[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] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Tijuana, Mexico City, Honolulu

• CityLab notes that talk about the rent in Montréal being uniquely affordable is somewhat exaggerated.
• CityLab notes that, in New York City, the growing numbers of electric bikes are posing a major problem for traffic planners.
• Despite high levels of crime, tourism in Tijuana is thriving, VICE reports.
• CityLab has a nice photo essay looking at a “market on wheels” in Mexico City.
• Honolulu and wider Oahu are trying to regulate the construction of “monster homes” on the island, houses that occupy much too much of their lots and might not be a good response to the island’s housing crisis. CityLab reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Mississauga, Montréal, New York City, Winnipeg, Tijuana

• After consultation with indigenous groups, Mississauga is removing all Indigenous symbols from sports teams and facilities. blogTO reports.
• This Huffington Post Québec article, in French, notes that Montréal can make a very good case for again supporting a major league baseball team. The Expos may return.
• VICE notes that the idea of legalizing marijuana sales in New York State, and of devoting the funds raised from marijuana taxation to rebuilding the New York City subway station, is becoming popular.
• The latest redrawing of provincial electoral boundaries in Manitoba leaves the growing metropolis of Winnipeg with one seat more and rural Manitoba with one seat less. Global News reports.
• Laura Agustín reports on the experiences of a volunteer lawyer working with the Central American migrant caravan in Tijuana, here.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Detroit, Calgary, Tijuana and San Diego, Kathmandu, Chernobyl

• CityLab looks at how, facing the impending closing of a General Motors plant that brutally displaced and mostly destroyed the (mostly) Detroit neighbourhood of Poletown, there is question about what to do with this space. Can Poletown live again?
• Taylor Lambert at Sprawl Calgary writes about how Calgary is learning to adopt Indigenous names for its growing communities and roads, and more, how Calgary is learning to do so respectfully.
• Guardian Cities notes the extreme sensitivity of the binational conurbations straddling the US-Mexico border in the Californias to the possibility of border closures.
• Guardian Cities notes how people in Kathmandu, struggling to rebuild their homes after the 2015 earthquake, are now facing terrible levels of debt.
• The Guardian reports on a remarkable rave/art party held in Chernobyl not far at all from the ruined reactor.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Mexico City, Tijuana, Mosul

• Montréal mayor Valérie Plante outlines how, in the face of provincial government cuts to immigration in Québec, her city will continue to welcome immigrants and promote their integration, over at CTV.
• Gothamist shares the argument of new MTA transit head Andy Byford to New York City’s city council there that the city simply must spend $US 40 billion to keep the MTA running.</li.
• CityLab looks at how access to water is a major political issue in Mexico City, one that local community groups are acting upon.
• The Central American refugees in Tijuana, CityLab reports, are facing an increasing number of issues, including deteriorating conditions and local hostility.
• A VICE interview suggests that the city of Mosul, eighteen months after ISIS, is in such a poor state of repair that a resurgence of the Islamic State is possible.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Markham, Seattle, Tijuana, New York City, Hong Kong and Shenzhen

• A new neighbourhood in Markham is going to make use of geothermal energy to heat hundreds of homes. CBC reports.
• CityLab reports on how a census of the giant Pacific octopus in the waters of Seattle is going to be conducted.
• Some residents of Tijuana are protesting against the thousands of Central American refugees now sheltering in their city. Global News reports.
• A new exhibit at the 9/11 Museum in New York City tells of the contribution of Mohawk steelworkers to the construction of the megalopolis’ skyline. CBC Indigenous reports.
• Officials in Hong Kong and Shenzhen are having problems drawing a boundary through a garden plot on their mutual border. The SCMP reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Windsor, Québec City, Calgary, Tokyo, Tijuana

• Low-lying Windsor, Ontario, faces the prospect of serious flooding that might be alleviated if old features of the natural landscape like trees and wetlands were restored. CBC reports.
• Robert Vandewinkel at Huffington Post Québec makes an argument for a subway system for Québec City.
• Jason Markusoff at MacLean’s, noting the referendum vote in Calgary against hosting the 2026 Olympics, suggests this vote can be best sign as a sign of this city’s maturity and confidence, that Calgary does not need the Olympics to be successful.
• The Diplomat notes how costs for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics have ballooned, despite promises of an affordable Olympics.
• VICE notes the plight of the Central American refugees gathering at Tijuana, unlikely to gain asylum in the United States.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the effort to name, for New Horizons, Kuiper belt world (486958) 2014 MU69.
• Centauri Dreams considers the possibility that Ceres might have a residual ocean underneath its surface.
• D-Brief notes the bizarre supernova iPTF14hls, which seems to have been a recurrent supernova for the past sixty years.
• The Frailest Thing’s Michael Sacasas argues we are already in a dystopia, one of Huxley not of Orwell.
• Hornet Stories notes that Ezra Miller was advised not to come out by his supposed allies in Hollywood.
• The LRB Blog notes an interesting exhibit, inspired by poetry and the Stalinist camp system, in London’s Bloomsbury Square.
• At Out of Ambit, Diane Duane tells the old Swiss story of Charlemagne and the snake.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the last days of bullfighting in Tijuana.
• Mark Simpson considers the state of masculinity in the modern United Kingdom, and calls for some tartiness.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers how the Bullet Cluster of galaxies helps prove the existence of dark matter.
• Understanding Society considers political power in China at the level of the village.
• Window on Eurasia considers a variety of negative demographic trends for ethnic Russians in Russia, including low fertility and emigration.