A Bit More Detail

• D-Brief notes a new study examining the evolution of giant planets.


• Cody Delistraty has a nice essay about the power of coincidence in the human mind.


• Dead Things reports on the possible discovery of hominin remains in China dating from 2.2 million years ago.


• Language Hat notes the discovery of an ancient tablet in Greece dating from the 3rd century CE containing the earliest extract of The Odyssey so far found.


• Language Log notes the importance of the language skills of a multilingual teen in leading to the rescue of the boys trapped in a Thai cave.


• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution imagines what friendship would be like in a world of telepathy.


• The Planetary Society Blog's Jason Davis shares images taken by the Hayabusa2 probe of the asteroid Ryugu.


• At Spacing, John Lorinc notes how the Ford government's opposition to the clean energy policies of Wynne may well lead to the return of noticeable air pollution.


• Window on Eurasia reports on Russian government actions intended to suppress what seems to be the spectre of separatism in Kaliningrad.

• Centauri Dreams looks at the SPECULOOS red dwarf observation program.


• The Crux examines VX nerve agent, the chemical apparently used to assassinate the half-brother of North Korea's ruler.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos of the inhabitants of the Tokyo night, like gangsters and prostitutes and drag queens.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money examines Donald Trump's tepid and belated denunciation of anti-Semitism.


• Language Log looks at the story of the Wenzhounese, a Chinese group notable for its diaspora in Italy.


• The LRB Blog looks at the by-elections in the British ridings of Stoke and Copeland and notes the problems of labour.


• The Map Room Blog shares a post-Brexit map of the European Union with an independent Scotland.


• Marginal Revolution reports that a border tax would be a poor idea for the United States and Mexico.


• The NYRB Daily looks at the art of the medieval Tibetan kingdom of Guge.


• Otto Pohl notes the 73rd anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Chechens and the Ingush.


• Supernova Condensate points out that Venus is actually the most Earth-like planet we know of. Why do we not explore it more?


• Towleroad notes Depeche Mode's denunciation of the alt-right and Richard Spencer.


• Whatever's John Scalzi considers the question of feeling empathy for horrible people.


• Window on Eurasia notes the thousands of Russian citizens involved with ISIS and examines the militarization of Kaliningrad.

• Bloomberg notes the closure of Poland's frontier with Kaliningrad, looks at how Google is beating out Facebook in helping India get connected to the Internet, notes British arms makers' efforts to diversify beyond Europe and examines the United Kingdom's difficult negotiations to get out of the European Union, looks at the problems of investing in Argentina, looks at the complications of Germany's clean energy policy, observes that the Israeli government gave the schools of ultra-Orthodox Jews the right not to teach math and English, examines the consequences of terrorism on French politics, and examines at length the plight of South Asian migrant workers in the Gulf dependent on their employers.


• Bloomberg View notes Donald Trump's bromance with Putin's Russia, examines Melania Trump's potential immigrant problems, and is critical of Thailand's new anti-democratic constitution.


• CBC looks at how some video stores in Canada are hanging on.


• The Inter Press Service notes that the Olympic Games marks the end of a decade of megaprojects in Brazil.


• MacLean's approves of the eighth and final book in the Harry Potter series.


• The National Post reports on a Ukrainian proposal to transform Chernobyl into a solar farm, and examines an abandoned plan to use nuclear weapons to unleash Alberta's oil sands.


• Open Democracy looks at the relationship between wealth and femicide in India, fears a possible coup in Ukraine, looks at the new relationship between China and Africa, examines the outsized importance of Corbyn to Britain's Labour Party, and looks how Armenia's defeat of Azerbaijan has given its veterans outsized power.


• Universe Today notes proposals for colonizing Mercury, looks at strong support in Hawaii for a new telescope, and examines the progenitor star of SN 1987A.


• Wired emphasizes the importance of nuclear weapons and deterrence for Donald Trump, and looks at how many cities around the world have transformed their rivers.

• blogTO depicts a new Toronto condo tower that will also be a vertical forest.


• D-Brief notes the latest German success with nuclear fusion.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the discovery of Jupiter analog HD 32963b.


• The Dragon's Tales provides updates about the Russian wars in Syria and Ukraine.


• Geocurrents examines the demographic history of the Philippines.


• Language Log notes odd sound borrowings into Taiwanese.
  
• Une heure de peine's Denis Colombi notes that sociology by its nature is political but not normative.


• Window on Eurasia notes Russian fears that Belarus is drifting westwards and argues Kaliningraders are shifting towards a Europe-oriented identity.

• Alpha Sources notes that Eurozone economic sentiment is holding up.


• Centauri Dreams looks at SETI in the light of KIC 8462852.


• D-Brief notes predictions that Cassini could determine if Enceladus' ocean is active enough to support life.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a video presentation examining how habitable planets around Alpha Centauri could be imaged.


• The Dragon's Tales has the latest on the Russian war in Syria.


• Geocurrents is impressed by this map of world religion, so finely and accurately detailed.


• Language Log notes the oddities of the promotion of China's next five-year plan.


• The Map Room is impressed by Martin Vargic's new book of maps.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw is touring Denmark and noticing the differences and similarities between that Nordic country and his native Australia.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes workshopping for the location of the first manned Mars landing.


• The Power and the Money notes that Cristina Kirchner might be setting up her successors to fail, so as to ensure her eventual re-election.


• Towleroad notes that Italy forced the removal of registries of same-sex marriages contracted outside of the country.


• Window on Eurasia talks to a Kaliningrad regionalist, notes Dagestanis are not being drafted in the proportions one would expect, and reports that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is out of control.

The topic of a “Kaliningrad identity” has been played up before. A recent article in New Eastern Europe magazine focuses on the “Riddle of Kaliningrad.” The author credits Kaliningraders with “a strong regional identity” which, he says, can become a framework for political mobilization, namely when the inhabitants feel that the interest of their Oblast have been disregarded. One may wonder to what extent this analysis is accurate.

There is no doubt that the Kaliningrad Oblast has always been somehow special. The German Ostpreussen was split up between Poland and the Soviet Union in the wake of World War II. The renaming of its former capital, Koenigsberg, to Kaliningrad was only one of myriad toponymic purges in the Oblast, all meant to minimize the previous cultural presence. Massive resettlement from several Soviet republics worked to set up a Soviet melting pot. And what could be called a local version of the Benes decrees rid the land of the remnants of German inhabitants, ensuring there was no societal continuity between populations. During the Soviet era interest in the German past was generally discouraged, though it could not be erased completely. Buildings, cobblestone roads, orchards, and even household items remained behind as numb witnesses of the city’s “other” past. Everyday observations on whether, for example, one lived in a “German” brick house or a Soviet concrete apartment block were (and still are) commonplace.
The post-Soviet period saw a resurgence of interest in the Koenigsberg identity, owing in no small part to the influx of German tourists. Many of them came to see the ancestral land they may have left as small children. They were prepared to consume the Koenigsberg narrative in the form of souvenirs and tourist services. And immediately the specters of both German revisionism and a sort of Kaliningrad independentism arose. Political ideas of a “Baltic republic” existing separately from the Russian Federation remained utterly marginal. But the specific “Europeanness” that made Kaliningrad somehow distinct from the rest of Russia was a theme played on multiple sides. Vladimir Putin's engagement of the “Old Europe” in 2005 included a triple visit, together with Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac, to Kaliningrad. It was apparently for this occasion that the Kaliningrad State University was officially renamed after the philosopher Immanuel Kant, thus emphasizing continuity with the European heritage of Koenigsberg through the name of one of its most famous citizens.

[. . . A]pparently, importing European goods was not the same as importing European values – or the EU's stance on political issues of the day, for that matter. A poll taken in April 2014 by the Kaliningrad Monitoring group indicates that 88 percent in the Oblast supported the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol. The same poll revealed that the number of those who admit separating in any way from Russia as a possibility fell to the historical minimum of 3 percent. The fanciful idea of a joint EU-Russia jurisdiction over Kaliningrad has also been marginalized (2 percent compared with 12 percent in a similar poll taken in 2003). As the sociologist Aleksei Vysotskiy argued, the Kaliningraders finally admitted that Kaliningrad Oblast was “an ordinary administrative unit of the Russian Federation” which according to him has always been the situation anyway.

• Antipope Charlie Stross speculates about the consequences of SYRIZA's eleciton victory.


• Bad Astronomy discusses the Rosetta probe's pictures of Comet 67P.
  
• blogTO notes that Uniqlo is coming to Toronto.
  
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a comparative study of binary stars with exoplanets.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a study of the atmosphere of Pluto.


• Joe. My. God. notes that Alexis Tsipras has foresworn a religious oath of office.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that fast food restaurants could pay their employee living wages.


• Otto Pohl links to a study of his on German exiles in central Asia.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that the Nicaragua Canal still makes no sense.


• Transit Toronto observes the spread of Presto cards on the TTC.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes an English court's distinction between female genital mutilation and male circumcision.


• Window on Eurasia notes the decline of Christianity in the North Caucasus, high inflation in Kaliningrad, official Belarus' measures to deal with a Ukraine-style invasion, and suggests Ukraine could still win the conflict.


• The Financial Times' World blog considers the question of Greek debt.

• The Boston Globe's The Big Picture shares photos of the Paris anti-terrorist rallies.


• blogTO shares five books put out by Toronto-area artists.


• Crooked Timber's Corey Robin notes the international ideological tumult around the American civil war.


• D-Brief talks about some neat facts about Eta Carinae.


• The Dragon's Gaze reports on a recent study of the HR 8799 planetary system.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on the Chinese Chang'e probe's observations of nearby Earth-crossing asteroid Toutatis.


• Joe. My. God. notes how a Hasidic paper photoshopped out images of female world leaders.


• Languages of the World looks at the influences of Novgorod's dialect and Old Church Slavonic on Russian.


• Livejournaler pollotenchegg looks at ethnicity and politics in Soviet Ukraine and Belarus.


• Savage Minds provides organizational advice for ethnographers who are writing large projects.


• Window on Eurasia notes Kaliningrad separatism, wonders about the loyalties of Central Asian volunteers in the Russian military, and fears for the future of Russia under its cynical leadership.

• Anthropology.net notes the importance of anthropological knowledge in understanding the West African Ebola crisis.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the strange protoplanetary belt of GG Tauri-A.


• Discover's Crux considers requirements for a starfaring civilization.


• The Dragon's Gaze points to an apparently young and planet-forming binary star, OGLE-LMC-ECL-11893.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that China and Russia have blocked the formation of an Antarctic marine reserve, notes the ways in which diverse sciences can be used to understand the pre-Columbian Amazon, and notes a simulation of Titan's ancient climate.


• Eastern Approahces looks at the Ukraine-Russia gas deal.


• Geocurrents examines regional divides in Brazil on the basis of the 2014 presidential election vote.


• Joe. My. God. notes that PReP can prevent HIV infection even on short notice, and observes that the coming out of Apple CEO Tim Cook has been followed by a Russian parliamentarian's proposal to ban Apple and the taking down of a monument to Steve Jobs.


• Language Hat links to a beautiful family tree illustration of Europe's languages.


• Language Log notes complex translation issues between Cantonese and Mandarin in Chow Yun Fat's position on Hong Kong.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money does not like Frank Gehry.


• Marginal Revolution notes a quixotic movement in the Italian island of Sardinia to be annexed by Switzerland.


• Peter Watts of No Fucking Icons dislikes the political uses of terrorism by the Canadian government.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes a design for a drill that could drill deeply into the surfaces of different moons and notes the return of Chinese test moon vehicle Chang'e 5's probe.


• Savage Minds notes an interesting comparative study of Seoul and Baltimore.


• Spacing Toronto looks at the recovery of Toronto's lost Tomlins Creek.


• Torontoist discusses the importance of finding a new police chief for Toronto.


• Towleroad examines reasons
  
• Window on Eurasia notes the need to sustain the survivors of the Aral Sea, and observes the new isolation of Kaliningrad.
  
• Zero Geography links to a paper examining the spread of telecommunications networks in East Africa now with the spread of modern transport a century earlier.

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes that it has been fifteen years since Space 1999 took place.


• blogTO notes that Sunrise Records is closing its downtown Toronto stores.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a study of nearby star BD-21 1074 suggesting that its close-in planets are forming not as a result of core accretion but rather gravitational collapse.


• Far Outliers notes the population exchanges of Muslims and Christians occurring after the Crimean War.


• A Fistful of Euros' Edward Hugh worries about the Spanish government's reaction, or lack thereof, to events in Catalonia.


• Marginal Revolution notes the pressures an independent Scotland would face for austerity.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that Scottish departure from the United Kingdom makes it unlikely that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the Circassian diaspora.


• Spacing Toronto notes the political feudalism of the Ford family.


• Torontoist chronicles the appearances and murders of American serial killer H.H. Holmes in 1890s Toronto.


• Towleroad notes the importance of Ellen Degeneres.


• The Volokh Conspiracy continues covering the debate on Scottish separatism.


• Window on Eurasia notes the costs to Kaliningrad of European Union sanctions and suggests Russia has very intrusive war aims in Ukraine.


• Yorkshire Ratner Alex Harrowell takes a look at sub-national separatist movements in Europe.