages, to become more open to immigrants and minorities.
• Cities facing challenges were a recurring theme. This Irish Examiner article, part of a series, considers how the Republic of Ireland’s second city of Cork can best break free from the dominance of Dublin to develop its own potential. Also on Ireland, the NYR Daily looked at how Brexit and a hardened border will hit the Northern Ireland city of Derry, with its Catholic majority and its location neighbouring the Republic. CityLab reported on black migration patterns in different American cities, noting gains in the South, is fascinating. As for the threat of Donald Trump to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities in the United States has widely noted., at least one observer noted that sending undocumented immigrants to cities where they could connect with fellow diasporids and build secure lives might actually be a good solution.
• Declining rural settlements featured, too. The Guardian reported from the Castilian town of Sayatón, a disappearing town that has become a symbol of depopulating rural Spain. Global News, similarly, noted that the loss by the small Nova Scotia community of Blacks Harbour of its only grocery store presaged perhaps a future of decline. VICE, meanwhile, reported on the very relevant story about how resettled refugees helped revive the Italian town of Sutera, on the island of Sicily. (The Guardian, to its credit, mentioned how immigration played a role in keeping up numbers in Sayatón, though the second generation did not stay.)
• The position of Francophone minorities in Canada, meanwhile, also popped up at me.
• This TVO article about the forces facing the École secondaire Confédération in the southern Ontario city of Welland is a fascinating study of minority dynamics. A brief article touches on efforts in the Franco-Manitoban community of Winnipeg to provide temporary shelter for new Francophone immigrants. CBC reported, meanwhile, that Francophones in New Brunswick continue to face pressure, with their numbers despite overall population growth and with Francophones being much more likely to be bilingual than Anglophones. This last fact is a particularly notable issue inasmuch as New Brunswick’s Francophones constitute the second-largest Francophone community outside of Québec, and have traditionally been more resistant to language shift and assimilation than the more numerous Franco-Ontarians.
• The Eurasia-focused links blog Window on Eurasia pointed to some issues. It considered if the new Russian policy of handing out passports to residents of the Donbas republics is related to a policy of trying to bolster the population of Russia, whether fictively or actually. (I’m skeptical there will be much change, myself: There has already been quite a lot of emigration from the Donbas republics to various destinations, and I suspect that more would see the sort of wholesale migration of entire families, even communities, that would add to Russian numbers but not necessarily alter population pyramids.) Migration within Russia was also touched upon, whether on in an attempt to explain the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s or in the argument of one Muslim community leader in the northern boomtown of Norilsk that a quarter of that city’s population is of Muslim background.
• Eurasian concerns also featured. The Russian Demographics Blog observed, correctly, that one reason why Ukrainians are more prone to emigration to Europe and points beyond than Russians is that Ukraine has long been included, in whole or in part, in various European states. As well, Marginal Revolution linked to a paper that examines the positions of Jews in the economies of eastern Europe as a “rural service minority”, and observed the substantial demographic shifts occurring in Kazakhstan since independence, with Kazakh majorities appearing throughout the country.
• JSTOR Daily considered if, between the drop in fertility that developing China was likely to undergo anyway and the continuing resentments of the Chinese, the one-child policy was worth it. I’m inclined to say no, based not least on the evidence of the rapid fall in East Asian fertility outside of China.
• What will Britons living in the EU-27 do, faced with Brexit? Bloomberg noted the challenge of British immigrant workers in Luxembourg faced with Brexit, as Politico Europe did their counterparts living in Brussels.
• Finally, at the Inter Press Service, A.D. Mackenzie wrote about an interesting exhibit at the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris on the contributions made by immigrants to popular music in Britain and France from the 1960s to the 1980s.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul takes a look at “infrastructural scars”, at geopolitically-inspired constructions like border fences and fortifications.
• Centauri Dreams notes what we can learn from 99942 Apophis during its 2029 close approach to Earth, just tens of thousands of kilometres away.
• D-Brief reports on the reactions of space artists to the photograph of the black hole at the heart of M87.
• Dangerous Minds shares the first recording of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that Germany has begun work on drafting laws to cover space mining.
• Gizmodo reports on what scientists have learned from the imaging of a very recent impact of an asteroid on the near side of the Moon.
• io9 makes the case that Star Trek: Discovery should try to tackle climate change.
• Joe. My. God. notes that Verizon is seeking a buyer for Tumblr. (Wouldn’t it be funny if it was bought, as other reports suggest might be possible, by Pornhub?)
• JSTOR Daily reports on a 1910 examination of medical schools that, among other things, shut down all but two African-American medical schools with lasting consequences for African-American health.
• Language Log asks why “Beijing” is commonly pronounced as “Beizhing”.
• Simon Balto asks at Lawyers, Guns and Money why the murder of Justine Ruszczyk by a Minneapolis policeman is treated more seriously than other police killings, just because she was white and the cop was black. All victims deserve the same attention.
• Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares a video of the frieze of the Parthenon.
• The NYR Daily responds to the 1979 television adaptation of the Primo Levi novel Christ Stopped at Eboli, an examination of (among other things) the problems of development.
• Peter Rukavina is entirely right about the practical uselessness of QR codes.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society points readers towards the study of organizations, concentrating on Charles Perrow.
• Window on Eurasia notes the argument of one Russian commentator that Russia should offer to extend citizenship en masse not only to Ukrainians but to Belarusians, the better to undermine independent Belarus.
• Arnold Zwicky shares photos of some of his flourishing flowers, as his home of Palo Alto enters a California summer.

[BLOG] Some Monday blog links

• Crooked Timber at John Quiggin takes issue with the idea that, now, there are many Republicans who accept Trump only conditionally, for what a Trump presidency could achieve.
• D-Brief notes the XT2 signal, issue of a collision between two magnetars in a galaxy 6.6 billion light-years away.
• Cody Delistraty reports on an exhibit at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris on the history of soccer in world politics.
• Earther reports on a new satellite mission focused on studying solar-induced fluorescence, the glow of plants as they photosynthesize.
• Far Outliers notes how U.S. Grant responded to slaves seeking freedom from the Union Army.
• JSTOR Daily explores Lake Baikal.
• Language Log reports on the multilingualism of Pete Buttigieg.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money gives deserved praise to the Jason Lutes graphic novel Berlin.
• Marginal Revolution looks at the ways in which dense social networks can keep stroke victims from getting quick help.
• The NYR Daily looks at the campaigns and ideas of anti-authoritarian Chinese professor and writer Xu Zhangrun.
• Drew Rowsome gives a largely negative review to the 2014 Easter horror film The Beaster Bunny.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the singularities of black holes have spin.
• Window on Eurasia notes on the report of a Muslim community leader in Norilsk that a quarter of the population of that Russian Arctic city is of Muslim background.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the ways in which flowers and penguins and cuteness can interact, with photos.