[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.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams notes a strange corridor of ice beneath the surface of Titan, a possible legacy of an active cryovolcanic past.
• D-Brief notes one study suggesting that, properly designed, air conditioners could convert carbon dioxide in the air into carbon fuels.
• Dead Things reports on the discovery of an unusual human skull three hundred thousand years old in China, at Hualongdong in the southeast.
• Gizmodo notes the identification of a jawbone 160 thousand years old, found in Tibet, with the Denisovans. That neatly explains why the Denisovans were adapted to Tibet-like environments.
• JSTOR Daily examines Ruth Page, a ballerina who integrated dance with poetry.
• Language Hat shares a critique of a John McWhorter comment about kidspeak.
• Victor Mair at Language Log shares a well-researched video on the Mongolian language of Genghis Khan.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how Donald Trump, in his defiance of investigative findings, is worse than Richard Nixon.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the bombing of London gay bar Admiral Duncan two decades ago, relating it movingly to wider alt-right movements and to his own early coming out.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen notes a recent review article making the case for open borders, disproving many of the claims made by opponents.
• Paul Mason at the NYR Daily explains why the critique by Hannah Arendt of totalitarianism and fascism can fall short, not least in explaining our times.
• Corey S. Powell at Out There explains how, and why, the Moon is starting to get serious attention as a place for long-term settlement, even.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog explores the fund that she had in helping design a set of scientifically-accurate building blocks inspired by the worlds of our solar system.
• Drew Rowsome reports on the new restaging of the classic queer drama Lilies at Buddies in Bad Times by Walter Borden, this one with a new racially sensitive casting.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers the massive boom of diversity at the time of the Cambrian Explosion.
• Towleroad features the remarkable front cover of the new issue of Time, featuring Pete Buttigieg together with his husband Chasten.
• Window on Eurasia considers 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.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the various flowers of May Day.

[NEWS] Five LG&M links: Free Tibet, lynching, Beto, Ilham Omar, Bangladesh and globalization

• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the decline of the Free Tibet movement from a recent 1990s apogee.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the extent to which lynching in the United States is broadly dispersed throughout the country, is not only a method of African-American suppression.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at Beto O’Rourke as a Democratic nominee for the American presidency.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue, rightfully, with the Islamophobic criticism of Ilham Omar by even her supposed allies.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the people who recently died in Bangladesh at one end of a global supply chain, and asks about our responsibility at the other end.

[NEWS] Five politics links: Canadian navy, Chemi Lhamo, refugee chocolate, Brexit, Ireland

• Is the culture of the Canadian navy that much of an obstacle to the retention of personnel? Global News reports.
• That Chemi Lhamo, a Tibetan-Canadian student who was elected student president of the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus, has come under attacks coordinated through Chinese social media on account of her heritage is disturbing. CBC reports.
• A successful Nova Scotia chocolatier founded by Syrian refugees is set to take on new refugee hires. The National Post reports.
• Pankaj Mishra writing at The New York Times is, perhaps unkind but not wrong, in suggesting that the bad habits of Britain’s imperial elites are finally rebounding on Britain in this mismanaged Brexit.
• Andrew Gallagher writes at Slugger O’Toole about the impossibility of Ireland ever having good boundaries through any imaginable partition.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on Supernova 2018oh in nearby galaxy UGC 4780, a star that demonstrated a most unusual bump in its light curve. Did the explosion engulf a neighbouring star?
• Centauri Dreams reports on New Horizons as it approaches its next target, the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule.
• D-Brief notes new observations of a black hole suggesting that gas around them forms not a rigid donut shape but rather a looser fountain.
• Dead Things notes a new discovery that the icythosaur had blubber like modern cetaceans, demonstrating convergent evolution.
• Cody Delistraty writes about changing perceptions of painter Egon Schiele.
• Far Outliers notes how Japanese prisoners of war were often so surprised by good treatment that they reciprocated, by freely sharing information with interrogators.
• Hornet Stories notes that, at least on Reddit, RuPaul’s Drag Race is the most discussed show currently playing on television.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the Indian police was seeking two American evangelical Christian missionaries for aiding another to breach North Sentinel Island, both having fled the country.
• JSTOR Daily looks back to a 1963 paper on the effects of automation on society by Leon Megginson, finding that many of his predictions were correct.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that it is a sad day for Hungary that its government was able to drive the Central European University out of Budapest into exile.
• At Lingua Franca, Roger Shuy takes a look at the dreaded PhD oral exam. (I know that seeing other students taking it was one thing putting me off from academia.)
• The LRB Blog takes a look at the disastrous state of politics in Honduras, with a corrupt leader deeply compromised by (among other things) a dependency upon the United States.
• The NYR Daily takes a look at the beautiful Tibetan Buddhist religious art on display in the Ladakh settlement of Alchi.
• Window on Eurasia notes a conference in Moscow taking a look at a Eurasianism based on a Slavic-Turkic synthesis.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at Santa Barbara in some of her many dimensions.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Little Tibet, #650Parliament, Downsview Park, #topoli

• blogTO took a look at the history of Little Tibet, the stretch of Parkdale home to one of the biggest Tibetan communities outside of Asia.
• Extensive electrical issues with 650 Parliament, the property manager claims, will keep that huge tower’s inhabitants from their homes for months. Global News reports.
• Urban Toronto notes how the new Downsview Park will make its densifying neighbourhood that much more attractive.
• John Lorinc at Spacing considers the contributions, and possible threats, posed by fringe candidates in this year’s mayoral election in Toronto.
• Samantha Beattie at the Toronto Star reports on what some of the candidates who have dropped out of the race following the halving in the number of Toronto’s wards are doing now.

[NEWS] Five history links: Himalayas, bad maps, United States, Ontario Prohibition, Easter Island

• Reddit’s unresolvedmysteries highlights a historical conundrum: Who were these hundreds of people from all over Asia who died in a remote district of the Indian Himalayas centuries ago?
• Smithsonian Magazine notes why 18th century Europeans prized even wildly inaccurate maps and images of colonial cities in the Americas.
• J.M. Opal’s argument at The Conversation that the United States, dominated by a rigid oligarchy, is as unreformable as 18th century Britain is depressing.
• The suggestion of Dan Malleck at The Conversation, looking back at the Ontario pre-Prohibition history of unregulated alcohol sales, that the Ford deregulation of marijuana sales might be short-sighted, seems plausible.
• George Dvorsky at Gizmodo shares the latest evidence that pre-contact Easter Island did not undergo a great violent collapse, with no signs of a major conflict.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul has an extended long interview with architect Dragoljub Bakić, talking about the innovative architecture of Tito’s Yugoslavia and his experiences abroad.
• Centauri Dreams remarks on how the new maps of Pluto can evoke the worlds of Ray Bradbury.
• The Crux answers an interesting question: What, exactly, is a blazar?
• D-Brief links to a study suggesting that conditions on Ross 128 b, the second-nearest potentially habitable planet, are potentially (very broadly) Earth-like.
• Dangerous Minds shows how John Mellencamp was, in the 1970s, once a glam rocker.
• The Finger Post shares photos from a recent visit to Naypyidaw, the very new capital of Myanmar.
• Gizmodo explains how the detection of an energetic neutrino led to the detection of a distant blazar, marking yet another step forward for multi-messenger astronomy.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the now-overlooked writer of supernatural fiction Vernon Lee.
• Language Log makes an argument that acquiring fluency in Chinese language, including Chinese writing, is difficult, so difficult perhaps as to displace other cultures. Thoughts?
• Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that the decline of the neo-liberal world order is needed. My main concern is that neo-liberalism may well be the least bad of the potential world orders out there.
• Lingua Franca takes a look at how Hindi and Urdu, technically separate languages, actually form two poles of a Hindustani language continuum.
• The Map Room Blog links to a unique map of the London Underground that shows the elevation of each station.
• Rocky Planet notes that the continuing eruption of Kilauea is going to permanently shape the lives of the people of the Big Island of Hawai’i.
• Window on Eurasia notes that the Buddhists of Kalmykia want the Russian government to permit a visit by the Dalai Lama to their republic.
• Writing at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Livio Di Matteo notes that the Trump demand NATO governments spend 4% of their GDP on defense would involve unprecedented levels of spending in Canada.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares some stunning photos of the polar regions of Jupiter, from Juno.
• Centauri Dreams notes speculation on how antimatter could be harnessed for space propulsion.
• D-Brief notes how nanotechnological design is used to create tools capable of extracting water from the air above the Atacama.
• Russell Darnley notes the continuing peat fires in Sumatra’s Riau Province.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes evidence of an ancient cultural diffusion, from Copper Age Iberia, apparently not accompanied by gene flows.
• Mark Graham links to a paper he co-authored looking at the viability of online work as an option, or not, in the Global South.
• Hornet Stories notes an upcoming documentary about Harlem fashion figure Dapper Dan.
• JSTOR Daily notes the surprising controversy around the practice of keeping crickets as pets, for entertainments including music and bloodsports.
• Language Log looks at the extent to which Xi Jinping actually has been identified as a Tibetan bodhisattva.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the extent to which Mexican society has also experienced negative effects from NAFTA, in ways perhaps not unfamiliar to Americans.
• Lingua Franca considers the usage of the term “blockbuster”.
• Neuroskeptic notes a new paper suggesting there is no neurogenesis in adult humans.
• The NYR Daily features an eyewitness description of a botched execution in Alabama. This one does indeed seem to be particularly barbaric.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes the rise of dictatorship worldwide.
• Roads and Kingdoms <U?considers the simple joys of chilaquiles sandwiches in Guadalajara.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the vast bumber of starless planets, rogue planets, out there in the universe.
• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative notes the fact, and the political import of the fact, that public-sector wages in Ontario are higher than private-sector ones.
• Window on Eurasia notes the continuing decline of the Russian village, not helped by recent changes in policy under Putin.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes the difference, in business, between pre- and post-funding investments.

[NEWS] Five links about diverse Canada; Terry Fox & Métis, First Nations businesses, refugees, Tibet

• Suggestions that the family of Canadian hero Terry Fox have Métis ancestry and can claim Métis identity are, among other things, timely. The Globe and Mail reports.
• National Observer notes the growing foothold of First Nations businesses in Canadian cities.
• Identity is becoming complex in an increasingly multiethnic and intermixed Canada. The Globe and Mail reports.
• Québec companies are turning to some of the incoming wave of asylum seekers from the United States in the search for workers. CBC reports.
• The Toronto Star profiles two Tibetan-Canadians who are fulfilling their childhood dreams by heading off to be educated as dentists.