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  • Charlie Stross at Antipope shares an essay he recently presented on artificial intelligence and its challenges for us.

  • P. Kerim Friedman writes at {anthro}dendum about the birth of the tea ceremony in the Taiwan of the 1970s.

  • Anthropology net reports on a cave painting nearly 44 thousand years old in Indonesia depicting a hunting story.

  • Architectuul looks at some temporary community gardens in London.

  • Bad Astronomy reports on the weird history of asteroid Ryugu.

  • The Buzz talks about the most popular titles borrowed from the Toronto Public Library in 2019.

  • Caitlin Kelly talks at the Broadside Blog about her particular love of radio.

  • Centauri Dreams talks about the role of amateur astronomers in searching for exoplanets, starting with LHS 1140 b.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber looks at what is behind the rhetoric of "virtue signalling".

  • Dangerous Minds shares concert performance from Nirvana filmed the night before the release of Nevermind.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes new evidence that, even before the Chixculub impact, the late Cretaceous Earth was staggering under environmental pressures.

  • Myron Strong at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about how people of African descent in the US deal with the legacies of slavery in higher education.

  • Far Outliers reports on the plans in 1945 for an invasion of Japan by the US.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing gathers together a collection of the author's best writings there.

  • Gizmodo notes the immensity of the supermassive black hole, some 40 billion solar masses, at the heart of galaxy Holm 15A 700 million light-years away.

  • Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res writes about the issue of how Wichita is to organize its civic politics.

  • io9 argues that the 2010s were a decade where the culture of the spoiler became key.

  • The Island Review points readers to the podcast Mother's Blood, Sister's Songs, an exploration of the links between Ireland and Iceland.

  • Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of the lawyer of the killer of a mob boss that the QAnon conspiracy inspired his actions. This strikes me as terribly dangerous.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at a study examining scholarly retractions.

  • Language Hat shares an amusing cartoon illustrating the relationships of the dialects of Arabic.

  • Language Log lists ten top new words in the Japanese language.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the dissipation of American diplomacy by Trump.

  • The LRB Blog looks at the many problems in Sparta, Greece, with accommodating refugees, for everyone concerned.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting the decline of the one-child policy in China has diminished child trafficking, among other crimes.

  • Sean Marshall, looking at transit in Brampton, argues that transit users need more protection from road traffic.

  • Russell Darnley shares excerpts from essays he wrote about the involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War.

  • Peter Watts talks about his recent visit to a con in Sofia, Bulgaria, and about the apocalypse, here.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the corporatization of the funeral industry, here.

  • Diane Duane writes, from her own personal history with Star Trek, about how one can be a writer who ends up writing for a media franchise.

  • Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the job of tasting, and rating, different cuts of lamb.

  • The Planetary Society Blog looks at a nondescript observatory in the Mojave desert of California that maps the asteroids of the solar system.

  • Roads and Kingdoms interviews Eduardo Chavarin about, among other things, Tijuana.

  • Drew Rowsome loves the SpongeBob musical.

  • Peter Rukavina announces that Charlottetown has its first public fast charger for electric vehicles.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog considers the impact of space medicine, here.

  • The Signal reports on how the Library of Congress is making its internet archives more readily available, here.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers how the incredibly isolated galaxy MCG+01-02-015 will decay almost to nothing over almost uncountable eons.

  • Strange Company reports on the trial and execution of Christopher Slaughterford for murder. Was there even a crime?

  • Strange Maps shares a Coudenhove-Kalergi map imagining the division of the world into five superstates.

  • Understanding Society considers entertainment as a valuable thing, here.

  • Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine announces his new book, Où va l'argent des pauvres?

  • John Scalzi at Whatever looks at how some mailed bread triggered a security alert, here.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on the massive amount of remittances sent to Tajikistan by migrant workers, here.

  • Arnold Zwicky notes a bizarre no-penguins sign for sale on Amazon.

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  • Bad Astronomer notes the circumstances of the discovery of a low-mass black hole, only 3.3 solar masses.

  • Crooked Timber shares a photo of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

  • The Crux looks at Monte Verde, the site in Chile that has the evidence of the oldest human population known to have lived in South America.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that Russia may provide India with help in the design of its Gaganyaan manned capsule.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing talks of his work, including his upcoming conference and his newsletter, The Convivial Society. (Subscribe at the website.)

  • Gizmodo shares the Voyager 2 report from the edges of interstellar space.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the East India Company and its corporate lobbying.

  • Language Hat shares an account from Ken Liu of the challenges in translating The Three Body Problem, linguistic and otherwise.

  • Language Log looks at the problems faced by the word "liberation" in Hong Kong.

  • Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the implications of the surprising new relationship between Russia and the Philippines.

  • Marginal Revolution seems to like Terminator: Dark Fate, as a revisiting of the series' origins, with a Mesoamerican twist.

  • Sean Marshall announces his attendance at a transit summit in Guelph on Saturday the 9th.

  • Garry Wills writes at the NYR Daily about his experience as a man in the mid-20th century American higher education looking at the rise of women.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the strangely faint distant young galaxy MACS2129-1.

  • Window on Eurasia considers the possibility of Latvia developing a national Eastern Orthodox church of its own.

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  • Jamie Bradburn took a look at now-effaced Toronto cemetery Potter's Field, here.

  • Kingston, Ontario's Skeleton Park is a remarkable legacy. Global News reports.

  • CBC Saskatoon reports on the origins of Halloween in harvest events.

  • The Hong Kong protests took on a new tinge this Halloween. CBC reports.

  • The Vancouver tradition of Halloween fireworks may be dying out. The National Post reports.

  • Guardian Cities looks around the world, from Derry to West Hollywood, at local celebrations of Halloween.

  • Gizmodo shares an image of a ghostly collision of galaxies in deep space.

  • Dangerous Minds shared some album covers inspired by Halloween.

  • CBC looks at the very low rate of candy tampering in Canada over the past decade.

  • JSTOR Daily considers how the Great Pumpkin of Peanuts came to be so great.

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  • Bad Astronomy notes a new detailed study suggesting that asteroid Hygeia is round. Does this mean it is a dwarf planet?

  • The Buzz notes that the Toronto Public Library has a free booklet on the birds of Toronto available at its branches.

  • Crooked Timber looks forward to a future, thanks to Trump, without the World Trade Organization.

  • D-Brief notes how the kelp forests off California were hurt by unseasonal heat and disease.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes an impending collision of supergalactic clusters.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how judgement can complicate collective action.

  • Language Hat looks at the different definitions of the word "mobile".

  • Language Log looks at the deep influence of the Persian language upon Marathi.
    https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=44807
  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how, if anything, climate scientists make conservative claims about their predictions.

  • Marginal Revolution wonders if planned power outages are a good way to deal with the threat of wildfires in California.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the ethnic cleansing being enabled by Turkey in Kurdish Syria.

  • Corey S. Powell at Out There interviews archeologist Arthur Lin about his use of space-based technologies to discovery traces of the past.

  • The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks at the staggering inequality in Chile, driver of the recent protests.

  • At Roads and Kingdoms, Anthony Elghossain reports from the scene of the mass protests in Lebanon.

  • Drew Rowsome tells how his balcony garden fared this year.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at stellar generations in the universe. (Our sun is a third-generation star.)

  • Strange Company looks at the murder of a girl five years old in Indiana in 1898. Was the neighbor boy twelve years old accused of the crime the culprit?

  • Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine takes a look at social mobility in France.

  • Understanding Society's Daniel Little considers economic historians and their study of capitalism.

  • Window on Eurasia looks at the pro-Russian policies of the Moldova enclave of Gagauzia, and draws recommendations for Ukraine re: the Donbas.

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  • CBC Montreal notes how there is now a mural in memory of missing child Ariel Kouakou in a east-end Rosemont alley.

  • CultMTL takes a look at an odd convenience store hidden in the basement of an apartment block near McGill University, here.

  • CBC Montreal notes how mass transit is the top priority for mayor Valérie Plante, here.

  • An archeological dig near Pointe Claire is revealing ruins dating back to the time of New France. Global News reports.


  • CBC Montreal looks at the new campus of the Université de Montréal, and controversy over its transformation of neighbourhoods.

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  • Why not build a public beach in the Montréal neighbourhood of Lachine? Global News considers.

  • The Vietnamese cuisine of New Orleans does look good. VICE reports.

  • CityLab describes an effort to build a smart city in Berlin, in Siemensstadt. I wish Berliners better outcomes than what Toronto seems to be getting in the Port Lands.

  • Guardian Cities reports on what seems to me to be a terrible plan to flood the ancient settlement of Hasankeyf in Turkey for dams.

  • Saša Petricic at CBC looks at how the political consensus in Hong Kong has broken down, perhaps irretrievably.

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  • Architectuul profiles architectural photographer Lorenzo Zandri, here.

  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes a new study suggesting red dwarf stars, by far the most common stars in the universe, have plenty of planets.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly shares 11 tips for interviewers, reminding me of what I did for anthropology fieldwork.

  • Centauri Dreams notes how water ice ejected from Enceladus makes the inner moons of Saturn brilliant.

  • The Crux looks at the increasingly complicated question of when the first humans reached North America.

  • D-Brief notes a new discovery suggesting the hearts of humans, unlike the hearts of other closely related primates, evolved to require endurance activities to remain healthy.

  • Dangerous Minds shares with its readers the overlooked 1969 satire Putney Swope.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that the WFIRST infrared telescope has passed its first design review.

  • Gizmodo notes how drought in Spain has revealed the megalithic Dolmen of Guadalperal for the first time in six decades.

  • io9 looks at the amazing Jonathan Hickman run on the X-Men so far, one that has established the mutants as eye-catching and deeply alien.

  • Joe. My. God. notes that the Pentagon has admitted that 2017 UFO videos do, in fact, depict some unidentified objects in the air.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the origin of the equestrian horseback statue in ancient Rome.

  • Language Log shares a bilingual English/German pun from Berlin.

  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money reflects on the legacy of Thomas Jefferson at Jefferson's grave.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution looks at a new book arguing, contra Pinker perhaps, that the modern era is one of heightened violence.

  • The New APPS Blog seeks to reconcile the philosophy of Hobbes with that of Foucault on biopower.

  • Strange Company shares news clippings from 1970s Ohio about a pesky UFO.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why the idea of shooting garbage from Earth into the sun does not work.

  • Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps explains the appearance of Brasilia on a 1920s German map: It turns out the capital was nearly realized then.

  • Towleroad notes that Pete Buttigieg has taken to avoiding reading LGBTQ media because he dislikes their criticism of his gayness.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at diners and changing menus and slavery.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait shares a video of the expansion of supernova remnant Cas A.

  • James Bow shares an alternate history Toronto transit map from his new novel The Night Girl.

  • Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes the Boris Johnson coup.

  • The Crux notes a flawed study claiming that some plants had a recognizable intelligence.

  • D-Brief notes the mysterious absorbers in the clouds of Venus. Are they life?

  • Dangerous Minds shares, apropos of nothing, the Jah Wabbles song "A Very British Coup."

  • Cody Delistraty looks at bullfighting.

  • Dead Things notes the discovery of stone tools sixteen thousand years old in Idaho which are evidence of the first humans in the Americas.

  • io9 features an interview with authors Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz on worldbuilding.

  • Joe. My. God. notes that a bill in Thailand to establish civil unions is nearing approval.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how using plastic in road construction can reduce pollution in oceans.

  • Language Log looks to see if some police in Hong Kong are speaking Cantonese or Putonghua.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the perplexing ramblings and--generously--inaccuracy of Joe Biden.

  • The LRB Blog asks why the United Kingdom is involved in the Yemen war, with Saudi Arabia.

  • The Map Room Blog looks at the different efforts aiming to map the fires of Amazonia.

  • Marginal Revolution reports on how some southern US communities, perhaps because they lack other sources of income, depend heavily on fines.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the complex literary career of Louisa May Alcott, writing for all sorts of markets.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on the apparently sincere belief of Stalin, based on new documents, that in 1934 he faced a threat from the Soviet army.

  • Arnold Zwicky takes a look at fixings, or fixins, as the case may be.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares images of galaxy M61.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at a proposal for the Solar Cruiser probe, a NASA probe that would use a solar sail.

  • D-Brief notes the discovery of bacteria on coasts which manufacture dimethyl sulfide.

  • Bruce Dorminey writes about some facts about the NASA X-15 rocket plane.

  • The Dragon's Tales reports on the strange nuclear accident in Nyonoksa, Russia.

  • JSTOR Daily reports on the recent uncovering of the ancient Egyptian city of Heracleion, under the Mediterranean.

  • Language Hat looks at 19th century standards on ancient Greek language.

  • Language Log notes an ironically swapped newspaper article subhead.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the role of Tom Cotton in the recent Greenland scandal.

  • Marginal Revolution glances at the relationship between China and Singapore.

  • The NYR Daily looks at how the car ride played a role in the writing of Jacques Lacan.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares an index on state fragility around the world.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why Jupiter suffers so many impacts from incoming bodies.

  • John Scalzi at Whatever reports on what seems to have been an enjoyable concert experience with Iron Maiden.

  • Window on Eurasia reports a claim that, with regards to a border dispute, Chechnya is much more unified than Dagestan.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the Elon Musk proposal to terraform Mars by dropping nuclear weapons on the planet's ice caps is a bad idea.

  • James Bow writes about how the introduction of faeries saved his novel The Night Girl.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the storms of Jupiter.

  • The Crux explains the mystery of a village in Poland that has not seen the birth of a baby boy for nearly a decade.

  • D-Brief looks at the exoplanets of nearby red dwarf Gliese 1061.

  • Cody Delisraty talks of Renaissance painter Fra Angelico.

  • Drew Ex Machina commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune.

  • The Dragon's Tales shares links to some papers about the Paleolithic.


  • JSTOR Daily hosts an essay by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger suggesting that Internet rot might be good since it could let people start to forget the past and so move on.

  • Language Hat questions whether the phrase "free to all" has really fallen out of use.

  • Language Log takes a look about immigration to the United States and Emma Lazarus' famous poem.

  • Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with the suggestion of, among other, Henry Farrell, that we are headed away from globalization towards fortress economies. Redundancy, he suggests, will be more important.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a disturbing paper suggesting users of opioids use them in part for social reasons.

  • The NYR Daily features an exchange on a new law in Singapore seeking to govern fake news.

  • The Power and the Money features a guest post from Leticia Arroyo Abad looking at Argentina before the elections.

  • Drew Rowsome takes a look at a new play by Raymond Helkio examining the life of out boxer Mark Leduc.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers if we can test gravitational waves for wave-particle duality.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares photos of the many flowers of Gamble Garden, in Palo Alto.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes how the warp in space-time made by the black hole in V404 Cygni has been detected.

  • The Crux reports on the discovery of the remains of a chicha brewery in pre-Columbian Peru.

  • D-Brief notes a new model for the creation of the Moon by impact with primordial Earth that would explain oddities with the Earth still being molten, having a magma ocean.

  • Bruce Dorminey shares the idea that extraterrestrial civilizations might share messages with posterity through DNA encoded in bacteria set adrift in space.

  • The Dragon's Tales reports on progress in drones and UAVs made worldwide.

  • Gizmodo notes some of the privacy issues involved with Alexa.

  • JSTOR Daily explains how some non-mammals, including birds and fish, nurse their young.

  • Language Hat reports on the latest studies in the ancient linguistic history of East Asia, with suggestions that Old Japanese has connections to the languages of the early Korean states of Silla and Paekche but not to that of Koguryo.

  • Language Log considers the issues involved with the digitization of specialized dictionaries.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money remembers the start of the Spanish Civil War.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points towards his recent interview with Margaret Atwood.

  • The NYR Daily reports on a remarkable new play, Heidi Schreck's What The Constitution Means To Me.

  • Towleroad reports on what Hunter Kelly, one of the men who operatives tried to recruit to spread slander against Pete Buttigieg, has to say about the affair.

  • Window on Eurasia suggests that a Russian annexation of Belarus would not be an easy affair.

  • Arnold Zwicky reports on the latest signs of language change, this time in the New Yorker.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers the possibility that interstellar objects like 'Oumuamua might help planets consdense in young systems.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly explains the genesis of news stories.

  • Centauri Dreams explores a remarkable thesis of somehow intelligent, living even, mobile stars.

  • Citizen Science Blog reports on an ingenious effort by scientists to make use of crowdsourcing to identify venerable trees in a forest.

  • The Crux takes a look at the idea of rewilding.

  • D-Brief takes a look at how active auroras can lead to satellite orbits decaying prematurely.

  • Bruce Dorminey reports on a new finding suggesting that the suspected exomoon given the name Kepler-162b I does not exist.

  • JSTOR Daily takes a look at the incident that led to the concept of Stockholm syndrome.

  • Language Log takes a look at the idea of someone having more than one native language. Is it even possible?

  • Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at how trade war with the EU is hurting the bourbon industry of the United States.

  • The LRB Blog reports on the aftermath in Peru of the startling suicide of former president Alan Garcia.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that rising health care costs have hurt the American savings rate and the wider American economy.

  • Russell Darnley takes a look at the innovative fish weirs of the Aborigines on Australia's Darling River.

  • The NYR Daily takes a look at Russian Doll and the new era of television.

  • The Planetary Society Blog notes the formal end of the Mars rover expeditions. Spirit and Opportunity can rest easy.

  • Drew Rowsome praises Out, a one-man show at Buddies in Bad Times exploring what it was like to be out in the late 1970s.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that a search for dark matter has revealed evidence of the radioactive decay of pretty but not perfectly stable isotope xenon-124.

  • Window on Eurasia considers the likely impact of new Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelensky on Ukrainian autocephaly.

  • Arnold Zwicky celebrated the penguin drawings of Sandra Boynton, starting from her World Penguin Day image from the 25th of April.

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  • New estimates suggest the costs of global warming will be in the tens of trillions of dollars, with warmer countries taking a particularly big hit. Motherboard reports.

  • Indigenous bumblebee populations in Canada are fast approaching extinction, with a certainty of major negative environmental effects. CBC reports.

  • MacLean's reports on the return to prominence of Jim Balsillie, this time not so much as a tech mogul as a sort off tech skeptic.

  • This Motherboard article makes a somewhat far-fetched argument that Game of Thrones demonstrates the need for human civilization to have backups.

  • The Conversation reports on the recent discovery, in Serbia by a joint Serbian-Canadian team, of a Neanderthal tooth, and what this discovery means for our understanding of the deep past of humanity.

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  • Quite honestly, this CBC report about pet owners in Collingwood who are complaining that they cannot let their pets roam for fear of coyotes makes me feel sorry for the poor pets.

  • CityLab reports on the problems that Ottawa has had in getting its light-rail transit network operational.

  • CityLab reports on how Amazon may be distancing itself from Seattle, the better to not get caught up in big-city politics.

  • The Guardian reports from the Castilian town of Sayatón, a disappearing town that has become a symbol of depopulating rural Spain. What, if anything, can be done to reverse these trends?

  • Ozy reports on how Kathmandu is literally uncovering elements of its past as it continues its post-earthquake reconstruction.

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  • Bad Astronomy shares Hubble images of asteroid 6478 Gault, seemingly in the process of dissolving.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the experience of living in a body one knows from hard experience to be fallible.

  • Gizmodo notes new evidence that environmental stresses pushed at least some Neanderthals to engage in cannibalism.

  • Hornet Stories notes the 1967 raid by Los Angeles police against the Black Cat nightclub, a pre-Stonewall trigger of LGBTQ organization.

  • Imageo notes the imperfect deal wrought by Colorado Basin states to minimize the pain felt by drought in that river basin.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the cinema of Claire Denis.

  • Language Log reports on the work of linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, a man involved in language revival efforts in Australia after work in Israel with Hebrew.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders if the Iran-Contra scandal will be a precedent for the Mueller report, with the allegations being buried by studied inattention.

  • Marginal Revolution makes a case for NIMBYism leading to street urination.

  • Justin Petrone at North! looks at a theatrical performance of a modern Estonian literary classic, and what it says about gender and national identity.

  • Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw makes the case for a treaty with Australian Aborigines, to try to settle settler-indigenous relations in Australia.

  • John Quiggin looks at the factors leading to the extinction of coal as an energy source in the United Kingdom.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that we are not yet up to the point of being able to detect exomoons of Earth-like planets comparable to our Moon.

  • Window on Eurasia notes the occasion of the last singer in the Ket language.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares some cartoon humour, around thought balloons.

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  • A statue of Queen Victoria has been vandalized in Montréal, the act claimed by an anti-colonialist coalition. Global News reports.

  • Guardian Cities profiled an Instagram account, thedoorsofnyc, concentrating on the unique doors of New York City.

  • Billionaire urbanism is identified by this article at The Stranger as the downfall of the waterfront of Seattle.

  • CityLab notes that the government of Amsterdam is now requiring owners of new homes to live in their property, limiting the ability to rent them out.

  • The Atlantic notes the criticisms of many urbanists in Istanbul that restorations of the city's ancient heritage are actually destroying them, at least as survivals from the past.

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  • Charlie Stross at Antipope has an open thread regarding Brexit.

  • Centauri Dreams considers the dust lanes of the solar system.

  • D-Brief reports on the discovery of the first confirmed skull piece of a Denisovan.

  • Dangerous Minds considers the filmic history of Baron Munchausen.

  • JSTOR Daily considers the past of the Monroe Doctrine, as a marker of American power over the Western Hemisphere.

  • Language Log notes that "frequency illusion", a 2005 coinage of Arnold Zwicky on that blog, has made it to the Oxford English Dictionary. Congratulations!

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the talents of Pete Buttigieg, someone who (among other things) is fluent in the Norwegian language. Could he be a serious challenger?

  • Oliver Miles at the LRB Blog notes the threat of new locust swarms across the Sahara and into the Middle East.

  • Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution highlights a new paper aiming to predict the future, one that argues that the greatest economic gains will eventually accrue to the densest populations.

  • The NYR Daily reports from the scene in a fragmented Libya.

  • The Planetary Society Blog reports that the OSIRIS-REx probe has detected asteroid Bennu ejecting material into space.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains the import of having a supermoon occur on the Equinox this year.

  • Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs reports a new finding that Mercury actually tends to be the closest planet in the Solar System to Earth.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that fewer Russians than before think highly of the annexation of Crimea.

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  • National Geographic reports on the discovery of animals slaughtered by mysterious hominins present in the Philippines some 700 thousand years ago. Who were they?

  • National Geographic notes a new study suggesting that, before the Chixculub impact, the dinosaurs were doing fine as a group of animals, that they were not on the verge of dying out. The dinosaurs simply had bad luck.

  • CityLab notes how the jobs typically filled by women, particularly, are especially vulnerable to roboticization.

  • CBC recently reported from a conference in Las Vegas, where robots demonstrated their ability to fill any number of jobs, displacing human workers.

  • Matt Simon at WIRED wrote about the potential for robot and human workers to co-exist, each with their own strengths.

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  • Core samples from the Earth contain the history of our planet's orbital machinations. D-Brief reports.

  • Global action on climate, D-Brief notes, is needed now if we are to save the Earth for future generations.

  • Certain kinds of tectonic collisions, by exposing fresh rock, may well cause ice ages. D-Brief reports.
  • Some Apollo moon rocks as yet untouched by science have been given over for analysis. D-Brief reports.

  • An analysis of pig bones at Stonehenge reveals the cosmopolitanism of the visitors to that site. D-Brief reports.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how the dinosaurs seem to have been killed off 65 million years ago by a combination of geological and astronomical catastrophes.

  • Centauri Dreams examines Kepler 1658b, a hot Jupiter in a close orbit around an old star.

  • The Crux reports on the continuing search for Planet Nine in the orbits of distant solar system objects.

  • D-Brief notes how researchers have begun to study the archaeological records of otters.

  • Cody Delistraty profiles author and journalist John Lanchester.

  • Far Outliers reports on the terrible violence between Hindus and Muslims preceding partition in Calcutta.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing suggests the carnival of the online world, full of hidden work, is actually an unsatisfying false carnival.

  • Hornet Stories reports that São Paulo LGBTQ cultural centre and homeless shelter Casa 1 is facing closure thanks to cuts by the homophobic new government.

  • io9 reports on one fan's attempt to use machine learning to produce a HD version of Deep Space Nine.

  • JSTOR Daily takes a look at the increasing trend, at least in the United States and the United Kingdom, to deport long-term residents lacking sufficiently secure residency rights.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the literally medieval epidemics raging among the homeless of California.

  • Marginal Revolution considers how the Book of Genesis can be read as a story of increasing technology driving improved living standards and economic growth.

  • The NYR Daily interviews Lénaïg Bredoux about #MeToo in France.

  • The Planetary Society Blog considers the subtle differences in colour between ice giants Uranus and Neptune, one greenish and the other a blue, and the causes of this difference.

  • The Speed River Journal's Van Waffle shares beautiful photos of ice on a stream as he talks about his creative process.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers what the universe was like back when the Earth was forming.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on a statement made by the government of Belarus that the survival of the Belarusian language is a guarantor of national security.

  • Arnold Zwicky was kind enough to share his handout for the semiotics gathering SemFest20.

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