[NEWS] Five Window on Eurasia links: Estonia, eugenics, empire, demographics, Old Believers

• Window on Eurasia notes how Russia continues to oppose the recognition of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu as the basis for Russia-Estonia relations, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports on how, and why, Stalin cracked down on eugenics as a permissible theory in the Soviet Union, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports on polling suggesting Russians are more interested in their country acting as a great power than as an empire, here.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, in the space of the former Soviet Union, population growth in the six Muslim-majority republics more than compensates in absolute numbers for declines elsewhere.
• Window on Eurasia notes the resettlement of a couple hundred Old Believers, part of a diaspora of perhaps seven thousand, in the Far East of Russia.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul shares photos from a bike tour of Berlin.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on new evidence that exocomets are raining on star Beta Pictoris.
• Larry Klaes at Centauri Dreams reviews the two late 1970s SF films Alien and Star Trek I, products of the same era.
• D-Brief reports on Hubble studies of the star clusters of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• Bruce Dorminey shares Gemini telescope images of interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov).
• The Dragon’s Tales shares video of Space X’s Starhopper test flight.
• Far Outliers notes the import of the 13th century Norman king of England calling himself Edward after an Anglo-Saxon king.
• Gizmodo notes that not only can rats learn to play hide and seek, they seem to enjoy it.
• io9 notes the fantastic high camp of Mister Sinister in the new Jonathan Hickman X-Men run, borrowing a note from Kieron Gillen’s portrayal of the character.
• Joe. My. God. notes that Guiliani’s soon-to-be ex-wife says he has descended from 911 hero to a liar.
• Language Log looks at the recent ridiculous suggestion that English, among other languages, descends from Chinese.
• The LRB Blog looks at the brief history of commemorating the V2 attacks on London.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the practice in Saskatchewan of sterilizing First Nations women against their consent.
• Marginal Revolution suggests that farmers in Brazil might be getting a partly unfair treatment. (Partly.)
• The Planetary Society Blog explains why C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) matters.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, for the first time, immigrants from Turkmenistan in Belarus outnumber immigrants from Ukraine.