[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Charlie Stross hosts at Antipope another discussion thread examining Brexit.
• Architectuul takes a look at five overlooked mid-20th century architects.
• Bad Astronomy shares a satellite photo of auroras at night over the city lights of the Great Lakes basin and something else, too.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the directions love has taken her, and wonders where it might have taken her readers.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the Hayabusa 2 impactor on asteroid Ryugu.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the claims of Steven Pinker about nuclear power.
• D-Brief notes the detection, in remarkable detail, of a brilliant exocomet at Beta Pictoris.
• The Dragon’s Tales considers the possibility that China might be building a military base in Cambodia.
• Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about the importance of small social cues, easily overlookable tough they are.
• Far Outliers notes the role of Japan’s imperial couple, Akihito and Michiko, in post-war Japan.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing writes about the potential inadequacy of talking about values.
• Gizmodo notes a new study suggesting the surprising and potentially dangerous diversity of bacteria present on the International Space Station.
• Mark Graham shares a link to a paper, and its abstract, examining what might come of the creation of a planetary labour market through the gig economy.
• Hornet Stories takes a look at Red Ribbon Blues, a 1995 AIDS-themed film starring RuPaul.
• io9 notes that Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke are co-writing a Pan’s Labyrinth novel scheduled for release later this year.
• Joe. My. God. notes a new study suggesting 20% of LGBTQ Americans live in rural areas.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the Bluestockings, the grouping of 18th century women in England who were noteworthy scholars and writers.
• Language Hat notes an ambitious new historical dictionary of the Arabic language being created by the emirate of Sharjah.
• Language Log examines, in the aftermath of a discussion of trolls, different cultures’ terms for different sorts of arguments.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how early forestry in the United States was inspired by socialist ideals.
• The Map Room Blog links to a map showing the different national parks of the United Kingdom.
• Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, noting the new findings from the Chixculub impact, notes how monitoring asteroids to prevent like catastrophes in the future has to be a high priority.
• The New APPS Blog explains how data, by its very nature, is so easily made into a commodity.
• The NYR Daily considers the future of the humanities in a world where higher education is becoming preoccupied by STEM.
• Corey S. Powell at Out There interviews Bear Grylls about the making of his new documentary series Hostile Planet.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw considers the pleasures of birds and of birdwatching.
• Jason C. Davis at the Planetary Society Blog noted the arrival of the Beresheet probe in lunar orbit.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the new amazing-sounding play Angelique at the Factory Theatre.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes a paper that makes the point of there being no automatic relationship between greater gender equality and increases in fertility.
• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress has made use of the BagIt programming language in its archiving of data.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel comes up with questions to ask plausible visitors from other universes.
• Strange Company notes the mysterious deaths visited on three members of a British family in the early 20th century. Who was the murderer? Was there even a crime?
• Towleroad notes the activists, including Canadian-born playwright Jordan Tannahill, who disrupted a high tea at the Dorchester Hotel in London over the homophobic law passed by its owner, the Sultan of Brunei.
• Window on Eurasia notes rising instability in Ingushetia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes that the British surveillance of Huawei is revealing the sorts of problems that must be present in scrutiny-less Facebook, too.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Saint John, Seattle, Hong Kong, Singapore, Angkor

• A community organization in Saint John, New Brunswick, is hoping to try to save some of the many abandoned buildings in that city. Global News reports.
• Wired notes that a proposed Amazon expansion in Seattle has also been abandoned.
• Bloomberg View suggests Hong Kong is being unduly conservative in not investing its budget surpluses.
• Roads and Kingdoms tells the history of Singapore through ten local dishes.
• Ars Technica suggests the medieval city of Angkor, in Cambodia, died slowly as its complex machineries gradually ground to a halt.

[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 Tuesday links

• Centauri Dreams looks at the latest images of asteroid Bennu provided by the OSIRIS-REx probe.
• The Crux notes the impact of genetic research on theories of language among the Neanderthals. If they were, as seems very likely, users of language, did their language use differ from that of homo sapiens sapiens?
• D-Brief notes that climate change leads to changes in the microbiology of soils. (What effect would this have on the environment? Unknown, as of yet.)
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that the Indian aircraft Vikramaditya has just had its second refit completed.
• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the social construction of geography. How are categories created, for instance?
• Far Outliers looks at efforts to educate prisoners of war in the Second World War-era United States, to use them even as test-beds for a wider reeducation of their societies.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing, considering the idea of the society of the spectacle of Debord after the thoughts of Foucault, notes the early prediction of a fusion between surveillance and spectacle, of a fusion between the two.
• Hornet Stories notes the anti-gay policies of the government of Tanzania government, arguing that country cannot be allowed to be a second Chechnya.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the rhetoric of Richard Nixon helped pave the way for Donald Trump.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that even if the Democratic Party loses today’s elections in the United States, Americans should still have hope, should still work for a better future. I wish you all luck, myself.
• The Map Room Blog looks at Stanford University’s archive of the Maps of the Office of Strategic Studies.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining immigrant success in Sweden, noting the complicating picture of general success: Children of more deprived refugees do better than more favoured ones.
• The NYR Daily looks at early feminist Ernestine Rose.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at the work of Cambodian architect Dy Preoung, who during the Khmer Rouge era managed to preserve his work on Angkor Wat.
• Drew Rowsome looks at the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, focusing on its queer elements.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel examines how black holes actually do evaporate.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy notes the signal flaws with the argument that migrants should stay at home and fix their country. (What if they have no chance to, for instance?)
• Window on Eurasia notes that the West has a vested interest in the survival of Lukashenka in Belarus, if only because a sudden liberalization could well lead to a Russian invasion.
• Nick Rowe at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative takes a look at “bicycle disequilibrium theory”.

[NEWS] Five politics links: free trade, Brexit, Soviet restoration, Cambodia, Malaysia

• NOW Toronto questions, in the aftermath of the post-NAFTA negotiations, the point of free trade. (I favour it on the condition that it be effective regulated, as effectively regulated as intra-national trade and probably in the same ways.)
• This Bloomberg View article makes the point that the United Kingdom needs to make provisions for the 3.5 million people, including workers, from the EU-27 in its borders, doing necessary work.
• Open Democracy notes a popular movement in Russia aiming to reestablish the Soviet Union, a movement that in its details reminds me a lot of the “sovereign citizens” and Reichsburger movements.
• What place was there for justice, this Open Democracy article asks, in post-genocide Cambodia?
• Ozy notes a new plan to rewrite the history taught in Malaysian schools to be more open to representing non-Malay and non-Islamic influences.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Cleveland, Osaka and San Francisco, Port City, Sihanoukville

• CityLab wonders how the new CAQ government of Québec will come into conflict with Valérie Laplante in Montréal, a city that wants mass transit not highways and that voted against the CAQ.
• CityLab considers what could become of The Mall, the neglected central park of Cleveland.
• Osaka just cut its ties with San Francisco over that city’s erection of a monument honouring the comfort women of Second World War Japan. VICE reports.
• This article in Guardian Cities examining the Chinese creation of a virtually new and highly autonomous city, Port City, on Sri Lanka to support China’s aspirations in the Indian Ocean is revealing.
• Kris Janssens at the Inter Press Service looks at how the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville is being transformed by Chinese investment and trade into a regional metropolis.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Iqaluit, San Francisco, Sydnbey, Sihanoukville

• That the real estate market in Hamilton, Toronto’s traditionally more affordable western neighbor, is so strong that some people have been pushed into homelessness is a concern. The Toronto Star reports.
• Iqaluit is acting to deal with the threatened water shortages, but will it succeed in time to hold off this concern? MacLean’s reports.
• This Bloomberg View article suggesting the unaffordability of San Francisco came not so much as a result of the tech sector as because of Barry Bonds’ sports success is interesting. Thoughts?
• The extended fire season of Sydney, Australia, will force Sydneysiders to adapt to this dangerous new environment. Guardian Cities reports.
• The SCMP looks at how an influx of Chinese investment is transforming Sihanoukville, the leading deep-sea port of Cambodia.

[NEWS] Four migration links: American tourism, Canadian farm workers, Indian sculptors, deportees

• Justin Bachman at Bloomberg notes how a tourism industry group in the United States is urging policy changes that might reverse a recent fall in incoming tourist numbers to that country.
• Over at MacLean’s, Donald MacLean Wells and Janet McLaughlin look at the exploitation of migrant farm labourers in Canada.
• CBC reports on allegations that skilled Tamil sculptors from India were exploited and cheated out of a wage by their Toronto employers, Sridurka Hindu Temple.
• Inter Press Service reports on the plight of some deportees from the United States to Cambodia, people who came over as children but never acquired American citizenship and so were eligible for deportation if convicted of crimes.

[ISL] Five links on islands: Puerto Rico, Japan, Newfoundland, climate change, Koh Pich

• New York Magazine carries this article looking at the dreadful aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the lagging response of government (American, mainly). Heads should roll.
• Japan Times carries an article looking at the various strategies used by different Japanese islands and archipelagoes to try to resist depopulation. Some work better than others.
• Could the outposts of Newfoundland benefit not from consolidation and planned depopulation, but from planned resettlement? The precedents from Ireland and Italy are interesting, at least. CBC reports.
• The Inter Press Service notes that climate change, including rising sea levels and growing storms, will hit smart island nations badly.
• Morgan Fache at Roads and Kingdoms reports on how Koh Pich, “Diamond Island”, offshore of Phmon Penh, has been emptied of its population of fishers to make way for an elite real estate development.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Anthrodendum features a guest author talking about the need for artificial intelligence’s introduction into our civilization to be managed.
• Dangerous Minds tells the story of how John Lennon and Yoko Ono met Marshall McLuhan.
• Cody Delistraty suggests Freud still matters, as a founder and as a pioneer of a new kind of thinking.
• The Dragon’s Gaze reports on cloud circulation patterns of exoplanet HD 80606b.
• Far Outliers examines just how Chinese immigration to Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, became so big.
• Hornet Stories interviews Moises Serrano, one of the many undocumented queer people victims of the repeal of DACA.
• Marginal Revolution notes a study suggesting some Indian students have math skills which do not translate into the classroom.
• The NYR Daily looks at the crackdown on free media in Cambodia.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at a new set of recommendations for Canada’s space future by the Space Advisory Board.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports from Burma, noting the prominence of social media in anti-Rohingya hate.
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands shares beautiful photos from the Sicilian community of Taormina.
• Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang talks about the mystery of some stars which appear to be older than the universe.
• Window on Eurasia is critical of a Russian proposal for UN peacekeepers in the Donbas making no mention of Russia.