[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.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Architectuul looks at the photos and the architecture of Carlo Mollino, all curves.
• Centauri Dreams notes a remarkable piece of detective work, identifying candidate stars responsible for a close encounter that threw a planet of star HD 109606 into a distant eccentric orbit.
• John Holbo at Crooked Timber takes a second look at the “Historovox” concept raised by Corey Robin.
• D-Brief notes a study suggesting planets in close orbit of red dwarf stars could experience sufficient tectonic stresses from their star to remain geologically active.
• Far Outliers looks at how and why, in Calcutta, the poor were kept physically close to the rich.
• Gizmodo reports on a massive nuclear superbubble thousands of light-years wide in the heart of galaxy NGC 3079, with photos.
• Hornet Stories shares a shortlist of essential books by LGBTQ writers from the United Kingdom.
• JSTOR Daily notes how architect Mary Colter came up with ingenious buildings for the Grand Canyon that fit this unique environment.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money shares a compelling argument against the Electoral College.
• Marginal Revolution notes that Mormonism stands out among American religions as enjoying continued, if decelerating, growth.
• The NYR Daily considers if there is a point at which empathy becomes banal.
• Corey S. Powell writes at Out There about how the Spirit and Opportunity rovers were deeply meaningful surrogates for human minds on Mars.
• Justin Petrone at north! argues that MTV’s The Real World set a precedent for individual people to be self-curating and self-creating their representations.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the historic discovery of the cosmic neutrino background, a signal formed one second after the Big Bang.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map showing the long train journey of Kim Jong-um across China to the recent summit in Hanoi.
• Towleroad notes</u. that the Donald Duck comic is going to see a lesbian character for the first time.
• Window on Eurasia notes how a new Russian governmental process of optimization is undermining many small communities in rural Russia, a picture familiar to many in Canada, too.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Colby King writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about furnace, kiln, and oven operators as recorded in the American Community Survey. What experiences do they have in common, and which separate them?
• Far Outliers reports on the work of the Indian Labourer Corps on the Western Front, collecting and recycling raw materials from the front.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing makes the case that the seeming neutrality of modern digital technologies are dissolving the established political order.
• Joe. My. God. notes a report from Andrew McCabe suggesting that Trump did not believe his own intelligence services’ reports about the range of North Korean missiles, instead believing Putin.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the interracial marriages of serving members of the US military led to the liberalization of immigration law in the United States in the 1960s.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the connections of the police in Portland, Oregon, to the alt-right.
• Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution shares a report of the discovery of English-speaking unicorns in South America that actually reveals the remarkable language skills of a new AI. Fake news, indeed.
• The NYR Daily shares a short story by Panashe Chigumadzi, “You Can’t Eat Beauty”.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw welcomes a new fluidity in Australian politics that makes the elections debatable.
• Drew Rowsome looks at the horror fiction of Justin Cronin.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel shares some of the key historical images of Pluto, from its discovery to the present.
• Window on Eurasia takes a look at the only church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church operating in Russia, in the Moscow area city of Noginsk.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell makes the point that counting on opinion pieces in journalism as a source of unbiased information is a categorical mistake.
• Arnold Zwicky looks back, on President’s Day at Berkeley, at his experiences and those of others around him at that university and in its community.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Oshawa, Philadelphia, London, Pontevedra, Pyongyang

• Matt Gurney notes at Global News though the end of GM in Oshawa should have been expected, people there are still shocked.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of ten foodstuffs in Philadelphia that help explain that city.
• The Guardian explains how London has become a European centre of tuberculosis.
• CityLab suggests that pedestrianization helped the Spanish city of Pontevedra become very child-friendly.
• Guardian Cities shares some photos from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

[NEWS] Some international links: Koreas, eastern Europe, Brazil, Ireland and England, Canada

• This sad SCMP article takes a look at the struggles of North Korean defectors on arriving in South Korea, a competitive society with its own values alien to them.
• This Open Democracy book review asks what went wrong in eastern Europe, that illiberalism became so popular. (Of note, I think, is the suggestion that Western definitions have changed substantially since the 1990s.)
• The rise, in the person of Bolsonario, of fascism in Brazil is the subject of this stirring Open Democracy feature.
• This New York Times opinion piece by an Irish woman living in England touches upon the ways in which Brexiteers’ blithe dismissal of Ireland and Irish needs are starting to make many 21st century Irish angry with their eastern neighbour, again.
• MacLean’s notes how the legalization of marijuana in Canada came about as a consequence of the recognition by Justin Trudeau of the unfairness of the old regime.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers nearby galaxy NGC 6744, a relatively nearby spiral galaxy that may look like the Milky Way.
• D-Brief notes the remarkable ceramic spring that gives the mantis shrimp its remarkably powerful punch.
• Far Outliers notes how the north Korean port of Hamhung was modernized in the 1930s, but also Japanized, with few legacies of its Korean past remaining.
• Joe. My. God. notes how the Trump administration plans to define being transgender out of existence. Appalling.
• Alexandra Samuel at JSTOR Daily notes the ways in which the Internet has undermined the traditions which support American political institutions. Can new traditions be made?
• Lawyers, Guns, and Money notes how the Trump’s withdrawal from the INF treaty with Russia on nuclear weapons harms American security.
• Rose Jacobs at Lingua Franca writes about ways in which derision, specifically of other nationalities, enters into English slang.
• Marginal Revolution notes that, in an article surveying the Icelandic language, a report that sales of books in Iceland have fallen by nearly half since 2010.
• The NYR Daily looks at two recent movies, one autobiographical and one fictional, looking at dads in space.
• Jason Perry at the Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest imagery of the volcanoes of Io.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the possibility that time travel might not destroy the universe via paradoxes.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that the experience of post-Soviet Estonia with its two Orthodox churches might be a model for Ukraine.

[NEWS] Five links from around the world: Montenegro, Donbas, Warmbier, IKEA in India, futures

• This Open Democracy article examines how, exactly, Montenegro could start a Third World War. (It would need help from the Great Powers, for starters.)
• Politico Europe notes that wildlife seems to thrive on the depopulated front line in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas.
• Doug Bock Clark writes at GQ about the sad story of Otto Warmbier, finding much evidence to confirm that he was not tortured but rather that he suffered a sadder fate.
• The New York Times takes a look at the first IKEA in India, still recognizably an IKEA but tailored to fit local conditions.
• Douglas Rushkoff writes at The Guardian about the blind alleys of nihilism and fear that at least some corporate futurists and transhumanists are racing into.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Halifax and Dartmouth, Winnipeg, Iqaluit, St. Petersburg, Pyongyang

• Is a mysterious chair in Dartmouth a legacy of the Halifax Explosion? Global News reports.
• Who is Googling Winnipeg, and why? Global News reports.
• The Nunavut capital of Iqaluit faces a serious prospect of water shortages, as its water source Lake Geraldine cannot support growing consumption. CBC reports.
• Guardian Cities reports that the old Tsarist-era palaces of St. Petersburg face a grim future unless someone–artists, say–can rehabilitate these edifices.
• Guardian Cities shares photos of the subway stations of Pyongyang.

[META] Eight new news sources

It’s time to add new links and news sources to my blogroll, ones reflecting my interests.

• CityLab is a great news source looking at different urban phenomena within individual cities and uniting cities. CityLab hosts Sam Weber’s article looking at the many problems facing North Korean defectors as they try to assimilate into ultra-sophisticated Seoul.
• The Conversation CA hosts Stephen Scherer’s article explaining the importance of sequencing the genomes of Canadian animals.
• The Discourse is a new Canadian media start-up promising in-depth coverage on Canadian issues. Before the recent Ontario election, they started a hashtag, #GTADiscourse, to see what people in the GTA underserved by the media were concerned about.
• The Guardian Cities takes a look at urban issues around the world. I liked this Mireille Silcoff article explaining the import of 1 July to the inhabitants of Montréal: It’s moving day!
• Steve Benjamins hosts Village, a new subscriber-only newsletter focusing on Toronto. I liked this article about a Seaton Village beekeeper, here.
• The venerable hard-left Canadian news site Rabble has plenty of thought-provoking articles, like Barâa Arar’s essay explaining their fear of what a Doug Ford government in Ontario might do.
• American queer magazine Them has plenty of great articles. I liked this one confirming that Tessa Thompson, Valkyrie in Thor and Janelle Monáe’s rumoured girlfriend, is out as bi.
• Toronto website and discussion forum Urban Toronto reports on a massive mural set to grace the Parkside Student Residences at Jarvis and Carlton.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait suggests that strange markings in the upper atmosphere of Venus might well be evidence of life in that relatively Earth-like environment.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly raves over Babylon Berlin.
• Centauri Dreams considers, fifty years after its publication, Clarke’s 2001.
• Crooked Timber considers Kevin Williamson in the context of conservative intellectual representation more generally.
• D-Brief considers “digisexuality”, the fusion of the digital world with sexuality. (I think we’re quite some way off, myself.)
• The Dragon’s Tales considers evidence suggesting that the agricultural revolution in ancient Anatolia was achieved without population replacement from the Fertile Crescent.
• Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the flight of Apollo 6, a flight that helped iron out problem with the Saturn V.
• The Frailest Thing’s Michael Sacasas is not impressed by the idea of the trolley problem, as something that allows for the displacement of responsibility.
• Gizmodo explains why the faces of Neanderthals were so different from the faces of modern humans.
• JSTOR Daily considers if volcano-driven climate change helped the rise of Christianity.
• Language Log considers, after Spinoza, the idea that vowels are the souls of consonants.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money engages in a bit of speculation: What would have happened had Clinton won? (Ideological gridlock, perhaps.)
• Lovesick Cyborg explores how the advent of the cheap USB memory stick allowed North Koreans to start to enjoy K-Pop.
• Russell Darnley considers the transformation of the forests of Indonesia’s Riau forest from closed canopy forest to plantations.
• The Map Room Blog shares some praise of inset maps.
• Neuroskeptic considers how ketamine may work as an anti-depressant.
• The NYR Daily considers student of death, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
• Justin Petrone of north! shares an anecdote from the Long Island coastal community of Greenport.
• Personal Reflection’s Jim Belshaw considers the iconic Benjamin Wolfe painting The Death of General Wolfe.
• The Planetary Society Blog’s Casey Dreier notes cost overruns for the James Webb Space Telescope.
• pollotenchegg maps recent trends in natural increase and decrease in Ukraine.
• Roads and Kingdoms talks about a special Hverabrauð in Iceland, baked in hot springs.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel shares his own proposal for a new Drake Equation, revised to take account of recent discoveries.
• Vintage Space considers how the American government would have responded if John Glenn had died in the course of his 1962 voyage into space.
• Window on Eurasia considers the belief among many Russians that had Beria, not Khrushchev, succeeded Stalin, the Soviet Union might have been more successful.