A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomer notes a serendipitous photo of two galaxies, one in front of the other, and what this photo reveals about their structures.


• Dangerous Minds notes how, and why, Robert Crumb rejected the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger.


• D-Brief notes that every hot Jupiter has clouds on its nightside.


• Earther notes that, after a century and a half, iguanas have been reintroduced to the largest island in the Galapagos.


• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing notes how the data self is a shadow of the social self.


• Gizmodo shares a stunning photo mosaic by Hubble of the Triangulum Galaxy, third-largest component of the Local Group.


• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the story of William Faulkner and his engagement with Hollywood.


• Language Log looks at the possibility of outside influence, from other language groups including Indo-European, on a Sinitic word for "milk".


• Marginal Revolution links to a London Review of Books article looking at the different national reactions to Brexit from each of the EU-27.


• The NYR Daily looks at how Israel is exporting its technologies developed during the occupation of the Palestinians globally.


• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at the latest census data on the languages spoken in England.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why astronomers have not yet been able to locate (or exclude as a possibility) Planet Nine.


• Towleroad notes that the homophobia of Bolsonario began to be implemented on his first day as president of Brazil.


• Daniel Little at Understanding Society takes a look at some sociological examinations of the research university.


• Window on Eurasia notes that many congregations in the west and centre of Ukraine once links to the Russian Orthodox Church have switched to the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but that this has not happened in the east.


• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the appearance of a conlang in comics.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares the latest images of asteroid Ryugu.


• Centauri Dreams reports on the equal-mass near-Earth asteroid binary 2017 YE5.


• Far Outliers notes how corrosive fake news and propaganda can be, by looking at Orwell's experience of the Spanish Civil War.


• The Frailest Thing's L.M. Sacasas looks at swarms versus networks, in the light of Bauman's thinking on freedom/security.


• Joe. My. God. reports on how American pharmacy chain PVS fired a man--a Log Cabin Republican, no less--for calling the police on a black customer over a coupon.


• JSTOR Daily links to a paper making the case that national service plays a useful role in modern countries.


• Language Hat quotes from a beautiful Perry Anderson essay at the LRB about Proust.


• Jeffey Herlihy-Mera writes/u> at Lingua Franca about his first-hand experiences of the multilingualism of Ecuador.


• The NYR Daily takes a look at the art created by the prominent members of the Romanov dynasty.


• The Power and Money's Noel Maurer has reposted a blog post from 2016 considering the question of just how much money the United States could extract, via military basing, from Germany and Japan and South Korea


• Window on Eurasia <>suggests a new Russian language law that would marginalize non-Russian languages is provoking a renaissance of Tatar nationalism.

• Beyond the Beyond notes that electronic newspapers just don't work.


• blogTO notes that the Eaton Centre's HMV is closing.


• Crooked Timber notes that it will be shifting to moderated commenting.


• D-Brief notes a new sharp image of Eta Carinae.


• Dead Things notes that some monkeys are apparently making stone tools.


• Joe. My. God. shares Le Tigre's new pro-Clinton song, "I'm With Her".


• The LRB Blog is critical of Britain's hostility towards refugee children.


• The Map Room Blog links to a new historical atlas of Tibet.


• The NYRB Daily examines Assange's reasons for using Wikileaks to help Trump.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes that New Horizons target 2007 OR10 has a moon.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes the reasons for Ecuador's clamping down on Assange.

• Keiran Healy suggests much of Apple's opposition to the FBI's demand it decrypt a terrorist's phone has to do with its need to establish itself as a reliable and trustworthy source of hardware.


• Joe. My. God. notes that WWE wrestler Dave Bautista takes Manny Pacquiao's homophobia poorly.


• Language Hat links to this 2008 map showing lexical différences between Europe's languages.


• Language Log notes the politicized position of minority languages in China.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money is unimpressed? with Amitai Etzioni's call for genocide in Lebanon.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer, looking to Ecuador, notes that international arbitration awards do matter.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw is unimpressed by Australia's reaction to the Syrian refugee crisis.


• Peter Rukavina shares a photo of Charlottetown transit's new maps.


• Transit Toronto notes the delivery of the TTC's 16th streetcar.


• Window on Eurasia notes the weakness of the Russian opposition, particularly in relation to Chechnya's Kadyrov.

[E]vident in [Hans] Rosling’s animations is the great breakout to much-higher living standards that the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand made in the 1800s, followed by the great catchup in Asia since the middle of the 20th century. Some African countries have begun making big strides, too, although sub-Saharan Africa remains the world’s poorest region by far.

Then there’s Latin America and the Caribbean, whose part in this story has always intrigued and saddened me. In the 19th century, some of the countries and colonies to the south of the U.S. were among the world’s most affluent. In the 20th century most of them have become much more affluent in an absolute sense (Haiti is the tragic exception). They have nonetheless lost relative ground, especially during the past half-century, as rich countries just got richer and Asian nations broke through to wealth.

[. . .]

Compared to these other, more dynamic economies, Latin America seems to have been making hardly any progress. I’m not even going to try to go into all the possible reasons for this, in part because they vary greatly among countries. I am willing to go out on a limb and say that I don’t think either U.S. imperialism or persistent bad luck is a satisfactory explanation for Latin America’s slow growth. Clearly these -- with the possible exception of Chile -- have not been among the world’s best-managed economies. And that really is too bad.

• The Dragon's Tales' Will Baird speculates that life on Mars, which plausibly got started earlier thanks to quicker cooling, was devastated by multiple devastating impacts.


• Far Outliers' Joel examines the 11th century of Constantinople and Venice, a relationship that was shifting as Venice gained strength.


• Geocurrents takes a look at religious diversity in Ethiopia, making the interesting point that in addition to Christian-Muslim conflict there is also conflict between Ethiopian Orthodox Christians and Protestants.


• The Inuit Bikini Monster notes that a cat in Mexico is running for a mayoral position.


• John Moyer makes the point that fantasy literature isn't necessarily escapist, not least because terrible things happen.


• Language Hat notes that, for plausible and understandable reasons, the phrase "a sight for sore eyes" is starting to refer to something bad.


• Marginal Revolution wonders whether traditional dress in the Gulf States is a marker of identity, and to what extent.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer thinks that Edward Snowden made a good choice by seeking refuge in Ecuador, a sufficiently democratic and low-crime Latin American polity.


• Torontoist notes that Toronto city police is trying to work on improving the relationship with Somali-Canadians after the recent raid.


• Towleroad notes that late gay writer John Preston has given the Maine city of Portland a new slogan.


• The Volokh Conspiracy talks about rising nationalism among Burmese Buddhists. Sadly, many commenters talk about how Muslims must be controlled.


• Window on Eurasia notes the ongoing demographic issues of Russia and Belarus.
  

• Bag News Notes examines the use of a stock photo of some Dutch immigrant youths to illustrate a variety of different alarming articles.


• Crasstalk's Maxichamp introduces readers to the Port Chicago disaster during the Second World War, which incidentally led to a notable civil rights case.


• Daniel Drezner didn't find many surprises with the terms of the Cypriot bailout and notes that Russian disinterest in bailing Cyprus out underlines the extent to which it's a status quo, non-revisionist power.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Edward Hugh speculates that the current trend of emigration from Spain may put the Spanish health and pension systems at risk, especially inasmuch as Spain needs skilled labour to boost its productivity.


• A Geocurrents comparison of Bolivia with Ecuador, two Andean republics with large indigenous populations and radical governments, underlines the differences (Ecuador's government draws its support from the coastal Hispanophone majority and is somewhat hostile to the indigenous minority of the interior).


• Language Hat links to a site describing the small languages of Russia.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen seems much more worried about the outcomes of the Cypriot bailout than Drezner.


• Whatever's John Scalzi notes the unsustainability of Ohio's current constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, legally and in terms of popular opinion, and suggests it indicates current patterns of change.


• Window on Eurasia's Paul Goble notes that the Moldovan enclave of Gagauzia, an autonomous Turkic-populated district, wants a voice in Moldovan foreign policy.


• Zero Geography's Mark Graham notes the proportion of edits to geotagged English-language Wikipedia articles coming from users in the relevant countries. There are significant variations, with African articles being largely maintained by non-national users.

44-year-old construction worker [Jaime Cadena] sat at the folding table in the tiny living room of his basement apartment on the outskirts of Barcelona and tried to grasp the larger meaning of a letter from the bank informing him he no longer owned the property.

The apartment will be auctioned at a fraction of the price he’d paid for it four years ago, when his fast-rising salary seemed a sure ticket to middle-class stability for his family. If a buyer is found this week, he and his four teenaged children will be evicted. As Spain has no personal-bankruptcy law, he will still owe the bank almost €200,000 – more than the current market value of the apartment – even if he loses it.

“It’s like a terrible weight I’m forced to carry,” Mr. Cadena says. “I feel like the whole country’s problems have fallen on my back.”

With an unemployment rate of nearly 20 per cent, the highest in Europe, it could be a long time before he finds more than the occasional month-long construction job. But the spending cuts launched by Mr. Zapatero this week will likely lead to reductions in the welfare and unemployment-insurance programs that were Mr. Cadena’s only hope of staying aloft until jobs materialize again.

Mr. Cadena’s family are part of an estimated 1.4 million Spaniards now facing court action over unpaid mortgages. During the late 1990s and 2000s, a freewheeling mortgage market gave Spain the highest rate of homeownership in Europe and possibly in the Western world, at 85 per cent. But property values quickly collapsed across Spain – falling more than 40 per cent in Barcelona – at the same time as 2.5 million jobs were wiped out, so there are now a million Spanish families in which all the members are unemployed.

Mr. Cadena’s case is typical in many respects. He is, along with one-10th of all Spaniards today, an immigrant – in his case from Ecuador – who worked hard for a dozen years, married, raised a family and was stably employed enough to became naturalized. A house seemed a logical next step; in fact, his neighbours told him, it was insane to continue renting.

In 2006, a Barcelona bank offered him a “free” mortgage – with no down payment – that was offered, signed and closed in one day. His salary of €1,100 a month was combined with his wife’s earnings of €600, and the bank asked them to claim they worked weekends (they didn’t) in order to make their income appear high enough to qualify them.

Before he had a chance to think about it, Mr. Cadena was given the keys to the apartment and a 2-centimetre-thick package of fine-print pages he either couldn’t or didn’t read, and was told the mortgage payments would be €900 a month, withdrawn from his account.

He had no idea how much he’d paid for the 3-bedroom basement apartment (only this year did he realize it was an extraordinary €253,000) or the interest rate (5 per cent above prime).

The monthly payments, he soon learned, were calibrated to rise over time, first to €1,100 euros and then, in 2009, to €1,600 – a mortgage structure, also popular in the United States, that only made sense under the assumption both the borrower’s income and the house’s value would rise quickly and constantly.

They didn’t. The collapse of Spain’s property bubble coincided with the rising mortgage rates faced by Mr. Cadena (and many others). In early 2009, his construction company cut his shifts to six hours per day; in November they folded completely.