[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.

[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.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Oshawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, Montréal, Accra, Beijing

• A tiny house put on the market in Oshawa got a surprising amount of buzz before its sale. Global News reports.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle shares photos for a nearby crossing for the new Kitchener-Waterloo Ion light rail project, set to open very soon.
• MTLBlog shares a map showing the distribution of some notable immigrant communities in Montréal.
• Guardian Cities reports on how authorities in Accra are trying to deal with noise pollution produced by the city’s many churches and preachers.
• Roads and Kingdoms notes how elderly singles in Beijing use Changpu River Park as a place to meet new partners.

[URBAN NOTE] Four city links: Kingston, New York City, Los Angeles, Beijing

• Kingston is currently in the process of planning for two tall high-rises to be built in what seems to be near the heart of the downtown. Global News reports.
• The question of how New York City will deal with the extended shutdown of the L Train seems, from this account, to have scarcely been answered. VICE reports.
• The defenses of Los Angeles’ Getty Museum against wildfires are impressive, though I certainly still fear for the art inside. New York reports.
• The displacement of poor people, often rural migrants, from their Beijing neighbourhoods is a sad story. The Guardian reports.

[LINK] “25 years on, the fate of Tiananmen’s ‘Tank Man’ is still a mystery”

Tank Man, the Beijing man whose solitary stand in front of a column at Chinese tanks at Tiannamen Square created famous imagery, remains unknown. Such is the theme of this Agence France-Presse article.

He is world famous, and at the same time anonymous. The man who stood alone blocking a column of tanks at Tiananmen Square endures as a symbol of peaceful protest and defiance 25 years later.

It was just before noon on June 5, 1989. Wearing a white shirt, carrying a shopping bag in each hand, he strode out a day after Chinese troops killed hundreds of pro-democracy protesters in the heart of Beijing.

In the middle of the wide avenue running north of Tiananmen Square — by now empty of the students who had dreamed of democracy — he stopped, facing the first of a column of tanks and armoured vehicles stretching far down the road.

Captured on camera, “Tank Man” has become one of the defining images of the 20th century. Unforgettably powerful, his photograph has been endlessly reproduced, despite being censored at home by China’s ruling Communist Party.

His identity and fate are unknown.

Much more later.

[LINK] On a Beijing to Vancouver rail link

VanCityBuzz’ Kenneth Chan notes that apparently China is considering funding a high-speed rail connection between Beijing and Vancouver (via Siberia and Alaska).

I’m impressed by the scope.

(Business in Vancouver suggests that the rail link could be a convenient way to export large amounts of Albertan oil to China.)

China is contemplating on building a high-speed railway that will link Beijing to Vancouver, a 13,000 kilometre route that will cross Siberia and reach Alaska through a 200 kilometres long tunnel under Bering Strait – the narrow point between the two continents.

It was reported on state-run television and the Beijing Times newspaper earlier this month. According to another report by the English language version of China Daily, “The project will be funded and constructed by China. The details of this project are yet to be finalized.”

From Vancouver, the line will branch on to continue to Eastern Canada before reaching its final destination on the American East Coast.

The line would be 3,000 kilometres longer than the epic Trans-Siberia railroad with trains traveling from end to end at an average of 350 km/h, completing a one-way trip in about 37 hours.

One estimate pegs the cost of building such a line at $2 trillion with the main engineering challenge revolving around the technology needed to construct the Bering Strait undersea tunnel – a length four times that of the Chunnel between the United Kingdom and France and an area known for its seismic activity. The economics behind constructing and maintaining such expensive infrastructure is also in question.

The ‘China-Siberia-Canada-America Line’ is among four international high-speed railway projects being contemplated by the Central People’s Government of China. The Beijing Times also lists three other lines that will connect China to London (through Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev and Moscow), Central Asian nations, and Southeast Asia.