[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that Betelgeuse is very likely not on the verge of a supernova, here.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the mapping of asteroid Bennu.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber reposted, after the election, a 2013 essay looking at the changes in British society from the 1970s on.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares a collection of links about the Precambrian Earth, here.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about fear in the context of natural disasters, here.
• Far Outliers reports on the problems of privateers versus regular naval units.
• Gizmodo looks at galaxy MAMBO-9, which formed a billion years after the Big Bang.
• io9 writes about the alternate history space race show For All Mankind.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the posters used in Ghana in the 1980s to help promote Hollywood movies.
• Language Hat links to a new book that examines obscenity and gender in 1920s Britain.
• Language Log looks at the terms used for the national language in Xinjiang.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with Jeff Jacoby’s lack of sympathy towards people who suffer from growing inequality.
• Marginal Revolution suggests that urbanists should have an appreciation for Robert Moses.
• Sean Marshall writes, with photos, about his experiences riding a new Bolton bus.
• Caryl Philips at the NYR Daily writes about Rachmanism, a term wrongly applied to the idea of avaricious landlords like Peter Rachman, an immigrant who was a victim of the Profumo scandal.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking at the experience of aging among people without families.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the empty space in an atom can never be removed.
• Strange Maps shares a festive map of London, a reindeer, biked by a cyclist.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Mongolia twice tried to become a Soviet republic.
• Arnold Zwicky considers different birds with names starting with x.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Oshawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, Montréal, Accra, Beijing

• A tiny house put on the market in Oshawa got a surprising amount of buzz before its sale. Global News reports.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle shares photos for a nearby crossing for the new Kitchener-Waterloo Ion light rail project, set to open very soon.
• MTLBlog shares a map showing the distribution of some notable immigrant communities in Montréal.
• Guardian Cities reports on how authorities in Accra are trying to deal with noise pollution produced by the city’s many churches and preachers.
• Roads and Kingdoms notes how elderly singles in Beijing use Changpu River Park as a place to meet new partners.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Oshawa, Montréal, London, Madrid, Accra

• The closure of the GM plant in Oshawa will hurt local charities. Global News reports.
• MTL Blog notes that for a variety of factors, including affordability and attractiveness, Montréal is the best city in Canada in which to rent an apartment.
• Guardian Cities reports on a project mapping reported violent crimes in early 14th century London.
• Guardian Cities reports on how the city of Madrid has today banned polluting vehicles from its downtown.
• A high rate of deadly car accidents has led, Guardian Cities reports, to mass protests in the Ghana capital of Accra.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes, taking a look past more than a century of images of the famous star J1407 including its planet with massive ring system, the power of big data to reveal important things about the universe.
• D-Brief takes a look at the discoveries of the Hayabusa2 probe at asteroid Ryugu.
• Gizmodo notes that the planned landing of the Hayabusa2 probe on Ryugu has been postponed until 2019 in order to find a safe landing point on the rocky asteroid’s surface.
• Livia Gershon at JSTOR Daily takes a look at how modern Hallowe’en derives from the Celtic day of Samhain.
• Joe. My. God. reports on a Gavin McInnes speech to the Young Republicans Club of New York City in which he says, despite his Proud Boys’ crudity and violence, the two groups have much in common, that they need the Proud Boys even.
• Anne Curzon at Lingua Franca takes a look at the changing definition of “fun” in recent decades.
• The LRB Blog takes a look at the storied destruction by fire of the Soviet steamship Pobeda in the Black Sea in 1948.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution suggests</a. that a strategy for African economic development, with a big push to build basic infrastructure, has not been working in a test site in northern Ghana.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw sees the alt-right being fed by the radicalism of the far left.
• Brittney Cooper at the Planetary Society Blog shares some images of heiligenschein from throughout the solar system.
• Drew Rowsome looks at a recent horror novel by Douglas Clegg, The Infinite.
• Window on Eurasia argues the ethnic distinction confirmed by Stalin between Tatars and Bashkirs has weakened both groups versus wider Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky plays with the idea of the piñata, at multiple levels.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams reports on the work of the MASCOT rover on asteroid Ryugu.
• The Crux considers the critical role of the dolphin in the thinking of early SETI enthusiasts.
• D-Brief goes into more detail about the import of the Soyuz malfunction for the International Space Station.
• Dangerous Minds notes an artist who has made classic pop song lyrics, like Blue Monday, into pulp paperback covers.
• Earther is entirely correct about how humans will need to engage in geoengineering to keep the Earth habitable.
• David Finger at The Finger Post describes his visit to Accra, capital of Ghana.
• Gizmodo notes a new paper suggesting that, in some cases where massive moons orbit far from their parent planet, these moons can have their own moons.
• Hornet Stories shares the first look at Ruby Rose at Batwoman.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the image of southern California and Los Angeles changed from a Mediterranean paradise with orange trees to a dystopic urban sprawl.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money imagines what might have happened to the navy of China had it not bought the Ukrainian aircraft carrier Varyag.
• Lingua Franca at the Chronicle reports on how the actual length of “minute”, as euphemism for a short period of time, can vary between cultures.
• The LRB Blog reports on the disaster in Sulawesi, noting particularly the vulnerability of colonial-era port settlements in Indonesia to earthquakes and tsunamis.
• The Map Room Blog shares Itchy Feet’s funny map of every European city.
• The New APPS Blog wonders if the tensions of capitalism are responsible for the high rate of neurological health issues.
• The NYR Daily considers what, exactly, it would take to abolish ICE.
• At the Planetary Society Weblog, Ian Regan talks about how he assembled a photoanimated flyover of Titan using probe data.
• Roads and Kingdoms explores some excellent pancakes in the Malaysian state of Sabah with unusual ingredients.
• Drew Rowsome raves over a new documentary looking at the life of opera star Maria Callas.
• Window on Eurasia notes the continued high rate of natural increase in Tajikistan.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• At Anthropology.net, Kambiz Kamrani notes the Qesem caves of Israel, where four hundred thousand years ago hominids learned to make tools.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that star S2 is about to plunge to its closest approach to Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the heart of our galaxy, and what this means for science.
• Centauri Dreams takes a look at research done on Earth about the atmospheres of super-Earths.
• D-Brief takes a look at the recent research done on the regions on the edges of supermassive black holes.
• Bruce Dorminey notes that the Juno science team thinks that Jupiter probe has exceeded expectations.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes the evidence for a massive migration from the steppes into Europe circa 3300 BCE.
• The Frailest Thing’s Michael Sacasas makes the argument that the idea of humane technology is something of an oxymoron.
• Imageo notes evidence that permafrost will melt more quickly than previous predicted under the impact of global warming.
• JSTOR Daily looks at explanations for the unusually strong activism among high school students in East Los Angeles in the 1960s.
• Language Hat looks at evidence for the close relationship, in vocabulary and even in grammar, between the Turkish and Western Armenian languages now separated by bad blood.
• Lingua Franca notes how easy it is to change conventions on language use–like pronouns, say–at a well-functioning institution.
• Marginal Revolution looks at the economic progress made, after a recent lull, by Ghana.
• The NYR Daily looks at the growing involvement of the United States in small wars in Africa, starting with Niger and Cameroon.
• Justin Petrone at north! reports on a family visit to his ancestral home of Bari, seeing what little remains of the past there.
• Peter Rukavina wonders, apropos of a very successful experience shopping online at Amazon, how anyone else will be able to compete.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the difference between mathematics and physics. Where is the line to be drawn?
• Strange Maps’ Frank Jacobs maps obesity in the United States and in Europe.
• Towleroad reports on the apparent interest of actor Cynthia Nixon in becoming governor of New York.
• John Scalzi at Whatever is a big fan of A Wrinkle in Time, a movie that is not perfect but is still quite good. I’m curious to see it myself.
• Window on Eurasia reports on food riots in isolated Turkmenistan.

[NEWS] Five notes on migration: Asians in the US, Ghana to Libya, Indian women, Brazil, Canada

• Noah Smith notes at Bloomberg View that Trump’s bizarre opposition to chain migration would hit (for instance) Asian immigrant communities in the United States quite badly.
• The Inter Press Service shares one man’s nearly fatal attempt to migrate from his native Ghana through Libya.
• The Inter Press Service notes a hugely underestimated system of migration within India, that of women moving to their new husbands’ homes.
• In an extended piece, the Inter Press Service examines how wars and disasters are driving much immigration to Brazil, looking particularly at Haiti and Venezuela as new notable sources.
• Canada is a noteworthy destination for many immigrants who move here to take part in Canadian sports, including the Olympics. The Mational Post reports.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• blogTO considers some of the spendthrift things a millionaire could do in Toronto.
• James Bow remembers his 9/11 experience.
• Crasstalk features an essay by a New Yorker reflecting on her 9/11.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog reflects on how white power and white powerlessness can co-exist.
• Language Hat shares one book’s evaluation of Neapolitan dialect.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes one evaluation of Neapolitan.
• Otto Pohl notes how Kurdish history is less ethnically complex but more politically complex than Ghana’s.
• Towleroad notes the death of trans actress Alexis Arquette.
• Window on Eurasia describes Russia as, I would say, quasi-Bonapartist.

[LINK] On the loss of the African grey parrot from the wild

Paul Steyn’s National Geographic report about this intelligent bird is terribly sad. May it flourish in protected areas, and perhaps in the diaspora, too.

Flocks of chattering African Grey parrots, more than a thousand flashes of red and white on grey at a time, were a common site in the deep forests of Ghana in the 1990s. But a 2016 study published in the journal Ibis reveals that these birds, in high demand around the world as pets, and once abundant in forests all over West and central Africa, have almost disappeared from Ghana.

According to the study, the pet trade and forest loss—particularly the felling of large trees where the parrots breed—are major factors contributing to the decline.

Uncannily good at mimicking human speech, the African Grey (and the similar but lesser-known Timneh parrot) is a prized companion in homes around the world. Research has shown that greys are as smart as a two-five year-old human child—capable of developing a limited vocabulary and even forming simple sentences.

Google the term “African Grey talking,” and you’ll find hundreds of videos—including Einstein the talking parrot’s TED presentation—showing the birds whistling and mimicking words and phrases.

The grey parrot has a wide historic range across West and central Africa—1.1 million square miles (nearly three million square kilometers)—from Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana in West Africa, through Nigeria and Cameroon and the Congo forests, to Uganda and western Kenya. Ghana accounts for more than 30,000 square miles (75,000 square kilometers) of that range, but losses of greys there have been some of the most devastating.

[LINK] “Years After Its Curfew Killed Theater, Ghana Gets A Second Act”

NPR’s Goats and Soda features an article looking at the rebirth of live theatre in Ghana.

When the military took power in Ghana, imposing a curfew from the early 1980s, theaters in the West African country went dark. By the time elected-civilian government was restored in 1992, many Ghanaians had lost the habit of going out to watch a play.

Now one man is luring his compatriots back to live shows — and away from TV and videos. His name is James Ebo Whyte — “but everyone in Ghana calls me ‘Uncle’ Ebo Whyte, because of the program I do on radio,” he says.

You can’t miss the nattily dressed playwright. At 70 years old, he’s small, dynamic and fit with a big smile. The one-time businessman regularly leaps on stage to talk to the audience for whatever reason — whether to explain a cut to the power supply or to encourage the enthusiastic theatergoers to pick up his magazine and buy tickets for his next play.

“I’ve been writing, directing and producing a play every quarter for the last seven years, and this is my 28th play in seven years,” Whyte says.