A Bit More Detail

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross examines the connections between bitcoin production and the alt-right. Could cryptocurrency have seriously bad political linkages?


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes GW170680, a recent gravitational wave detection that is both immense in its effect and surprising for its detection being normal.


• Centauri Dreams reports on a new study suggesting hot Jupiters are so large because they are heated by their local star.


• Crooked Timber counsels against an easy condemnation of baby boomers as uniquely politically malign.


• Daily JSTOR notes one paper that takes a look at how the surprisingly late introduction of the bed, as a piece of household technology, changed the way we sleep.


• Dangerous Minds shares a 1968 newspaper interview with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, talking about Charlie Manson and his family and their influence on him.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the opioid epidemic and the way that it is perceived.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Alex Harrowell suggests that the unsolvable complexities of Northern Ireland may be enough to avoid a hard Brexit after all.


• The LRB Blog describes a visit to a seaside village in Costa Rica where locals and visitors try to save sea turtles.


• Lingua Franca reflects on the beauty of the Icelandic language.


• The Map Room Blog shares an awesome map depicting the locations of the stars around which we have detected exoplanets.


• Marginal Revolution notes the ill health of North Korean defectors, infected with parasites now unseen in South Korea.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the revival of fonio, a West African grain that is now starting to see successful marketing in Senegal.


• Spacing reviews a fascinating book examining the functioning of urban villages embedded in the metropoli of south China.


• Strange Company reports on the mysterious 1920 murder of famous bridge player Joseph Bowne Elwell.


• Towleroad reports on Larnelle Foster, a gay black man who was a close friend of Meghan Markle in their college years.


• Window on Eurasia notes that, although Ukraine suffered the largest number of premature dead in the Stalinist famines of the 1930s, Kazakhstan suffered the greatest proportion of dead.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell has a photo essay looking at the Berlin Brandenburg Airport, still years away from completion and beset by many complex failures of its advanced systems. What does the failure of this complex system say about others we may wish to build?

• Charley Ross reports on an unexpected personal involvement in the disappearance of Kori Gossett. Did an informant know?


• Citizen Science Salon reports, in the time of #sharkweek, on the sevengill sharks.


• The Dragon's Tales links to an article on the Chinese base in Sudan.


• Inkfish has a fascinating article describing how New Zealand's giant black swans went extinct, and were replaced.


• Language Hat notes two obscure words of Senegalese French, "laptot" and "signare". What do they mean? Go see.


• Language Log argues that the influx of English loanwords in Chinese is remarkable. Does it signal future changes in language?


• Lawyers, Guns Money notes how Los Angeles and southern California were, during the American Civil War, a stronghold of secessionist sentiment, and runs down some of the problems of Mexico, including the militarization of crime.
  
• Marginal Revolution reports on what books by which authors tend to get stolen from British bookstores.
  
• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer suggests that Donald Trump is not likely to be able to substantially reshape NAFTA.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports from the recent protests in Poland against changes to the Supreme Court.


• Understanding Society takes a look at the structure of the cities of medieval Europe, which apparently were dynamic and flexible.


• Unicorn Booty shares some classic gay board games.


• Window on Eurasia argues that Russia is going to try to wage a repeat of the Winter War on Ukraine.

• The Big Picture shares photos of the South Sudanese refugee exodus into Uganda.


• blogTO shares an ad for a condo rental on Dovercourt Road near me, only $1800 a month.


• Centauri Dreams reports on the idea of using waste heat to detect extraterrestrial civilizations.


• Crooked Timber uses the paradigm of Jane Jacobs' challenge to expert in the context of Brexit.


• The LRB Blog reports on the fishers of Senegal and their involvement in that country's history of emigration.


• The Planetary Society Blog shares an image comparing Saturn's smaller moons.


• The Volokh Conspiracy comes out in support of taking down Confederate monuments.
  
• Window on Eurasia suggests Chechens are coming out ahead of Daghestanis in the North Caucasus' religious hierarchies, and argues that Putin cannot risk letting Ukraine become a model for Russia.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at various bowdlerizations of Philip Larkin's famous quote about what parents do to their children.

• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the need for opponents of Trump to fight, not just the man but the root causes.


• Centauri Dreams notes a study suggesting Proxima Centauri is gravitationally bound to Alpha Centauri A and B.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos depicting the devastation of Gatlinburg by fire.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes that stars with close-orbiting rocky worlds seem to have above-solar metallicity, and considers the albedos of exoplanets.


• Far Outliers looks at how Poland's Communist government tried to undermine Pope John Paul II in 1979.


• Joe. My. God. notes a lawsuit lodged against the American government demanding the release of information regarding the Russian information hack.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes poor working conditions in Bangladesh.


• Marginal Revolution notes a Yoruba tongue twister.


• The Planetary Society Blog links to China's planned program of space exploration.

• blogTO reports that Honest Ed's will have its final sign sale this weekend.


• D-Brief looks at the New Horizons probe's next target after Pluto, and reports that Venus is tectonically active.


• Centauri Dreams reports on the mechanics of the antimatter sail.


• Dangerous Minds features a video of France Gall singing about computer dating in 1968.
  
• The Dragon's Gaze considers biological fluorescence as a marker for life on red dwarf exoplanets.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on a wall of taco trucks set to face Donald Trump in Las Vegas.


• The LRB Blog notes the flailings of the Nigerian president.


• The NYRB Blog reports on how Brexit will wreck a British economy dependent on single market access.


• Transit Toronto notes that preliminary work has begun on the Scarborough subway.


• The Volokh Conspiracy's Orin Kerr links to an editorial of his arguing that it should be made easier for Americans to migrate.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Russia is losing a third world war over brainpower and looks at the problems of sleeping districts in Moscow, a legacy of Soviet misplanning.

• The Big Picture shares photos of life around the world this month.


• blogTO notes that a vacant lot on Sherbourne Street will become an urban farm, for a time.


• Centauri Dreams explores the strange oceans of Titan.


• Dangerous Minds shares some astoundingly open ads for cocaine paraphrenalia from the 1980s.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a study suggesting that it was the Chicxulub impact, not the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions, which were extinction-triggering.


• Joe. My. God. notes the governor of South Carolina's statement that his political opponents orchestrated the reaction to anti-trans legislation to ensure he would not get re-elected.


• Language Hat reports on an Igbo journalist explaining why he, and many of his people, do not speak their ancestral language.


• The Map Room Blog maps patterns of rail travel in Europe.


• Michael Steeleworthy is critical, and rightly so, of the massive announced cutbacks to Newfoundland and Labrador's library service.


• Torontoist notes the Toronto Hard Candy gym's cutting of its links with Madonna.


• Transit Toronto notes the TTC is looking for volunteer ambassadors.


• Window on Eurasia notes that population growth in Russia is concentrated in largely non-Russian regions.

In the past five years, the West African nation of Mali has suffered through a military coup, an attempted countercoup and the eruption of a major insurgency in the northern part of the country. But the capital, Bamako, still pulses with the culture of music, from traditional kora and ngoni to slow Songhoy Blues jams and from Touareg rock to West African hip-hop. Two festivals ran concurrently there last month, the Festival Acoustik de Bamako and a Dogon heritage festival.

Meanwhile, Egypt is in the midst of the most invasive crackdown on citizens in its modern history, five years after the overthrow of the dictator Hosni Mubarak. Thousands of people have been killed, and tens of thousands have been imprisoned, tortured and disappeared. Police are breaking into people’s homes around Cairo’s Tahrir Square and searching their Facebook and email accounts, looking for anyone who might still espouse the goals of the Jan. 25, 2011, revolution. On once occupied streets, the music has gone silent. In the Sinai desert, an anti-government insurgency rages on, but the government has little incentive to end it, since it functions as a justification for suspending freedoms.

Why are these two countries in opposite circumstances five years after what should always have been understood as an Afro-Arab Spring? In theory, the situation should be the reverse. Egypt’s GDP per capita is triple Mali’s; its human development index rating, literacy rate and level of industrialization are almost double; and its life expectancy is 20 years longer. Egypt has a relatively educated population and a historically strong state that at least has the potential to govern and develop the country. For its part, Mali remains by almost every measure one of the poorest countries on earth.

The two countries both contain ungoverned desert regions, home to disaffected and marginalized populations who for centuries have been engaged in long-distance trade outside the bounds of state control. More recently, as the level of state neglect and broken promises became intolerable, foreign-influenced religious insurgencies have been able to infiltrate and take over some of these areas.

Mali is certainly not the economic African success story it was once described as, and its government and security forces are not free of corruption and abuse. Yet it is experiencing a renewed democracy and a cultural renaissance, both pitted against the religious extremism that nearly ripped the country in half. In Mali some of the most beautiful, complex and virtuosic music on earth is being weaponized in the struggle against Islamist extremism.

Flocks of chattering African Grey parrots, more than a thousand flashes of red and white on grey at a time, were a common site in the deep forests of Ghana in the 1990s. But a 2016 study published in the journal Ibis reveals that these birds, in high demand around the world as pets, and once abundant in forests all over West and central Africa, have almost disappeared from Ghana.

According to the study, the pet trade and forest loss—particularly the felling of large trees where the parrots breed—are major factors contributing to the decline.

Uncannily good at mimicking human speech, the African Grey (and the similar but lesser-known Timneh parrot) is a prized companion in homes around the world. Research has shown that greys are as smart as a two-five year-old human child—capable of developing a limited vocabulary and even forming simple sentences.

Google the term “African Grey talking,” and you’ll find hundreds of videos—including Einstein the talking parrot’s TED presentation—showing the birds whistling and mimicking words and phrases.

The grey parrot has a wide historic range across West and central Africa—1.1 million square miles (nearly three million square kilometers)—from Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana in West Africa, through Nigeria and Cameroon and the Congo forests, to Uganda and western Kenya. Ghana accounts for more than 30,000 square miles (75,000 square kilometers) of that range, but losses of greys there have been some of the most devastating.

When the military took power in Ghana, imposing a curfew from the early 1980s, theaters in the West African country went dark. By the time elected-civilian government was restored in 1992, many Ghanaians had lost the habit of going out to watch a play.

Now one man is luring his compatriots back to live shows — and away from TV and videos. His name is James Ebo Whyte — "but everyone in Ghana calls me 'Uncle' Ebo Whyte, because of the program I do on radio," he says.

You can't miss the nattily dressed playwright. At 70 years old, he's small, dynamic and fit with a big smile. The one-time businessman regularly leaps on stage to talk to the audience for whatever reason — whether to explain a cut to the power supply or to encourage the enthusiastic theatergoers to pick up his magazine and buy tickets for his next play.

"I've been writing, directing and producing a play every quarter for the last seven years, and this is my 28th play in seven years," Whyte says.

One month ago, Jahu Camara’s life changed forever.

The young woman stepped off a plane at Halifax Stanfield International Airport, and in an instant, everything was different.

She was free.

“I was feeling like I was in a different world. Everything was like a dream to me,” said Camara, 20.

“If I remember where I am from and where I am, it’s just like a dream.”

Camara is originally from Gambia, in northwest Africa, but she fled to neighbouring Senegal in October 2014. As a lesbian, Camara knew that remaining in Gambia meant not only hiding her sexuality but also living under the constant threat of imprisonment and torture.

“Being a homosexual in Gambia is a deadly act,” she said, sitting at a kitchen table in Dartmouth.