[URBAN NOTE] Seven city links: Innisfil, Buffalo, Ottawa, Montréal, Winnipeg, Amsterdam, Singapore

• The town of Innisfil is looking forward to some very futuristic developments. Global News reports.
• Jeremy Deaton at CityLab reports on how, buffered by the Great Lakes, Buffalo NY may end gaining from climate change.
• The Ottawa chain Bridgehead Coffee has been sold to national chain Second Cup. Global News reports.
• Many of the more eye-raising installations in the Gay Village of Montréal have since been removed. CTV News reports.
• Warming huts for homeless people in Winnipeg were torn down because the builders did not follow procedures. Global News reports.
• Open Democracy looks at innovative new public governance of the city budget in Amsterdam, here.
• Singapore, located in a well-positioned Southeast Asia and with working government, may take over from Hong Kong. Bloomberg View makes the case.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer considers how a stellar-mass black hole of 70 solar masses got so unaccountably huge.
• Alex Tolley at Centauri Dreams considers the colours of photosynthesis, and how they might reveal the existence of life on exoplanets.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares some links on humans in the Paleolithic.
• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers the scripts of jokes.
• Gizmodo reports on the repurposed China-Netherlands radio telescope operating from an orbit above the far side of the Moon.
• JSTOR Daily considers the political rhetoric of declinism.
• Language Log considers the controversy over the future of the apostrophe.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog notes a YouGov prediction of a Conservative majority in the UK and how this prediction is not value-neutral.
• Marginal Revolution shares a paper from India noting how caste identities do affect the labour supply.
• Ursula Lindsay at the NYR Daily considers if the political crisis in Lebanon, a product of economic pressures and sectarianism, might lead to a revolutionary transformation of the country away from sectarian politics.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections looks at some of the many complicated and intermingled issues of contemporary Australia.
• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest projects funded by the ESA.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel shares ten beautiful photos taken in 2019 by the Hubble.
• Strange Company reports on the strange unsolved disappearance of Lillian Richey from her Idaho home in 1964.
• Window on Eurasia shares a Russian criticism of the Ukrainian autocephalous church as a sort of papal Protestantism.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the positive potential of homoeros.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes how gas giants on eccentric orbits can easily disrupt bodies on orbits inwards.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber suggests that the political culture of England has been deformed by the trauma experienced by young children of the elites at boarding schools.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the haunting art of Paul Delvaux.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the work of Tressie McMillan Cottom in investigating for-profit higher education.
• Far Outliers looks at Tripoli in 1801.
• Gizmodo shares the Boeing design for the moon lander it proposes for NASA in 2024.
• io9 shares words from cast of Terminator: Dark Fate about the importance of the Mexican-American frontier.
• JSTOR Daily makes a case against killing spiders trapped in one’s home.
• Language Hat notes a recovered 17th century translation of a Dutch bible into the Austronesian language of Siraya, spoken in Taiwan.
• Language Log looks at the origin of the word “brogue”.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the payday lender industry.
• Marginal Revolution notes a new biography of Walter Raleigh, a maker of empire indeed.
• The NYR Daily looks at a new dance show using the rhythms of the words of writer Robert Walser.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at how, in a quantum universe, time and space could still be continuous not discrete.
• Strange Company looks at a court case from 1910s Brooklyn, about a parrot that swore.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes an affirmative action court case in which it was ruled that someone from Gibraltar did not count as Hispanic.
• Window on Eurasia notes rhetoric claiming that Russians are the largest divided people on the Earth.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at lizards and at California’s legendary Highway 101.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Fredericton, Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Riga

• The city of Fredericton hopes a new strategy to attracting international migration to the New Brunswick capital will help its grow its population by 25 thousand. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities notes the controversy in Amsterdam as users of moped find themselves being pushed from using bike lanes.
• Guardian Cities looks at how many in Athens think the city might do well to unbury the rivers covered under concrete and construction in the second half of the 20th century.
• The Sagrada Familia, after more than 130 years of construction, has finally received a permit for construction from Barcelona city authorities. Global News reports.
• Evan Gershkovich at the Moscow Times reports on how the recent ousting of the mayor of the Latvian capital of Riga for corruption is also seem through a lens of ethnic conflict.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Kingston, Ottawa, Amsterdam, Madrid, Yerevan

• Kingston, Ontario, is currently doing its best to cope with flood risk from the rising Lake Ontario. Global News reports.
• MacLean’s reports on an appalling expansion of the iconic Chateau Laurier in Ottawa.
• CityLab reports on how Amsterdam is trying to avoid being overwhelmed by tourism.
• Guardian Cities reports on how the new government in Madrid plans to scrap a low-emissions zone because of a belief that congestion is a Madrid tradition.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares some tips for visitors to Yerevan.

[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?

[AH] Five #alternatehistory maps from r/imaginarymaps: UK-Dutch, Patagonias, Virginia, Japan, Europe

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a united Anglo-Dutch state. Could such have ever have occurred?
• This r/imaginarymaps map, one in a series, imagines a Patagonia divided between multiple rival powers perhaps after the Guyanas. Could Patagonia, only recently incorporated into Argentina and Chile, have seen something like this?
• This is a perhaps-optimistic depiction of the territory that a #Virginia independent of the United States might have held. In a no-US timeline, how far could it have gotten?
• This r/imaginarymaps map sees the Empire of Japan as a bulwark against Communism in Asia, even taking Australia and New Zealand under its aegis. Too, see its protectorate over the Russian Far East.
• This r/imaginarymaps map, imagining a European Federation circa 2004, makes an important point: The earlier that Europe unifies, the more geographically restricted its membership will be.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Centauri Dreams notes the discovery of rocky debris indicative of destroyed planets in orbit of the white dwarf SDSS J122859.93+104032.9, 400 light-years away.
• JSTOR Daily shows how the Columbine massacre led to a resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US.
• Language Log notes an example of digraphia, two scripts, in use in Taiwan.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money identifies the presidential run of Howard Schultz in ways unflattering to him yet accurate.
• The LRB Blog takes a look at the current, unsettling, stage of artificial intelligence research.
• At the NYR Daily, Boyd Tonkin writes about an exhibition of the works of Van Gogh at the Tate Britain highlighting his ties with England and with his Europeanness.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on the ultimate fate of the Earth, a cinder orbiting a black dwarf.
• Strange Company tells the strange, sad story of 19th century California writer Yda Hillis Addis.
• At Vintage Space, Amy Shira Teitel explains why the Apollo missions made use of a dangerous pure-oxygen environment.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, 41 years ago, protests in Georgia forced the Soviet Union to let the Georgian republic keep Georgian as its official language.
• Arnold Zwicky starts with peeps and goes on to look at dragons.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, London, Amsterdam, Odesa, Tashkent

• MTL Blog shares photos from the interior of a Habitat 67 apartment on the market at $C 1.3 million dollars.
• Guardian Cities reports on more London housing estates where the ability of children to play in common spaces is determined by their parents’ income.
• CityLab notes how Amsterdam is making it clear that it is cutting down on car traffic in its downtown, by removing car-related infrastructure.
• Open Democracy reports on how community activists in Odesa are responding to unrestrained property development.
• Guardian Cities reports on the background to mass evictions and demolitions of people in Tashkent.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Seattle, Amsterdam, Istanbul

• A statue of Queen Victoria has been vandalized in Montréal, the act claimed by an anti-colonialist coalition. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities profiled an Instagram account, thedoorsofnyc, concentrating on the unique doors of New York City.
• Billionaire urbanism is identified by this article at The Stranger as the downfall of the waterfront of Seattle.
• CityLab notes that the government of Amsterdam is now requiring owners of new homes to live in their property, limiting the ability to rent them out.
• The Atlantic notes the criticisms of many urbanists in Istanbul that restorations of the city’s ancient heritage are actually destroying them, at least as survivals from the past.