A Bit More Detail

• Centauri Dreams looks at the advanced microelectronics that might last a space probe the two decades it would take to get to Proxima Centauri.


• Dangerous Minds links to a 1980 filmed concert performance by Queen.


• The Dragon's Gaze reports on the discovery of potassium in the atmosphere of WASP-17b.


• Language Hat looks at the Carmina of Optatianus, an interesting piece of Latin literature.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the shameless anti-democratic maneuvering of the Republicans in North Carolina.


• The LRB Blog reflects on the shamelessness of the perpetrators of the Aleppo massacres.


• Marginal Revolution looks at what Charles Darwin's reading habits have to say about the man's process of research.


• North!'s Justin Petrone looks at the elves of Estonia.


• The NYRB Daily praises the new movie Manchester by the Sea.


• The Planetary Society Blog shares a recent photo of Phobos.


• Peter Rukavina argues that the Island's low PISA scores do not necessarily reflect on what Islanders have learned.


• Savage Minds shares an essay by someone who combines academic work with library work.


• Torontoist notes the city's subsidies to some major water polluters.


• Window on Eurasia notes the anniversary of some important riots in Kazakhstan.


• Arnold Zwicky reflects on the penguin-related caption of a photo on Wikipedia that has made the world laugh.

• blogTO notes that the TTC plans on raising fares for next year.


• Centauri Dreams notes the evidence for an ocean on Pluto.


• City of Brass' Aziz Poonawalla argues against Muslims voluntarily registering in an American listing of Muslims.


• Dangerous Minds notes the sadness of Abbie Hoffman at Janis Joplin's use of IV drugs.


• Joe. My. God. notes that Manhattan's Trump Place complex has opted to drop the name.


• Language Hat looks at a seminal Arabic novel published in mid-19th century France.


• Language Log looks at an intriguing Chinese-language sign in London.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that the US-Iran nuclear deal is likely to stay.


• The LRB Blog looks at a critic's old building, an old warehouse, in New York City.


• The NYRB Daily looks at the art of the spot illustration.


• Window on Eurasia notes the state of interethnic relations in Kazakhstan.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at some flowers of Mediterranean climate zones.

• blogTO notes that Suspect Video is liquidating its stock.


• James Bow likes a portable USB adaptor.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to an analysis of the spectrum of a Luhman 16 brown dwarf.


• Language Log notes Sino-Western characters.


• The Map Room Blog reports on a Twitter bot that randomly generates maps of fantasy settings.


• Maximos62 notes the terrible pollution produced by the Indonesian forest burning.


• Otto Pohl reports from Kurdistan.


• Torontoist shares a photo of a graffiti alley near Trinity Bellwoods.


• Window on Eurasia reports on current trends in Russian migration from Kazakhstan.


• Arnold Zwicky describes the female gaze of the paintings of men done by Sylvia Sleigh.

• Beyond the Beyond references Vincent Cerf's concern about the fragility of new media.


• Crooked Timber considers the politics inherent in monetary unions.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes a paper suggesting Alpha Centauri A is quite evolved.


• Discover's Dead Things wonders if Georgia is the birthplace of wine.


• Joe. My. God. notes the claim of a Florida public employee that the rainbow flag creates a hostile work environment.


• Language Hat looks at records of ancient Greek music.


• The LRB Blog considers the politics of hate in the United Kingdom.


• Marginal Revolution wonders which European financial centres would win at the expense of London.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer suggests the United Kingdom should merge with Canada.


• Registan notes domestic terrorism in Kazakhstan.


• Torontoist looks at queer people who opt not to celebrate Pride with the crowds.


• Towleroad looks at a Thai gym for trans men.


• The Volokh Conspiracy makes the case for sports boycotts.


• Window on Eurasia notes the fragility of the post-Soviet order, in Ukraine and in Russia.

• Apostrophen's 'Nathan Smith updates readers on his writing projects and points them to anthologies looking for new submissions.


• blogTO talks about the origins of Bay Street.


• Centauri Dreams notes new discoveries about the origins of mysterious "fast radio bursts".


• The Dragon's Tales notes how a genetic study of Panama's population showed the impact of colonization.


• Joe. My. God. notes Germany's opening of a centre for LGBT refugees.


• Language Log notes controversy over simplified characters in Hong Kong and poor fluency in kanji in Japan.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the controversies surrounding the commemoration of the death of Scalia at Georgetown University.


• Steve Munro looks at various routes for a relief line in the east of the city.


• North's Justin Petrone talks about teaching his daughter who ran Estonia during the Soviet era.


• Strange Maps maps Europe divided into city-states.


• Window on Eurasia notes Kazakhstan's plan to shift to Latin script for Kazakh and looks at ethnic Russian converts to Islam.

• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly makes the case that people need rest.


• The Dragon's Gaze wonders if a lithium-rich giant star KIC 9821622 ate its exoplanets.


• The Dragon's Tales writes about the Russian war in Syria.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog considers the sociology of holidays.


• A Geocurrents guest post looks at one mapping of ISIS.


• Joe. My. God. notes Donald Trump's defense of Vladimir Putin, discounting state-sponsored murder of journalists, and reports on the repeal of marriage equality in Slovenia.


• Language Hat looks at how a Chinese font was created.


• Language Log looks at how the Japanese language can be used to memorize pi.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money maps student debt in the United States.


• Marginal Revolution considers migration as a basic human right.


• Torontoist looks at how KFC got started in Mississauga.


• Window on Eurasia considers the reasons for Donbas residents to seek refugee status elsewhere, looks at Russia's problems with Circassians, examines Russian Muslim emigrants in Turkey, and reports on fears in Kazakhstan that the country might be attacked by Russian media.

'Urban boosterism' is defined as the active promotion of a city, and it typically involves large-scale urban development schemes—constructing iconic new buildings, revamping local infrastructure, and creating a new image for the city.

For long a popular tactic of free market liberals, used to justify speculative building, the logic of urban boosterism hinges on freedom of movement of both capital and individuals. Curiously, though, it is increasingly at work in settings less committed to such freedoms. Urban planners in authoritarian countries are increasingly seeking to create new images for their cities and states through grandiose urban development and the hosting of major international spectacles, such as World Fairs, Olympic Games or the World Cup.

As citizens and their leaders in liberal democracies grow increasingly fatigued by—and intolerant of—the skyrocketing expense of hosting such spectacles, leaders in non-democracies have been quick to pick up the slack and are beginning to win first-tier event bids (like the 2008 Beijing Olympics; the 2014 Sochi Olympics and Russia’s 2018 World Cup; and Qatar’s 2022 World Cup). While urban boosterism in liberal democratic settings is also used to solidify the position of 'growth machine' elites, the unprecedented $51 billion price tag for Russia’s Olympic Games in Sochi shows that resource-rich, non-democratic states are positioned to develop such projects on a dramatically larger scale.

[. . .]

The 'Sochi syndrome' is a sign of what we can expect as more and more non-democratic, illiberal states host these events, as illustrated by the cases of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan.

According to Freedom House, in its classification system, these rank among the world’s least free countries. Boosterist agendas in Baku, Astana, and Ashgabat serve two related purposes—to distribute financial and political patronage, and to promote a positive image of the state for both international and domestic consumption.

• Claus Vistesen of Alpha Sources notes that though the stock market might be peaking, we don't know when.


• blogTO warns that Toronto might consider a bid for the 2024 Olympics.


• James Bow thinks about Ex Machina.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly looks forward to her impending visit to Maine.


• Centauri Dreams features an essay by Michael A.G. Michaud looking at modern SETI.


• Crooked Timber finds that even the style of the New York intellectuals of the mid-20th century is lacking.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes that a search for superjovians around two nearby brown dwarfs has failed.


• The Dragon's Tales considers the flowing nitrogen ice of Pluto.


• Geocurrents compares Chile's Aysén region to the Pacific Northwest.


• Joe. My. God. shares the new Janet Jackson single, "No Sleeep".


• Language Log looks at misleading similarities between Chinese and Japanese words as written.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that the low-wage southern economy dates back to slavery.


• Marginal Revolution is critical of rent control in Stockholm and observes the negative long-term consequences of serfdom in the former Russian Empire.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes how Jamaica is tearing down illegal electrical connections.


• Savage Minds considers death in the era of Facebook.


• Towleroad looks at how the Taipei city government is petitioning the Taiwanese high court to institute same-sex marriage.


• The Volokh Conspiracy argues restrictive zoning hurts the poor.


• Window on Eurasia looks at how Tatarstan bargains with Moscow, looks at Crimean deprivation and quiet resistance, considers Kazakh immigration to Kazakhstan, and argues Russian nationalist radicals might undermine Russia itself.

[I]t has been clear for some time, and recent news reports confirm it, that the Russian language is steadily losing ground in Central Asia in educational institutions and in much of the media throughout Central Asia. To be sure, Moscow is trying to counter this, for instance with recent attempts to saturate the Kazakh media. Yet this trend towards establishing the primacy of national cultures and languages at the expense of Russian builds on twenty years of steady nationalization of the culture of these states as a matter of deliberate policy, on their deliberate efforts to maintain an openness to the larger globalizing trends in the world economy, and on a generation of growing restrictions on Russian language use in broadcasting and other media.

Of course, Central Asian leaders will not publicly attack the use of Russian language or create situations that could tempt Moscow to intervene in Central Asia on the same pretexts as it employed in Ukraine. But while the invasion of Ukraine created and still generates considerable anxiety in Central Asia, the crisis that Russia faces as a result of its action makes intervention in Central Asia a less likely prospect for the foreseeable future. Given the steep economic decline Russia has experienced following its Ukrainian adventure a third front on top of Ukraine and the North Caucasus is the last thing Moscow seeks. Nonetheless, leaders like Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev point with pride to the growth of Kazakh as the native language and more younger students are preferring English or Chinese to Russian.

In Kyrgyzstan, a recent report showed different forces at work but similar outcomes. The poverty of the Kyrgyz school system means that despite Russian claims of large-scale support for Russian-language teaching abroad, means that only 11 percent of Kyrgyz students are going to superior Russian schools in that republic. Students otherwise are not learning Russian and competent teachers are hard to find. All this, of course, generates a vicious cycle. Similarly, in December 2013, Veniamin Kaganov, Russia’s deputy education minister, was quoted in Tass as saying that the number of Russian speakers had fallen by 100 million since the break up of the Soviet Union. Neither is this outcome unique to Kyrgyzstan or Central Asia. Although globalization certainly plays a role here, all these states have taken serious policy steps since 1991 to create a stronger sense of national identity among their peoples, a policy line that inevitably translates into privileging native languages over Russian and English and now Chinese over it as well.

This outcome strongly suggests that while state support for the propagation of he Russian language abroad is a point in Russia’s 2009 national security strategy, Moscow is apparently steadily if somewhat unobtrusively failing to achieve its goals. And this testifies to a continuing failure to actualize Russia’s soft power despite an enormous state investment. The manifestations of this failure may be quiet and not immediately visible but they do point to the steady erosion over time of Russian power of all kinds in Central Asia, although its military capabilities there remain potentially formidable.

• blogTO notes the development of a new shopping mall in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper examining the ability of the James Webb telescope to detect exoplanet transits.


• Joe. My. God. notes a breakthrough for GLBT rights protesters in Seoul.


• Language Log notes Google's localization in Kazakh and observes Erdogan's desire to revive Ottoman Turkish.


• Languages of the World looks at the Gagauz.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer shares the story of a poor Texan fallen into the cracks of Obamacare because of his state's chosen policies.


• Savage Minds looks at early African-American anthropologist St. Clair Drake.


• Spacing Toronto examines the appearance of the Ku Klux Klan in the GTA in the 1970s and 1980s.


• Torontoist looks at the career of Joseph Shlisky, a Toronto-based Jewish cantor who tried to combine secular and religious careers.


• Towleroad suggests that Elton John and David Furnish might be getting married next week.


• Window on Eurasia notes that immigration has made Moscow the city with the largest Muslim population in Europe, and looks at security fears related to Central Asian migrant workers.


• The Financial Times' The World wonders if Netanyahu has triggered the end of his political career.