[CAT] Shakespeare, also awake in bed

Shakespeare was not sleeping early this morning either.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• 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.

[NEWS] Four LGBTQ links: Chechnya, Albania, families

• CBC shares the story of Maxim Lapunov, a surviving victim of Chechnya's gay pogroms who escaped to Canada.


• Kristi Penderi writes about his LGBT activism in Albania made a difference, even though he had to eventually leave.


• Jessie Randall writes about her struggles to become an aspiring young mother as a coupled lesbian.


• Naveen Kumar at VICE shares stories of gay men who donated sperm to lesbians and helped create new families.

[ISL] Six island links: Easter Island, Iceland, Vieques, Dominica, Saint Helena

• Catrine Jarman notes how Easter Island's history has been badly misread. The island was sustainably run, after all.


• Dead Things notes how DNA studies of ancient Rapa Nui suggest there was no South American immigration. No contact?


• Will the new airport at St. Helena open up new potential for tourism for the South Atlantic island? Global News reports.


• Iceland is enthusiastically trying to restore its ancient forests, downed by Vikings, so far with not much success. The New York Times reports.


• Ottawa has been urged to give farm workers from Dominica, ravaged by hurricanes, extended work permits. The Toronto Star reports.


• The island of Vieques, already hit by American military testing, has been prostrated by Maria. VICE reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto notes: Humber River Bay and Christie's, towers, Google at Quayside, vans

• The area of Humber River Bay may yet be radically transformed by the development of the vast Christie's site. The Globe and Mail reports.


• Torontoist notes how the City of Toronto is starting to let apartment dwellers know if they might die in a disastrous fire like Grenfell.


• Wired reports on the vast Google plan to make not just Quayside but the entire waterfront a high-tech prototype.


• TVO's John Michael McGrath argues that the city does not need Google to design good neighbourhoods.


• Apparently many people are escaping the Toronto affordable housing crisis by moving into vans. The Toronto Star reports.

[NEWS] Four links about transatlantic populism and economics: Brexit, NAFTA, Bombardier

• Bloomberg notes that the people and businesses leaving London for the EU-27 will enjoy lower rents.


• DW reports on potential British interest in joining NAFTA, if Brexit talks with the EU collapse entirely.


• The remarkable Bombardier deal with Airbus may yet save the Canadian company from American tariffs. Global News reports.


• Global News takes a look at the provinces and economic sectors in Canada to be hit hardest by the end of NAFTA.