[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Architectuul looks at the winners of an architecture prize based in Piran, here.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes the wind emitted from one distant galaxy’s supermassive black hole is intense enough to trigger star formation in other galaxies.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber pays tribute to Jack Merritt, a young victim of the London Bridge attack who was committed to the cause of prisoner rehabilitation.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the history of French pop group Les Rita Mitsouko.
• Bruce Dorminey reports on the European Space Agency’s belief Earth-observing spacecraft are needed to track ocean acidification.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on the consensus of the Russian scientific community against human genetic engineering.
• Far Outliers reports on the first ambassador sent from the Barbary States to the United States.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the life of pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas.
• Language Log shares images of a bottle of Tibetan water, bought in Hong Kong, labeled in Tibetan script.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money rightly assigns responsibility for the terrible measles outbreak in Samoa to anti-vaxxers.
• The LRB Blog notes how tree planting is not apolitical, might even not be a good thing to do sometimes.
• Marginal Revolution reports on a paper suggesting that food tends to be better in restaurants located on streets in Manhattan, better than in restaurants located on avenues.
• Justin Petrone at north! shares an account of a trip across Estonia.
• The NYR Daily looks at the photography of Michael Jang.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw continues to report from Armidale, in Australia, shrouded in smoke from wildfires.
• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the early days of the Planetary Society, four decades ago.
• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at how centenarians in Sweden and in Denmark experience different trends in longevity.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on the accidental discovery of the microwave background left by the Big Bang in 1964.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at the increasingly poor treatment of workers by employers such as Amazon through the lens of primitive accumulation.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the small differences separating the Kazakhs from the Kyrgyz.
• Arnold Zwicky shares a dance routine, shown on television in France, against homophobia.

[ISL] Five islands links: Malta/Pantelleria, American Samoa, Chatham Islands, Tasmania, Newfoundland

• The suggestion of Maltese academic Godfrey Baldacchino that Malta relieve its overcrowding by buying the nearby Italian island of Pantelleria has the advantage of being attention-catching. Malta Today has it.
• I wish the lawsuit of American Samoans seeking full citizenship in the United States all possible success. NBC News reports.
• Atlas Obscura takes a look at the distinctive history and culture of the Moriori of the Chatham Islands.
• Tasmania turns out to be a hugely popular destination for tourists from China. Bloomberg reports.
• The Newfoundland government’s program of relocating marginal settlements remains hugely controversial. CBC reports.

[NEWS] Some Monday links

• Al Jazeera warns about the militarization of the Ukrainian state, notes the alienation of Turkish Kurds from their goverment and wonders if northern Syria will become a Turkish protectorate, wishes Arab authors could travel to the United States more readily, wonders about the impact of immigrants on Catalonian separatism, and notes Wheaton College’s issue with new federal healthcare regulations.
• Bloomberg observes the shrinkage of the American labour force, the success of the coffee crop in Vietnam, the emigration from ethnic Czechs from Ukraine to the Czech Republic, the successful retention of industry in Singapore, observes the debilitating toll of illegal fisheries off of the West African coast, and notes the call for an investigation into the treatment of the United States’ first Ebola victim.
• Bloomberg View notes that Uber can succeed only in the context of a struggling labour market, looks at the economic issues of European petrostates, notes how political concerns override fears for the Russian economy, argues British cities also need autonomy, and via Faroese fish exports notes that sanctions may not have that much effort.
• CBC notes Tanya Tagaq’s stalking by a sexually aggressive man in Winnipeg, and notes that Windsor is using cayenne peppers to deter squirrels from attacking the city’s tulips. (That last should work.)
• The Inter Press Service notes the scale of Samoan emigration, observes the negative consequences of climate change for livestock farmers in the Caribbean, looks at the drought besetting Sao Paulo, looks at an economically questionable train line in Sri Lanka, considers how the Karabakh issue makes Armenian entry into the Eurasian Union problematic, and u>observes anti-Palestinian discrimination in housing in the Jerusalem area.
• IWPR reports on growing Ukraine-related ethnic tensions in Kazakhstan and observes Georgia’s clampdown on immigration.
• Open Democracy recommends a consistent policy of European Union opening to the western Balkans, notes the plight of Copts in Egypt, looks at ethnic tensions in North Ossetia between Ossetians and Ingush, examines Basque and Corsican separatisms, fears for the future of secularism in Mali and Senegal, and considers the dire demographics of Ukraine.

[LINK] Some Friday links

I’ve a few links today.

• Michael’s Bloor-Lansdowne Blog considers the question of how safe the Bloor-Lansdowne neighbourhood is. It mostly is, and it’s better than it was a couple of years ago.
• blogTO’s Christopher Reynolds blogs about a visit to the Canadian Air & Space Museum. I’ve never been.
• James Bow writes about Moscow’s planned attempts to prevent an excess of snow by attacking the clouds.
• Centauri Dreams imagines boats on Titan and compares the composition of the atmospheres of different gas giants.
• The Dragon’s Tales Will Baird links to a study that anoxygenic photosynthetic microorganisms dominated the Earth for nearly half of its history, and also links to a report suggesting that European astronomers have found a terrestrial planet.
• Daniel Drezner is, rightly, profoundly skeptical about fears that the United States dollar will stop being the world’s leading reserve currency. Who are the competitors? More importantly, who started speculating about this?
• English Eclectic’s Paul Halsall responds to the British National Party’s recent electoral success with a reposting of Daniel DeFoe’s “The True-Born Englishman.”
• Far Outliers considers the Spanish of the Sephardic Jews driven to Salonica.
• Gideon Rachman argues, on the argument that sunlight is the best disinfectant, that putting the British National Party leader Nick Griffin on an all-party debate on the BBC was a good thing.
• pauldrye introduces us to the failed late-19th century Hawai’ian attempt to absorb Samoa into a Pacific islands state.
• Torontoist reports on an apparent lack of protesters at the first hearing surrounding the bizarre death of a bike courier on Bloor Street West.
• Towleroad informs us that some forwards-thinking people want to establish a .gay domain.
• If what Window on Eurasia suggests is accurate, the good sense in trying to use traditional communal structures to control a very dynamic and young North Caucasus escaoes me.
• zarq has provided an interesting roundup of articles and sundry on the news that Putongua is displacing Cantonese and other like tongues in the Chinese diaspora.