[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Anthro{dendum} examines the politics and the problems involved with accurately representing the history of Taiwan to the world.


• Centauri Dreams notes a paper suggesting not only that it is possible for a pulsar to have a circumstellar habitable zone, but that the known worlds of PSR B1257+12 might well fall into this zone. (!) D-Brief also looks at the topic of pulsar planets and circumstellar habitable zones.


• The Crux reports on how some students are making the case that robotic cricket farming could help feed the world.


• Dangerous Minds shares some Carlo Farneti illustrations for an edition of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.


• Cody Delistraty writes about the last days of a Paris store, Colette.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that an infrared search for Planet Nine, using WISE and NEOWISE, has turned up nothing.


• JSTOR Daily talks about how the spectre of "white slavery" was used a century ago, in the United States, to justify Progressive reformers.


• Language Hat reports on a former diplomat's efforts to translate the traditional poetry of Najd, in central Saudi Arabia.


• Language Log takes a look at the ways in which zebra finches learn song, when raised in isolation and otherwise.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money argues in favour of putting up new monuments, to better people, in place of old Confederate memorials.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that the food desert effect is limited, that if poor people choose not to eat healthy foods this relates to their choice not to a lack of options for buying said.


• The Planetary Society Blog reports on China's interest in a Mars sample return mission.


• Seriously Science reports a paper claiming straight women tend to prefer to get dating advice from gay men to getting it from other women.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel makes the point that, without much more funding for NASA, there is going to be no American return to the Moon.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Tatarstan will no longer be providing Tatar inserts for Russian passport users, a sign of Tatarstan's drifting towards the Russian mainstream.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: June Rowlands, Sidewalk Labs, L Tower, race in schools, TTC

• The Toronto Star pays respect to the late June Rowlands, Toronto's first female mayor.


• Google's Sidewalk Labs project, intended to remake Quayside, is already resulting in jobs--in New York City? MacLean's reports.


• The flooding at the L Tower downtown sounds terrible. The Toronto Star reports.


• Race, unsurprisingly, remains a significant divide in Toronto schools. NOW Toronto reports.


• The TTC is increasing bus service on the Dundas and Carlton routes to compensate for Bombardier's failure to deliver. CBC reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five world cities: Madrid, São Paulo, New York City, Jakarta, Ottawa and Montréal

• This is a nice study of the life of some Latin American migrant communities in Madrid, over at the Inter Press Society.


• Gentrification has driven the techno music of São Paulo from its haunts. VICE's Noisey reports.


• This New York Times study examining some potential fixes for the New York City subway system is illuminating.


• Jakarta is particularly vulnerable to flooding, as a city at sea level facing subsidence. National Geographic reports.


• Are home prices in Ottawa and Montréal starting to ascend sharply in the manner of Toronto and Vancouver? GLobal News reports.

[NEWS] Four space science links: Mars, RZ Piscium, Alpha Centauri

• Could it be, as one theory suggests, that Mars did not form in the same area of the young solar system as Earth and Venus?


• RZ Piscium, a young star 500 light-years away, is eating its planets. CBC reports.


• Universe Today links to a paper indicating upper limits for planets at Alpha Centauri. Earth-like planets orbiting A and B are still possible.


• The kilonova behind GW170817, detected in galaxy NGC 4993 earlier this year, is thought to have produced a black hole based on X-ray emissions. Universe Today reports.