[BLOG] Five NYR Daily links (@nyrdaily)

• Claire Messud writes at the NYR Daily about two art exhibits concerned with borders.
• Caitlin Chandler writes at the NYR Daily about the state of the experiment of Germany with mass reception and integration of refugees.
• The NYR Daily explores the modern Russian history of state-sponsored murder outside of its frontiers.
• Moroccan writer Hisham Aldi writes at NYR Daily about his relationship with Paul Bowles.
• The NYR Daily reports on a remarkable exhibit at the Barbican in London of notable nightclubs in 20th century culture.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Charlie Stross at Antipope shares an essay he recently presented on artificial intelligence and its challenges for us.
• P. Kerim Friedman writes at {anthro}dendum about the birth of the tea ceremony in the Taiwan of the 1970s.
• Anthropology net reports on a cave painting nearly 44 thousand years old in Indonesia depicting a hunting story.
• Architectuul looks at some temporary community gardens in London.
• Bad Astronomy reports on the weird history of asteroid Ryugu.
• The Buzz talks about the most popular titles borrowed from the Toronto Public Library in 2019.
• Caitlin Kelly talks at the Broadside Blog about her particular love of radio.
• Centauri Dreams talks about the role of amateur astronomers in searching for exoplanets, starting with LHS 1140 b.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber looks at what is behind the rhetoric of “virtue signalling”.
• Dangerous Minds shares concert performance from Nirvana filmed the night before the release of Nevermind.
• Bruce Dorminey notes new evidence that, even before the Chixculub impact, the late Cretaceous Earth was staggering under environmental pressures.
• Myron Strong at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about how people of African descent in the US deal with the legacies of slavery in higher education.
• Far Outliers reports on the plans in 1945 for an invasion of Japan by the US.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing gathers together a collection of the author’s best writings there.
• Gizmodo notes the immensity of the supermassive black hole, some 40 billion solar masses, at the heart of galaxy Holm 15A 700 million light-years away.
• Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res writes about the issue of how Wichita is to organize its civic politics.
• io9 argues that the 2010s were a decade where the culture of the spoiler became key.
• The Island Review points readers to the podcast Mother’s Blood, Sister’s Songs, an exploration of the links between Ireland and Iceland.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of the lawyer of the killer of a mob boss that the QAnon conspiracy inspired his actions. This strikes me as terribly dangerous.
• JSTOR Daily looks at a study examining scholarly retractions.
• Language Hat shares an amusing cartoon illustrating the relationships of the dialects of Arabic.
• Language Log lists ten top new words in the Japanese language.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the dissipation of American diplomacy by Trump.
• The LRB Blog looks at the many problems in Sparta, Greece, with accommodating refugees, for everyone concerned.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting the decline of the one-child policy in China has diminished child trafficking, among other crimes.
• Sean Marshall, looking at transit in Brampton, argues that transit users need more protection from road traffic.
• Russell Darnley shares excerpts from essays he wrote about the involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War.
• Peter Watts talks about his recent visit to a con in Sofia, Bulgaria, and about the apocalypse, here.
• The NYR Daily looks at the corporatization of the funeral industry, here.
• Diane Duane writes, from her own personal history with Star Trek, about how one can be a writer who ends up writing for a media franchise.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the job of tasting, and rating, different cuts of lamb.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at a nondescript observatory in the Mojave desert of California that maps the asteroids of the solar system.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Eduardo Chavarin about, among other things, Tijuana.
• Drew Rowsome loves the SpongeBob musical.
• Peter Rukavina announces that Charlottetown has its first public fast charger for electric vehicles.
• The Russian Demographics Blog considers the impact of space medicine, here.
• The Signal reports on how the Library of Congress is making its internet archives more readily available, here.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers how the incredibly isolated galaxy MCG+01-02-015 will decay almost to nothing over almost uncountable eons.
• Strange Company reports on the trial and execution of Christopher Slaughterford for murder. Was there even a crime?
• Strange Maps shares a Coudenhove-Kalergi map imagining the division of the world into five superstates.
• Understanding Society considers entertainment as a valuable thing, here.
• Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine announces his new book, Où va l’argent des pauvres?
• John Scalzi at Whatever looks at how some mailed bread triggered a security alert, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports on the massive amount of remittances sent to Tajikistan by migrant workers, here.
• Arnold Zwicky notes a bizarre no-penguins sign for sale on Amazon.

[URBAN NOTE] Six Toronto links

• The Pilot, in Yorkville, celebrates its 75th anniversary as a venue. Global News reports.
• Some immigrant businesspeople recently bought an old Toronto Hydro building in the north of the city as a shelter for immigrants. Global News reports.
• The backlash against the proposed condo tower at Yonge and Eglinton branded by Pharrell Williams has been swift. blogTO reports.
• Urban Toronto notes that a 13-story mixed-use building has been proposed for 888 Dupont Street, at the corner of Dupont and Ossington.
• A TV crew in North York last week cancelled its shoot in North York, near the site of last year’s ramming attack on Yonge Street. CTV News reports.
• A poster on r/Toronto noted last week the six-year anniversary of the admission of then-mayor Rob Ford that he smoked crack.

[NEWS] Thirteen #cdnpoli links for #elxn43

• CTV News notes that election day is here in Canada.
• CTV News shares a list of answers to frequently asked questions about #elxn43 requirements.
• Philippe Fournier at MacLean’s notes that #elxn43 is shaping to be perhaps the most uncertain federal election in Canada since 1979, at least.
• Kai Cheng Thom at Daily Xtra addresses the despair of a voter wondering if they should vote at all. Even in dark times, there must be some room for hope, for creative responses.
• Andrew Coyne at the National Post points out the obvious, that Canadians should not feel smug about dysfunction in the US and Britain.
• Chris Selley at the National Post argues against electoral reform.
• CBC shares stories of Syrian refugees, now citizens, voting for the first time in #elxn43.
• The diffusion of extremist sentiments in Canada in the past few years is a real concern. NOW Toronto has it.
• This CBC opinion suggests that expatriates from Canada, non-resident in the country, should not have a right to vote.
• Andrew Scheer, once notable for his vocal support for Brexit, is now much quieter about the issue. CBC reports.
• Peter Henderson at NOW Toronto argues that Ed the Sock has become the voice of a responsible conservatism.
• The claims of Andrew Scheer that the political party that wins the most seats gets to form the government in the Canadian system are obviously wrong. Global News has it.
• Who, exactly, forms the middle class in Canada, that demographic that Trudeau and Scheer have been claiming to address? CBC reports.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Adam Fish at anthro{dendum} shares a new take on the atmosphere, as a common good.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a photo of Earth taken from a hundred million kilometres away by the OSIRIS-REx probe.
• The Crux tells the story of how the first exoplanets were found.
• D-Brief notes that life could be possible on a planet orbiting a supermassive black hole, assuming it could deal with the blueshifting.
• io9 looks at the latest bold move of Archie Comics.
• JSTOR Daily explores cleaning stations, where small fish clean larger ones.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the role China seeks to play in a remade international order.
• The Map Room Blog looks at the new upcoming national atlas of Estonia.
• Marginal Revolution touches on the great ambition of Louis XIV for a global empire.
• Steve Baker of The Numerati shares photos from his recent trip to Spain.
• Anya Schiffrin at the NRY Daily explains how American journalist Varian Fry helped her family, and others, escape the Nazis.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the classic movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map looking at the barriers put up by the high-income world to people moving from outside.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel answers the complex question of how, exactly, the density of a black hole can be measured.
• John Scalzi at Whatever reviews Gemini Man. Was the high frame rate worth it?
• Window on Eurasia notes the deep hostility of Tuvins towards a large Russian population in Tuva.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the existential question of self-aware cartoon characters.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at Westerlund-1, a massive star cluster with many bright stars in our galaxy.
• Centauri Dreams notes a finding that giant planets like Jupiter are less likely to be found around Sun-like stars.
• D-Brief notes how, in a time of climate change, birds migrated between Canada and the equator.
• Bruce Dorminey lists five overlooked facts about the Apollo 11 mission.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that the US House of Representatives has approved the creation of a US Space Corps analogous to the Marines.
• JSTOR Daily considers tactics to cure groupthink.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, looking at the experience of Hong Kong, observes how closely economic freedoms depend on political freedom and legitimacy.
• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog explains his rationale for calculating that the Apollo project, in 2019 dollars, cost more than $US 700 billion.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the star R136a1, a star in the 30 Doradus cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud that is the most massive star known to exist.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Circassians in Syria find it very difficult to seek refuge in their ancestral lands in the North Caucasus.
• Arnold Zwicky looks, in occasionally NSFW detail, at the importance of June the 16th for him as a date.

[DM] Some links: immigration, cities, small towns, French Canada, Eurasia, China, Brexit, music

Another links post is up over at Demography Matters!

• Skepticism about immigration in many traditional receiving countries appeared. Frances Woolley at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative took issue with the argument of Andray Domise after an EKOS poll, that Canadians would not know much about the nature of migration flows. The Conversation observed how the rise of Vox in Spain means that country’s language on immigration is set to change towards greater skepticism. Elsewhere, the SCMP called on South Korea, facing pronounced population aging and workforce shrinkages, to become more open to immigrants and minorities.
• Cities facing challenges were a recurring theme. This Irish Examiner article, part of a series, considers how the Republic of Ireland’s second city of Cork can best break free from the dominance of Dublin to develop its own potential. Also on Ireland, the NYR Daily looked at how Brexit and a hardened border will hit the Northern Ireland city of Derry, with its Catholic majority and its location neighbouring the Republic. CityLab reported on black migration patterns in different American cities, noting gains in the South, is fascinating. As for the threat of Donald Trump to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities in the United States has widely noted., at least one observer noted that sending undocumented immigrants to cities where they could connect with fellow diasporids and build secure lives might actually be a good solution.
• Declining rural settlements featured, too. The Guardian reported from the Castilian town of Sayatón, a disappearing town that has become a symbol of depopulating rural Spain. Global News, similarly, noted that the loss by the small Nova Scotia community of Blacks Harbour of its only grocery store presaged perhaps a future of decline. VICE, meanwhile, reported on the very relevant story about how resettled refugees helped revive the Italian town of Sutera, on the island of Sicily. (The Guardian, to its credit, mentioned how immigration played a role in keeping up numbers in Sayatón, though the second generation did not stay.)
• The position of Francophone minorities in Canada, meanwhile, also popped up at me.
• This TVO article about the forces facing the École secondaire Confédération in the southern Ontario city of Welland is a fascinating study of minority dynamics. A brief article touches on efforts in the Franco-Manitoban community of Winnipeg to provide temporary shelter for new Francophone immigrants. CBC reported, meanwhile, that Francophones in New Brunswick continue to face pressure, with their numbers despite overall population growth and with Francophones being much more likely to be bilingual than Anglophones. This last fact is a particularly notable issue inasmuch as New Brunswick’s Francophones constitute the second-largest Francophone community outside of Québec, and have traditionally been more resistant to language shift and assimilation than the more numerous Franco-Ontarians.
• The Eurasia-focused links blog Window on Eurasia pointed to some issues. It considered if the new Russian policy of handing out passports to residents of the Donbas republics is related to a policy of trying to bolster the population of Russia, whether fictively or actually. (I’m skeptical there will be much change, myself: There has already been quite a lot of emigration from the Donbas republics to various destinations, and I suspect that more would see the sort of wholesale migration of entire families, even communities, that would add to Russian numbers but not necessarily alter population pyramids.) Migration within Russia was also touched upon, whether on in an attempt to explain the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s or in the argument of one Muslim community leader in the northern boomtown of Norilsk that a quarter of that city’s population is of Muslim background.
• Eurasian concerns also featured. The Russian Demographics Blog observed, correctly, that one reason why Ukrainians are more prone to emigration to Europe and points beyond than Russians is that Ukraine has long been included, in whole or in part, in various European states. As well, Marginal Revolution linked to a paper that examines the positions of Jews in the economies of eastern Europe as a “rural service minority”, and observed the substantial demographic shifts occurring in Kazakhstan since independence, with Kazakh majorities appearing throughout the country.
• JSTOR Daily considered if, between the drop in fertility that developing China was likely to undergo anyway and the continuing resentments of the Chinese, the one-child policy was worth it. I’m inclined to say no, based not least on the evidence of the rapid fall in East Asian fertility outside of China.
• What will Britons living in the EU-27 do, faced with Brexit? Bloomberg noted the challenge of British immigrant workers in Luxembourg faced with Brexit, as Politico Europe did their counterparts living in Brussels.
• Finally, at the 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.

[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.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Québec City, Fort Lee, Vancouver, Paris and Saint-Denis, Sutera

• Le Devoir wonders if excessive tourism will make Vieux-Québec unlivable for locals.
• Sam Sklar at CityLab, native of the New Jersey community of Fort Lee, wonders when it will burst out from the shadow of New York City.
• The question of how Vancouver in the era of legalization will celebrate 4/20 remains actively contested. The National Post reports.
• CityLab reports on how the 2024 Paris Olympics may help regenerate Saint-Denis.
• The story about how resettled refugees helepd revive the Italian town of Sutera, on the island of Sicily, needs to be better-known. VICE reports.

[ISL] Five #PEI links: Biovectra, Syrian refugees, Crapaud vs Kinkora, telehealth, Jed Mackay

• The nearly forty million dollars of federal government investment promised for PEI biotech firm Biovectra is a substantial investment indeed. The Guardian reports.
• The Guardian reports the reunification of a family of Syrian refugees on the Island.
• Peter Rukavina notes and explains the significant differences, cultural and religious, between the neighbouring PEI communities of Crapaud and Kinkora.
• The western PEI community of Alberton, faced with doctor shortages, has been experimenting with telehealth. The National Post explains.
• CBC Prince Edward Island reports on Jed Mackay, an Islander currently writing for Marvel’s Daredevil.