A Bit More Detail

• Bad Astronomer notes the latest news on interstellar comet 2/Borisov.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly emphasizes how every writer does need an editor.


• Centauri Dreams notes how the gas giant GJ 3512 b, half the mass of Jupiter orbiting a red dwarf star closely, is an oddly massive exoplanet.


• Gina Schouten at Crooked Timber looks at inter-generational clashes on parenting styles.


• D-Brief looks at the methods of agriculture that could conceivably sustain a populous human colony on Mars.


• Bruce Dorminey argues that we on Earth need something like Starfleet Academy, to help us advance into space.


• Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how the socio-spatial perspective helps us understand the development of cities.

Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res listens to the Paul McCartney album Flaming Pie.

• io9 looks at Proxima, a contemporary spaceflight film starring Eva Green.


• JSTOR Daily looks at how the intense relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia began in, and reflected, the era of Jim Crow.


• Language Hat notes a report suggesting that multilingualism helps ward off dementia.


• Language Log takes issue with the names of the mascots of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the emergence of a ninth woman complaining about being harassed by Al Franken.


• Marginal Revolution links to a new paper arguing that the Washington Consensus worked.


• The NYR Daily shares an Aubrey Nolan cartoon illustrating the evacuation of war children in the United Kingdom during the Second World War.


• At Out of Ambit, Diane Duane shares a nice collection of links for digital mapmakers.


• The Planetary Society Blog looks at how the European Space Agency supports the cause of planetary defense.


• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Kenyan writer Kevin Mwachiro at length.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel reports on how a mysterious fast radio burst helped illuminate an equally mysterious galactic halo.


• Strange Company reports on the mysterious and unsolved death in 1936 of Canadian student Thomas Moss in an Oxfordshire hayrick.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps notes how Mount Etna is a surpassingly rare decipoint.


• Understanding Society considers the thought of Kojève, after Hegel, on freedom.


• Window on Eurasia looks at the falling numbers of Russians, and of state support for Russian language and culture, in independent Central Asia.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how individual consumer responses are much less effective than concerted collective action in triggering change.


• Arnold Zwicky reports on some transgender fashion models.

• JSTOR Daily notes the unorthodox and generally unacknowledged truce struck between Nantucket Island and the British Empire in 1814, during the War of 1812.


• A visit by Anthony Bourdain had lasting effects on the culinary scene on Newfoundland. Global News reports.


• The Island Review reports on the different plans of the different islands of Scotland to commemorate the end of the First World War.


• Michael Erard at The Atlantic writes about the remarkable South Goulburn Island, an island off the coast of Australia where speakers of nine different languages co-exist in a shared passive multilingualism.


• Richard Longley wrote at NOW Toronto about the challenges faced by the Toronto Islands in the era of climate change and instability.

• Architectuul talks about the remarkable and distinctive housing estates of south London, like Alexandra Road, currently under pressure from developers and unsympathetic governments.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at Bennu, set to be visited by the OSIRIS-REx probe.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about meeting people you've met online via social networks, making friends even. Myself, I've done this all the time: Why not use these networks to their fullest in a fragmented vast world?


• Centauri Dreams celebrates the now-completed mission of the exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope.


• D-Brief looks at the distinctive seasons of Triton, and the still-open questions surrounding Neptune's largest moon.


• At JSTOR Daily, Nancy Bilyeau writes about the import of the famous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, something often underplayed despite its potential for huge change and its connection to wider conflicts.


• Language Hat notes the name of God in the Hebrew tradition, Yahweh. Where did it come from?


• Language Log shares an interesting idea for helping to preserve marginalized languages: Why not throw a language party celebrating the language?


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the question of what historical general or military leader would do best leading the armies of the living dead.


• The NYR Daily looks at the problems with Erdogan's big investments in public infrastructure in Turkey, starting with the new Istanbul airport.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the possibility of life in the very early universe. Earth-like life could have started within a billion years of the Big Bang; Earth life might even have begun earlier, for that matter.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shows a map of Europe identifying which countries are the more chauvinistic in the continent.


• Window on Eurasia notes the strength of the relatively recent division between Tatars and Bashkirs, two closely related people with separate identities grown strong in the Soviet era.

• Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about what goes into her creation of comfortable outdoor spaces. (I approve of the inclusion of blue; green is also nice.)


• D-Brief notes that the strong stellar winds of TRAPPIST-1 means that the outermost worlds are best suited to retain their atmospheres and host Earth-like environments.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Russia has shown video of its latest crop of doomsday weapons.


• Joe. My. God. notes the duet of a German astronaut on board the ISS with Kraftwerk.


• JSTOR Daily considers if fear of race mixing, and of venereal disease, were important factors in the British Empire's abolition of slavery in 1833.


• Language Log notes differential censorship in China aimed at minority languages, using some books to be shipped from Inner Mongolia as an example.


• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that Russian support for Trump was less a well-thought plan and more a desperate gamble with unpredictable and largely negative consequences for Russia.


• The LRB Blog notes the perception by Proust of time as a dimension.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Apollo missions helped clear up the mystery of the origins of the Moon.


• Window on Eurasia notes how the Donbas republics are inching away from Ukraine by seeking associations with adjacent Russian regions.

• The chief medical officer of Toronto, Eileen de Villa, has called for the decriminalization of drugs to help deal with the opioid crisis. The Guardian reports.


• Christopher Hume makes the case for Toronto to keep, and enhance, its dense tree coverage, over at the Toronto Star.


• Edward Keenan notes that the failure to find some way to comfortably use the interactive art display at Pioneer Village station is more than unfortunate. The Toronto Star has it.


• Roughly 5% of the population of Toronto lacks fluency in either English or French, making their effective participation in Toronto at large that much more difficult. Global News reports.


• The terracotta-tiled house at 20 Jerome Street may end up being torn down, but people want to preserve the tiles. I'll have to head over myself. Richard Longley at NOW Toronto reports.

• blogTO notes that 1975 was a formative year for Toronto.


• Centauri Dreams speculates about the oceans of Pluto and Saturn's Dione.


• Crooked Timber talks about Hannah Arendt's arguments about the importance of bearing testament.


• D-Brief looks at the cnyodont, an extinct reptile ancestral to mammals.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos of Patti Smith.


• The Dragon's Gaze suggests that K-class dwarf stars are best for life.


• Language Log looks at a merging of Wu and Mandarin Chinese on signage.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on how supply chains can hide corporations from responsibility.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes an American court ruling to the effect that barring Syrian refugees is unconstitutional discrimination.


• Window on Eurasia reports on collapsing life expectancy in many Russian regions, looks at Russia's withdrawal from the plutonium agreement with the United States, and criticizes American policy towards Belarus and Lukashenka.

If the United States were to have a typeface, it might be something like Highway Gothic, the sans-serif, designed by Ted Forbes, that’s plastered across our nation’s road signs. Or maybe Helvetica, the famed font found just about everywhere, including your cereal box’s nutrition label. Some people, the ones less impressed with the government’s competence, might even say Comic Sans.

While the United States has yet to determine its typographic identity, its northern neighbor recently chose one. Canada 150, created for the country’s 150th birthday, is a typographic family that unites the Latin characters of English and French with the syllabic characters of the country’s many indigenous dialects. It is the work of Raymond Larabie, a typographer who says he sought to create a font that might help bring together Canada’s disparate cultures. “I just thought, well it’s a birthday present for Canada, it kind of has to be inclusive,” he says.

Canada 150 is an expansion of Larabie‘s free typeface Mesmerize, a geometric font with sharp, pointed angles. Though it’s not perfect, it does come with an interesting evolution. To expand the original typeface, Larabie studied the syllabic characters of the Cree language and other indigenous languages of what is now Canada. The written Cree language, created in 1840 by missionary James Evans, is marked by geometric glyphs, each of which stands for a syllable. Though distinct from their Latin counterparts, Larabie says most of the syllabic glyphs are a “Frankenstein-ing” the original Mesmerize typeface. Many of the syllabics look like a modified version of an M or U or C, with slightly wider apertures. “The triangular shapes have a lot to do with the A,” he explains. Canada 150 is among a handful of typefaces to bridge multiple languages, which includes Huronia, another multilingual typeface from Rosetta Type Foundry that blends Latin and Inuktitut symbols, the latter of which are derived from the Cree system.