[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Kambiz Kamrani at Anthropology.net notes that the more Neanderthal DNA gets sequenced, the more we know of this population's history.


• Anthro{dendum} takes a look at anthropologists who use their knowledge and their access to other cultures for purposes of espionage.


• Crooked Timber tackles the question of immigration from another angle: do states have the authority to control it, for starters?


• Dangerous Minds shares a fun video imagining Netflix as it might have existed in 1995.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog considers how the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico is an instance of American state failure.


• The Frailest Thing's L.M. Sacasas considers is vows to abandon Facebook are akin to a modern-day vow of poverty.


• JSTOR Daily looks at Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and why it still matters.


• Language Log considers the naming practices of new elements like Nihonium.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that, based on the stagnation of average incomes in the US as GDP has growth, capitalism can be said to have failed.


• Lingua Franca considers the origin of the phrase "bad actor."


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that the American opioid epidemic is not simply driven by economic factors.


• The NYR Daily considers how Poland's new history laws do poor service to a very complicated past.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw has an interesting post examining the settlement of Australisa's inland "Channel Country" by cattle stations, chains to allow herds to migrate following the weather.


• The Planetary Science Blog's Emily Lakdawalla takes a look at the latest science on famously volcanic Io.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel examines how the Milky Way Galaxy is slowly consuming its neighbours, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Lower Bay, housing, Villiers Island, Saigon Flower, Little Jamaica

• blogTO reports on an upcoming concert scheduled for the TTC's Lower Bay station on the 11th of March.


• A new student residence for Ryerson University with prices actually comparable to prevailing rents for a studio apartment downtown seems like not the best solution to student housing issues. blogTO reports.


• The upcoming formation of a new island, Villiers Island off the mouth of the Don, as part of the Port Lands renewal is very cool. blogTO reports.


• Julien Gignac writes at the Toronto Star about the Saigon Flower, a Vietnamese restaurant on Queen Streeet West in the shadow of the Drake with an owner who refuses to sell. I have eaten there, and enjoyed it; I applaud her.


• The disruption being inflicted on Little Jamaica, an enclave stretching along an Eglinton Avenue West being disrupted by Crosstown construction, is sad. Is there any alternative, though, if we want more transit? What can be done for the neighbourhood? The Toronto Star reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Los Angeles and California, Montréal, London, Shenzhen

• The clashes of radical protesters in Hamilton are becoming worryingly more prominent. What is going on there? The Toronto Star reports.


• Marginal Revolution reports that Los Angeles, and all of California, is at last overcoming the densification that NIMBYists have been trying to block.


• Foreign buyers are apparently starting to drive up prices in Québec, especially Montréal, though to a lesser degree than elsewhere in Canada. Bloomberg reports.


• CBC reports on a tour of the city of London, highlighting the purchases of Russian oligarchs, that leaves me unsettled for a few reasons.


• This report on Naomi Wu, a maker of tech goods who has become a prominent figure representing a booming high-tech Shenzhen, is fascinating. Shenzhen is clearly a city to watch. VICE has it.