[URBAN NOTE] Seven city links: Pierrefonds, Edmundston, Saskatoon, Louisville, Belfast, Jerusalem …

• Ending free coffee for municipal employees in the Québec community of Pierrefonds created massive controversy. CBC reports.
• The mayor of the Francophone city of Edmundston in New Brunswick has encouraged immigrant Québec students hurt by immigration changes to come to his community. CTV News reports.
• The price of crystal meth in Saskatoon is apparently as low as $3 a bag. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities notes how Louisville, low on trees, is trying to regreen the city as a way to deal with rising temperatures.
• Open Democracy considers if the DUP is about to lose its strongholds in Belfast.
• Guardian Cities looks at the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Kafr Aqab, a place where Palestinians can access their metropolis (and their partners).
• CityLab shares photos of the wonderful new public library of Helsinki.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Adam Fish at anthro{dendum} compares different sorts of public bathing around the world, from Native America to Norden to Japan.
• Charlie Stross at Antipope is unimpressed by the person writing the script for our timeline.
• Architectuul reports on an architectural conference in Lisbon.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning photos of the eruption of the Raikoke volcano in Kamchatka.
• Centauri Dreams looks at what the Voyager spacecraft have returned about the edge of the solar system.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the idea of bipartisanship if it means compromising on reality, allegorically.
• The Crux counts the number of people who have died in outer space.
• D-Brief notes that the Andromeda Galaxy has swallowed up multiple dwarf galaxies over the eons.
• Dead Things notes the identification of the first raptor species from Southeast Asia, Siamraptor suwati.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes a paper tracing the origins of interstellar comet 2/Borisov from the general area of Kruger 60.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the privilege allowing people access to affordable dental care.
• Gizmodo tells how Alexei Leonov survived the first spacewalk.
• io9 looks at the remarkable new status quo for the X-Men created by Jonathan Hickman.
• Selma Franssen at the Island Review writes about the threats facing the seabirds of the Shetlands.
• JSTOR Daily looks at what led Richard Nixon to make so many breaks from the American consensus on China in the Cold War.
• Language Log notes an undergraduate course at Yale using the Voynich Manuscript as an aid in the study of language.
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains her recent experience of the socialized health care system of Israel for Americans.
• The LRB Blog looks at how badly the Fukuyama prediction of an end to history has aged.
• The Map Room Blog shares a few maps of the new Ottawa LRT route.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper establishing a link between Chinese industries undermining their counterparts in Mexico and Mexican social ills including crime.
• Sean Marshall reports from Ottawa about what the Confederation Line looks like.
• Adam Shatz at the NYR Daily looks at the power of improvisation in music.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at South Williamsburg Jewish deli Gottlieb’s.
• Drew Rowsome reviews</a the new Patti Smith book, Year of the Monkey.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking as the factors leading into transnational movements.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the question of the direction(s) in which order in the universe was generated.
• Window on Eurasia shares a report noting the very minor flows of migration from China to Russia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at the politics in the British riding of Keighley.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at some penguin socks.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• The Crux takes a look at how those people who actually are short sleepers work.
• D-Brief looks at a study noting how the moods of people are determined by the strengths of their phones’ batteries.
• Dan Lainer-Vos at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at statistical certainty at a time of climate change.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how, and why, the New England Puritans believed human bone might have medical power.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the press coverage that created the alleged Clinton uranium scandal.
• The Map Room Blog shares maps noting that, already, since the late 19th century much of the world has warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius.
• Strange Company shares a diverse collection of links.
• Daniel Pfau at Towleroad writes about possible deep evolutionary roots of homosexuality.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the Russian republic of Karelia, despite its border with Finland, suffers from repression.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Ottawa, Montréal, Halifax, Peripignan, Helsinki

• The Confederation LRT line, happily, has opened in Ottawa. Global News reports.
• Dorchester Square in Montréal will feature an open-air gallery for emerging artists. CTV reports.
• How, exactly, will the crane that collapsed in Halifax in Dorian be removed? CBC reports.
• Guardian Cities tells the story of how Gypsies in Perpignan resisted gentrification, here.
• Atlas Obscura reports on the summer custom, in Helsinki, of families cleaning their carpets with salt water on piers.

[AH] Five r/imaginarymaps #alternatehistory maps: Polabians, Huguenots, Malays, Finland, Ireland

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines the survival of a Slavic people of east Germany to nation-statehood, not the extant Sorbs but the more obscure Polabians.
• Was there ever a possibility, as imagined in this r/imaginarymaps map, of a Huguenot polity forming and seceding from France?

This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a decidedly different Malay world, with a fragmented Indonesia.

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a Finland that grew sharply, to include much more of Karelia and even North Ingria.
• What would have come if, as suggested here, Northern Ireland had been repartitioned in the 1920s, most of the west and south passing to independent Ireland?

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Halifax, London, Helsinki, Rustavi

• Some new high-rise housing developments in Hamilton are lacking in permits. Global News reports.
• Halifax is currently undergoing public consultations to see what is to be done with a statue of controversial British governor Cornwallis. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities looks at how the ring-tailed parakeet has come to thrive in its adopted home of London.
• Guardian Cities reports on how the city of Helsinki has solved its problem with homelessness by automatically giving people in need housing.
• Open Democracy looks at the Georgian city of Rustavi, during the Soviet era dependent on a single industry like many others and left to cope with the collapse of this economy in the post-Soviet era.

[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?

[NEWS] Five futurish links: Quadriga, Brexit, Facebook and Rohingya, basic income, friendship

• This CBC feature on the apparent loss of a quarter-billion dollars via the Quadriga cryptocurrency makes the whole business look incredibly sketchy to me. Why would anyone rational take such risks?
• At Open Democracy, Christine Berry suggests that after the Grenfell Tower catastrophe the idea of using Brexit to deregulate has become impossible. Is this a wedge issue?
• Vox notes the effort of Facebook to try to hold itself accountable for providing a platform for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.
• Inverse has a positive account of the guaranteed minimum income experiment in Finland, emphasizing the improved psychological state of recipients.
• The Atlantic notes that one major impact of Facebook is that, through its medium, friendships can never quite completely die.

[NEWS] Seven politics links: childcare, China in Canada, drugs, Venezuela, Brexit, Finland

• CBC reports on childcare costs across Canada, noting how exceptionally low and affordable they are in Québec.
• If China withdraws its students studying in Canadian universities from the country in the way Saudi Arabia did its students, the financial impact on many centres of higher education would be significant. Global News reports.
• NOW Toronto notes how Doug Ford, surprisingly, has managed to make a mess of the nascent legal cannabis sector of retail.
• VICE explains how Europe has largely managed to avoid a fentanyl crisis–Europe’s drug dealers have much more of a vested interest in the survival of their clients.
• This Open Democracy essay notes how, in the light of the breakdown of Venezuela, this central alliance of China in Latin America is looking increasingly problematic.
• This essay at Open Democracy by an anonymous anti-Brexit activist from northern England notes that, in the end, an already vulnerable North is going to have to take responsibility for the Brexit it voted for when catastrophe hits.
• DW reports the results of Finland’s guaranteed minimum income experiment: Although well-being was improved, recipients did not increase their participation in the labour market.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul looks at the divided cities of the divided island of Cyprus.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares an image of a galaxy that actually has a tail.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber talks about her pain as an immigrant in the United Kingdom in the era of Brexit, her pain being but one of many different types created by this move.
• The Crux talks about the rejected American proposal to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon, and the several times the United States did arrange for lesser noteworthy events there (collisions, for the record).
• D-Brief notes how the innovative use of Curiosity instruments has explained more about the watery past of Gale Crater.
• Bruce Dorminey notes one astronomer’s theory that Venus tipped early into a greenhouse effect because of a surfeit of carbon relative to Earth.
• Far Outliers looks at missionaries in China, and their Yangtze explorations, in the late 19th century.
• Gizmodo notes evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans cohabited in a cave for millennia.
• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox writes about his exploration of the solo music of Paul McCartney.
• io9 looks at what is happening with Namor in the Marvel universe, with interesting echoes of recent Aquaman storylines.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the Beothuk of Newfoundland and their sad fate.
• Language Hat explores Patagonian Afrikaans.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on how mindboggling it is to want to be a billionaire. What would you do with that wealth?
• The Map Room Blog shares a visualization of the polar vortex.
• Marginal Revolution reports on the career of a writer who writes stories intended to help people fall asleep.
• The New APPS Blog reports on the power of biometric data and the threat of its misuse.
• Neuroskeptic takes a look at neurogenesis in human beings.
• Out There notes the import, in understanding our solar system, of the New Horizons photos of Ultima Thule.
• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes that OSIRIS-REx is in orbit of Bennu and preparing to take samples.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of 21 things that visitors to Kolkata should know.
• Mark Simpson takes a critical look at the idea of toxic masculinity. Who benefits?
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why global warming is responsible for the descent of the polar vortex.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the pro-Russian Gagauz of Moldova are moving towards a break if the country at large becomes pro-Western.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the art of Finnish painter Hugo Simberg.