[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Architectuul looks at the winners of an architecture prize based in Piran, here.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes the wind emitted from one distant galaxy’s supermassive black hole is intense enough to trigger star formation in other galaxies.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber pays tribute to Jack Merritt, a young victim of the London Bridge attack who was committed to the cause of prisoner rehabilitation.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the history of French pop group Les Rita Mitsouko.
• Bruce Dorminey reports on the European Space Agency’s belief Earth-observing spacecraft are needed to track ocean acidification.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on the consensus of the Russian scientific community against human genetic engineering.
• Far Outliers reports on the first ambassador sent from the Barbary States to the United States.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the life of pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas.
• Language Log shares images of a bottle of Tibetan water, bought in Hong Kong, labeled in Tibetan script.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money rightly assigns responsibility for the terrible measles outbreak in Samoa to anti-vaxxers.
• The LRB Blog notes how tree planting is not apolitical, might even not be a good thing to do sometimes.
• Marginal Revolution reports on a paper suggesting that food tends to be better in restaurants located on streets in Manhattan, better than in restaurants located on avenues.
• Justin Petrone at north! shares an account of a trip across Estonia.
• The NYR Daily looks at the photography of Michael Jang.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw continues to report from Armidale, in Australia, shrouded in smoke from wildfires.
• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the early days of the Planetary Society, four decades ago.
• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at how centenarians in Sweden and in Denmark experience different trends in longevity.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on the accidental discovery of the microwave background left by the Big Bang in 1964.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at the increasingly poor treatment of workers by employers such as Amazon through the lens of primitive accumulation.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the small differences separating the Kazakhs from the Kyrgyz.
• Arnold Zwicky shares a dance routine, shown on television in France, against homophobia.

[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 Friday links

(A day late, I know; I crashed after work yesterday.)

• Antipope’s Charlie Stross has a thought experiment: If you were superwealthy and guaranteed to live a long health life, how would you try to deal with the consequence of economic inequality?
• Vikas Charma at Architectuul takes a look at the different factors that go into height in buildings.
• Bad Astronomy notes S5-HVS1, a star flung out of the Milky Way Galaxy by Sagittarius A* at 1755 kilometres per second.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly shares photos from two Manhattan walks of hers, taken in non-famous areas.
• Centauri Dreams looks at habitability for red dwarf exoplanets. Stellar activity matters.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber shares words from a manifesto about data protection in the EU.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos from Los Angeles punks and mods and others in the 1980s.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a ESA report suggesting crew hibernation could make trips to Mars easier.
• Gizmodo notes that the Hayabusa2 probe of Japan is returning from asteroid Ryugu with a sample.
• Imageo shares photos of the disastrous fires in Australia from space.
• Information is Beautiful reports on winners of the Information is Beautiful Awards for 2019, for good infographics.
• JSTOR Daily explains how local television stations made the ironic viewing of bad movies a thing.
• Kotaku reports on the last days of Kawasaki Warehouse, an arcade in Japan patterned on the demolished Walled City of Kowloon.
• Language Hat notes how translation mistakes led to the star Beta Cygni gaining the Arabic name Albireo.
• Language Log reports on a unique Cantonese name of a restaurant in Hong Kong.
• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to an analysis of his suggesting the military of India is increasingly hard-pressed to counterbalance China.
• The LRB Blog notes the catastrophe of Venice.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting states would do well not to place their capitals too far away from major population centres.
• Justin Petrone at North! remarks on a set of old apple preserves.
• The NYR Daily looks at how the west and the east of the European Union are divided by different conceptions of national identity.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reports from his town of Armidale as the smoke from the Australian wildfires surrounds all. The photos are shocking.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog lists some books about space suitable for children.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the Canadian film music Stand!, inspired by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting that, in Switzerland, parenthood does not make people happy.
• The Signal notes that 1.7 million phone book pages have been scanned into the records of the Library of Congress.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains the concept of multi-messenger astronomy and why it points the way forward for studies of astrophysics.
• Strange Maps looks at how a majority of students in the United States attend diverse schools, and where.
• Strange Company explores the mysterious death of Marc-Antoine Calas, whose death triggered the persecution of Huguenots and resulted in the mobilization of Enlightenment figures like Voltaire against the state. What happened?
• Towleroad hosts a critical, perhaps disappointed, review of the major gay play The Inheritance.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at the power of individual people in political hierarchies.
• Window on Eurasia shares an opinion piece noting how many threats to the Russian language have come from its association with unpopular actions by Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky explores queens as various as Elizabeth I and Adore Delano.

[NEWS] Ten Window on Eurasia links

• What will become of the Azerbaijani language in education in Iran? More here.
• Is a Russia-Belarus state union feasible? More here.
• Is Estonia, as some would have it, a viable model for the Finnic Mordvin peoples of the Russian interior? More here.
• Will Russia be happy with its alliance with China if this makes it a secondary partner, a relatively weaker exporter of resources? More here.
• How many Muslims are there in Moscow, and what import does the controversy over their numbers carry? More here.
• Is the Russian fertility rate set to stagnate, leading to long-term sharp decline? More here.
• If 10% of the Russian working-age population has emigrated, this has serious consequences for the future of Russia. More here.
• Irredentism in Kazakhstan, inspired by the example of Crimea, is just starting to be a thing. More here.
• The decline of Russian populations in the north of Kazakhstan, and the growth of Uzbeks, is noteworthy. More here.
• The different Russian proposals for the future of the Donbas, an analyst notes, are built to keep Ukraine a neutral country. More here.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Adam Fish at anthro{dendum} shares a new take on the atmosphere, as a common good.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a photo of Earth taken from a hundred million kilometres away by the OSIRIS-REx probe.
• The Crux tells the story of how the first exoplanets were found.
• D-Brief notes that life could be possible on a planet orbiting a supermassive black hole, assuming it could deal with the blueshifting.
• io9 looks at the latest bold move of Archie Comics.
• JSTOR Daily explores cleaning stations, where small fish clean larger ones.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the role China seeks to play in a remade international order.
• The Map Room Blog looks at the new upcoming national atlas of Estonia.
• Marginal Revolution touches on the great ambition of Louis XIV for a global empire.
• Steve Baker of The Numerati shares photos from his recent trip to Spain.
• Anya Schiffrin at the NRY Daily explains how American journalist Varian Fry helped her family, and others, escape the Nazis.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the classic movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map looking at the barriers put up by the high-income world to people moving from outside.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel answers the complex question of how, exactly, the density of a black hole can be measured.
• John Scalzi at Whatever reviews Gemini Man. Was the high frame rate worth it?
• Window on Eurasia notes the deep hostility of Tuvins towards a large Russian population in Tuva.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the existential question of self-aware cartoon characters.

[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?

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Larry Claes at Centauri Dreams considers the issues of the alien featuring in the title of the classic The Thing, facing human persecution.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber starts a debate about past blogging and conventional wisdom.
• The Crux reports on a mass rescue of orphaned flamingo chicks in South Africa.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that asteroids provided perhaps half of the Earth’s current supply of water.
• Cody Delistraty looks at how the far-right in Germany is appropriating artworks to support its view of history.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that China may be hoping to build a base at the Moon’s south pole by 2029.
• Far Outliers reports on the 1865 collapse of the Confederacy.
• Gizmodo reports on how astronomers have identified the approximate location of a kilonova that seeded the nascent solar system with heavy elements.
• Joe. My. God. shares the news from yet another study demonstrating that HIV cannot be transmitted by HIV-undetectable people. U=U.
• JSTOR Daily notes how, via Herb Caen, the Beat Generation became known as Beatniks.
• Language Hat shares and comments upon a passage from Dostoevsky noting how an obscenity can be stretched out into an entire conversation.
• Language Log considers a peculiarity of the Beijing dialect.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how statehood has been used to game the American political system.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that countries with greater levels of gender inequality are more likely to produce female chess grandmasters.
• Justin Petrone at North!, considering the history of writers in Estonia, considers what the mission of the writer should be.
• The NYR Daily examines the black people once miners in the Kentucky town of Lynch, remembering and sharing their experiences.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw considers what he has learned from a recent research and writing contract.
• Jason C. Davis at the Planetary Society Blog reports in greater detail on the crater Hayabusa 2 made in asteroid Ryugu.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how the Event Horizon Telescope acts like a mirror.
• Strange Company shares an impressively diverse collection of links.
• Towleroad talks with writer Tim Murphy about his new novel, Correspondents.
• Window on Eurasia considers future directions for Ukrainian language policy.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the artistic riches horded by the Nazis in the Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomy shares Hubble images of asteroid 6478 Gault, seemingly in the process of dissolving.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the experience of living in a body one knows from hard experience to be fallible.
• Gizmodo notes new evidence that environmental stresses pushed at least some Neanderthals to engage in cannibalism.
• Hornet Stories notes the 1967 raid by Los Angeles police against the Black Cat nightclub, a pre-Stonewall trigger of LGBTQ organization.
• Imageo notes the imperfect deal wrought by Colorado Basin states to minimize the pain felt by drought in that river basin.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the cinema of Claire Denis.
• Language Log reports on the work of linguist Ghil’ad Zuckermann, a man involved in language revival efforts in Australia after work in Israel with Hebrew.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders if the Iran-Contra scandal will be a precedent for the Mueller report, with the allegations being buried by studied inattention.
• Marginal Revolution makes a case for NIMBYism leading to street urination.
• Justin Petrone at North! looks at a theatrical performance of a modern Estonian literary classic, and what it says about gender and national identity.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw makes the case for a treaty with Australian Aborigines, to try to settle settler-indigenous relations in Australia.
• John Quiggin looks at the factors leading to the extinction of coal as an energy source in the United Kingdom.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that we are not yet up to the point of being able to detect exomoons of Earth-like planets comparable to our Moon.
• Window on Eurasia notes the occasion of the last singer in the Ket language.
• Arnold Zwicky shares some cartoon humour, around thought balloons.

[DM] Some news links: public art, history, marriage, diaspora, assimilation

Some more population-related links popped up over the past week.

• CBC Toronto reported on this year’s iteration of Winter Stations. A public art festival held on the Lake Ontario shorefront in the east-end Toronto neighbourhood of The Beaches, Winter Stations this year will be based around the theme of migration.
• JSTOR Daily noted how the interracial marriages of serving members of the US military led to the liberalization of immigration law in the United States in the 1960s. With hundreds of thousands of interracial marriages of serving members of the American military to Asian women, there was simply no domestic constituency in the United States
• Ozy reported on how Dayton, Ohio, has managed to thrive in integrating its immigrant populations.
• Amro Ali, writing at Open Democracy, makes a case for the emergence of Berlin as a capital for Arab exiles fleeing the Middle East and North America in the aftermath of the failure of the Arab revolutions. The analogy he strikes to Paris in the 1970s, a city that offered similar shelter to Latin American refugees at that time, resonates.
• Alex Boyd at The Island Review details, with prose and photos, his visit to the isolated islands of St. Kilda, inhabited from prehistoric times but abandoned in 1930.
• VICE looks at the plight of people who, as convicted criminals, were deported to the Tonga where they held citizenship. How do they live in a homeland they may have no experience of? The relative lack of opportunity in Tonga that drove their family’s earlier migration in the first place is a major challenge.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, in many post-Soviet countries including the Baltic States and Ukraine, ethnic Russians are assimilating into local majority ethnic groups. (The examples of the industrial Donbas and Crimea, I would suggest, are exceptional. In the case of the Donbas, 2014 might well have been the latest point at which a pro-Russian separatist movement was possible.)

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams looks at the genesis of ocean worlds. Having a nearly massive star producing lots of radioactive aluminum when it supernovas might be surprisingly important.
• The Crux takes a look at languages newly forming in the world around us, starting with the Australian language of Light Warlpiri. What does this say about humans and language?
• D-Brief notes that researchers have managed to create cyborg rats whose motions are controlled directly by human thought.
• Gizmodo reports on the abandonment by Amazon of its plan for a HQ2 campus in Queens.
• JSTOR Daily shares the perfectly believable argument that people with autism should not be viewed as people incapable of love.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Simon Balto writes about how the Ryan Adams scandal demonstrates the male gatekeeper effect in popular music.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution comes up with a list of winners and losers of the Amazon decision not to set up HQ2 in Queens. (Myself, I am unconvinced New York City is a loser here.)
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how, despite not interacting directly with normal matter, dark matter can still be heated up by the matter and energy we see around us.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, in many post-Soviet countries including the Baltic States and Ukraine, ethnic Russians are assimilating into local majority ethnic groups.