[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• The Crux notes the discovery of a second impact crater in Greenland, hidden under the ice.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that ancient Celts did, in fact, decapitate their enemies and preserve their heads.
• Far Outliers notes how Pakhtun soldier Ayub Khan, in 1914-1915, engaged in some cunning espionage for the British Empire on the Western Front.
• Kashmir Hill at Gizmodo notes how cutting out the big five tech giants for one week–Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft–made it almost impossible for her to carry on her life.
• Hornet Stories notes that, unsurprisingly, LGBTQ couples are much more likely to have met online that their heterosexual counterparts.
• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox imagines Elizabeth Warren giving a speech that touches sensitively and intelligently on her former beliefs in her Cherokee ancestry.
• Mónica Belevan at the Island Review writes, directly and allegorically, about the Galapagos Islands and her family and Darwin.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the economics of the romance novel.
• Language Hat notes the Mandombe script creating by the Kimbanguist movement in Congo.
• Harry Stopes at the LRB Blog notes the problem with Greater Manchester Police making homeless people a subject of concern.
• Ferguson activists, the NYR Daily notes, are being worn down by their protests.
• Roads and Kingdoms lists some things visitors to the Uzbekistan capital of Tashkent should keep in mind.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel makes a case for supersymmetry being a failed prediction.
• Towleroad notes the near-complete exclusion of LGBTQ subjects and themes from schools ordered by Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro.
• Window on Eurasia notes a somewhat alarmist take on Central Asian immigrant neighbourhoods in Moscow.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the Kurds, their history, and his complicated sympathy for their concerns.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer notes a serendipitous photo of two galaxies, one in front of the other, and what this photo reveals about their structures.
• Dangerous Minds notes how, and why, Robert Crumb rejected the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger.
• D-Brief notes that every hot Jupiter has clouds on its nightside.
• Earther notes that, after a century and a half, iguanas have been reintroduced to the largest island in the Galapagos.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing notes how the data self is a shadow of the social self.
• Gizmodo shares a stunning photo mosaic by Hubble of the Triangulum Galaxy, third-largest component of the Local Group.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the story of William Faulkner and his engagement with Hollywood.
• Language Log looks at the possibility of outside influence, from other language groups including Indo-European, on a Sinitic word for “milk”.
• Marginal Revolution links to a London Review of Books article looking at the different national reactions to Brexit from each of the EU-27.
• The NYR Daily looks at how Israel is exporting its technologies developed during the occupation of the Palestinians globally.
• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at the latest census data on the languages spoken in England.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why astronomers have not yet been able to locate (or exclude as a possibility) Planet Nine.
• Towleroad notes that the homophobia of Bolsonario began to be implemented on his first day as president of Brazil.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society takes a look at some sociological examinations of the research university.
• Window on Eurasia notes that many congregations in the west and centre of Ukraine once links to the Russian Orthodox Church have switched to the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but that this has not happened in the east.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the appearance of a conlang in comics.

[NEWS] Five links: Kazakhstan and Xinjiang, Qing China economy, US-Iran, Assange, Germany and AI

• Eurasianet notes that the trial in Kazakhstan of an ethnic Kazakh woman from Xinjiang for illegal crossing is creating a public scandal via her revelations about the Chinese security state there.
• J. Bradford Delong identifies some of the many institutional and economic issues of Qing China in the 19th century, explaining why catch-up to the West was not possible.
• A very imperfect deterrence prevails between the United States and Iran, neither country being strong enough to make attack impossible. Global News reports.
• The Intercept reported that the new government of Ecuador is negotiating with the British government to expel Assange from its London embassy.
• Politico Europe notes that Germany is trying to catch up to the United States and China in the domain of artificial intelligence.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares the latest images of asteroid Ryugu.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the equal-mass near-Earth asteroid binary 2017 YE5.
• Far Outliers notes how corrosive fake news and propaganda can be, by looking at Orwell’s experience of the Spanish Civil War.
• The Frailest Thing’s L.M. Sacasas looks at swarms versus networks, in the light of Bauman’s thinking on freedom/security.
• Joe. My. God. reports on how American pharmacy chain PVS fired a man–a Log Cabin Republican, no less–for calling the police on a black customer over a coupon.
• JSTOR Daily links to a paper making the case that national service plays a useful role in modern countries.
• Language Hat quotes from a beautiful Perry Anderson essay at the LRB about Proust.
• Jeffey Herlihy-Mera writes/u> at Lingua Franca about his first-hand experiences of the multilingualism of Ecuador.
• The NYR Daily takes a look at the art created by the prominent members of the Romanov dynasty.
• The Power and Money’s Noel Maurer has reposted a blog post from 2016 considering the question of just how much money the United States could extract, via military basing, from Germany and Japan and South Korea
• Window on Eurasia suggests a new Russian language law that would marginalize non-Russian languages is provoking a renaissance of Tatar nationalism.

[URBAN NOTE] “Subway Will Modernise – and Further Gentrify – Historic Centre of Quito”

The story told by the Inter Press Service’s Mario Osava, describing how the Ecuadorian capital of Quito will be transformed through gentrification following subway construction, sounds sadly familiar.

Success can kill, when it comes to cities. Spain’s Barcelona is facing problems due to the number of tourists that it attracts. And the historic centre of Ecuador’s capital city, Quito, a specially preserved architectural jewel, is losing its local residents as it gentrifies.

This paradox was pointed out by Fernando Carrión, president of the Latin American and Caribbean Organisation of Historic Centres (OLACCHI) and a professor at the Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLACSO) in Ecuador.

“Quito’s historic centre lost 42 per cent of its population over the last 15 years, a period in which it gained better monuments and lighting, and became cleaner,” he said. According to official census figures, the population of the old city dropped from 58,300 in 1990 to 50,982 in 2001 and 40,587 in 2010.

The effort to revitalise the historic centre was based on a “monumentalist policy,” on the restoration of churches and large buildings, which led to a process of gentrification, driving up housing prices and the conversion of residential into commercial property and pushing out low-income residents, he told IPS.

“I fear that the subway will drive away more people,” exacerbating the tendency, he added.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Beyond the Beyond notes that electronic newspapers just don’t work.
• blogTO notes that the Eaton Centre’s HMV is closing.
• Crooked Timber notes that it will be shifting to moderated commenting.
• D-Brief notes a new sharp image of Eta Carinae.
• Dead Things notes that some monkeys are apparently making stone tools.
• Joe. My. God. shares Le Tigre’s new pro-Clinton song, “I’m With Her”.
• The LRB Blog is critical of Britain’s hostility towards refugee children.
• The Map Room Blog links to a new historical atlas of Tibet.
• The NYRB Daily examines Assange’s reasons for using Wikileaks to help Trump.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes that New Horizons target 2007 OR10 has a moon.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes the reasons for Ecuador’s clamping down on Assange.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly talks about the need for freelance writers to constantly engage.
• Centauri Dreams notes the imaging in infrared of Jupiter-like 2M1207b.
• The Dragon’s Gaze notes a new imaging technique that might help detect dim exoplanets.
• The Dragon’s Tales updates us with news from Ukraine.

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• Joe. My. God. notes lifetime risks for contracting HIV in the United States, particularly high in the south and among blacks.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the awkward position of the Baltic States in NATO.
• The LRB Blog thinks poorly of the quality of Euroskeptics in the United Kingdom on the eve of the Brexit referendum.
• The NYRB Daily wonders how Russians will react to collapsing living standards.
• Steve Munro and Transit Toronto react to the drop in Union-Pearson Express fares, Munro wondering how it could have taken so long.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer reveals his disillusionment with Marco Rubio has much to do with the man’s opposition to a viable solution for Puerto Rico, and notes Ecuador’s oil policies are not so bad.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Crooked Timber’s John Holbo considers the problems of some Americans with modernity.
• Kieran Healy reports on Apple sales trends through to January 2016.
• Language Hat considers the etymology of “Iona”.
• The Map Room Blog links to speculation that GPS and mobile maps are eroding humans’ ability to track things.
• Marginal Revolution questions why there is a lesbian wage premium.
• pollotenchegg notes the changing housing situation across Ukraine.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that Ecuador is adapting well enough to falling oïl prices.
• Towleroad shares a video of a scientist proposing to his boyfriend in the top of a rainforest.
• Window on Eurasia discusses coercion of public religiosity in Russia.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Keiran Healy suggests much of Apple’s opposition to the FBI’s demand it decrypt a terrorist’s phone has to do with its need to establish itself as a reliable and trustworthy source of hardware.
• Joe. My. God. notes that WWE wrestler Dave Bautista takes Manny Pacquiao’s homophobia poorly.
• Language Hat links to this 2008 map showing lexical différences between Europe’s languages.
• Language Log notes the politicized position of minority languages in China.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money is unimpressed? with Amitai Etzioni’s call for genocide in Lebanon.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer, looking to Ecuador, notes that international arbitration awards do matter.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw is unimpressed by Australia’s reaction to the Syrian refugee crisis.
• Peter Rukavina shares a photo of Charlottetown transit’s new maps.
• Transit Toronto notes the delivery of the TTC’s 16th streetcar.
• Window on Eurasia notes the weakness of the Russian opposition, particularly in relation to Chechnya’s Kadyrov.

[LINK] “Immigration – Still a Pending Issue in Cuban-U.S. Relations”

The Inter Press Service’s Patricia Grogg notes how Cuban immigration issues are becoming noteworthy across Latin America, as Cubans seek to reach the United States while they can.

The crisis that has broken out at several border crossings in Latin America as a result of thousands of Cubans attempting to reach the United States has revived a problem that remains unresolved between the two countries in spite of agreements, negotiations and the diplomatic thaw that started a year ago.

In the meantime, measures taken by Havana to curb the exodus of health professionals have led to reversals in the flexibilisation of the country’s migration policies which was part of the reforms being adopted, and have given rise to reflection on the causes and the consequences for the country of the growing wish to move abroad.

Analysts say it’s time to discuss why so many young people want to leave Cuba, despite the risks of failing in their attempt. In October 2012, the government of Raúl Castro lifted the restrictions that for decades kept Cubans from going abroad, eliminating, for example, the requirement of an exit visa to leave the country.

But the main hurdle was still the visa demanded by the United States, the main recipient of immigration from Cuba, and nearly all other countries. “Two friends of mine are stuck in Costa Rica and another was about to buy a ticket to fly to Ecuador when that country began to demand an entry visa, starting on Dec. 1,” a young local musician who preferred not to give his name told IPS.

In response to the announcement that Ecuador would no longer be one of the few countries to which Cubans can freely travel, around 300 people protested outside the Ecuadorean embassy to demand a solution. Some cried while others asked for visas or to be reimbursed for the money they had spent on plane tickets.