[PHOTO] Winter blue sky framed, Dupont and Dufferin

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams notes the astounding precision of the new Habitable Planet Finder telescope.


• D-Brief notes that the lack of small craters on Pluto and Charon suggests there are not many small bodies in the Kuiper Belt.


• Far Outliers notes the many and widely varying transliterations of Bengali to English.


• JSTOR Daily notes the extent to which border walls represent, ultimately, a failure of politics.


• Language Log examines the emergence of the Germanic languages in the depths of prehistory.


• Anna Aslanyan at the LRB Blog considers the eternal search for a universal language.


• Noah Smith shareshis Alternative Green New Deal Plan at his blog, one that depends more on technology and market forces than the original.


• Mitchell Abidor at the NYR Daily writes about the incisive leftism of journalist Victor Sorge.


• Out There notes the reality that the worlds of our solar system, and almost certainly other systems, are united by a constant stream of incoming rocks.


• At the Planetary Society Blog, Emily Lakdawalla examines the data transmitted back by OSIRIS-REx from that probe's Earth flyby.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel examines cosmic conditions at the time the solar system formed 4.56 billion or so years ago.


• Towleroad notes the censorship of many explicitly gay scenes from Bohemian Rhapsody in its Chinese release.


• Window on Eurasia looks at the many ways in which the social norms of North Caucasian men are converging with those of the average Russian.


• On St. David's Day, Arnold Zwicky pays tribute to the daffodil and to the Welsh.

[DM] Some news inks: Montréal & Calcutta migration, Chinese languages, former Soviet Union, borders

I've a new links post up at Demography Matters.

• La Presse notes that suburbanization proceeds in Montréal, as migration from the island of Montréal to off-island suburbs grows. This is of perhaps particular note in a Québec where demographics, particularly related to language dynamics, have long been a preoccupation, the island of Montréal being more multilingual than its suburbs.


• The blog Far Outliers has been posting excerpts from The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta, a 2018 book by Kushanava Choudhury. One brief excerpt touches upon the diversity of Calcutta's migrant population.


• The South China Morning Post has posted some interesting articles about language dynamics. In one, the SCMP suggests that the Cantonese language is falling out of use among young people in Guangzhou, largest Cantonese-speaking city by population. Does this hint at decline in other Chinese languages? Another, noting how Muslim Huiare being pressured to shut down Arabic-medium schools, is more foreboding.


• Ukrainian demographics blogger pollotenchegg is back with a new map of Soviet census data from 1990, one that shows the very different population dynamics of some parts of the Soviet Union. The contrast between provincial European Russia and southern Central Asia is outstanding.


• In the area of the former Soviet Union, scholar Otto Pohl has recently examined how people from the different German communities of southeast Europe were, at the end of the Second World War, taken to the Soviet Union as forced labourers. The blog Window on Eurasia, meanwhile, has noted that the number of immigrants to Russia are falling, with Ukrainians diminishing particularly in number while Central Asian numbers remain more resistant to the trend.
  
• Finally, JSTOR Daily has observed the extent to which border walls represent, ultimately, a failure of politics.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: green Designers Walk, Hearn, property taxes, U of T, renoviction

• Narcity reports that the 27-story Designers Walk condo tower in Yorkville is going to be a green vertical forest.


• The owners of the Hearn generating station are upset the building has received heritage protection from the City of Toronto. The Toronto Star reports.


• David Rider at the Toronto Star notes a new study suggesting there is substantial leeway for Toronto to increase property taxes.


• The Varsity notes that the University of Toronto now receives more funding from international students' tuition than from the Ontario provincial government.


• The tenants of 394 Dovercourt Road fear they might face renoviction from their affordable homes. The Toronto Star reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Saint John, Seattle, Hong Kong, Singapore, Angkor

• A community organization in Saint John, New Brunswick, is hoping to try to save some of the many abandoned buildings in that city. Global News reports.


• Wired notes that a proposed Amazon expansion in Seattle has also been abandoned.


• Bloomberg View suggests Hong Kong is being unduly conservative in not investing its budget surpluses.


• Roads and Kingdoms tells the history of Singapore through ten local dishes.


• Ars Technica suggests the medieval city of Angkor, in Cambodia, died slowly as its complex machineries gradually ground to a halt.

[NEWS] Five science links: Gulf of St. Lawrence, ocean uranium, chimpanzees, parrots, Lunar Gateway

• The study of the changing environment of the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence is explored in this article, over at Global News.


• A new process for extracting uranium from seawater makes nuclear energy still more viable. Forbes has it.


• A recent study of chimpanzee groups in central Africa has found evidence of regional variations in their material culture. Phys.org has it.


• Opium poppy farmers in India are forced to defend their fields against parrots addicted to their crops. VICE reports.


• CBC explores the Lunar Gateway project that Canada is newly involved in.

[NEWS] Five Indigenous links: Toronto housing, Kahnawake, Mohawk language, archive, Wilson-Raybould

• CBC reports on the exceptional problems facing Indigenous people hoping to rent housing in Toronto.


• The Mohawk community of Kahnawake is divided by a new proposal to open up slot machines. CBC reports.


• Kanesatake has a new app aiming to promote knowledge of the Mohawk language among its users. CBC reports.


• An Edmonton man is trying to compile an archive of Indigenous audiovisual material for future generations, Global News reports.


• This article at The Conversation places Jody Wilson-Raybould in a tradition of Indigenous women who were tellers of truths to power.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: James Barry, Madonna, Maddie Blaustein, Wilton Manors, LIlly Singh

• Them notes the transphobia involved in novelist E.J. Levy's apparent determination to note define 19th century doctor James Barry as a trans man in an upcoming novel.


• Hornet Stories notes the long history of support of Madonna for LGBTQ people and causes, from the 1980s on.


• Them tells the story of trans writer voice actor Maddie Blaustein, perhaps most famous for voicing the character of Meowth from Pokémon.


• VICE reports from Wilton Manors, the Florida town where all the government officials are LGBTQ.


• The coming-out of YouTube star Lilly Singh as bisexual is huge news, for South Asians and the wider community. (How To Be A Bawse is a great book.) VICE Congratulations! has it.