A Bit More Detail

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines an early medieval France that became not a notional kingdom but rather a decentralized empire, a Holy Roman Empire of the French Nation.


• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a greater Austria that includes Slovenia.


• A Greater Slovenia, encompassing lands from Austria, Italy, and even Hungary, is the subject of this r/imaginarymaps map.


• Could an Austria divided in the Cold War be divided like this r/imaginarymaps map?
  
• This r/imaginarymaps map shows a Japanese Empire that survived until 1956, encompassing much of the Russian Far East as well as Manchuria and Korea.

• Masha Gessen at The New Yorker reports on the arguments of American queer historian Martin Duberman about mistakes that gay rights movement has made.


• Arshy Mann at Daily Xtra reports on how, in Russia and Poland and Hungary and now Brazil, homophobia is being used as a mobilizing tool by the far right.


• Them reports on a study suggesting LGBTQ people are twenty times as likely to be social activists as cishets. (The overall rates, though, are still low.)


• Mike Miksche writes at Them about the genesis of the famous Andrew Holleran novel Dancer from the Dance and its impact.


• Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy points to a compelling argument at the Wall Street Journal why the Obergefell decision legalizing gay marriage nation-wide in the United States will not be revisited. (I hope.)

• At Anthrodendum, Elizabeth Marino takes issue with what she identifies as the naively and fiercely neoliberal elements of Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now.


• Anthropology.net's Kambiz Kamrani takes a look at an innovative study of the Surinamese creole of Sranan Tongo that uncovers that language's linguistic origins in remarkably fine detail.


• Architectuul examines the architecture of Communist-era Hungarian architect István Szábo.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the nearly naked black hole at the heart of galaxy ZwCl 8193, 2.2 billion light-years away.


• The Big Picture shares photos from the 2018 Paralympics in South Korea.


• Gerry Canavan has an interesting critical take on Star Trek: Discovery. Is it really doing new things, or is its newness just superficial?


• Centauri Dreams considers the impact the spectra of red dwarfs would have on biosignatures from their worlds.


• Russell Darnley takes a look at Australia's Darling River, a critical watercourse threatened by extensive water withdrawals.


• Inkfish notes that patterns of wear on the tusks of elephants indicate most are right-handed.


• Joe. My. God. links to a study suggesting a relationship between Trump rallies and violent assaults.


• JSTOR Daily links to a paper examining why people drink Guinness on St. Patrick's Day.


• Language Hat takes a look at the use of Xhosa as the language of Wakanda.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money mourns Alfred Crosby, the historian whose work examined the epidemiological and ecological changes wrought by contact with the Americas.


• The Map Room Blog links to a map showing indigenous placenames in Canada.


• Marginal Revolution suggests AI will never be able to centrally plan an economy because the complexity of the economy will always escape it.


• In the aftermath of the death of Stephen Hawking, Out There had a lovely idea: what nearby major stars emitted life than arrive at the moment of his birth? Hawking's star is Regulus, and mine was (nearly) Arcturus.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel examines Stephen Hawking's contribution to the study of black holes.


• Supernova Condensate shares a list of moons, fictional and otherwise, from Endor on down.

In this way, the October visit of the Dalai Lama – who was the main star of the 20th edition of the Forum 2000 conference, founded by late President Vaclav Havel – was also a test of Havel’s legacy in the former Czechoslovakia. That humanitarian approach is today confined to almost hidden corners of the local political scene, only revived from time to time by small groups, usually consisting of NGO activists, and lately by Kiska. In mainstream politics, it gets almost completely forgotten.

Lastly, the episode illustrates in broader strokes the emerging relationship between Central Europe and China. For the last couple of years, China has crafted its policy toward Europe, and the weak and often Eurosceptic Central European governments have seemed an ideal gateway for Chinese money and political influence. China could thereby reach the wider European Union, which, due to the refugee crisis and Brexit, looks weaker than ever in the last 20 years.

The job, however, isn’t easy for Chinese diplomats in Prague, Bratislava, or Warsaw (the Dalai Lama also briefly visited Wroclaw, without meeting any government official there). They have to exert maximum effort, show off their supposed powers to influence investment, and gain leverage over local politicians. But the real work in leaning on the locals is done by the businessmen who have cultivated business and political ties in China as relations have warmed. That’s not so tough when the United States, a traditional ally, seems so far off, the EU looks to be in disarray, and Russia plays old, familiar Soviet power games.

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.

When they were last on Canadian soil, the Pusuma family took sanctuary in a Toronto church as they fought to avoid being sent back to their native Hungary.

On Thursday, 18 months after leaving Canada, Jozsef Pusuma, his wife, Timea Daroczi, and their daughter Viktoria (Lulu) were welcomed back by their loyal supporters who battled for the Roma family’s return.

“I’m happy to be here, back for a free life. I feel home,” said an exhausted Pusuma, as he and his family walked out from the Pearson Internation Airport customs area to the applause of more than a dozen supporters from the Windermere United Church and Romero House.

“Thank you, Canada for giving my family a new life. We have fought for so long and today I’m free.”

Barbara Sheffield, a member of the church, said she was thrilled to see the family back and justice having persevered.

This migration is not irregular, it is the seasonal speeding up of the global tourism of the middle class. European capitals are filled with people talking all kinds of languages, drink menus are replaced with new versions including higher prices and those who don’t belong to the global travelling middle class are crowded out of their cities for months.

According to Zygmunt Bauman “being a tourist” is a privilege, a sign of adaptation to the postmodern state of things. Therefore not only business people working and moving around in networks are classified as tourists, but also those cultural managers and intellectuals who adopt cosmopolitanism as their life strategy. Mostly they are the ones who make up the crowds in the inner city of Budapest, their local governors and their global counterparts are smiling happily, advertising through their life style such bilingual statements as “be a tourist in your own town”.

So, here we are, tourists in our own city. “I love Budapest” – comes the message from new urban marketing. They order us to find a new café, a breakfast place, discover things that have already existed before but now can be “liked”, in other words: now visible for those who see through a digital eye. Let this city be in a light mood, let multiculturalism be a pastime activity, let’s discover day after day that we can discover something again tomorrow. The city turns into a constant buzz and it retains nothing else but its name, Budapest.

In the 2000s in Budapest, the money revolution arrived. The time of the invisible, off-shore development industry, which doesn’t communicate with anybody but itself. They wiped out entire neighborhoods and “developed” them into faceless mall-condo combos. The city embraced them in the name of “development” and only a few “crazy greens” chained themselves to trees and organized resistance.

The new pavements covering new urban rehabilitation projects take us to postindustrial workplaces to check in. On their paper thin laptops, account managers are making their money, forcing themselves to feel good at the places advertised in tourist magazines as “community venues”. In today’s Budapest, thanks to the sterilization and to the multicultural atmosphere-designer industry you have to write up on the entrance of a place what function they fulfil: social bar and public pub. As if a bar would not be a social place in the first place and the pub would not be public originally. While a bar is dark and mysterious, a social bar is white, carefully designed and sterile. While a pub is loud, smoky and swims in malt, a “public pub” is the place for craft, local and cherry beer.

Like many Canadians, I was riveted to the point of distraction by the extremely disturbing events of last week, and the way the developments in Europe’s refugee crisis reverberated in this city, and in other big cities across the country.

But beyond the emotion of that terrible image of a young boy washed up on beach, the accounts of the chaos in Budapest, and the Canadian government’s tin-ear response to the same, something else gnawed at me relentlessly, almost like a trigger. And on Saturday, as the migrants who’d been treated so wretchedly in Budapest finally reached the safety and open arms of officials in Austria and Germany, the source of the aggravation hit me:

That as the events of the past week unfolded, Canada, in a peculiar way, suddenly found itself on the same ethical plane as Hungary — a self-involved country with an odious government and a rich history of treacherous xenophobia.

True, we haven’t forced weary families off trains. But in the worst humanitarian crisis in decades, it suddenly became crystal clear that we hadn’t done much better than the Hungarians, and that grim fact sunk in powerfully last week.

We caught the image of Harper’s Canada in the mirror, and we didn’t like what we saw there.

• blogTO notes the heavy level of pollution in Toronto Harbour following recent rains, and suggests Toronto is set to get gigabit Internet speeds.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about her recent vacation in Donegal.


• Centauri Dreams revisits Robert L. Forward's Starwisp probe.


• Crooked Timber speculates that there is hope for rapid action on climate change.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on an inflated hot Jupiter orbiting a F-class star.


• The Dragon's Tales shares a vintage supercomputer pamphlet.


• Far Outliers looks at the collapse of the Comanche empire in the 1860s.


• Language Log looks at the controversial English test in France.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reacts to an overly broad pulling of computer games with Confederate flags.


• Steve Munro reacts to the state of streetcar switches.


• Torontoist looks at a queer art exhibition at Bay and Wellesley on sex ed.


• Towleroad shares a straight-married Scottish bishop's tale of same-sex love.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that remembering the Civil War does not requite keeping the Confederate flag.


• Window on Eurasia notes how few Crimeans identify with Russia and looks at Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian influence on Russia's Finno-Ugric minorities.

In the Czech Republic, the prime minister said on Wednesday that joining the euro soon would help the economy after the president challenged the central bank’s long-standing resistance with a vow to appoint policy makers who favor the common currency. In Poland, the main divide between the top two candidates in the May 10 presidential election is whether the region’s biggest economy should ditch the zloty.

“It’s quite interesting how the sentiment has shifted -- I’m slightly surprised by this,” William Jackson, London-based senior economist at Capital Economics Ltd., said by phone on Wednesday. “As the story coming from the euro zone in recent years has been negative, it’s very hard to imagine how the euro case for the public would be made now.”

The obstacles are many. Romania, which has set 2019 as a potential target date, and Hungary don’t meet all the economic criteria. Poland faces legal hurdles and the Czech government has said it won’t set a date during its four-year term. As a standoff between Greece and euro-area leaders threatens to push the country into insolvency and potential exit, opinion polls show most Czechs and Poles oppose a switch.

The appeal of the euro, which all European Union members save Britain and Denmark are technically obliged to join, suffered when the area had to provide emergency loans to ailing members during the economic crisis. While five ex-communist countries that joined the trading bloc in 2004 -- Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- have acceded, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary don’t have road maps.

The region’s three biggest economies argued that floating currencies and control over monetary policy helps shield themselves against shocks like the euro crisis even if smaller countries may benefit from lower exchange-rate volatility and reduced trade costs. Facing weakening in their korunas, zlotys, and forints, some politicians in eastern Europe are questioning that logic.