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  • NOW Toronto looks at the Pickering nuclear plant and its role in providing fuel for space travel.

  • In some places like California, traffic is so bad that airlines actually play a role for high-end commuters. CBC reports.

  • Goldfish released into the wild are a major issue for the environment in Québec, too. CTV News reports.

  • China's investments in Jamaica have good sides and bad sides. CBC reports.

  • A potato museum in Peru might help solve world hunger. The Guardian reports.

  • Is the Alberta-Saskatchewan alliance going to be a lasting one? Maclean's considers.

  • Is the fossil fuel industry collapsing? The Tyee makes the case.

  • Should Japan and Europe co-finance a EUrasia trade initiative to rival China's? Bloomberg argues.

  • Should websites receive protection as historically significant? VICE reports.

  • Food tourism in the Maritimes is a very good idea. Global News reports.

  • Atlantic Canada lobster exports to China thrive as New England gets hit by the trade war. CBC reports.

  • The Bloc Québécois experienced its revival by drawing on the same demographics as the provincial CAQ. Maclean's reports.

  • Population density is a factor that, in Canada, determines political issues, splitting urban and rural voters. The National Observer observes.

  • US border policies aimed against migration from Mexico have been harming businesses on the border with Canada. The National Post reports.

  • The warming of the ocean is changing the relationship of coastal communities with their seas. The Conversation looks.

  • Archival research in the digital age differs from what occurred in previous eras. The Conversation explains.

  • The Persian-language Wikipedia is an actively contested space. Open Democracy reports.

  • Vox notes how the US labour shortage has been driven partly by workers quitting the labour force, here.

  • Laurie Penny at WIRED has a stirring essay about hope, about the belief in some sort of future.

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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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  • JSTOR Daily considers whether koalas are actually going extinct, here.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the life and accomplishments of Alexander Von Humboldt, here.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how a move to California doomed the Oneida Community, here.

  • JSTOR Daily considers how the genetically diverse wild relatives of current crops could help our agriculture, here.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the devastating flood of Florence in 1966, here.

  • JSTOR Daily points out there is no template for emotional intelligence, here.

  • JSTOR Daily explores some remarkable lumpy pearls, here.

  • JSTOR Daily notes an 1870 scare over the future of men, here.

  • JSTOR Daily reports on the staging of war scenes for the 1945 documentary The Battle of San Pietro, here.

  • JSTOR Daily considers the bioethics of growing human brains in a petri dish, here.

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  • Climate change is playing a major role in the wildfires of California. Are we now in the Fire Age? Global News considers.

  • The new normal of the Arctic Ocean is to be ice-free. Global News reports.

  • Plants first reached land through unexpected horizontal gene transfers. CBC reports.

  • Zebra mussels have made it to the Lake of the Woods. Global News reports.

  • An artificial leaf that turns carbon dioxide into usable fuel is a remarkable technology. Universe Today reports.

  • Earth once hosted nine human species; now it has one. What happened? National Pot considers.

  • Thanks to better medical care and preventative measures, people have longer healthy lifespans than ever before. Global News reports.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the findings that the LISA Pathfinder satellite was impacted by hypervelocity comet fragments.

  • Centauri Dreams reports on what we have learned about interstellar comet Borisov.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes the ESA's Matisse instrument, capable of detecting nanodiamonds orbiting distant stars.

  • Gizmodo reports a new study of the great auk, now extinct, suggesting that humans were wholly responsible for this extinction with their hunting.

  • The Island Review links to articles noting the existential vulnerability of islands like Venice and Orkney to climate change.

  • Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of Tucker Carlson--perhaps not believably retracted by him--to be supporting Russia versus Ukraine.

  • Language Hat reports on the new Indigemoji, emoji created to reflect the culture and knowledge of Aboriginal groups in Australia.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes one of the sad consequences of the American president being a liar.

  • James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the optimism of the spending plans of Labour in the UK, a revived Keynesianism.

  • Marginal Revolution notes the exceptional cost of apartments built for homeless people in San Francisco.

  • Strange Maps looks at some remarkable gravity anomalies in parts of the US Midwest.

  • Towleroad notes the support of Jamie Lee Curtis for outing LGBTQ people who are homophobic politicians.

  • Understanding Society looks at organizations from the perspective of them as open systems.

  • Whatever's John Scalzi gives a generally positive review of the Pixel 4.

  • Arnold Zwicky notes the irony of sex pills at an outpost of British discount chain Poundland.

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  • Architectuul visits the studio of Barbas Lopes Arquitectos in Lisbon, here.

  • Bad Astronomer takes a look at a new paper examining the effectiveness of different asteroid detection technologies, including nuclear weapons.

  • Centauri Dreams reports on a new study suggesting potentially habitable planets orbiting Alpha Centauri B, smaller of the two stars, could suffer from rapid shifts of their axes.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber argues some polls suggest some American conservatives really would prefer Russia as a model to California.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes the discovery, by the Murchison Widefield Array in Australia, of 27 supernova remnants in our galaxy.

  • The Dragon's Tales shares a collection of links about stealth aircraft, here.

  • Gizmodo notes a new study suggesting that DNA is but one of very very many potential genetic molecules.

  • Language Hat shares a reevaluation of the Richard Stanyhurst translation of the Aeneid, with its manufactured words. Why mightn't this have been not mockable but rather creative?

  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money celebrated the 50th anniversary of the takeover of Alcatraz Island by Native American activists.

  • Chris Bertram writes at the LRB Blog, after the catastrophe of the Essex van filled with dozens of dead migrants, about the architecture of exclusion that keeps out migrants.

  • Marginal Revolution shares a comment looking at the fentanyl crisis from a new angle.

  • Jenny Uglow writes at the NYR Daily about a Science Museum exhibit highlighting the dynamic joys of science and its progress over the centuries.

  • Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw takes a look at the question of how to prevent the wildfires currently raging in Australia. What could have been done, what should be done?

  • The Planetary Society Blog reports on proposals from China for two long-range probe missions to interstellar space, including a Neptune flyby.

  • Drew Rowsome reviews the wonderfully innocent Pinocchio currently playing at the Young People's Theatre.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the evidence for the universe, maybe, being closed.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that the Alexandria Patriarchate is the next Orthodox body to recognize the Ukrainian church.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at irregular versus regular, as a queer word too.

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(A day late, I know; I crashed after work yesterday.)


  • Antipope's Charlie Stross has a thought experiment: If you were superwealthy and guaranteed to live a long health life, how would you try to deal with the consequence of economic inequality?

  • Vikas Charma at Architectuul takes a look at the different factors that go into height in buildings.

  • Bad Astronomy notes S5-HVS1, a star flung out of the Milky Way Galaxy by Sagittarius A* at 1755 kilometres per second.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly shares photos from two Manhattan walks of hers, taken in non-famous areas.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at habitability for red dwarf exoplanets. Stellar activity matters.

  • Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber shares words from a manifesto about data protection in the EU.

  • Dangerous Minds shares photos from Los Angeles punks and mods and others in the 1980s.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes a ESA report suggesting crew hibernation could make trips to Mars easier.

  • Gizmodo notes that the Hayabusa2 probe of Japan is returning from asteroid Ryugu with a sample.

  • Imageo shares photos of the disastrous fires in Australia from space.

  • Information is Beautiful reports on winners of the Information is Beautiful Awards for 2019, for good infographics.

  • JSTOR Daily explains how local television stations made the ironic viewing of bad movies a thing.

  • Kotaku reports on the last days of Kawasaki Warehouse, an arcade in Japan patterned on the demolished Walled City of Kowloon.

  • Language Hat notes how translation mistakes led to the star Beta Cygni gaining the Arabic name Albireo.

  • Language Log reports on a unique Cantonese name of a restaurant in Hong Kong.

  • Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to an analysis of his suggesting the military of India is increasingly hard-pressed to counterbalance China.

  • The LRB Blog notes the catastrophe of Venice.

  • Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting states would do well not to place their capitals too far away from major population centres.

  • Justin Petrone at North! remarks on a set of old apple preserves.

  • The NYR Daily looks at how the west and the east of the European Union are divided by different conceptions of national identity.

  • Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reports from his town of Armidale as the smoke from the Australian wildfires surrounds all. The photos are shocking.

  • Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog lists some books about space suitable for children.

  • Drew Rowsome reviews the Canadian film music stand, inspired by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting that, in Switzerland, parenthood does not make people happy.

  • The Signal notes that 1.7 million phone book pages have been scanned into the records of the Library of Congress.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains the concept of multi-messenger astronomy and why it points the way forward for studies of astrophysics.

  • Strange Maps looks at how a majority of students in the United States attend diverse schools, and where.

  • Strange Company explores the mysterious death of Marc-Antoine Calas, whose death triggered the persecution of Huguenots and resulted in the mobilization of Enlightenment figures like Voltaire against the state. What happened?

  • Towleroad hosts a critical, perhaps disappointed, review of the major gay play The Inheritance.

  • Understanding Society's Daniel Little looks at the power of individual people in political hierarchies.

  • Window on Eurasia shares an opinion piece noting how many threats to the Russian language have come from its association with unpopular actions by Russia.

  • Arnold Zwicky explores queens as various as Elizabeth I and Adore Delano.

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  • Bad Astronomer notes a new study explaining how climate change makes hurricanes more destructive.

  • Centauri Dreams shares a mosaic photo of the sky with Alpha Centauri highlighted.

  • The Crux shares a paper explaining why the bubonic plague rarely becomes mass epidemics like the Black Death of the 14th century.

  • D-Brief notes the new ESA satellite ARIEL, which will be capable of determining of exoplanet skies are clear or not.

  • Gizmodo consults different experts on the subject of smart drugs. Do they work?

  • JSTOR Daily explains why Native Americans are so prominent in firefighting in the US Southwest.

  • Language Log looks at evidence for the diffusion of "horse master" between speakers of ancient Indo-European and Sinitic languages.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the election of Chesa Boudin as San Francisco District Attorney.

  • The LRB Blog considers the apparent pact between Farage and Johnson on Brexit.

  • Marginal Revolution looks at a paper examining longer-run effects of the integration of the US military on racial lines in the Korean War.

  • The NYR Daily looks at how Big Pharma in the US is trying to deal with the opioid epidemic.

  • The Signal explains how the Library of Congress is expanding its collections of digital material.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how future generations of telescopes will be able to directly measure the expansion of the universe.

  • The Volokh Conspiracy explains why DACA, giving succor to Dreamers, is legal.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that, after a century of tumult, the economy of Russia is back at the same relative ranking that it enjoyed a century ago.

  • Arnold Zwicky reports on an old butch cookbook.

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  • Centauri Dreams notes how gas giants on eccentric orbits can easily disrupt bodies on orbits inwards.

  • Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber suggests that the political culture of England has been deformed by the trauma experienced by young children of the elites at boarding schools.

  • Dangerous Minds looks at the haunting art of Paul Delvaux.

  • The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the work of Tressie McMillan Cottom in investigating for-profit higher education.

  • Far Outliers looks at Tripoli in 1801.

  • Gizmodo shares the Boeing design for the moon lander it proposes for NASA in 2024.

  • io9 shares words from cast of Terminator: Dark Fate about the importance of the Mexican-American frontier.

  • JSTOR Daily makes a case against killing spiders trapped in one's home.

  • Language Hat notes a recovered 17th century translation of a Dutch bible into the Austronesian language of Siraya, spoken in Taiwan.

  • Language Log looks at the origin of the word "brogue".

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the payday lender industry.

  • Marginal Revolution notes a new biography of Walter Raleigh, a maker of empire indeed.

  • The NYR Daily looks at a new dance show using the rhythms of the words of writer Robert Walser.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at how, in a quantum universe, time and space could still be continuous not discrete.

  • Strange Company looks at a court case from 1910s Brooklyn, about a parrot that swore.

  • The Volokh Conspiracy notes an affirmative action court case in which it was ruled that someone from Gibraltar did not count as Hispanic.

  • Window on Eurasia notes rhetoric claiming that Russians are the largest divided people on the Earth.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at lizards and at California's legendary Highway 101.

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  • D-Brief looks at how the Nile River has kept its current course for 30 million years, here.

  • D-Brief notes a study suggesting modern apartments are filled with fungi.

  • House plants do not purify the air, D-Brief reports.

  • D-Brief notes that 0.2% of the methane emitters in California release a third of the methane released in the entire state.

  • A rocky planet in the right orbit in the HR5183 system, with a gas giant in a very eccentric orbit, could have a spectacular sky, D-Brief notes.

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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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  • Ryan Anderson at anthro{dendum} looks at the unnatural history of the beach in California, here.

  • Architectuul looks at the architectural imaginings of Iraqi Shero Bahradar, here.

  • Bad Astronomy looks at gas-rich galaxy NGC 3242.

  • James Bow announces his new novel The Night Girl, an urban fantasy set in an alternate Toronto with an author panel discussion scheduled for the Lillian H. Smith Library on the 28th.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the indirect evidence for an exomoon orbiting WASP-49b, a possible Io analogue detected through its ejected sodium.

  • Crooked Timber considers the plight of holders of foreign passports in the UK after Brexit.

  • The Crux notes that astronomers are still debating the nature of galaxy GC1052-DF2, oddly lacking in dark matter.

  • D-Brief notes how, in different scientific fields, the deaths of prominent scientists can help progress.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes how NASA and the ESA are considering sample-return missions to Ceres.

  • Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the first test flights of the NASA Mercury program.

  • The Dragon's Tales looks at how Japan is considering building ASAT weapons.

  • Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at the first test flights of the NASA Mercury program.

  • Far Outliers looks how the anti-malarial drug quinine played a key role in allowing Europeans to survive Africa.

  • At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox considers grace and climate change.

  • io9 reports on how Jonathan Frakes had anxiety attacks over his return as Riker on Star Trek: Picard.

  • JSTOR Daily reports on the threatened banana.

  • Language Log looks at the language of Hong Kong protesters.

  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how a new version of The Last of the Mohicans perpetuates Native American erasure.

  • Marginal Revolution notes how East Germany remains alienated.

  • Neuroskeptic looks at the participant-observer effect in fMRI subjects.

  • The NYR Daily reports on a documentary looking at the India of Modi.

  • Corey S. Powell writes at Out There about Neptune.

  • The Planetary Society Blog examines the atmosphere of Venus, something almost literally oceanic in its nature.

  • Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money considers how Greenland might be incorporated into the United States.

  • Rocky Planet notes how Earth is unique down to the level of its component minerals.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog considers biopolitical conservatism in Poland and Russia.

  • Starts With a Bang's Ethan Siegel considers if LIGO has made a detection that might reveal the nonexistence of the theorized mass gap between neutron stars and black holes.

  • Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps looks at Marchetti's constant: People in cities, it seems, simply do not want to commute for a time longer than half an hour.

  • Understanding Society's Daniel Little looks at how the US Chemical Safety Board works.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on how Muslims in the Russian Far North fare.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at cannons and canons.

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  • The Crux looks at the australopiths, not-so-distant ancestors of modern humans.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes the interest of NASA in exploring the lunar subsurface, including lava tubes.

  • Far Outliers looks at the politicking of mid-19th century European explorers in the Sahel.

  • io9 notes that the new Joker film is getting stellar reviews, aided by the performance of Joaquin Phoenix.

  • JSTOR Daily explores how, to meet censors' demands, Betty Boop was remade in the 1930s from sex symbol into housewife.

  • Language Log reports on an utter failure in bilingual Irish/English signage.

  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money shows that a history of slavery in the US (Canada too, I would add) must not neglect the enslavement of indigenous peoples.

  • Marginal Revolution notes a paper studying San Francisco looking at how rent control did not work.

  • The NYR Daily considers growing protest against air travel for its impact on global climate.

  • Drew Rowsome reviews the queer romance film Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how the influence of Russia in the former Soviet Union is undone by Russian imperialism.

  • Arnold Zwicky considers the striking imagery--originally religious--of "carnal weapons".

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  • Author Peter Watts bids farewell to his noble companion cat, Minion.

  • Narcity notes that Toronto Animal Services is offering cats (and dogs) at a discount.

  • An Alberta organization aiming to rehouse cats from older owners has found itself overwhelmed. CBC reports.

  • A parasite spread by housecats, Smithsonian reports, is responsible for mass deaths in sea lion colonies in California.

  • The suffering of the stray cats of Marrakech, Morocco, prone to all sorts of illness and cruelty, sounds terrible. Morocco World News has it.

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  • The Buzz shares a TIFF reading list, here.

  • Centauri Dreams notes the growing sensitivity of radial velocity techniques in finding weird exoplanet HR 5183 b, here.

  • The Crux reports on circumgalactic gas and the death of galaxies.

  • Dead Things notes the import of the discovery of the oldest known Australopithecine skull.

  • Dangerous Minds reports on pioneering 1930s queer artist Hannah Gluckstein, also known as Gluck.

  • Gizmodo notes that, for an unnamed reason, DARPA needs a large secure underground testing facility for tomorrow.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how Jim Crow laws affected Mexican immigrants in the early 20th century US.

  • Language Hat looks at a new project to study Irish texts and language over centuries.

  • Language Log shares some Chinglish signs from a top university in China.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money shares an interview with Jeffrey Melnick suggesting Charles Manson was substantially a convenient boogeyman.

  • Marginal Revolution shares a paper suggesting marijuana legalization is linked to declining crime rates.

  • Susan Neiman at the NYR Daily tells how she began her life as a white woman in Atlanta and is ending it as a Jewish woman in Berlin.

  • The Planetary Society Blog looks at Hayabusa2 at Ryugu.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel celebrated the 230th anniversary of Enceladus, the Saturn moon that might harbour life.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how global warming is harming the rivers of Siberia, causing many to run short.

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  • Hamilton, Ontario, leads the country in reports of hate crimes. The National Post reports.

  • Cyclists are 42 times as likely to be ticketed for traffic violations in Montréal than in Toronto. CTV News reports.

  • CBC considers if the city of Ottawa loosened unduly its requirements for its new light rail networks.

  • A new report suggests that economics of a central Canadian high-frequency rail route would work better if Québec City was not included. CTV reports.

  • CityLab looks at nostalgia in Los Angeles for that city's old comprehensive paper map, the Thomas Guide.

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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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  • Real estate in Hamilton, Ontario, is quite affordable by GTA standards. Global News reports.

  • Québec City has a new farmer's market to replace an old. CBC reports.

  • San Jose, California, is set to embark on a grand experiment in cohousing, CityLab reports.

  • These vast abandoned apartment blocks in the desert outside of Tehran speak of economic underperformance, to say the least. Messynessychic has it.

  • Now that Hong Kong has not just competition from other cities in China but is finding itself outmatched by the likes of Shenzhen and Shanghai, the city-state's bargaining power is accordingly limited. The SCMP reports.

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  • Architectuul notes the recent death of I.M. Pei.

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes what, exactly, rubble-pile asteroids are.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about definitions of home.

  • Centauri Dreams considers white dwarf planets.

  • The Crux notes how ultra-processed foods are liked closely to weight gain.

  • D-Brief observes that a thin layer of insulating ice might be saving the subsurface oceans of Pluto from freezing out.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes the critical role played by Apollo 10 in getting NASA ready for the Moon landings.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes the American government's expectation that China will seek to set up its own global network of military bases.

  • Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the Soviet Union's Venera 5 and 6 missions to Venus.

  • Far Outliers looks at the visit of U.S. Grant to Japan and China.

  • Gizmodo notes a recent analysis of Neanderthal teeth suggesting that they split with Homo sapiens at a date substantially earlier than commonly believed.

  • io9 notes the sheer scale of the Jonathan Hickman reboots for the X-Men comics of Marvel.

  • Joe. My. God. shares the argument of Ted Cruz that people should stop making fun of his "space pirate" suggestion.I am inclined to think Cruz more right than not, actually.

  • JSTOR Daily notes the wave of anti-black violence that hit the United States in 1919, often driven by returned veterans.

  • Language Hat shares a recognizable complaint, written in ancient Akkadian, of bad customers.

  • Language Log shares a report of a village in Brittany seeking people to decipher a mysterious etching.

  • This Scott Lemieux report at Lawyers, Guns and Money about how British conservatives received Ben Shapiro is a must-read summary.

  • Benjamin Markovits at the LRB Blog shares the reasons why he left his immigrant-heavy basketball team in Germany.

  • Marginal Revolution looks at one effort in Brazil to separate people from their street gangs.

  • The NYR Daily looks at how ISIS, deprived of its proto-state, has managed to thrive as a decentralized network.

  • Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw tells of his experiences and perceptions of his native region of New England, in southeastern Australia.

  • The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Chang'e 4 rover may have found lunar mantle on the surface of the Moon.

  • The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that while Argentine president Mauricio Macri is polling badly, his opponents are not polling well.

  • Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of things to do in see in the Peru capital of Lima.

  • The Signal examines how the Library of Congress engages in photodocumentation.

  • Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal explains how he is helping native insects by planting native plants in his garden.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how scientific illiteracy should never be seen as cool.

  • Towleroad notes the questions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as to why Truvada costs so much in the United States.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how family structures in the North Caucasus are at once modernizing and becoming more conservative.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the distribution of US carriers and their fleets at present does not support the idea of a planned impending war with Iran.

  • Arnold Zwicky examines the tent caterpillar of California.

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