[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Apostrophen's 'Nathan Smith updates his readers about the progress of his various writing projects.


• The Big Picture shares photos from the Battle of Mosul waged against ISIS.


• Centauri Dreams notes the discovery of rogue binary planet 2MASS J11193254–1137466, two super-Jupiters by themselves.


• Dangerous Minds notes the raw photography of early 20th century New York City's Weegee.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money is rightly unimpressed by the reflexive Russophilia of The Nation. Imperialism is still imperialism ...


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen strongly recommends Dali, in the Chinese province of Yunnan, for tourists.


• The NYR Daily features Masha Gessen, looking at the truth underneath the lies of Trump.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer makes a case that Macron's use of "civilizational" to describe Africa's issues might be the subject of over-quick outrage.


• Peter Rukavina describes his two weeks with a Nokia N95, without a modern smartphone. There was good and bad to this.


• Speed River Journal's Van Waffle explains, with photos, what hoverflies are and why they are so important.


• Understanding Society considers a fraught question: what paths to modernization were open for China in the 1930s, before the People's Republic?


• Window on Eurasia suggests that, in 30 years, Moscow will be a megacity with a large population of (substantially immigrant) Muslim origin.