A Bit More Detail

• Architectuul looks at the divided cities of the divided island of Cyprus.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares an image of a galaxy that actually has a tail.


• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber talks about her pain as an immigrant in the United Kingdom in the era of Brexit, her pain being but one of many different types created by this move.


• The Crux talks about the rejected American proposal to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon, and the several times the United States did arrange for lesser noteworthy events there (collisions, for the record).


• D-Brief notes how the innovative use of Curiosity instruments has explained more about the watery past of Gale Crater.


• Bruce Dorminey notes one astronomer's theory that Venus tipped early into a greenhouse effect because of a surfeit of carbon relative to Earth.


• Far Outliers looks at missionaries in China, and their Yangtze explorations, in the late 19th century.


• Gizmodo notes evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans cohabited in a cave for millennia.


• At In Media Res, Russell Arben Fox writes about his exploration of the solo music of Paul McCartney.


• io9 looks at what is happening with Namor in the Marvel universe, with interesting echoes of recent Aquaman storylines.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the Beothuk of Newfoundland and their sad fate.


• Language Hat explores Patagonian Afrikaans.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on how mindboggling it is to want to be a billionaire. What would you do with that wealth?


• The Map Room Blog shares a visualization of the polar vortex.


• Marginal Revolution reports on the career of a writer who writes stories intended to help people fall asleep.


• The New APPS Blog reports on the power of biometric data and the threat of its misuse.


• Neuroskeptic takes a look at neurogenesis in human beings.


• Out There notes the import, in understanding our solar system, of the New Horizons photos of Ultima Thule.


• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes that OSIRIS-REx is in orbit of Bennu and preparing to take samples.


• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of 21 things that visitors to Kolkata should know.


• Mark Simpson takes a critical look at the idea of toxic masculinity. Who benefits?


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why global warming is responsible for the descent of the polar vortex.


• Window on Eurasia notes how the pro-Russian Gagauz of Moldova are moving towards a break if the country at large becomes pro-Western.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at the art of Finnish painter Hugo Simberg.

• Crooked Timber seeks advice for academics trying to publish general-interest books.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas considers the extent, and the way, in which technological change can outstrip the ability of cultures and institutions to manage this change.


• Hornet Stories notes the many ways in which the Trump Presidency is proving to be terrible for HIV-positive people around the world.


• Sara Jaffe at JSTOR Daily explores the concept of queer time. What is time like for queer people if the traditional markers of adulthood--marriage, children, and so on--are unavailable? How do they think of life stages?


• Language Log looks at the complexities of language in Hong Kong under Chinese rule.


• Drew Rowsome reports on the latest theatre piece of Jordan Tannahill, Declarations.


• Window on Eurasia reports on declining flows of migrants from elsewhere in the former Soviet Union to Russia.

• At Apostrophen, author 'Nathan Smith shares some of his favourite LGBTQ reads from the past year.


• At the Broadside Blog, Caitlin Kelly asks her readers where their deepest roots lie.


• Missing persons blog Charley Ross celebrates its 11th anniversary.


• At Crooked Timber, Corey Robin takes issue with some attitudes of Democrats post-Alabama, especially regarding African-American voters.


• D-Brief notes that the icy rings of Saturn apparently influence that planet's ionosphere.


• Imageo shares satellite photos of the Thomas wildfire in California, apparently worsened by climate change.


• JSTOR Daily links to ten beautiful poems of winter.


• Language Hat links to an interesting-looking thesis examining non-Indo-European words in proto-Indo-European.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at the underlying cycles leading to the speedy extinction of the passenger pigeon.


• Lingua Franca takes a look at the modern use of the word "even" as a sort of intensifier. Tina Fey's Mean Girls seems to be the source.


• In the aftermath of the "Oumuamua scan, Marginal Revolution takes a look at the Fermi paradox. Where is everyone?


• Neuroskeptic examines the universe of papers lacking citations, apparently only 10% of the total published.


• Drew Rowsome shares some ideas for last-minute Christmas gifts, some naughty and some nice.


• The blog Savage Minds is dead, long live its successor anthro(dendum)!


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shows readers ways they can pick up traces of the quantum universe safely at home.


• Towleroad has a queer take on the new Star Wars. (No spoilers, please--I think there are spoilers in the link.)


• Window on Eurasia suggests language issues in Gaugazia, a Turkic enclave in Moldova, might trigger another bout of separatism there.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell has a new take on the cloud of bizarre videos that is #elsagate, introducing readers to the idea of algorithmic kitsch.

• blogTO notes that yesterday was a temperature record here in Toronto, reaching 12 degrees Celsius in the middle of February.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the pleasure of using old things.


• Joe. My. God. notes the death of Roe v Wade plaintiff Norma McCorvey.


• Language Hat notes that, apparently, dictionaries are hot again because their definitions are truthful.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers if the Trump Administration is but a mechanism for delivering Pence into power following an impeachment.


• Steve Munro notes that Exhibition Loop has reopened for streetcars.


• The NYRB Daily considers painter Elliott Green.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that North Carolina's slippage towards one-party state status is at least accompanied by less violence than the similar slippage following Reconstruction.


• Window on Eurasia warns that Belarus is a prime candidate for Russian invasion if Lukashenko fails to keep control and notes the potential of the GUAM alliance to counter Russia.

• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer is concerned with Trump: what would happen if a terrorist attack occurred under his rule, would he actually be able to save money from changing foreign basing, do terrorist attacks help him in the polls?


• Towleroad notes the advent of marriage equality in Greenland.


• Window on Eurasia notes legal challenges to Russian autocracy in regional courts, notes Tatarstan's controversial support of the Gagauz, notes Protestants in Ukraine are strongly Ukrainian, and analyzes Russia's response to the Brussels attack.


• The Financial Times' The World notes Poland's use of public relations firms to deal with its PR problems.

• blogTO lists ten signs someone grew up in pre-amalgamation Toronto.


• Centauri Dreams and D-Brief both react to Planet Nine.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the new Russian manned capsule will be called Federation.


• Joe. My. God. notes an Italian parliamentarian hijacked a civil union bill by adding a new bill that would imprison gay couples who used surrogate mothers.


• Language Log suggests again that the complexity of the Chinese writing system hinders the acceptance of Chinese as a global language.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes precedents suggesting black Americans could not get away with the Malheur occupation.


• The Map Room Blog shares an evocative map of Boston as a collection of insular--literally insular--neighbourhoods.


• Towleroad notes gay porn star Colby Kelly is now a Vivienne Westwood model.


• Window on Eurasia notes Chechnya's Kadyrov is sounding increasingly unhinged and warns Belarus is now coming under attack in Russia.


• The Financial Times's The World notes the implications of Moldovan instability for the European Union.

Transnistria certainly needs a shoulder to lean on. A clampdown on the transit of excisable goods, launched last March by Ukraine and enthusiastically taken up by Saakashvili, is severely restricting a trade on which its economy has long relied.

Moreover, the authorities cut pensions by 30 percent in February, promising to return what’s owed once the economic crisis abates. That has led to a daily crowd of mostly elderly people gathering outside the city’s Russian consulate, hoping to access higher pensions under a newly expedited procedure for Russian citizenship.

In the line are also some working-age people looking to leave. Among them is Andrian Braga, who at 23 decided to move to Moscow with his wife and two-year-old daughter. “Things are bad, but they always have been. The fact that everyone’s leaving is nothing new,” he said, standing outside the consulate clutching his daughter’s new Russian passport.

The region has always struggled. Since separating from Moldova, Europe’s poorest country, it’s also been dependent on Moscow’s aid. Heavily subsidized Russian gas has provided a lifeline, saddling Transnistria with a $5 billion debt that would fall on Chisinau if the territory were reabsorbed. Trolleybuses course through central Tiraspol, decorated with pictures of beaming pensioners and the words “Into the future together with Russia!” Like dozens of big-ticket items dotted throughout the region — from modern hospitals to construction cranes — the vehicles bear the logo of their sponsor: Moscow-based non-profit “Eurasian Integration,” founded in 2012 by Russian MP and leader of nationalist party Rodina, Alexey Zhuravlev.

Locals praise Moscow’s projects for providing much-needed jobs, while many young men see conscription into the Russian Army’s regional force as the only chance for a secure job at home. Uniformed soldiers are a common sight in Tiraspol, congregating outside army bases or along the vast perimeter of the former Soviet aerodrome that now lies decaying on its outskirts.

The Moldovan leu lost more against the U.S. dollar last week than in all of 2014. The tiny nation, squeezed between Ukraine and Romania, could no longer handle a deep structural imbalance in its economy. It buys about 70 percent of all its consumer goods from abroad, so its imports are about twice as high as its exports. The shortfall was partly covered by remittances from migrant workers, which reached $1.61 billion last year. In the fourth quarter, however, the remittances fell by 20 percent, because many of the Moldovan migrants work in Russia, and as the ruble lost value, they weren't able to send as many dollars and euros home. Moldova's exports to Russia almost halved last year, both because of the latter's economic problems and because Moscow was trying to pressure Moldova to stay within its economic orbit rather than integrate with the European Union.

Adding to these problems, the previous Moldovan government spent part of its meager foreign reserves to bail out three large banks, a move the country's leftist parliamentary opposition described as a money-laundering scam. Moldova's international reserves now stand at less than $2 billion, their lowest level since 2011. The leu devaluation is likely to continue because there's no plausible way to stop it.

The core of Azerbaijan's problem is that it's an oil exporter. Since 2011, it had pegged its currency, the manat, to the U.S. dollar, but as the oil price fell, the peg became expensive to maintain. On Jan. 31, the country's foreign reserves stood 11 percent lower than a year before. The devaluation would not have needed to be as sharp as it was, however, if Russia hadn't been the country's biggest export market. Those exports fell sharply last year -- by 30 percent in the third quarter, the last one for which data are available.

As for Georgia, its exports to Russia actually increased last year, at least in the period for which the IMF has data. Yet exports to Ukraine, which had become a major trading partner when Georgia's relations with Russia were particularly strained last decade, have fallen by about half over the past year. In total, Georgia's exports in January were 20 percent lower than the year before. For this tiny economy with less than $2.5 billion in foreign reserves, that drop made devaluation inevitable.

Belarus, Russia's closest ally, is completely dependent on Moscow for extra-cheap energy imports. So it predictably suffered more than others -- except Ukraine -- when Russia effectively started a price war with its neighbors by devaluing its currency.blockquote>

• blogTO notes an interesting play being put on at Buddies in Bad Times about a same-sex couple's divorce.


• Centauri Dreams features a guest post from Andrew Lepage examining habitable exomoons.


• Crooked Timber notes the exceptionally high voter turn-out in Scotland.


• The Dragon's Tales notes China's attempts to construct a new security architecture in Asia.


• Eastern Approaches notes that Poland's Radek Sikorski is now foreign minister.


• A Fistful of Euros' Edward Hugh notes that the Eurozone is set to become Japan-like economically.


• Far Outliers has a whole slew of posts on Romanian history, noting early Romanian history, the autonomy of the Danubian principalities from Ottoman rule, and the complex relationships in Transylvania and with central Europe.


• Geocurrents notes that one Islamic State map was made from a computer game.


• Joe. My. God. notes that the final segment of New York City's High Line park is complete.


• Language Hat notes the Scots dialect of Yiddish.


• Marginal Revolution looks forward to the complexities of Catalonian separatism.


• Registan notes Kazakhstan's concerns with Russia.


• The Search examines methodologies for preserving E-mails.


• Towleroad notes that a Grindr poll in Scotland accurately predicted the outcome of the Scottish referendum and also notes Grindr's concern with Egyptian police use of the app.


• Understanding Society considers the idea of turning points in history. Do they exist, or not?


• The Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin comes out in favour of allowing informed teenagers--16 years and older--to vote.


• Window on Eurasia notes Russification in the Gagauz leadership and observes Russophilia among Ukrainian evangelical Protestants.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell imagines likely issues with devolution in the near future in the United Kingdom.

Undeterred by the conflict triggered by Ukraine's swing towards Europe, the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Georgia will sign a trade and political pact with the European Union this month with Russia warning both countries against the move.

The two small countries - Moldova has a population of just over 3.5 million and Georgia 4.5 million - see the signing of an association agreement as the crucial step towards mainstream Europe, leading to eventual membership of the powerful EU trading bloc.

But, as has been shown by their regional neighbor Ukraine, Russia sees their westward move further away from Moscow's sphere of influence as a geo-political setback that could threaten its markets too.

Last November, Russia persuaded a now-ousted Ukrainian leader to pull out of an identical pact with the EU. When protests then chased him from office, Russia, in a backlash, annexed Crimea, and armed pro-Russian separatist groups sprang up in Ukraine's east and the battle there is still raging.

How Russia - which went to war with Georgia in 2008 - will react now remains the big unknown but officials have warned of "possible consequences".

With Moldova and Georgia harboring pro-Russian breakaway enclaves themselves within their borders - all of which are hankering after union with Russia and look askance on EU association - both states have valid grounds for concern from a Russian response to the June 27 signature.