[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Architectuul looks at the winners of an architecture prize based in Piran, here.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes the wind emitted from one distant galaxy’s supermassive black hole is intense enough to trigger star formation in other galaxies.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber pays tribute to Jack Merritt, a young victim of the London Bridge attack who was committed to the cause of prisoner rehabilitation.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the history of French pop group Les Rita Mitsouko.
• Bruce Dorminey reports on the European Space Agency’s belief Earth-observing spacecraft are needed to track ocean acidification.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on the consensus of the Russian scientific community against human genetic engineering.
• Far Outliers reports on the first ambassador sent from the Barbary States to the United States.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the life of pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas.
• Language Log shares images of a bottle of Tibetan water, bought in Hong Kong, labeled in Tibetan script.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money rightly assigns responsibility for the terrible measles outbreak in Samoa to anti-vaxxers.
• The LRB Blog notes how tree planting is not apolitical, might even not be a good thing to do sometimes.
• Marginal Revolution reports on a paper suggesting that food tends to be better in restaurants located on streets in Manhattan, better than in restaurants located on avenues.
• Justin Petrone at north! shares an account of a trip across Estonia.
• The NYR Daily looks at the photography of Michael Jang.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw continues to report from Armidale, in Australia, shrouded in smoke from wildfires.
• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the early days of the Planetary Society, four decades ago.
• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at how centenarians in Sweden and in Denmark experience different trends in longevity.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on the accidental discovery of the microwave background left by the Big Bang in 1964.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at the increasingly poor treatment of workers by employers such as Amazon through the lens of primitive accumulation.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the small differences separating the Kazakhs from the Kyrgyz.
• Arnold Zwicky shares a dance routine, shown on television in France, against homophobia.

[NEWS] Five Window on Eurasia links: Estonia, eugenics, empire, demographics, Old Believers

• Window on Eurasia notes how Russia continues to oppose the recognition of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu as the basis for Russia-Estonia relations, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports on how, and why, Stalin cracked down on eugenics as a permissible theory in the Soviet Union, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports on polling suggesting Russians are more interested in their country acting as a great power than as an empire, here.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, in the space of the former Soviet Union, population growth in the six Muslim-majority republics more than compensates in absolute numbers for declines elsewhere.
• Window on Eurasia notes the resettlement of a couple hundred Old Believers, part of a diaspora of perhaps seven thousand, in the Far East of Russia.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer notes the circumstances of the discovery of a low-mass black hole, only 3.3 solar masses.
• Crooked Timber shares a photo of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.
• The Crux looks at Monte Verde, the site in Chile that has the evidence of the oldest human population known to have lived in South America.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that Russia may provide India with help in the design of its Gaganyaan manned capsule.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing talks of his work, including his upcoming conference and his newsletter, The Convivial Society. (Subscribe at the website.)
• Gizmodo shares the Voyager 2 report from the edges of interstellar space.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the East India Company and its corporate lobbying.
• Language Hat shares an account from Ken Liu of the challenges in translating The Three Body Problem, linguistic and otherwise.
• Language Log looks at the problems faced by the word “liberation” in Hong Kong.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the implications of the surprising new relationship between Russia and the Philippines.
• Marginal Revolution seems to like Terminator: Dark Fate, as a revisiting of the series’ origins, with a Mesoamerican twist.
• Sean Marshall announces his attendance at a transit summit in Guelph on Saturday the 9th.
• Garry Wills writes at the NYR Daily about his experience as a man in the mid-20th century American higher education looking at the rise of women.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the strangely faint distant young galaxy MACS2129-1.
• Window on Eurasia considers the possibility of Latvia developing a national Eastern Orthodox church of its own.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Adam Fish at anthro{dendum} shares a new take on the atmosphere, as a common good.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a photo of Earth taken from a hundred million kilometres away by the OSIRIS-REx probe.
• The Crux tells the story of how the first exoplanets were found.
• D-Brief notes that life could be possible on a planet orbiting a supermassive black hole, assuming it could deal with the blueshifting.
• io9 looks at the latest bold move of Archie Comics.
• JSTOR Daily explores cleaning stations, where small fish clean larger ones.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the role China seeks to play in a remade international order.
• The Map Room Blog looks at the new upcoming national atlas of Estonia.
• Marginal Revolution touches on the great ambition of Louis XIV for a global empire.
• Steve Baker of The Numerati shares photos from his recent trip to Spain.
• Anya Schiffrin at the NRY Daily explains how American journalist Varian Fry helped her family, and others, escape the Nazis.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the classic movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map looking at the barriers put up by the high-income world to people moving from outside.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel answers the complex question of how, exactly, the density of a black hole can be measured.
• John Scalzi at Whatever reviews Gemini Man. Was the high frame rate worth it?
• Window on Eurasia notes the deep hostility of Tuvins towards a large Russian population in Tuva.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the existential question of self-aware cartoon characters.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Fredericton, Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Riga

• The city of Fredericton hopes a new strategy to attracting international migration to the New Brunswick capital will help its grow its population by 25 thousand. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities notes the controversy in Amsterdam as users of moped find themselves being pushed from using bike lanes.
• Guardian Cities looks at how many in Athens think the city might do well to unbury the rivers covered under concrete and construction in the second half of the 20th century.
• The Sagrada Familia, after more than 130 years of construction, has finally received a permit for construction from Barcelona city authorities. Global News reports.
• Evan Gershkovich at the Moscow Times reports on how the recent ousting of the mayor of the Latvian capital of Riga for corruption is also seem through a lens of ethnic conflict.

[PHOTO] Some photography links: CONTACT, Christopher Porter, Don McCullis, Antanas Sutkus, Laos

• NOW Toronto profiles some eye-catching exhibits part of the Contact Photography Festival.
• Toronto Life profiles some recently recovered photos by Christopher Porter dating from the 1990s.
• The NYR Daily took a look at the war-themed photographs of Don McCullin, here.
• The NYR Daily examines the work of Antanas Sutkus, who began his work in Soviet Lithuania.
• These images of the legacies of the Vietnam War in Laos, decades later, are stunning. VICE has them.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• 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.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams looks at the genesis of ocean worlds. Having a nearly massive star producing lots of radioactive aluminum when it supernovas might be surprisingly important.
• The Crux takes a look at languages newly forming in the world around us, starting with the Australian language of Light Warlpiri. What does this say about humans and language?
• D-Brief notes that researchers have managed to create cyborg rats whose motions are controlled directly by human thought.
• Gizmodo reports on the abandonment by Amazon of its plan for a HQ2 campus in Queens.
• JSTOR Daily shares the perfectly believable argument that people with autism should not be viewed as people incapable of love.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Simon Balto writes about how the Ryan Adams scandal demonstrates the male gatekeeper effect in popular music.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution comes up with a list of winners and losers of the Amazon decision not to set up HQ2 in Queens. (Myself, I am unconvinced New York City is a loser here.)
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how, despite not interacting directly with normal matter, dark matter can still be heated up by the matter and energy we see around us.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, in many post-Soviet countries including the Baltic States and Ukraine, ethnic Russians are assimilating into local majority ethnic groups.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Wasaga Beach, Montréal, Barcelona, Narva, Luanda

• The question of how to develop, or redevelop, the Georgian Bay resort town of Wasaga Beach is ever-pressing. Global News reports.
• Le Devoir enters the discussion over the Royalmount development, arguing that the city of Montréal needs to fight urban sprawl.
• Guardian Cities reports on the efforts of Barcelona to keep its street kiosks, home to a thriving culture, alive in the digital age.
• The New York Times reports on how the government of Estonia is trying to use pop culture to help bind the Russophone-majority city of Narva into the country.
• This Guardian Cities photo essay takes a look at how the Angolan capital of Luanda, after a long economic boom driven by oil, is rich but terribly unequal.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• David Price at {anthro}dendum considers, going through archival material from the 1950s, the number of radical anthropologists in the US as yet little known or unknown who were marginalized by the Red Scare.
• Centauri Dreams ruminates on a paper examining ‘Oumuamua that considers radiation pressure as a factor in its speed. Might it work as–indeed, be?–a lightsail?
• D-Brief notes the various reasons why the Chinese proposal for an artificial moon of sorts, to illuminate cities at night, would not work very well at all.
• The Dragon’s Tales touches on the perhaps hypocritical anger of Russia at the United States’ departure from the INF treaty.
• Far Outliers notes the sharp divides among Nazi prisoners of war in a camp in Texas, notably between pro- and anti-Nazi prisoners.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing revisits the original sin of the Internet culture, its imagining of a split between an individual’s virtual life and the remainder of their life.
• The Island Review welcomes, and interviews, its new editor C.C. O’Hanlon.
• JSTOR Daily explores the reasons for considering climate change to be a national security issue.
• Language Hat is enthused by the recent publication of a new dictionary of the extinct Anatolian languages of the Indo-European family.
• Language Log examines the existence of a distinctive, even mocked, southern French accent spoken in and around (among other cities) Toulouse.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the rise of fascism in Brazil with Bolsonaro.
• Roger Shuy at Lingua Franca writes about the power of correspondence, of written letters, to help language learners. (I concur.)
• At the LRB Blog, Jeremy Bernstein writes about anti-Semitism in the United States, in the 1930s and now.
• The NYR Daily examines the life of writer, and long-time exile from her native Portugal, Maria Gabriela Llansol.
• Haley Gray at Roads and Kingdoms reports on the life and work of Mark Maryboy, a Navajo land rights activist in Utah.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the Russian urban myth of blonde Baltic snipers from the Baltic States who had been enlisted into wars against Russia like that of Chechnya in the 1990s.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the classic red phone booths of the United Kingdom, now almost all removed from the streets of the country and sent to a graveyard in a part of rural Yorkshire that has other claims to fame.