A Bit More Detail

• Architectuul profiles the construction of the Modern Berlin Temple built to a design by Mies van der Rohe in 1968.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the beauty of galaxy M61.


• D-Brief notes new evidence that Mars sustained rivers on its surface at a surprising late date.


• Gizmodo notes a theory that the oddly shaped ring moons of Saturn might be product of a collision.


• Hornet Stories suggests/u> that recent raids on gay bars in New Orleans might be driven by internecine politics within the LGBTQ community.


• Joe. My. God. notes that a court in the Cayman Islands has recently legalized same-sex marriage there.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the origins of the Chipko activists of 1960s and 1970s India, whose tree-hugging helped save forests there.


• Language Log notes the story of Beau Jessep, who got rich off of a business creating English names for Chinese children.


• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money, looking at the introduction of public healthcare in Saskatchewan and wider Canada, notes the great institutional differences that do not make that a close model for public healthcare in the US now.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining the close relationship over time between population growth and economic and technological change.


• Roads and Kingdoms interviews documentary filmmaker Nadir Bouhmouch about a Amazigh community's resistance to an intrusive mine on their territory.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes, 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 European states.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that we still do not know why antimatter does not dominate in our universe.


• Understanding Society features a guest post from Indian sociologist V.K. Ramachandran talking about two visits four decades apart to one of his subjects.


• Vintage Space makes a compelling case for people not to be afraid of nuclear rockets in space, like the vintage never-deployed NERVA.


• Window on Eurasia takes issue with the bilingual radio programs aired in Russian republics, which subtly undermine local non-Russian languages.


• Arnold Zwicky starts with lilacs, which include hybrids tolerant of the California climate, and goes on to explore lavender in all of its glories, queer and otherwise.

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross announces (among other things) that his series The Laundry Files has been options for television development.


• D-Brief notes more evidence for the idea that regular exercise can help psychologically, this study suggesting help to long-term memory.


• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Karen Sternheimer writes about sociologists who study subjects that matter to them, subjects that might personally involve them, even.


• Gizmodo notes that astronomers have detected the formation of dark spots on Neptune, akin to those seen by Voyager 2 in its flyby in 1989, for the first time.


• JSTOR Daily considers how humans can live alongside crocodiles in peace.


• Language Log considers gāngjīng 杠精, a new Chinese word that may well denote "troll".


• Erik Loomis writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about beers that can serve industrial purposes like film development.


• The Map Room Blog notes new maps of a modern Westeros created by designer Jamie Shadrach.


• Marginal Revolution notes regulatory controversy in Alexandria, Virginia, regarding a potential halal butchery facility for chickens.


• Roads and Kingdoms interviews writer L. Kasimu Harris about the inequalities of New Orleans.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shows readers what the galaxy would look like in electromagnetic frequencies other than those of visible light.


• Arnold Zwicky writes about progress in education.

• CBC Ottawa reports on the impressive scope of the new light rail mass transit planned for the wider city of Ottawa.


• Richard Florida, writing at CityLab, notes a study tracing the second of two clusters of skyscrapers in Manhattan, in Midtown, to a late 19th century specialty in shopping.


• The Tyee notes how activist Yuly Chan helped mobilize people to protect Chinatown in Vancouver from gentrification.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the history of the free people of colour of New Orleans, a group established under the French period but who faced increasing pressures following Americanization.


• At Open Democracy, Christophe Solioz considers what is to be done to help protect the peace in Derry, second city of Northern Ireland, in the era of Brexit.

• The Conversation notes the concerns of Canadians about the potential privacy concerns regarding smart cities.


• This CityMetric article examines the particular role of the chain coffeeshop in the contemporary city.


• Will the tragic death of young mother Malaysia Goodson, killed trying to access public transit, lead to the spread of accessible infrastructure? Guardian Cities considers.


• A forced amalgamation of the different regional municipalities of Toronto could easily come into conflict with locals' identities, the Toronto Star noted.


• National Geographic considers Silicon Valley-type boomtowns around the world. (Toronto is on that list.)


• This Bloomberg article makes the point that, in same cases, merging cities with prosperous suburbs might be a godsends for the wider conurbations.


• This Curbed article by novelist Jami Attenberg looks at what has changed for her--what she has gained--since moving from large metropolis New York City to the smaller centre of New Orleans.

• Despite Brexit, the English language is continuing to make inroads against French in the halls of the European Union. Politico Europe reports.


• The State of Louisiana has made a formal application to join the Organisation international de la francophonie.


• This article in The Scotsman noting how some African slaves taken to plantations in the Carolinas came to use Gaelic, not English, as their common language is fascinating. What other influences came unexpectedly from Gaelic Scotland to African America?


• Can Hong Kong use the Cantonese language to extend its influence deeper into China and elsewhere? The SCMP considers.


• This article/a> in New Eastern Europe makes interesting arguments about how, in the post-Soviet world, the Russian language now has multiple centres and multiple standards. I'm unconvinced about the political arguments, though.

• The idea of making the Toronto Islands an officially designated bird sanctuary makes sense on a lot of levels. The Toronto Star reports.


• The community of Saanich, on Vancouver Island, is expected to host the biggest marijuana farm in Canada come legalization, making many there unhappy. Global News reports.


• Trump tariffs may doom a pulp and paper mills in the western Newfoundland city of Corner Brook. CBC reports.


• Wired features this heartbreaking choices facing the inhabitants of the Louisiana town of Isle de Jean Charles as their island submerges beneath rising waters. What will they do? Where will they go? Can the community survive?


• CityMetric tells the story about how people on the Channel Island of Jersey wanted to build a bridge to France, why this didn't happen, and how this relates to Brexit.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at enormous, explosive Wolf-Rayet stars, and at WR 124 in particular.
  
• The Big Picture shares heart-rending photos of Rohingya refugees fleeing Burma.


• Centauri Dreams considers the potential of near-future robotic asteroid mining.


• D-Brief notes the discovery of vast cave systems on the Moon, potential homes for settlers.


• Hornet Stories exposes young children to Madonna's hit songs and videos of the 1980s. She still has it.


• Inkfish notes that a beluga raised in captivity among dolphins has picked up elements of their speech.


• Language Hat notes a dubious claim that a stelae containing Luwian hieroglyphic script, from ancient Anatolia, has been translated.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the question of preserving brutalist buildings.


• The LRB Blog considers how Brexit, intended to enhance British sovereignty and power, will weaken both.


• The Map Room Blog notes that the moons and planets of the solar system have been added to Google Maps.


• The NYR Daily considers how the Burmese government is carefully creating a case for Rohingya genocide.


• The Power and Money's Noel Maurer concludes, regretfully, that the market for suborbital travel is just not there.


• Visiting a shrimp festival in Louisiana, Roads and Kingdoms considers how the fisheries work with the oil industry (or not).


• Towleroad reports on the apparent abduction in Chechnya of singer Zelimkhan Bakayev, part of the anti-gay pogrom there.


• Window on Eurasia notes that rebuilding Kaliningrad as a Russian military outpost will be expensive.

Louisiana is losing its coast at a rapid rate because of rising sea levels, development and sinking marshland. Officials are trying to rebuild those marshes and the wetlands, but much of the coast can't be saved. This makes Louisiana's history an unwitting victim. As land disappears and the water creeps inland, ancient archaeology sites are washing away, too.

Richie Blink was born and raised in Plaquemines Parish, La. — way down south of New Orleans along the Mississippi River. Now he works for the National Wildlife Federation.

[. . .]

What's locally known as the "Lemon Trees" is a stand of weathered old trees on a grassy tuft of land. It's a well-known landmark for fishermen, but Blink says they would rarely stop there to hunt or fish because it's a sacred Native American site.

"The legend goes that you were always to bring some kind of sacrifice, so somebody left some lemons for the ancestors," Blink says.

And those grew into big trees with grapefruit-sized lemons. But as land was lost to the Gulf of Mexico, saltwater made its way into the freshwater marsh, killing off the trees and other plants.

The trees stand like skeletons on the edge of this scrappy, wind-beaten island. Waves beat against the dirt, washing it away, exposing shards of ancient pottery.

• Anthropology.net notes that schizophrenia is not an inheritance from the Neanderthals.


• D-Brief notes a recent study of nova V1213 Cen that drew on years of observation.


• Dangerous Minds shares a Simple Minds show from 1979.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog argues in favour of educating people about how they consume.


• Far Outliers notes the mid-12th century Puebloan diaspora and the arrival of the Navajo.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen reports on the Faroe Islands.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes the impending launch of the OSIRIS-REx probe.


• Spacing Toronto examines through an interview the idea of artivism.


• Strange Maps notes the need to update the map of Louisiana.
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• Torontoist introduces its new daily newsletters.


• Understanding Society examines liberalism's relationship with hate-based extremism.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Russians are concerned about their country's post-Ukraine isolation but not enough to do anything about it, and looks at the generation gap across the former Soviet space.

Each morning at 3:30, when Joann Bourg leaves the mildewed and rusted house that her parents built on her grandfather’s property, she worries that the bridge connecting this spit of waterlogged land to Louisiana’s terra firma will again be flooded and she will miss another day’s work.

Bourg, a custodian at a sporting goods store on the mainland, lives with her two sisters, 82-year-old mother, son and niece on land where her ancestors, members of the Native American tribes of southeastern Louisiana, have lived for generations. That earth is now dying, drowning in salt and sinking into the sea, and she is ready to leave.

With a first-of-its-kind “climate resilience” grant to resettle the island’s native residents, Washington is ready to help.

In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totalling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, by building stronger levees, dams and drainage systems.

One of those grants, $48 million for Isle de Jean Charles, is something new: the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community struggling with the impacts of climate change. The divisions the effort has exposed and the logistical and moral dilemmas it has presented point up in microcosm the massive problems the world could face in the coming decades as it confronts a new category of displaced people who have become known as climate refugees.

“We’re going to lose all our heritage, all our culture,” lamented Chief Albert Naquin of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, the tribe to which most Isle de Jean Charles residents belong. “It’s all going to be history.”