A Bit More Detail

• 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.

• Architectuul takes a look at "infrastructural scars", at geopolitically-inspired constructions like border fences and fortifications.


• Centauri Dreams notes what we can learn from 99942 Apophis during its 2029 close approach to Earth, just tens of thousands of kilometres away.


• D-Brief reports on the reactions of space artists to the photograph of the black hole at the heart of M87.


• Dangerous Minds shares the first recording of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Germany has begun work on drafting laws to cover space mining.


• Gizmodo reports on what scientists have learned from the imaging of a very recent impact of an asteroid on the near side of the Moon.


• io9 makes the case that Star Trek: Discovery should try to tackle climate change.


• Joe. My. God. notes that Verizon is seeking a buyer for Tumblr. (Wouldn't it be funny if it was bought, as other reports suggest might be possible, by Pornhub?)


• JSTOR Daily reports on a 1910 examination of medical schools that, among other things, shut down all but two African-American medical schools with lasting consequences for African-American health.


• Language Log asks why "Beijing" is commonly pronounced as "Beizhing".


• Simon Balto asks at Lawyers, Guns and Money why the murder of Justine Ruszczyk by a Minneapolis policeman is treated more seriously than other police killings, just because she was white and the cop was black. All victims deserve the same attention.


• Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares a video of the frieze of the Parthenon.


• The NYR Daily responds to the 1979 television adaptation of the Primo Levi novel Christ Stopped at Eboli, an examination of (among other things) the problems of development.


• Peter Rukavina is entirely right about the practical uselessness of QR codes.


• Daniel Little at Understanding Society points readers towards the study of organizations, concentrating on Charles Perrow.


• Window on Eurasia notes the argument of one Russian commentator that Russia should offer to extend citizenship en masse not only to Ukrainians but to Belarusians, the better to undermine independent Belarus.


• Arnold Zwicky shares photos of some of his flourishing flowers, as his home of Palo Alto enters a California summer.

• 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.

• There is a shortlist of likely marijuana store locations in Ontario that includes Yorkville in Toronto. Global News reports.


• Éric Grenier at CBC reports that the NDP in Québec risks falling to pre-Orange Wave levels of support.


• Former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair warns that the weakening of the NDP stance on environmental issues might led to mass defections to the Green Party. CTV has it.


• Given the lack of any legal obligation to expedite the return of ISIS fighters holding Canadian citizenship, the Canadian government seems inclined to let them remain in detention in former ISIS territories. Global News reports.


• Brexit is boosting the Canadian film industry, given our numerous advantages as described by the Hollywood Reporter.

• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps takes a look at the regularity, and otherwise, of different cities' street grids.


• CityLab notes how the city of Baltimore is suing Big Oil over the effects of climate change, including flooding.


• The Lake Huron resort community of Wasaga Beach turns out to have strong connections with the Lithuanian-Canadian community.


• CityLab takes a look at the love food critic Jonathan Gold expressed for the city of Los Angeles in his writing.

The SCMP notes that the British government in the 1980s was so opposed to Hong Kongers gaining the right to live in the UK that they tried to get Portugal to strip full citizenship from eligible Macanese.

• blogTO notes a closure this weekend of Line 1 between St. Clair and Lawrence for Metrolinx construction. Still, at least their post uses my photo!


• Urban Toronto notes that, the studios at 390 through 444 Dufferin Street being demolished, new construction is begin. I remember those studios from when I first moved to Toronto.


• Urban Toronto looks at the latest revision to plans to redevelop the southwest corner of Bloor and Dufferin, one intended to install a more human scale to the streetscape and skyline.


• NOW Toronto takes an extended look at the #TheManWhoSoldParkdale campaign against gentrification in Parkdale.


• CBC shares the argument in favour of giving permanent residents voting rights in municipal elections in the City of Toronto.

• The suggestion of Maltese academic Godfrey Baldacchino that Malta relieve its overcrowding by buying the nearby Italian island of Pantelleria has the advantage of being attention-catching. Malta Today has it.


• I wish the lawsuit of American Samoans seeking full citizenship in the United States all possible success. NBC News reports.


• Atlas Obscura takes a look at the distinctive history and culture of the Moriori of the Chatham Islands.


• Tasmania turns out to be a hugely popular destination for tourists from China. Bloomberg reports.


• The Newfoundland government's program of relocating marginal settlements remains hugely controversial. CBC reports.

• Justin Bachman at Bloomberg notes how a tourism industry group in the United States is urging policy changes that might reverse a recent fall in incoming tourist numbers to that country.


• Over at MacLean's, Donald MacLean Wells and Janet McLaughlin look at the exploitation of migrant farm labourers in Canada.


• CBC reports on allegations that skilled Tamil sculptors from India were exploited and cheated out of a wage by their Toronto employers, Sridurka Hindu Temple.


• Inter Press Service reports on the plight of some deportees from the United States to Cambodia, people who came over as children but never acquired American citizenship and so were eligible for deportation if convicted of crimes.

• The New York Times is but one news source to observe the findings of archeologists and geneticists that the Canaanites were not slaughtered. Was the claimed Biblical genocide a matter of thwarted wish-fulfillment?


• At Wired, David Pierce mourns the standalone iPod, an innovative music-changing technology in its time now being phased out.


• Catherine McIntyre at MacLean's describes how birding is becoming hip among young urbanites, in Toronto and across Canada.


• Open Democracy looks at how Estonia is pioneering e-residency and virtual citizenship schemes.

For more than half a century, Steven Dugalin believed he didn’t have legal status in Canada and could be deported at any moment.

Decade after decade, the now 77-year-old Mississauga man tried to stay under the radar, working in construction jobs, even living in a motel, fearing if he was picked up by immigration he’d get the boot.

[. . .]

“If it wasn’t for the government’s mistake, saying I was here illegally, I wouldn’t have had to endure the hardship,” says Dugalin, who came to Canada as a government-sponsored refugee from Hungary in 1957. “This has ruined my life.”

Dugalin said he’d been told by immigration officials that he’d lost his permanent resident status after being convicted of breaking into houses in British Columbia in 1959. He says he was hungry and was only stealing food.

“There was a group of us. We didn’t speak English. Nobody had jobs. We were homeless, hungry and desperate,” said Dugalin, who was among 37,000 Hungarians admitted to Canada after the 1956 Soviet invasion.

The truth about Dugalin’s actual immigration status wasn’t uncovered until 2012, when Toronto lawyer Barbara Jackman picked up his case and found the government records that proved he had maintained his permanent resident status all along.