[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at the strange galaxy NGC 5866.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly looks at some of her prep work when she covers a news story.
• Centauri Dreams considers the idea of using the Earth itself for gravitational lensing.
• D-Brief notes a newly-discovered fossil parrot from New Zealand, a bird nearly one metre in size.
• Far Outliers looks at the values of cowrie shells in 19th century central Africa. What could they buy?
• Gizmodo notes the limited circumstances in which IMDb will allow transgender people to remove their birth names from their records.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the abortive American state of Franklin.
• Language Hat notes a 19th century Russian exile’s experience with the differences between Norwegian and Swedish.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes, after Epstein, the incompetence that too often characterizes American prisons.
• Marginal Revolution notes the importance of slavery in the history of Venice.
• The NYR Daily notes how W.H. Auden was decidedly unimpressed by the Apollo moon landing, and why.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the import of astronomers’ discovery of an ancient early black hole.
• Strange Maps’ Frank Jacobs shares a vertical world map from China.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little considers how competent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission actually is.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the internal divides of Russia.

[DM] Ten links on migration (#demographics, #demographymatters)

• CBC Kitchener-Waterloo notes how farmers in southwestern Ontario are trying to plan the transfer of their lands to new migrants.
• HuffPost Québec notes how the labour market of Gaspésie is starting to attract workers.
• The Guardian looks at how many New Zealanders are moving away from cities to less expensive and stressed rural areas.
• The murder of an maid from Indonesia in Malaysia is straining relations between the two neighbouring countries. The National Post reports
• Ozy looks how entrepreneurs from China, moving to Africa, are transforming that continent.
• Open Democracy examines the background behind an outbreak of anti-immigrant sentiment in Yakutsk.
• Doug Bock Clark writes at GQ about the underground networks smuggling North Koreans out of their country.
• Eater reports on the early 20th century migration of Punjabis to California that ended up creating a hybrid Punjabi-Mexican cuisine.
• Open Democracy tells the story of a woman who migrated from Thailand to Denmark for a marriage partner. Why is her migration less legitimate than others’?
• The Inter Press Service warns against treating migrants as human commodities.

[URBAN NOTE] Six city links: Montréal, New York City, Philadelphia, Istanbul, reserves, Wellington

• La Presse notes how Montréal is placing limits on new construction, and why.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Basquiat interacted with his surroundings in New York City, using them for art.
• CityLab reports on a study of gentrification and displacement in Philadelphia.
• Guardian Cities reports on the remarkable speed with which Turkish Airlines shifted to a new airport in Istanbul.
• This article in The Conversation is entirely right about the importance of Indigenous urban reserves: Why cannot First Nations be as urbanized as other Canadians?
• Chris Fitch writes at CityLab about how, as part of a new policy, Maori placenames are being introduced (or reintroduced) into the New Zealand capital of Wellington.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a lovely photo of the Earth peeking out from behind the far side of the Moon.
• At the Broadside Blog, Caitlin Kelly shares lovely photos of delicate ice and water taken on a winter’s walk.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the study by Chinese astronomers who, looking at the distribution of Cepheids, figured out that our galaxy’s disk is an S-shaped warp.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that melting of the Greenland ice sheet will disrupt the Gulf Stream.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing takes issue with the uncritical idealization of the present, as opposed to the critical examination of whatever time period we are engaging with.
• Gizmodo notes that an intensive series of brain scans is coming closer to highlighting the areas of the human brain responsible for consciousness.
• Mark Graham links to new work of his, done in collaboration, looking at ways to make the sharing economy work more fairly in low- and middle-income countries.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the mystic Catholicism of the African kingdom of Kongo may have gone on to inspire slave-led revolutions in 18th century North America and Haiti.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at an exhibition examining the ambitious architecture of Yugoslavia.
• The Map Room Blog links to a cartographer’s argument about the continuing importance of paper maps.
• Marginal Revolution shares one commenter’s perception of causes or the real estate boom in New Zealand.
• Neuroskeptic considers the role of the mysterious silent neurons in the human brain.
• At NYR Daily, Guadeloupe writer Maryse Condé talks about her career as a writer and the challenges of identity for her native island.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of ten dishes reflecting the history of the city of Lisbon.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel takes a look at the promise of likely mini-Neptune Barnard’s Star b as a target for observation, perhaps even life.
• Window on Eurasia shares the perfectly plausible argument that, just as the shift of the Irish to the English language did not end Irish identity and nationalism, so might a shift to Russian among Tatars not end Tatar identity.

[ISL] Five #islands links: Easter Island, New Zealand, Curaçao, Barbados, Toronto Islands

• Representatives of Easter Island, visiting London, plead for the return of a moai statue stolen away in the 1860s. The Guardian reports.
• Guardian Cities notes the problems facing Pacific Island migrants in the New Zealand city of Auckland.
• Daily Xtra takes a look at Pride on Curaçao.
• The Conversation notes how Barbados has demonstrated, and is continuing to demonstrate, remarkable resiliency versus threats both natural and human.
• Deb O’Rourke at NOW Toronto writes about how Toronto Islanders and the Mississauga of the New Credit First Nation are moving towards reconciliation.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the landing of the Franco-German MASCOT probe on asteroid Ryugu from the Japanese Hayabusa-2 probe.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly shares a powerful New York Times article she wrote about her health status.
• Centauri Dreams notes the continued fine-tuning of the New Horizons probe as it approaches Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, also known as Ultima Thule.
• D-Brief notes how the Gaia satellite has detected hundreds of hypervelocity stars heading towards the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, perhaps coming from other galactic neighbours like the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Karen Sternheimer writes about the possibilities opened up by learning another language.
• JSTOR Daily notes that, once, working-class children regularly roamed the night.
• Language Hat notes how the Maori remembered in their proverbs the disappearance of the moa, long after that species’ extinction in New Zealand.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money rejoices at the despair of the alt-right on learning their favourite pop star, Taylor Swift, supports the Democratic Party.
• Lingua Franca takes a look at the past usage of the phrase “cold civil war”.
• The LRB Blog writes about the profoundly disturbing case of the apparent murder, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution has a critical take on the concept of “Airspace”, the sort of shared minimalist public spaces enabled by modern technologies.
• Strange Company reports on the mysterious Napoleonic-era haunting of the Upper Silesian castle of Slawensik.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps reports on the most common last names in different European countries, finding that local variations on “Smith” are exceptionally common.

[ISL] Five islands links: Dufferin Islands, Antillia, Orkneys, Hawai’i, Stewart Island

• blogTO reports on the lovely Dufferin Islands of Niagara Falls, green creations in the river.
• Language Hat reports on the mythical island of Antillia, a phantom island reputed in late medieval Europe to lie far to the west of Iberia.
• Archeologists are racing to excavate and record and even protect hundreds, if not thousands, of archeological sites in the Orkney Islands ahead of rising sea levels. The National Post reports.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the factors that drew the 19th century kings of Hawai’i so strongly towards freemasonry.
• Janet Wainscott writes at The Island Review about her visit to New Zealand’s Stewart Island, searching for the remnants of her family’s homes and businesses there.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Architectuul reports on how architects, at a time of new environmental pressures on water, how some architects are integrating water into their works.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly talks about what books she is (and is not) reading these days.
• D-Brief notes a new study suggesting that the prospects of planet-based life at globular cluster Omega Centauri are low, simply because the tightly-packed stars disrupt each others’ planets too often.
• Hornet Stories notes how some American conservatives wish to prohibit states from mandating adoption agencies not bar same-sex couples as applicants.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the tattooed heads of Maori first became international trade items in the 19th century, then were returned to New Zealand in more recent years.
• Language Log’s Victor Mair writes about his favourite Nepali expression, “Bāphre bāph!”.
• The Map Room Blog notes the release of a revised vision of Star Trek: Stellar Cartography, including material from season 1 of Discovery.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw explains how, in 1976, he appeared on Australian television talking about the Yowie, the Australian equivalent to a Yeti.
• Drew Rowsome reviews Folsom Street Blues, Jim Stewart’s memoirs of the leather/SoMA scene in San Francisco in the 1970s.
• Peter Rukavina writes about the newly liberal liquor laws of Prince Edward Island, allowing children to be present in environments where liquor is being served.
• Window on Eurasia shares suggestions that the government of Ukraine needs to take a much more visible, and active, approach towards protecting its international tourists, for their sake and for the country’s.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell talks about the redefinition, at least in the United Kingdom, of Euroskepticism into a movement of extreme suburban nationalists, away from rational critiques of the European Union.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• D-Brief notes that global climate change seems already to have altered the flow of the ocean current system including the Gulf Stream.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the dialect, and cultural forms, of American loggers.
• Taika Waititi, director of (among other movies) Thor: Ragnarok, has created controversy by talking about racism in his native New Zealand. (Good for him, I’d say.) Lawyers, Guns and Money reports.
• Marginal Revolution takes a look at a strange public apology by a Chinese company, and what this says about Chinese politics.
• Strange Maps’ Frank Jacobs shared this map depicting the many ephemeral states that appeared in the former Russian Empire after the October Revolution.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel makes the point that there are very good reasons to believe in dark matter and dark energy, that these concepts are not just a latter-day version of the aether.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the many ways in which the Siberian republic of Tuva is a political anomaly in Russia.
• At Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Frances Woolley uses data from the National Graduates Survey to take a look at student regret in Canadian universities. To what extent does it exist? What disciplines is it concentrated in?

[ISL] Five islands links: Malta/Pantelleria, American Samoa, Chatham Islands, Tasmania, Newfoundland

• The suggestion of Maltese academic Godfrey Baldacchino that Malta relieve its overcrowding by buying the nearby Italian island of Pantelleria has the advantage of being attention-catching. Malta Today has it.
• I wish the lawsuit of American Samoans seeking full citizenship in the United States all possible success. NBC News reports.
• Atlas Obscura takes a look at the distinctive history and culture of the Moriori of the Chatham Islands.
• Tasmania turns out to be a hugely popular destination for tourists from China. Bloomberg reports.
• The Newfoundland government’s program of relocating marginal settlements remains hugely controversial. CBC reports.