[CAT] Seven #caturday links: Lil Bub, Pallas cats, Smudge, adoptions, expressions

• This Wired obituary for Lil Bub, arguing that the time for the Internet to be a place fo whimsy is over, does make me sad.
• Norwegian forest cats look amazing! The Dockyards has photos.
• The Pallas cats newly in the Calgary Zoo are, rightfully, becoming big hits. Cottage Life has more.
• Ottawa cat Smudge, already a meme hit, has become a celebrity. CBC Ottawa has more.
• Unsurprisingly, cats bond with their owners in the same sort of way as dogs and even human infants. More here.
• Happily, record numbers of cats are being adopted from shelters, given new homes. Global News reports.
• Some few people are apparently good are deciphering the expressions of cats, 15% of the total in one study sample. VICE reports.

[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.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that the galaxy’s stores of star-forming gas are running low, here.
• Centauri Dreams notes the next generation of gravitational wave detectors could detect exoplanets, massive worlds orbiting binary white dwarfs.
• The Crux reports on what is known about Homo naledi.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the risks of social isolation.
• Far Outliers reports on three enclaves of Arab culture encountered by early Western explorers in 19th century East Africa.
• Gizmodo notes the steady progress made by LightSail 2 in its travel around the world.
• The Island Review shares the Phillip Miller poem “Biennale”, inspired by Venice.
• Marginal Revolution looks at how the Norwegian Arctic island of Svalbard works without border controls.
• The NYR Daily notes that while America is not Rome, it thinks it is.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains some oddities of Higgs bosons.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at how the Kyshtym nuclear disaster occurred.
• Window on Eurasia notes that 5% of Russian Orthodox parishes in Ukraine have defected so far to the Ukrainian church.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell applies information and management theory to Brexit.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at the extreme millisecond pulsar IGR J17062−6143.
• Centauri Dreams looks at a proposal to intercept objects of extrasolar origin like ‘Oumuamua.
• The Crux looks at how researchers are discovering traces of lost hominid populations in the DNA of contemporary humans.
• D-Brief notes a crowdsourcing of a search for intermediate-mass black holes.
• Gizmodo notes the impending production of a new working Commodore 64 clone.
• The Island Review notes people of the Norway island of Sommarøy wish to make their island, home to the midnight sun, a #TimeFreeZone.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the art that has been produced in the era of digital addiction.
• Language Log looks at how, in Iran, the word “Eastoxification” has entered into usage alongside the older “Westoxification.”
• Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money looks at the many likely failings of a Corbyn foreign policy for the United Kingdom.
• The LRB Blog notes that opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu has been re-elected as mayor of Istanbul.
• The Map Room Blog links to various maps of the Moon.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper looking at markets in Lagos, suggesting they are self-regulating to some degree.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains when the earliest sunrise and latest sunset of the year is, and why.
• Towleroad shares an interview with Jack Baker and Mike McConnell, a same-sex couple married for nearly a half-century.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the open approach of the Russian Federation to Russian diasporids is not extended to diasporas of its minority groups, particularly to Muslim ones like Circassians and Tatars.
• Arnold Zwicky considers some Pride fashion, with and without rainbows.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Tromsø, Marseilles, Brampton, Harbin

• The different proposals for the future of McGill College Avenue in Montréal sound very interesting. Global News reports.
• Ozy reports on how Tromsø, largest city in Arctic Norway, has found new energy thanks to tourism.
• Roads and Kingdoms has some tips for visitors to the French Mediterranean city of Marseilles.
• Sean Marshall examines the question of why property taxes in the Ontario city of Brampton are so high. Can anything be done about them?
• Guardian Cities notes how the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin, like much of China’s old rest belt, is facing stagnant economic growth.

[URBAN NOTE] Six city links: Detroit, Oslo, Cox’s Bazar, Ho Chi Minh City, Shenzhen, Tokyo

• CityLab notes a new black-owned food coop in Detroit.
• CityLab notes the cool new designs of a new Oslo subway station.
• Al Jazeera notes the vulnerability of Cox’s Bazar, the Bangladesh city that is the heart of the Rohingya refugee settlements, to climate change.
• Guardian Cities notes how rapid redevelopment is devastating the architectural heritage of Ho Chi Minh City.
• This Culture Trip article looks at how, among other things, copying foreign technology helped make Shenzhen a global tech hub.
• Tokyo is offering subway users free food if they opt to travel on the subway outside of peak times, CityLab notes.

[ISL] Five links on islands: maps of absent islands, Lofoten, Palau, Iceland, Hawaii

• Greg Miller at National Geographic gathers together vintage maps showing islands that, for whatever reason, simply never existed.
• Roads and Kingdom tells the story of Bjorn Nilsen, the only mailman of the Lofoten Islands of Norway.
• Marginal Revolution notes the exceptional importance of baseball, not just as a sport but as an organizational principle, in the Pacific island country of Palau.
• Iceland, experiencing a tourism boom, is spending a billion dollars on refitting its national airport to accommodate the influx. Bloomberg reports.
• Hawaii Public Radio notes a Hawaiian protestor of Mauna Kea astronomical expansion, Kaho’okahi Kanuha, who is demanding a trial in the Hawaiian language.

[NEWS] Three links about technology and environment: lithium in Chile, Norway oil, CO2 into stone

• The intricacies of law in Chile are complicating the exploitation of the country’s vast lithium reserves. Bloomberg reports.
• Norway is faced with the question of how, or even if, it can ethically exploit its hydrocarbon fuel reserves. Bloomberg reports.
• Can the transformation of carbon dioxide from the air into carbon-neutral stone be an answer to climate change? Quartz reports.

[ISL] Six links on islands, from contested geopolitics to environmental changes to Villiers Island

• In Toronto, the new Port Lands plan imagines a new island, Villiers, at the mouth of the Don.
• Brexit means, among other thing, that the EU is no longer supporting the UK on the Chagos. The Economist reports.
• VICE notes that people on Mauritius fear extensive fish farming will also boost the shark population offshore.
• The Independent notes that tides and currents have created a new sand bar-cum-island more than 1 km long off of North Carolina, Shelly Island.
• The National Post notes that sub-Arctic Vardo Island, in Norway, has moved on from its fisheries to become a NATO outpost set to watch Russia.
• Carmela Fonbuena reports for The Guardian from Thitu Island, a Filipino-occupied island uncomfortably near a Chinese base in the contested South China Sea.

[URBAN NOTE] “Norway’s sailor king: Why Harald V has been sleeping on a yacht moored on Toronto’s waterfront”

Joe O’Connor of the National Post reveals that the Norwegian king is spending his time in Toronto, on the Lake Ontario shorefront.

His Majesty King Harald V of Norway was sitting at the back of his sailboat, munching on a green apple, reflecting upon the day of sailing that had just been. A day that was not “good,” according to the king. It was not good because the king, a sailor since age two, a three-time Olympian and the skipper of the Sira, a classic eight-metre sloop that his father, King Olav V, had built in 1938, thrives on competition.

Even today, the 79-year-old King Harald wants to win. But on a breezy Wednesday afternoon on Lake Ontario the King and his crew of Norwegians, whom he has been racing with since 1987, did not win. They came ninth out of 12 boats. The dismal showing dropped them to second place overall in the race for the Sira Cup — a coveted international prize that the king’s father donated to the international sailing community in 1983 — that concludes here Saturday.

“I’ve raced all my life,” says the king, who last won the Cup in 2008. “You can’t stop playing, you know? The first time I was on this boat I was two years old. For me, with sailing, it’s about the competition. The wind — the weather — it doesn’t make any difference who you are, before the wind.”

Norway’s sailor king doesn’t look or act like one might imagine a monarch would. On his green-hulled boat with the wooden deck, with his crew sitting in a nearby boat enjoying a post-race beer at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club on the Toronto Islands, the king cut the figure of a kindly grandfather (he has six grandchildren).

He was dressed casually: sneakers, white socks, shorts and a matching T-shirt. He crunched happily on his apple, consuming every morsel, including the core, before politely removing his sunglasses to reveal light blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled.