[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the findings that the LISA Pathfinder satellite was impacted by hypervelocity comet fragments.
• Centauri Dreams reports on what we have learned about interstellar comet Borisov.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the ESA’s Matisse instrument, capable of detecting nanodiamonds orbiting distant stars.
• Gizmodo reports a new study of the great auk, now extinct, suggesting that humans were wholly responsible for this extinction with their hunting.
• The Island Review links to articles noting the existential vulnerability of islands like Venice and Orkney to climate change.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of Tucker Carlson–perhaps not believably retracted by him–to be supporting Russia versus Ukraine.
• Language Hat reports on the new Indigemoji, emoji created to reflect the culture and knowledge of Aboriginal groups in Australia.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes one of the sad consequences of the American president being a liar.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the optimism of the spending plans of Labour in the UK, a revived Keynesianism.
• Marginal Revolution notes the exceptional cost of apartments built for homeless people in San Francisco.
• Strange Maps looks at some remarkable gravity anomalies in parts of the US Midwest.
• Towleroad notes the support of Jamie Lee Curtis for outing LGBTQ people who are homophobic politicians.
• Understanding Society looks at organizations from the perspective of them as open systems.
• Whatever’s John Scalzi gives a generally positive review of the Pixel 4.
• Arnold Zwicky notes the irony of sex pills at an outpost of British discount chain Poundland.

[ISL] Five #islands links: St. Vincent, Orkneys, Hong Kong, Kiribati, Manus

• The Inter Press Service reports on efforts to keep the fisheries of St. Vincent active, despite climate change.
• This Guardian report on the sheer determination of the librarians of the Orkneys to service their community, even in the face of giant waves, is inspiring.
• I am decidedly impressed by the scope of the Hong Kong plan to build a vast new artificial island. The Guardian reports.
• This Inter Press Service report about how the stigma of leprosy in Kiribati prevents treatment is sad, and recounts a familiar phenomenon.
• That Behrouz Boochani was able to write an award-winning book on Whatsapp while imprisoned in the Australian camp on Manus island is an inspiring story that should never have been. CBC’s As It Happens reports.

[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.

[ISL] Five islands links: Machias Seal, Newfoundland and Labrador, Orkneys, Haiti

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• Global News outlines the state of the Machias Seal island territorial dispute between Canada and the United States.
• Faced with mounting costs owing to an aging and dispersed population, is Newfoundland and Labrador headed for bankruptcy? What would happen then? The National Post reports.
• The selection of names of beers from the new brewery of Dildo, NL, has been undertaken with great care. Global News reports.
• The Island Review shares an extract from the new book by Robin Noble about the Orkneys, Sagas of Salt and Stone. http://theislandreview.com/content/sagas-of-salt-and-stone-orkney-unwrapped-robin-noble-extract
• Ayanna Legros makes a compelling argument for the recognition of Haiti and Haitians as not being somehow foreign to their region, but rather for including them in Latin America.

[LINK] “Remote, oil-rich Shetland elbows way into Scotland’s independence vote”

Reuters’ Sarah Young writes about how Scotland’s Shetland Islands–a small archipelago northeast of the Scottish mainland–are trying to take advantage of Scottish constitutional jockeying.

The three major Scottish archipelagoes in question–the Shetlands and the Orkneys to the northeast, the Western Isles to the west–are, to my limited knowledge, somewhat culturally distinct from the Scottish mainland. The Shetlands and the Orkneys have their Nordic links, while the Western Isles are the strongest redoubt of Scots Gaelic in the world.

Watching this.

Twelve hours by ferry from the Scottish mainland, hundreds of miles from Edinburgh and closer to Oslo than London, the windswept Shetland islands have their own aspirations about Scottish independence.

Some of the 23,000 inhabitants even want their own.

Many Shetlanders see the September 18 vote on whether Scotland should end the 307-year-old union with England as an opportunity to gain control over local services and a share of revenues from the oil pumped from the North Sea.

“The oil belongs to us. We don’t have to argue about that. It is ours,” said Shetlander Hazel Mackenzie, 43, who works in the livestock auction house in Shetland’s main town of Lerwick.

“If we could have all the revenue from all the oil then we could probably be very self-sufficient.”

[. . .]

As the Scottish independence vote nears, Shetland’s council has joined forces with two other island councils, Orkney and the Western Isles, to ask for greater control of local services and new fiscal arrangements to enable them to benefit from the oil, fisheries and renewable energy resources surrounding them.

At stake for the Scottish government could be its share of the 7 billion pounds or so of annual oil production taxes which Edinburgh wants in the event of a “Yes” vote for independence.

For many on Shetland, where the blue and white Nordic-style flag flutters from masts amongst the peat hills and isolated coves, a sense of being a Shetlander comes ahead of any Scottish, British or, given history, even Norwegian identity.

In Lerwick, where seals wait in the harbour to greet the arrival of the next fishing boat, some islanders see the result of the Scottish referendum as irrelevant.

“Why would we believe in independence if all it means is that powers move from London to Edinburgh? No, we want to move an awful lot further than that,” said Tavish Scott, a Liberal Democrat who is Shetland representative in the devolved Scottish parliament in Edinburgh, dominated by the Scottish National Party.