[AH] On the 1914 Europe map of Diplomacy as an alternate history (#alternatehistory)

One of the things that I am doing now, in the early days of my quarantine, is playing an online game of Diplomacy with some old friends. Looking at the standard European map, an elaboration on the map of Europe and adjoining areas, makes me think of the way that this map might better represent different alternate history scenarios than our own history.

1914 map of Diplomacy

The distribution of supply centres, the starred regions capable of supporting military units, comes to mind. Each region is capable of supporting military units of very comparable power. This suggests to me a relatively even level of development across the map, that (say) Belgium and Bulgaria are at similar levels.

One thing that particularly jumps out at me as the relative power of southeastern Europe, including the Ottoman Empire. Anatolian Turkey apparently does have the economic power and military heft necessary to support Great Power status, to a level comparable to Italy or Austria-Hungary. Is Diplomacy set in a timeline where Ottoman modernization succeeded? (But then, how can the loss of the Balkans be explained?) On a smaller scale, Tunis being a supply centre might also suggest successful modernization there.

(Another thing that pops out as me is the space on the map for other Great Powers. A Scandinavia that encompasses three power centres could surely be a great power. A United Netherlands with only two supply centres would be more vulnerable, while it seems that the main problem with a Balkan conglomeration would be a backstory.)

An idea: WI there is an earlier separation of the European Balkans from the Ottomans, the shock of this separation triggering more successful modernization not just of the Ottoman Empire but of other Muslim states in the Mediterranean? Perhaps the Ottoman Balkans managed to split off as a unified state–a broader Orthodox conspiracy–and even managed to become a separate power themselves?

Another thing that pops out to me is the distribution of supply centres on the map in specific regions. A world where western France industrializes before eastern France, where Bavaria beats the Ruhr, where Trieste outstrips Bohemia (an Illyrian unit in the Hapsburg empire?), would be a very different world.

[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.

[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.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Toronto Monopoly, signs, public art, Portlands, Union Station

• blogTO notes that there is, for a short while, a Toronto-themed version of Monopoly available for sale.
• The iconic Toronto sign in front of City Hall is set to be replaced with a more cost-effective one. The Toronto Star reports.
• I like the controversial statue of a man 25 feet tall placed in front of a new condo development on St. Clair Avenue West. The Toronto Star reports.
• The National Post reports in depth of the plans of Google’s Sidewalk Labs to transform the Portlands.
• Sean Marshall looks at how the concrete barriers put up in front of Union Station disrupt, particularly, non-car traffic there.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes the first time that an exoplanet, HR 8799e, has been directly observed using optical interferometry.
• Centauri Dreams notes the possibility, demonstrated by the glimpsing of a circumplanetary disc around exoplanet PDS 70b, that we might be seeing a moon system in formation.
• The Citizen Science Salon looks what observers in Antarctica are contributing to our wealth of scientific knowledge.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares links to articles looking at the latest findings on the Precambrian Earth.
• The Frailest Thing’s L.M. Sacasas writes about his ambivalent response to a Twitter that, by its popularity, undermines the open web.
• Gizmodo notes that NASA is going to open up the International Space Station to tourists.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how croquet, upon its introduction in the 19th century United States, was seen as scandalous for the way it allowed men and women to mix freely.
• Shakezula at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the unaccountable fondness of at least two Maine Republican legislators for the Confederacy.
• Marginal Revolution suggests that the economic success of Israel in recent decades is a triumph of neoliberalism.
• Stephen Ellis at the NYR Daily writes about the gymnastics of Willem de Kooning.
• Drew Rowsome profiles out comic Brendan D’Souza.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the still strange galaxy NGC 1052-DF2, apparently devoid of dark matter.
• John Scalzi at Whatever shares his theory about a fixed quantity of flavor in strawberries of different sizes.
• Window on Eurasia looks at a contentious plan for a territorial swap between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links: grocery games, real estate, housing, Shermans, Goldy

• blogTO notes that grocery chain No Frills has come out with a side-scrolling video game.
• blogTO notes that Lakeshore Apparel is making shirts and other garments representing often-overlooked Toronto neighbourhoods.
• Famed Little Italy nightclub The Matador has been sold to condo developers. The Toronto Star reports.
• The East Side Motel, a Scarborough motel once used by the City of Toronto to house homeless people, has been demolished. The Toronto Star U>reports.
• Front-line housing workers are finding themselves faced with problems impossible to solve thanks to the housing crisis. The Toronto Star reports.
• Anne Kingston at MacLean’s notes that estate documents belonging to Barry and Honey Sherman will be unsealed in a couple of months, attracting interest from people interested in the billionaire couple’s murder.
• This PressProgress report on the many well-off businesspeople in Toronto who supported the Faith Goldy run for mayor of Toronto is eye-opening.

[NEWS] Five social science links: Canadian Jews, US mafia, Miles O’Brien, online fandoms, Monopoly

• The Conversation hosts an article looking at the evolution of Jewish identity in Canada from something religious to something cultural.
• The state of the American mafia, so thoroughly Americanized, is remarkable in a lot of ways. VICE reports.
• There is definitely something to be said for the idea that Star Trek’s Chief Miles O’Brien is one of the best representations of someone Irish and of Irish culture in popular culture. entertainment.ie has it.
• This Wired article takes a look at the online interactions, positive and malign both, that have complicated so many fandoms like that of Harry Potter.
• Monopoly, this article reminds us at The Conversation, was a board game invented to remind people about the pitfalls of capitalism.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: TTC, Vienna, Zed 80, Toronto of the Future

• Cameron MacLeod at Spacing considers the poor record of the province of Ontario with supporting the TTC.
• Steve Munro, writing at NOW Toronto, looks at how the cost of the TTC to the provincial government is inevitably set to climb hugely.
• blogTO shares a list of five things Toronto can learn from Vienna.
• A second arcade bar is set to open in Toronto, Zed 80 on the Danforth. blogTO reports.
• Urban Toronto notes that the latest iteration of the Toronto of the Future conference is set for the end of June.

[NEWS] Five Indigenous links: Ainu, Mayan cards, food culture, hip-hop, translation

• Japan Today notes that the Ainu, the indigenous people of the northern island of Hokkaido, are set to be recognized by the Japanese government as indigenous.
• Atlas Obscura looks at the decks of Mayan playing cards created by the Soviet Union.
• The Conversation reports on how Indigenous food cultures in Canada can be used to better understand the environment and its changes.
• Brielle Morgan at The Discourse reports on the Indigenous, political hip-hop of Diana Hellson.
• CBC reports on the experiences of Priscilla Bosun, official Cree-language translator in the House of Commons.

[NEWS] Five sci-fi links: cyberpunk zombies, Alita: Battle Angel, women, W40K, The Silent Star

• Jesse Scott in The Guardian of Charlottetown considers the idea the cyberpunk might be in a process of being zombified.
• McKenna Gray at On The A Side suggests that James Cameron’s decision to wait until the technology caught up to his vision helps make Alita: Battle Angel a success.
• Wired notes the research of Lisa Yaszek, who argues the belief that early science fiction was lacking women writers is false, that it was instead a matter of misogynistic anthologists hiding women writers’ work.
• This delightful Alex Hern article in The Guardian takes a look at how Warhammer40K has become such a huge hit.
• Eric Schewe at JSTOR Daily looks at the 1960 East German SF film The Silent Star, a remarkably inclusive utopian vision of the future that–conceivably–did set a precedent for Star Trek.