[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Innisfil, Montréal, Yellowknife, Miami Beach, Plovdiv

• CityLab notes how the effort of exurban Innisfil to use Uber as a substitute for mass transit did not work as expected.
• HuffPost Québec looks at how the Québec government is prioritizing the REM suburban light rails over the proposed Pink Line.
• Yellowknife may see the construction of a decidedly green four-story building. CBC North reports.
• CityLab looks at the experience of Miami Beach in using public art to put itself on the map.
• Guardian Cities looks at how the city of Plovdiv, second-largest city in Bulgaria, is trying to attract past emigrants from the country.

[AH] Five #alternatehistory maps from r/imaginarymaps: Vinland, Finns, Caribbean, Bulgaria, Benelux

• This r/imaginarymaps creation maps the stages of an Norse expansion into North America, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence up the St. Lawrence River.
• A “Finnic Confederation” dominating the eastern Baltic, including not only Finland and Estonia but Ingria and even the lands of the Veps is, subject of this r/imaginarymaps map. How would you get this? Extended Swedish or Nordic hegemony, perhaps?
• This r/imaginarymaps creation is, I think, overoptimistic in depicting the ability of an independent Confederacy to expand into the Caribbean basin. It certainly would have been checked by rivals.
• Part of a larger alternate history scenario featuring a German victory in the First World War, this r/imaginarymaps map imagines a Greater Bulgaria that has taken territory from most of its neighbours.
• Though you might disagree with the details of this scenario, this map of a United Netherlands bringing together the Dutch with he Flemish is evocative. How could this have happened?

[URBAN NOTE] Five cities links: Lac-Mégantic, Ruse, Lviv, Istanbul, Melilla

• Five years after the rail disaster, Lac-Mégantic continues to rebuild and to recover. CBC reports.
• Language Hat reports on the city of Ruse in the eastern Balkans, once a famously multilingual community.
• Marginal Revolution takes a quick look at the tumultuous ethnic history of what is now the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
• Roads and Kingdoms reported on Syrian refugees who set up new homes in Istanbul in an old Ottoman-era neighbourhood.
• The Spanish enclave of Melilla, located on the African coast surrounded by Morocco, faces terrible unemployment. The Irish Times reports.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams shares a proposal for unmanned probe missions to future incoming extrasolar asteroids like ‘Oumuamua.
• The Crux considers, in the context of recent (perhaps surprising) context, how scientists will one day record dreams.
• Hornet Stories shares the report on a poll of younger gay people about the idea of monogamous relations versus open ones, suggesting there are signs a strong preference for monogamy isn’t well thought out.
• Imageo notes that global warming, by leading to the breakup of icecaps, will worsen the sea ice hazard to maritime shipping.
• JSTOR Daily notes how social workers are called to support serious social reform.
• Language Hat notes a monument to the Cyrillic alphabet erected in Antarctica by Bulgarians.
• In the era of Trump, Lingua Franca takes a look at the origin of the phrase “useful idiots”.
• Marginal Revolution notes a recent article observing the decline of German cuisine in the United States. Who, or what, will save it?
• At the Planetary Society Blog, Emily Lakdawalla talks about the latest exciting discoveries from Titan, including the odd distribution of nitrogen in its atmosphere and surface.
• Towleroad notes how the discomfort of Ben Carson with transgender people leads him to consider the needs of homeless transgender people as secondary to this discomfort.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that Cossacks in Russia are close to gaining recognition as a separate people.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell suggests–jokes?–that intellectual history from 1900 can be explained substantially in terms of the uncritical adoption of a nomad science, starting from race science and continuing to today with Harry Potter.
• Arnold Zwicky shares a post reporting on a PhD student’s thesis, studying features of Chicano English.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog offers some advice as to how to cope with rejection.
• Centauri Dreams shares Robert Zubrin’s take on the Drake Equation, and on ways it is lacking and could be improved.
• Crooked Timber looks at a book examining (among other things) the interactions of libertarian economists with racism and racist polities.
• D-Brief notes a study suggesting that, actually, people would react positively and with a minimum of panic to the discovery of extraterrestrial life.
• Dangerous Minds takes a look at Chandra Oppenheim, an artist who at the age of 12 in 1980 released an amazing post-punk album.
• Gizmodo responds to the news that the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are roughly the same mass.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the effects of the dingo fence in Australia on native wildlife there.
• Language Hat notes a new statistical analysis of literature that has found one of the sources of Shakespeare’s language.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how Trump’s many affairs make him eminently blackmailable.
• The LRB Blog reports on why academic workers in the United Kingdom are getting ready to strike on behalf of their pension rights, starting next week.
• Marginal Revolution notes the sharp ongoing decline in the population of Bulgaria, and wonders what can be done. What need be done, in fact, if Bulgarians as individuals are happy?
• Anastasia Edel writes about the Russian-American community, and what it is like being Russian-American in the era of Trump, over at the NYR Daily.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that there seems to be no periodicity in extinction events, that there is no evidence of a cycle.

[NEWS] Three links from eastern Europe: Bulgaria and Macedonia, Moldova, Georgia and Abkhazia

• Bulgaria and Macedonia have at last signed a treaty trying to put their contentious past behind them. Greece next?
• The legacies of Stalinist deportations in Moldova continue to trouble this poor country.
• The plight of the ethnic Georgians apparently permanently displaced from Georgia has been only muted by time.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• The Big Picture shares photos from Rio in advance of the Olympics.
• James Bow remembers Mel Hurtig, the recently dead Canadian nationalist.
• Centauri Dreams considers space-based collection of antimatter.
• Crooked Timber examines the tyranny of the ideal.
• Dangerous Minds looks at a charming early 1980s board game, Gay Monopoly.
• The Dragon’s Gaze predicts future transits of Beta Pictoris b.
• The Dragon’s Tales examines dwarf planet candidate 2015 RR245.
• Far Outliers shares some odd placenames found in the western United States.
• Language Hat reports on a new English/Yiddish dictionary.
• Language Log looks at how speakers of Slavic and Turkic communicate with each other across Eurasia.
• The Map Room Blog reports on an interesting-sounding exhibition on maps here in Toronto.
• Marginal Revolution considers a link between slow population growth and slow economic growth, and suggests land use policy in Tokyo is ideal for a large city.
• Steve Munro shares exchanges on GO Transit services in the Weston corridor.
• North’s Justin Petrone shares his progress towards
• The NYRB Daily looks at how Russia and China in particular make extensive use of doping at the Olympics, and international sports generally.
• Savage Minds considers how writing can help anthropologists who have witnessed violence heal.
• The Volokh Conspiracy engages with the bloody legacy of Mao.

[NEWS] Some Thursday links

• Bloomberg notes concern in Northern Ireland’s border towns over Brexit, reports that Morgan may shift its offices from London to Dublin or Frankfurt, and looks at the hostile reaction Donald Trump is likely to receive in Scotland.
• Bloomberg View looks at the vexed issues of American funding for Israel’s defense industry.
• The CBC notes the discovery of a transmissible cancer affecting shellfish.
• MacLean’s takes a sanguine view of millennials in Canada who stay with their parents.
• The National Post interviews a Muslim woman attacked in London, Ontario, and notes odd institutional issues raised against the Pride parade in Steinbach.
• The New Republic looks at the impact the collapse of Barnes & Noble would have on American publishing and literature.
• Open Democracy fears the effect of Brexit on central and eastern Europe.
• Transitions Online notes the lack of reciprocation for Bulgarian Russophilia.
• Wired notes that the Brexit referendum is a major inflection point in the European Union’s history.

[NEWS] Some Tuesday links

• Bloomberg notes how an economic boom will let Sweden postpone hard decisions, looks at the popularity of the Korean Wave in China, suggests that subsidies are going to be a big issue for cash-short Arab governments, looks at the investigation in Bulgaria of groups which arrest refugees, and looks at the long-term problems of the Russian economy.
• CBC reports on a Saskatchewan woman who has a refuge for pet rats.
• Global News illustrates the dire social conditions in the Ontario North, hitting particularly strongly First Nations groups.
• The Guardian reports on speculation that Neanderthals may have died in significant numbers from African diseases brought by human migrants.
• MacLean’s notes a study of handwriting styles in ancient Israel which suggest that literacy was reasonably common.
• The Mississauga News reports on a new PFLAG support group for South Asians in Peel.
• National Geographic notes the strong pressures on island birds towards flightlessness.
• Science Mag notes subtle genetic incompatibilities between human women and male Neanderthals which would have hindered reproduction.
• The USA Today network has a story examining the recent HIV outbreak in Indiana.
• Vice reports on the huge cleavages within the NDP, something also examined at the CBC.

[NEWS] Some Saturday links

• Bloomberg notes controversy over Sanders’ attendance at a Vatican conference and reports on the proposal for a bridge linking Saudi Arabia and Egypt across the Gulf of Aqaba.
• Bloomberg View notes mixed evidence behind the idea that separatism can work economically, and criticizes San Francisco’s family leave policy as having too much impact on business.
• CBC notes that the European Union will require visas of Canadians if Canada does not give visa-free access to Bulgarians and Romanians and looks at the controversy over women praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
• The Globe and Mail notes the division of the NDP over Mulcair, looks at the importance of the long-form census for northern Canada, and examines Vancouver’s rental market.
• The Inter Press Service reports on how the Nicaragua Canal is bogged down by money and environmental issues.
• MacLean’s defends transparent tax havens, as opposed to the other kind.
• National Geographic reports on the role of amateur mapmakers in charting the Syrian conflict and describes an exciting reconstruction of Pompeii.
• Universe Today reports on the ice disk of HD 100546.