[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Anthropology.net reports on the discovery of footprints of a Neanderthal band in Le Rozel, Normandy, revealing much about that group’s social structure.
• Bad Astronomer’s Phil Plait explains why standing at the foot of a cliff on Mars during local spring can be dangerous.
• Centauri Dreams shares a suggestion that the lakes of Titan might be product of subterranean explosions.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber considers how, and when, anger should be considered and legitimated in discussions of politics.
• The Crux looks at the cement mixed successfully in microgravity on the ISS, as a construction material of the future.
• D-Brief looks at what steps space agencies are considering to avoid causing harm to extraterrestrial life.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes new evidence that the Anthropocene, properly understood, actually began four thousand years ago.
• Jonathan Wynn writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about how many American universities have become as much lifestyle centres as educational communities.
• Far Outliers reports on how, in the 13th century, the cultural differences of Wales from the English–including the Welsh tradition of partible inheritance–caused great instability.
• This io9 interview with the creators of the brilliant series The Wicked and the Divine is a must-read.
• JSTOR Daily looks at a paper considering how teachers of German should engage with the concept of Oktoberfest.
• Language Hat looks at a new study examining the idea of different languages being more efficient than others. (They are not, it turns out.)
• Language Log looks at the history of translating classics of Chinese literature into Manchu and Mongolian.
• Erik Loomis considers the problems the collapse of local journalism now will cause for later historians trying to do research in the foreseeable future.
• Marginal Revolution reports on research suggesting that markets do not corrupt human morality.
• Neuroskeptic looks in more detail at the interesting, and disturbing, organized patterns emitted by organoids built using human brain cells.
• Stephen Baker at The Numerati writes, with photos, about what he saw in China while doing book research. (Shenzhen looks cool.)
• The NYR Daily notes the import of the working trip of Susan Sontag to Sarajevo in 1993, while that city was under siege.
• Robert Picardo at the Planetary Society Blog shares a vintage letter from Roddenberry encouraging Star Trek fans to engage with the Society.
• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money looks at the economy of Argentina in a pre-election panic.
• Strange Company looks at the life of Molly Morgan, a British convict who prospered in her exile to Australia.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, in 1939, many Soviet citizens recognized the import of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; they knew their empire would expand.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the treatment of cavemen, as subjects and providers of education, in pop culture.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, London, Bihac, Rovaniemi, MOscow

• Tenants in a Montréal apartment complex, in Little Burgundy are facing displacement after their home was bought by a company intent on turning their units into short-term rentals. CTV reports.
• Guardian Cities looks at the rising crime rate in London, concentrated among the young of that city.
• Politico Europe looks at how Bihac, in western Bosnia, has become a cul-de-sac trapping migrants seeking the European Union.
• Guardian Cities tells how Rovaniemi in northern Finland recovered from devastation in the Second World war to become a modernist home to Santa Claus.
• Owen Hatherley at Dezeen writes about how the successful new urbanism of the city of Moscow should not be mistaken for liberal politics there.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Zoe Todd at {anthro}dendum writes about white hostility in academia, specifically directed towards her Indigenous background.
• Architectuul writes about 3650 Days, a book celebrating a architectural festival in Sarajevo.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a proposal to look for Planet Nine by examining its impact on the local microwave background, legacy of the Big Bang.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing considers the relationship between the natural and the artificial.
• This remarkable essay at Gizmodo explains how the random selection of locations on maps by cartographers can create real-world problems for people who live near these arbitrary points.
• Language Log looks at a visual pun in a recent K-Pop song.
• Conrad Landin at the LRB Blog bids farewell to HMV, a store done in perhaps as much by predatory capitalism as by the changing music business.
• Marginal Revolution notes the impact of the federal government shutdown on Washington D.C.
• James Kirchick writes at the NYR Blog about pioneering activist Frank Kameny and his fight against the idea of a cure for gayness.
• Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle shares a recipe for a quick Asian peanut soup, with photo.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why a particular lava flow has blue lava.
• Window on Eurasia notes that the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church, by virtue of its independence and sheer size, will be a major player in the Orthodox world.
• Arnold Zwicky starts one post by noting how certain long-necked kitchenware bears a striking resemblance to extinct dinosaurs.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bruce Dorminey goes into detail about how the ESA’s Gaia space telescope discovered the vast, dim, Antlia 2 dwarf galaxy just outside of the Milky Way.
• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Colby King undertakes a sociological examination of the issues of the American circus.
• At The Finger Post, David Finger remembers a 2004 visit to the Bosnian city of Mostar, symbolized by the destruction of the Stari Most, the old bridge, linking the two halves of the divided city.
• The Frailest Thing’s L.M. Sacasas takes issue with Marie Kondo’s minimalism, her engineering of the physical environment through decluttering to create joy.
• JSTOR Daily notes how Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, a spacefaring woman, challenges contemporary American sexism.
• Language Hat notes the Japanese manga Heterogenia Linguistico, about linguists trying to understand the languages of non-humans.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money shares the argument of Mike Davis that Malibu, the home of wealthy people who built in an environmentally sensitive and dangerous area, should be left to burn.
• Lingua Franca looks at the unexpected complexities and subtleties of language involved in getting a hunting license in Montana.
• Danny Lyon at the NYR Daily, visiting a New Mexico forest seven years after a devastating fire, notes how it takes generations for these environments to recover.
• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes how the arrival of the Orion service module has been made amidst speculation that the commercial model for the Orion is not working.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports on an excellent Japanese bakery in Phnom Penh.
• Strange Company describes the life and career of Carol Crane.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Chuchotka and Kamchatka, remote Russian Far Eastern territories, are in many respects akin to islands.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Larisa Kurtović writes at anthro{dendum} about her experiences, as an anthropologist studying Bosnia and a native Sarajevan, at the time of the trial of Ratko Mladić. Representation in this circumstance was fraught.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the remarkable claim that extragalactic planets have been discovered 3.5 billion light-years away through gravitational lensing and does not find it intrinsically implausible. Centauri Dreams also looks at the background behind the claimed detection of two thousand rogue planets, ranging in mass from the Moon to Jupiter, in a distant galaxy.
• Dangerous Minds reviews a fantastic-sounding book reviewing girl gangs and bikers in the pulp fiction of mid-20th century English-language literature.
• Hornet Stories links to the Mattachine Podcast, a new podcast looking at pre-Stonwall LGBTQ history including that relating to the pioneering Mattachine Society.
• JSTOR Daily notes the substantial evidence that fish can actually be quite smart, certainly smarter than popular stereotypes have them being.
• Language Hat reports on the existence of a thriving population of speakers of Aramaic now in existence in New Jersey.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the many ways in which the privatization of state businesses have gone astray in the United Kingdom, and suggests that there is conflict between short-term capitalist desires and long-term needs. Renationalization a solution?
• At Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen argues that the prospect of the future financial insolvency of Chicago helps limit the large-scale settlement of wealthy people there, keeping the metropolis relatively affordable.
• Stephen Baker of The Numerati reflected, on the eve of the Superbowl, on the origins of his fandom with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1963 just before the assassination of JFK.
• The NYR Daily shares a rational proposal for an Israeli-Palestinian confederation that, alas, will never fly given irrational reality.
• Seriously Science notes a paper suggesting that Norway rats do, in fact, the reciprocal trade of goods and services.
• Strange Company notes an unfortunate picnic in Indiana in 1931, where the Simmons family was unexpectedly poisoned by strychnine capsules? Who did it?
• Window on Eurasia notes a demographers’ observation that, given the age structure and fertility of the Russian population, even with plausible numbers of immigrants the country’s population may never again grow.

[NEWS] Four geopolitics links: democracy, Trump and China, India and Pakistan, western Balkans

• The suggestion by David Moscrop, at MacLean’s, that between the rise of authoritarian China and the Trump ascendancy in the US, liberal democracy may face particular peril this year seems worryingly plausible.
• Evan Osnos at The New Yorker looks at how the savvy Chinese government is taking advantage of Trump’s incapacities.
• This DefenseOne essay arguing that India is facing a point where it is unable to defeat Pakistan in conventional battle is worth noting.
• This B92 essay arguing that the European Union should make special provisions for the western Balkans to avoid their protracted decay outside of the Union convinces me, at least.

[NEWS] Some Wednesday links

• Bloomberg notes an unexpected housing shortage in the Midwest, and considers the impact of the Panama scandal on the British Virgin Islands’ economic model.
• Bloomberg View calls for better regulation of the high seas, suggests (from the example of Yugoslav refugees in Denmark) that low-skilled immigrants can be good for working classes, and notes the failed states and potential for conflict in the former Soviet Union.
• The Inter Press Service notes the fight against religious misogyny in India.
• The Toronto Star‘s Chantal Hébert notes how voters in Ontario and Québec have been let down by the failure to enact ethics reforms in politics.
• Spiegel looks at the spread of radical Islam in Bosnia.
• Vice notes a photo project by a Swiss photographer who has been tracking couples for decades.
• Wired looks at the US-European trade in highly-enriched uranium.

[LINK] “Former Yugoslav States, Albania Vow to Step Up Drive to Join EU”

Bloomberg’s Jasmina Kuzmanovic and Gordana Filipovic report on the renewed push in the western Balkans for European Union membership. Certainly it’s not as if the western Balkans have any other future.

Former Yugoslav republics and neighboring Albania vowed to resuscitate their drive for European Union integration after the migrant crisis rocked the region and created the worst political rifts between Balkan states since the civil wars of the 1990s.

The heads of state for EU members Croatia and Slovenia and EU outsiders Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania signed a joint commitment to strengthening the stability and prosperity of the region. They also aim to strengthen ties to the U.S. and seek an expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization deeper into the Balkans.

[. . .]

The western Balkans has been stretched by the flood of hundreds of thousands of migrants escaping the violence in Syria as well as refugees from as far away as Afghanistan and Northern Africa. Slovenia and Croatia strained their EU ties after Slovenia declared its intention to build fencing along the two countries’ shared border. The dispute is being echoed across the EU as governments grapple with a crisis on a scale not seen since the 1940s.

[LINK] “Reporting Srebrenica: Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil”

Transitions Online hosts an article by one Antonela Riha looking at how the Serbian mass media chose not to cover the massacres following the fall of Srebrenica, and why.

[B]y merely browsing the most influential dailies and weeklies, such as Politika, Vecernje Novosti, Politika Ekspres, Nasa Borba, NIN, Vreme, Duga, and Intervju, as well as news programs (Dnevnik) produced by TV Belgrade, it becomes clear that the majority of media in Serbia did not pose any questions or investigate the events in the war regions. For them, Srebrenica was merely another episode of the war in which victims were taken for granted and were no longer counted.

Serbian public broadcaster RTS took literally what Milosevic said about being interested only in achieving a “just peace” and having nothing to do with the Serbs across the Drina River. The most popular TV show of the most powerful media house, TV Belgrade Evening News at 7:30 (Dnevnik), did not include a single video from Srebrenica or any other war zone until 30 July.

On 11 July 11, TV Belgrade commenced its news program with a report on the visit of Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic to some harvesters. It was only on the following day that TV Belgrade viewers would learn that something was going on some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Serbian border: in the 11th minute of the news they could hear Yasushi Akashi, special UN envoy to Bosnia and Herzegovina, saying the UN was not going to intervene in Srebrenica, and UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali saying UN peacekeepers were not going to retreat from Bosnia.

For days, several minute-long packages were broadcast in the middle of the news, with international officials announcing various peace solutions and a conference of the major outside powers leading the negotiations, with images of EU envoy Carl Bildt, Akashi, and another UN envoy, Thorvald Stoltenberg, sharing the settee with Milosevic. There were no sound bites from any of the players, with only statements being read to viewers.

Nor was there a single statement from or footage of a Bosnian Serb official, either soldier or civilian. The only frame showing Srebrenica that was broadcast during those 20 days was a video playing in the background of a TV comment by Tatjana Lenard on 23 July that featured the landscape of the town and UN vehicles, which could have been filmed at any time.

[LINK] “US moving to deport Bosnians over war crimes: report”

Al Jazeera reports on the impending mass deportation of Bosnian immigrants–Bosnian Serbs, I’m guessing–for their involvement in the Srebrenica massacre.

U.S. officials have identified about 300 Bosnian immigrants who they believe concealed their involvement in wartime atrocities, including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, and are trying to deport at least 150 of them, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

The immigrants were among refugees fleeing the violence in Bosnia after a war that erupted in 1992 with the collapse of Yugoslavia. The number of suspects could eventually be more than 600 as more records from Bosnia become available, the newspaper reported.

“The more we dig, the more documents we find,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement historian Michael MacQueen, who has led many of the agency’s war crimes investigations, told the Times.

Many of the Bosnian suspects were former soldiers, and they include a Virginia soccer coach, an Ohio metal worker and four Las Vegas hotel casino workers, the newspaper said. Some are now U.S. citizens, it said.