[CAT] Five #caturday links: Newfoundland, Australia, tracking, body language, bodies

• The rescue of cats from the Newfoundland outport of Little Bay Islands, now abandoned, was a success. Global News reports.
• Cats in Australia may be in a position to ravage vulnerable survivors of the wildfires. Wired reports.
• The Purrsong Pendant is a new fitness tracker for cats. CNET reports.
• Humans do need to be able to read the body language of cats, and not only to figure out when they are in pain. CP24 reports.
• Is anyone surprised cats might eat human corpses? Newsweek reports.

[CAT] Five #caturday links: Taylor Swift, Matsumoto, art, disease, Newfoundland

• io9 notes that Taylor Swift is co-writing a song for the new Cats movie.
• Japan Times looks at a newly translated work by Taiyu Matusomoto, Cats of the Louvre.
• CTV News reports that Vancouver cat cafe Catfe offers life drawing classes featuring its cats as models.
• D-Brief shares a list of diseases that cats can pass on to humans, and of prevention measures.
• Global News looks at the feral cats of Little Bay Islands, a Newfoundland outport community about to be abandoned. What will happen to them?

[NEWS] News from around the world: Cheetos fashion, Gaspé yaks, NL slavery, Lebanon comics, Netflix

• Oh, why not a fashion show organized around the theme of Cheetos? VICE reports.
• A farmer in the Gaspé peninsula is trying to retrieve all of his missing yaks. CBC Montreal has it.
• A Newfoundland researcher and artist is examining the relationship of the island with Atlantic slavery. Global News reports.
• Atlas Obscura takes a look at the alternative comics scene in the Middle East, centered on Lebanon.
• Vanity Fair shares an account of how Netflix tried to sell itself, and its model, to Blockbuster and failed.

[ISL] Five #islands links: Newfoundland, Komodo, South China Sea, Kiribati, Faroe Islands

• This story about a genealogical mystery newly-found in the genetics of Newfoundland is fascinating. The National Post reports.
• The island of Komodo has been closed to tourists to save the Komodo dragons from poachers. VICE reports.
• China plans to build a city under its control among the islets of the South China Sea. Business Insider reports.
• The Inter Press Service notes the spread of leprosy in Kiribati.
• JSTOR Daily explains why, for one week, the Faroe Islands are closed to tourists to better enable cleaning and repairs.

[AH] Five alternate history maps from r/imaginarymaps (#alternatehistory)

• r/imaginarymaps has a map imagining that, in the 1520s, the Kalmar Union successfully established outposts on Newfoundland. What would have happened next?
• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines that establishment, by the late 17th century, of a collection of Japanese settler states on the Pacific coast of North America.
• This map, tying into a scenario elsewhere, imagines a southern Africa largely colonized by the mid-18th century by an Iberian empire.
• What would a Britain successfully conquered by Napoleon look like? This map offers one idea.
• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a fictional city of a half-million people, Ramsay, at the location of St. Catharines in Niagara.

[ISL] Five #islands links: Newfoundland, Ireland, Novaya Zemlya, Pacific Islands, Diego Garcia

• CBC reports on a Toronto couple who found a better life in a small town in Newfoundland, Twillingate.
• The Irish Times reports on the difficulties, perceived and otherwise, surrounding the first application of Ireland to join the EEC in 1963.
• The Guardian reports on how the Russian Arctic islands of Novaya Zemlya have been facing an influx of hungry polar bears.
• This account at the NYR Daily of Oceania, an exhibit of art from the Pacific islands at the Royal Academy, makes me wish I could have seen it.
• The Inter Press Service reports on the victory of Mauritius over the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice, ordering Britain to retreat from Diego Garcia and to allow the Chagossians to return to their archipelagic home.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Indigenous links: film and TV, Mohawk, Iroquois food, Gaspésie, Beothuk

• NOW Toronto reports on the potential of Indigenous films and television shows to gain international markets, so long as they get needed funding.
• Activists seeking to promote the Mohawk language and culture have received needed government funding, Global News reports.
• CBC Montreal notes the visit of a chef from the Six Nations of the Grand River to Montréal to share Iroquois cuisine there, and more.
• A Mi’kMaq community in Gaspésie does not want to preserve the Maison Busteed, a historic house belonging to an early settler who reportedly cheated them of their land, to the dismay of some local history activists. CBC reports.
• The remains of Nonosabasut and Demasduit, two of the last of the Beothuk of Newfoundland, are going to be transfer from Scotland to a new home in Canada, at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. CBC reports.

[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.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Charlie Stross at Antipope notes</u. the many problems appearing already with 2019, starting with Brexit.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait examines the mysterious AT2018cow event. What was it?
• blogTO notes that the Ontario government seems to be preparing for a new round of amalgamation, this time involving Toronto neighbours.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about her strategies for minimizing her personal waste, including buying expensive durables.
• D-Brief shares Chang’e-4 photos taken on the far side of the Moon.
• Bruce Dorminey notes an innovative design for a steam-powered asteroid hopper.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about verstehen, the process of coming to an understanding of a subject, as demonstrated in the Arlene Stein study Unbound about trans men.
• Gizmodo looks at the remarkably complex nascent planetary system of the quarternary star system HD 98800.
• Imageo shares a visualization of the terrifyingly rapid spread of the Camp Fire.
• JSTOR Daily debunks the myth of Wilson’s unconditional support for the Fourteen Points.
• Language Hat notes a new study that claims to provide solid grounds for distinguishing dialects from languages.
• Language Log looks at what David Bowie had to say about the Internet in 1999, and how he said it.
• Christine Gordon Manley writes about her identity as a Newfoundlander.
• Marginal Revolution notes the very variable definitions of urbanization in different states of India as well as nationally.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares a few more images of Ultima Thule.
• Drew Rowsome reviews a new Toronto production of Iphegenia and the Furies.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how a fifth dimension might make the instantaneous spore drive of Discovery possible.
• Window on Eurasia links to an article examining eight misconceptions of Russians about Belarus.

[ISL] Five #islands links: Nantucket, Newfoundland, Scotland, South Goulburn, Toronto Islands

• JSTOR Daily notes</u. the unorthodox and generally unacknowledged truce struck between Nantucket Island and the British Empire in 1814, during the War of 1812.
• A visit by Anthony Bourdain had lasting effects on the culinary scene on Newfoundland. Global News reports.
• The Island Review reports on the different plans of the different islands of Scotland to commemorate the end of the First World War.
• Michael Erard at The Atlantic writes about the remarkable South Goulburn Island, an island off the coast of Australia where speakers of nine different languages co-exist in a shared passive multilingualism.
• Richard Longley wrote at NOW Toronto about the challenges faced by the Toronto Islands in the era of climate change and instability.