[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Architectuul looks back at some highlights from 2019.
• Bad Astronomy looks at the gas cloud, red and green, of RCW 120.
• Crooked Timber looks at the dynamics of identity politics, here.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a NASA statement about the importance of understanding dust dynamics in other solar systems to find Earth analogues.
• Far Outliers looks at the problems pacifying the Chesapeake Bay area in 1813, here.
• Gizmodo looks at the most popular Wikipedia articles for the year 2019.
• io9 shares a video of images from a 1995 Akira cyberpunk computer game that never got finished.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the United States tried to “civilize” the Inupiat of Alaska by giving them reindeer herds.
• Language Hat links to an online atlas of Scots dialects.
• Language Log reports on a 12th century Sanskrit inscription that testifies to the presence of Muslims in Bengal at that point.
• Marginal Revolution notes how much Tuvalu depends on revenue from its .tv Internet domain.
• Drew Rowsome looks at the Duncan Ralston horror novel Salvage, set in small-town Canada.
• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at the strong relationship between wealth and life expectancy in France.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that, in a hypothetical supernova, all life on an Earth-like planet would be boiled alive by neutrinos.
• Strange Maps links to a graphic interface that translates a word into all the languages of Europe.
• Understanding Society looks at the structures of high-reliability organizations.
• Window on Eurasia shares a suggestion that Homer Simpson is actually the US’ version of Russia’s Ivan the Fool.

[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.

[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: 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.

[MUSIC] Five music links: music videos, Yes Yes Y’All, 1970s Britain, New Caledonia, immigration

• Noisey interviews Ryann Donnelly on the importance of the music video as a sexually revolutionary art form.
• NOW Toronto celebrates the tenth anniversary of queer Caribbean dance party Yes Yes Y’All.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how, in 1970s Britain, pop music was often anything but apolitical.
• The Conversation shared this article taking a look at the important role of protest music among the independence camp in New Caledonia.
• At Inter Press Service, A.D. Mackenzie wrote about an interesting exhibit at the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris on the contributions made by immigrants to popular music in Britain and France from the 1960s to the 1980s.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes new evidence that the Pathfinder probe landed, on Mars, on the shores of an ancient sea.
• The Crux reports on tholins, the organic chemicals that are possible predecessors to life, now found in abundance throughout the outer Solar System.
• D-Brief reports on the hard work that has demonstrated some meteorites which recently fell in Turkey trace their origins to Vesta.
• Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog explores sociologist Eric Klinenberg’s concept of social infrastructure, the public spaces we use.
• Far Outliers reports on a Honolulu bus announcement in Yapese, a Micronesian language spoken by immigrants in Hawai’i.
• JSTOR Daily considers the import of the autobiography of Catherine the Great.
• Language Hat reports, with skepticism, on the idea of “f” and “v” as sounds being products of the post-Neolithic technological revolution.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen is critical of the idea of limiting the number of children one has in a time of climate change.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reflects on death, close at hand and in New Zealand.
• Strange Company reports on the mysterious disappearance, somewhere in Anatolia, of American cyclist Frank Lenz in 1892, and its wider consequences.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel identifies five types of cosmic events capable of triggering mass extinctions on Earth.
• Towleroad reports on the frustration of many J.K. Rowling fans with the author’s continuing identification of queer histories for characters that are never made explicit in books or movies.
• Window on Eurasia has a skeptical report about a Russian government plan to recruit Russophones in neighbouring countries as immigrants.
• Arnold Zwicky explores themes of shipwrecks and of being shipwrecked.

[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.

[DM] Some news links: public art, history, marriage, diaspora, assimilation

Some more population-related links popped up over the past week.

• CBC Toronto reported on this year’s iteration of Winter Stations. A public art festival held on the Lake Ontario shorefront in the east-end Toronto neighbourhood of The Beaches, Winter Stations this year will be based around the theme of migration.
• JSTOR Daily noted 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. With hundreds of thousands of interracial marriages of serving members of the American military to Asian women, there was simply no domestic constituency in the United States
• Ozy reported on how Dayton, Ohio, has managed to thrive in integrating its immigrant populations.
• Amro Ali, writing at Open Democracy, makes a case for the emergence of Berlin as a capital for Arab exiles fleeing the Middle East and North America in the aftermath of the failure of the Arab revolutions. The analogy he strikes to Paris in the 1970s, a city that offered similar shelter to Latin American refugees at that time, resonates.
• Alex Boyd at The Island Review details, with prose and photos, his visit to the isolated islands of St. Kilda, inhabited from prehistoric times but abandoned in 1930.
• VICE looks at the plight of people who, as convicted criminals, were deported to the Tonga where they held citizenship. How do they live in a homeland they may have no experience of? The relative lack of opportunity in Tonga that drove their family’s earlier migration in the first place is a major challenge.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, in many post-Soviet countries including the Baltic States and Ukraine, ethnic Russians are assimilating into local majority ethnic groups. (The examples of the industrial Donbas and Crimea, I would suggest, are exceptional. In the case of the Donbas, 2014 might well have been the latest point at which a pro-Russian separatist movement was possible.)

[ISL] Five #islands links: Iles-de-la-Madeleine, St. Kilda, Heligoland, Rapa Nui, Tonga

• Le Devoir took a look at the importance of the seal hunt for the Iles-de-la-Madeleine.
• Alex Boyd at The Island Review details, with prose and photos, his visit to the now-deserted island of St. Kilda.
• The Economist took a look at the German North Sea island of Heligoland.
• Orlando Milesi writes at the Inter Press Service about the threats posed by climate changes to the iconic statues and marine resources of Rapa Nui.
• VICE looks at the plight of people who, as convicted criminals, were deported to the Tonga where they held citizenship. How do they live in a homeland they may have no experience of?

[ISL] Five islands links: #PEI, Tonga, Greenland, Montréal, Brexit

• CBC Prince Edward Island reports on a poster showing the hundred largest islands in the world. (PEI is #96.)
• A broken undersea cable has disrupted Internet service throughout the Kingdom of Tonga, Motherboard reports.
• The melting of ice is southwestern Greenland is accelerating, CBC reports.
• CityLab notes controversy in Montréal regarding plans to redesign the insular Parc-Jean-Drapeau.
• Al Jazeera looks at the problems facing the inhabitants of the United Kingdom’s overseas territories, almost all islands, faced with Brexit.