[URBAN NOTE] Seven city links: Innisfil, Buffalo, Ottawa, Montréal, Winnipeg, Amsterdam, Singapore

• The town of Innisfil is looking forward to some very futuristic developments. Global News reports.
• Jeremy Deaton at CityLab reports on how, buffered by the Great Lakes, Buffalo NY may end gaining from climate change.
• The Ottawa chain Bridgehead Coffee has been sold to national chain Second Cup. Global News reports.
• Many of the more eye-raising installations in the Gay Village of Montréal have since been removed. CTV News reports.
• Warming huts for homeless people in Winnipeg were torn down because the builders did not follow procedures. Global News reports.
• Open Democracy looks at innovative new public governance of the city budget in Amsterdam, here.
• Singapore, located in a well-positioned Southeast Asia and with working government, may take over from Hong Kong. Bloomberg View makes the case.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: NYC and Montréal, Thunder Bay, Rouyn-Noranda, California City …

• Thanks to John for sharing me this review, by The Points Guy, of the apparently underwhelming Amtrak Adirondack track connecting New York City and Montréal. We deserve better.
• Sean Marshall shares, among other places at TVO, an account of the complex and roundabout grid of rail and bus routes he needed to take to get from Toronto to Thunder Bay.
• Graham Isador writes for CBC Arts about how the Québec mining town of Rouyn-Noranda became host to a major music festival.
• Wired reports on the deserted streets of California City, a metropolis proposed into existence in the mid-20th century that never took off.
• Can, as Bloomberg suggests, the property reforms that made it possible for people in Singapore to have secure homes be implemented in Hong Kong?

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Sainte-Marie, Saint John, Phoenix, Paris, Singapore

• The flood-damaged community of Sainte-Marie, in the Beauce south of Québec City, may not recover from necessary demolitions of damaged and dangerous structures. CBC reports.
• Erecting a barrier at an apparently suicide-attracting bridge like the Reversing Falls Bridge in Saint John makes perfect sense to me. Global News has it.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that, happily, voters in Phoenix have voted again in support of a light rail mass transit project.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution notes that the department of Paris has continued to lose population, contrary to the experience of growth elsewhere in other similar world cities.
• CityLab makes the case for Changi Airport, in Singapore, as a world-class attraction in its own right.

[AH] Five r/imaginarymaps #alternatehistory maps: Polabians, Huguenots, Malays, Finland, Ireland

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines the survival of a Slavic people of east Germany to nation-statehood, not the extant Sorbs but the more obscure Polabians.
• Was there ever a possibility, as imagined in this r/imaginarymaps map, of a Huguenot polity forming and seceding from France?

This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a decidedly different Malay world, with a fragmented Indonesia.

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a Finland that grew sharply, to include much more of Karelia and even North Ingria.
• What would have come if, as suggested here, Northern Ireland had been repartitioned in the 1920s, most of the west and south passing to independent Ireland?

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares images of galaxy M61.
• Centauri Dreams looks at a proposal for the Solar Cruiser probe, a NASA probe that would use a solar sail.
• D-Brief notes the discovery of bacteria on coasts which manufacture dimethyl sulfide.
• Bruce Dorminey writes about some facts about the NASA X-15 rocket plane.
• The Dragon’s Tales reports on the strange nuclear accident in Nyonoksa, Russia.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the recent uncovering of the ancient Egyptian city of Heracleion, under the Mediterranean.
• Language Hat looks at 19th century standards on ancient Greek language.
• Language Log notes an ironically swapped newspaper article subhead.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the role of Tom Cotton in the recent Greenland scandal.
• Marginal Revolution glances at the relationship between China and Singapore.
• The NYR Daily looks at how the car ride played a role in the writing of Jacques Lacan.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares an index on state fragility around the world.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why Jupiter suffers so many impacts from incoming bodies.
• John Scalzi at Whatever reports on what seems to have been an enjoyable concert experience with Iron Maiden.
• Window on Eurasia reports a claim that, with regards to a border dispute, Chechnya is much more unified than Dagestan.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the Elon Musk proposal to terraform Mars by dropping nuclear weapons on the planet’s ice caps is a bad idea.
• James Bow writes about how the introduction of faeries saved his novel The Night Girl.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the storms of Jupiter.
• The Crux explains the mystery of a village in Poland that has not seen the birth of a baby boy for nearly a decade.
• D-Brief looks at the exoplanets of nearby red dwarf Gliese 1061.
• Cody Delisraty talks of Renaissance painter Fra Angelico.
• Drew Ex Machina commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares links to some papers about the Paleolithic.
• JSTOR Daily hosts an essay by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger suggesting that Internet rot might be good since it could let people start to forget the past and so move on.
• Language Hat questions whether the phrase “free to all” has really fallen out of use.
• Language Log takes a look about immigration to the United States and Emma Lazarus’ famous poem.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with the suggestion of, among other, Henry Farrell, that we are headed away from globalization towards fortress economies. Redundancy, he suggests, will be more important.
• Marginal Revolution links to a disturbing paper suggesting users of opioids use them in part for social reasons.
• The NYR Daily features an exchange on a new law in Singapore seeking to govern fake news.
• The Power and the Money features a guest post from Leticia Arroyo Abad looking at Argentina before the elections.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at a new play by Raymond Helkio examining the life of out boxer Mark Leduc.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers if we can test gravitational waves for wave-particle duality.
• Arnold Zwicky shares photos of the many flowers of Gamble Garden, in Palo Alto.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams reports on how dataset mining of K2 data revealed 18 more Earth-sized planets.
• Crooked Timber speculates on how Clarence Thomas might rule on abortion given his public rulings.
• D-Brief observes that some corals in Hawaii appear to thrive in acidic waters. Is there hope yet for coral reefs?
• Karen Sternheimer writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about how sociology and history overlap, in their subjects and in their methods.
• Far Outliers examines how the last remnants of Soviet power faded quickly around the world in 1991.
• Gizmodo looks at how an image of a rare albino panda has just been captured.
• Joe. My. God. notes how Christian fundamentalists want to make the east of Washington State into a 51st state run by Biblical law.
• JSTOR Daily notes how trees can minimize algae blooms in nearby water systems.
• Victor Mair at Language Log takes issue with problematic pop psychology regarding bilingualism in Singapore.
• Lawyers, Guns, and Money takes issue with trying to minimize court decisions like (for instance) a hypothetical overthrow of Miranda v. Arizona. (Roe v. Wade is what they are concerned with.)
• The NYR Daily looks at the short storied life of avant-garde filmmaker Barbara Rubin.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why we can never learn everything about our universe.
• Towleroad notes that downloads of the relationship app Hinge have surged after Pete Buttigieg said he met his now-husband there.
• Window on Eurasia notes that Ukraine is seeking to have the Kerch Strait separating Crimea from adjacent Russia declared an international body of water.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at what famed gay writer John Rechy is doing these days.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomy identifies the most distant globular cluster known to exist around the Milky Way Galaxy, PSO J174.0675-10.8774 some 470 thousand light-years away.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the strange ring of the Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Haumea.
• Crooked Timber looks at an ill-constructed biography of Eric Hobsbawm.
• D-Brief notes an experiment that proves antimatter obeys the same laws of quantum mechanics as regular matter, at least insofar as the double-slit experiment is concerned.
• Earther notes that life in Antarctica depends critically on the presence of penguin feces.
• Imageo looks at awesome satellite imagery of spring storms in North America.
• The Island Review interviews Irene de la Torre, a translator born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, about her experiences and thoughts on her insular experiences.
• Joe. My. God. notes a new deal between Gilead Pharmaceuticals and the American government to make low-cost PrEP available to two hundred thousand people.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which The Great Gatsby reflects the norms of the Jazz Age.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money is rightly critical of the Sam Harris suggestion that white supremacism is not an ideology of special concern, being only a fringe belief.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution solicits questions for an upcoming interview with demographer of religion Eric Kaufmann.
• Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares cute video of otters frolicking on the Singapore River.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel asks when the universe became transparent to light.
• Arnold Zwicky shares photos of his blooming flower gardens.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Kingston, Montréal, Vancouver, Shenzhen

• CBC Hamilton notes that former white supremacist leader Marc Lemire is employed by the City of Hamilton in its IT department.
• The former Kingston Penitentiary will host a music concert this September. Global News reports.
• Allison Hanes writes at the Montreal Gazette about how the status of Montréal as a metropolis has not kept the city from coming into conflict with the Québec government. As she notes, this sounds familiar to Torontonians and Ontarians.
• Have the prices in the Vancouver condo markets dropped so much that developers really need to entice buyers with supplies of avocado toast? The Toronto Star reports.
• The SCMP notes that the city of Shenzhen is moving away from the Hong Kong model of laissez-faire housing towards the planning exemplified by Singapore.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul writes</u about the pioneering women architects of the United Kingdom.
• Bad Astronomy reports on a marvelous mosaic assembled by amateur astronomers of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog notes how college debts in the United States hinder social mobility.
• The Crux considers how the antibiotic-resistant fungus C. auris can be treated.
• D-Brief looks at the archaeological studies of graves in the forest islands of Bolivia that have revealed remarkable things about the settlement of ancient Amazonia.
• Far Outliers looks at how U.S. Grant built a pontoon bridge across the James River in Virginia.
• Gizmodo notes the big crater created by Hayabusa 2 in the surface of Ryugu, suggesting that body’s loose composition.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how the plan of Denmark to build a border fence to protect its pig populations against wild boars might be flawed.
• Language Hat looks at the South Arabian languages, non-Arabic Semitic languages spoken in the south of the Arabian peninsula.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the growing role of women in the American labour movement.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the new urgency of the Extinction Rebellion in this era of climate change and threatened apocalypse.
• Marginal Revolution considers a paper claiming that intergenerational social mobility in much of Canada is no higher than in most of the neighbouring United States.
• The NYR Daily examines the democracy of Indonesia.
• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money looks at how a particular reading of international law was used in Bolivia to justify a violation of the national constitution.
• Peter Rukavina shares an insightful map looking at the election results from PEI. One thing brought out by the map is the strength of the Greens across the Island.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle looks at the useful Ontario shrub of leatherwood.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the discovery of carbon-60 buckyballs in the far reaches of our galaxy by Hubble.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that the president and the prime minister of Ukraine are both Jews.
• Towleroad notes the new video by Willie Tay, a Singapore music star who was dropped by his label for being gay and has responded by coming out and releasing a video for his song “Open Up Babe”.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the Ingermanlanders, also known as Ingrians or Ingrian Finns, a Finnic people in the hinterland of St. Petersburg who suffered horrifically under Communism.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how computers, originally imagined to function in certain specific ways, are being reimagined and reused in ways which do not quite suit them (and us).
• Arnold Zwicky finds a stock photo used to represent art stolen by the Nazis and uses it to explore issues of recovery and loss and mistake.