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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait observes that a team may have discovered the elusive neutron star produced by Supernova 1987A, hidden behind a cloud of dust.

  • Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber shares a photo he made via the time-consuming 19th century wet-plate collodion method.

  • Drew Ex Machina's Andrew LePage looks at the Apollo 12 visit to the Surveyor 3 site to, among other things, see what it might suggest about future space archeology.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the story of rural poverty facing a family in Waverly, Ohio, observing how it is a systemic issue.

  • George Dvorsky at Gizmodo looks at how Mars' Jezero crater seems to have had a past relatively friendly to life, good for the next NASA rover.

  • Joe. My. God. reports on the latest ignorance displayed by Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter, this time regarding HIV.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how Climategate was used to undermine popular opinion on climate change.

  • Language Hat links to an article explaining why so many works of classical literature were lost, among other things not making it onto school curricula.

  • Language Log shares a photo of a Muji eraser with an odd English label.

  • Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests Pete Buttigieg faces a campaign-limiting ceiling to his support among Democrats.

  • The LRB Blog argues that Macron's blocking of EU membership possibilities for the western Balkans is a terrible mistake.

  • The Map Room Blog shares a map depicting regional variations in Canada towards anthropogenic climate change. Despite data issues, the overall trend of oil-producing regions being skeptical is clear.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining the slowing pace of labour mobility in the US, suggesting that home attachment is a key factor.

  • Frederic Wehrey at the NYR Daily tells the story of Knud Holmboe, a Danish journalist who came to learn about the Arab world working against Italy in Libya.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why thermodynamics does not explain our perception of time.

  • Understanding Society's Dan Little looks at Electronic Health Records and how they can lead to medical mistakes.

  • Whatever's John Scalzi shares a remarkable photo of the night sky he took using the astrophotography mode on his Pixel 4 phone.

  • Window on Eurasia shares an opinion that the Intermarium countries, between Germany and Russia, can no longer count on the US and need to organize in their self-defense.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares a photo of his handsome late partner Jacques Transue, taken as a college student.

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  • This r/imaginarymaps map imagines the creation, via migration in the 13th century, of a Turkic Christian minority akin to the Gagauz concentrated in northwestern Germany. Nice map, if questionable borders.

  • What would have happened if, as nearly occurred in 1762, Prussia was crushed by its neighbours and divided? r/imaginarymaps shows the outcome.

  • Could there ever have emerged, after the partitions of Poland, a dual-nation kingdom of Prussia-Poland? r/imaginarymaps shows this country.

  • This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a southern Germany unified under Austria, separate from the sphere of Prussia in the north.

  • Could a union of Bavaria with the German-speaking lands of Austria after 1919 have worked? r/imaginarymaps shows it.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait shares images of Jupiter, imaged in infrared by ALMA.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at ocean upwelling on one class of super-habitable exoplanet.

  • D-Brief looks at how the Komodo dragon survived the threat of extinction.

  • Far Outliers reports on a mid-19th century slave raid in the Sahel.

  • Gizmodo notes that the secret US Air Force spaceplane, the X-37B, has spent two years in orbit. (Doing what?)

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the economic underpinnings of medieval convents.

  • Dave Brockington writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the continuing meltdown of the British political system in the era of Brexit, perhaps even of British democracy.

  • The LRB Blog looks at the impact of Brexit on the Common Travel Area.

  • Marginal Revolution reports on how Poland has tried to deter emigration by removing income taxes on young workers.

  • Carole Naggar writes at the NYR Daily about the photography of women photographers working for LIFE, sharing examples of their work.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why time has to be a dimension of the universe, alongside the three of space.

  • Frank Jacobs of Strange Maps shares NASA images of the forest fires of Amazonia.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that many Russophones of Ukraine are actually strongly opposed to Russia, contrary Russian stereotypes of language determining politics.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait reports on the fragility of asteroid Ryugu.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the JUICE probe, planned to explore the three icy moons of Jupiter.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber reports on the fact that Jimmy Carter was warned in the 1970s about the possibility of global warming.

  • D-Brief notes that the Earth might not be the best world for life, that watery worlds with dense atmospheres and long days might be better.

  • Jessica Poling at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the construction of gender.

  • Far Outliers looks at the Nigerian city of Agadez, at one point a sort of port city of the Sahel.

  • Gizmodo asks a variety of experts their opinion on which species is likely to be next in developing our sort of intelligence. (Primates come up frequently, though I like the suggestion of bacterial colonies.)

  • JSTOR Daily looks/a> at the genderless Quaker prophet Publick Universal Friend.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money comments on the interview of Amy Wax with The New Yorker.

  • Marginal Revolution shares the enthusiasm of Tyler Cowen for Warsaw and Poland.

  • Peter Pomerantsev writes at the NYR Daily about how the alt-right has taken to culture-jamming.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes the exceptional power of cosmic rays.

  • Window on Eurasia shares the lament of a Chuvash writer about the decline of her people's language.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the Elon Musk proposal to terraform Mars by dropping nuclear weapons on the planet's ice caps is a bad idea.

  • James Bow writes about how the introduction of faeries saved his novel The Night Girl.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the storms of Jupiter.

  • The Crux explains the mystery of a village in Poland that has not seen the birth of a baby boy for nearly a decade.

  • D-Brief looks at the exoplanets of nearby red dwarf Gliese 1061.

  • Cody Delisraty talks of Renaissance painter Fra Angelico.

  • Drew Ex Machina commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune.

  • The Dragon's Tales shares links to some papers about the Paleolithic.


  • JSTOR Daily hosts an essay by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger suggesting that Internet rot might be good since it could let people start to forget the past and so move on.

  • Language Hat questions whether the phrase "free to all" has really fallen out of use.

  • Language Log takes a look about immigration to the United States and Emma Lazarus' famous poem.

  • Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with the suggestion of, among other, Henry Farrell, that we are headed away from globalization towards fortress economies. Redundancy, he suggests, will be more important.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a disturbing paper suggesting users of opioids use them in part for social reasons.

  • The NYR Daily features an exchange on a new law in Singapore seeking to govern fake news.

  • The Power and the Money features a guest post from Leticia Arroyo Abad looking at Argentina before the elections.

  • Drew Rowsome takes a look at a new play by Raymond Helkio examining the life of out boxer Mark Leduc.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers if we can test gravitational waves for wave-particle duality.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares photos of the many flowers of Gamble Garden, in Palo Alto.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at the German city of Nordlingen, formed in a crater created by the impact of a binary asteroid with Earth.

  • Centauri Dreams reports on the possibility that the farside of the Moon might bear the imprint of an ancient collision with a dwarf planet the size of Ceres.

  • D-Brief notes that dredging for the expansion of the port of Miami has caused terrible damage to corals there.

  • Dangerous Minds looks at the last appearances of David Bowie and Iggy Pop together on stage.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that China is on track to launch an ambitious robotic mission to Mars in 2020.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog talks about what sociological research actually is.

  • Gizmodo reports on the discovery of a torus of cool gas circling Sagittarius A* at a distance of a hundredth of a light-year.

  • io9 reports about Angola Janga, an independent graphic novel by Marcelo D'Salete showing how slaves from Africa in Brazil fought for their freedom and independence.

  • The Island Review shares some poems of Matthew Landrum, inspired by the Faroe Islands.

  • Joe. My. God. looks at how creationists are mocking flat-earthers for their lack of scientific knowledge.

  • Language Hat looks at the observations of Mary Beard that full fluency in ancient Latin is rare even for experts, for reason I think understandable.

  • Melissa Byrnes wrote at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the meaning of 4 June 1989 in the political transitions of China and Poland.

  • Marginal Revolution notes how the New York Times has become much more aware of cutting-edge social justice in recent years.

  • The NYR Daily looks at how the memories and relics of the Sugar Land prison complex outside of Houston, Texas, are being preserved.

  • Jason C Davis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the differences between LightSail 1 and the soon-to-be-launched LightSail 2.

  • The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks in detail at the high electricity prices in Argentina.

  • Peter Rukavina looks at the problems with electric vehicle promotion on PEI.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at when the universe will have its first black dwarf. (Not in a while.)

  • Window on Eurasia suggests that Belarusians are not as interested in becoming citizens of Russia as an Internet poll suggests.

  • Arnold Zwicky highlights a Pride Month cartoon set in Antarctica featuring the same-sex marriage of two penguins.

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  • La Presse considers some different strategies to keep rue Saint-Denis in Montréal a healthy thoroughfare and neighbourhood.

  • Atlas Obscura explains how the upstate New York town of Hobart made itself as a home for a used book store cluster.

  • Guardian Cities explains why anti-gentrirfication activists in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin are fighting to keep their local Aldi, to continue to have low-cost food locally.

  • Window on Eurasia notes a poll of immigrant workers in St. Petersburg that finds most quite like their new home.

  • CityLab looks at Polish architect Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak, whose brutalism played a key role in the reconstruction of the Poland city of Wroclaw from the ruins of old German Breslau.

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Reddit's imaginarymaps forum has a lot of great alternate history maps.


  • This r/imaginarymaps map depicts a Dutch Formosa crica 1900.

  • This creation imagines a joint German-Polish invasion of the Soviet Union.

  • this map imagines a different Cold War, with a largely Communist Germany opposed by a Franco-British Union.

  • This map of an alternate Cold War circa 1960 that actually made it into a history book as our timeline

  • This map shows the remarkably fragmented Central America of Marvel Comics's famous Earth-616.

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  • Architectuul celebrates the life and achievements of furniture designer Florence Basset Knoll.

  • Bad Astronomy notes the remarkably detailed 3d simulation of a solar flare.

  • At Crooked Timber, John Holbo engages with Corey Robin's article in The New Yorker on the question of why people moving politically from right to left are less prominent than counterparts moving from left to right.

  • Far Outliers takes a look at the rise and the fall of the international silk trade of China, from Roman times to the 20th century.

  • At The Frailest Thing, L.M. Sacasas writes about the importance of listening to observers at the "hinges", at the moments when things are changing.

  • Internet geographer Mark Graham links to a new chapters making the argument that cyberspace is not a novel new territory.

  • Language Log takes a look at a possible change in the representation of vocal fry as demonstrated in Doonesbury.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the background to the possible 2020 presidential bid of ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

  • Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok looks at a history of Aleppo that emphasizes the ancient city's history of catastrophes.

  • Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw takes issue with an online map highlighting factory farmers created by pressure group Aussie Farms. How meaningful is it, for starters?

  • The Russian Demographics Blog notes the timetable of the introduction of syphillis to Poland-Lithuania in the 1490s.

  • Window on Eurasia looks at Russian population prospects, noting the low fertility among the small cohort of women born in the 1990s.

  • Arnold Zwicky starts by sharing beautiful paintings and photos of tulips, and ends with a meditation on Crimean Gothic.

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  • La Presse notes that reconstruction work planned for Montréal's Saint-Sulpice library has been delayed by a shortage of workers, given the wider city's construction boom.

  • CBC notes how the Halifax Explosion led to the Oland family building the Moosehead Brewery in Saint John.

  • The closure of Sydney-based call centre Servicom has left six hundred people unemployed just before Christmas. CBC reports.

  • Gothamist warns people in New York City which bars to avoid during this weekend's Santacon.

  • Politico Europe notes how, in the Polish city of Katowice at the heart of Upper Silesia, even there coal is falling out of the mix as a major employer.

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  • Transitions Online reports on how Syrian refugees are increasingly finding new homes in Turkey.

  • Iranian families divided by the Trump visa ban now meet in a library on the Québec-Vermont border. Reuters reports.

  • Poland, this Le Devoir report observes, now attracts more immigrants in absolute numbers--many more in relative terms--than Germany.

  • What, this Open Democracy essay asks, will the Honduran refugees in Tijuana do next?

  • This Reihan Salam suggestion at The Atlantic that Mexico should start to encourage American retirees to settle, with the hope of diminishing the political weight of Latin American migration to the United States, actually makes a lot of sense.

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  • Architectuul interviews Vladimir Kulić, curator of the MoMA exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, about the history of innovative architecture in Yugoslavia.

  • The Crux takes a look at the long search for hidden planets in the solar system, starting with Neptune and continuing to Tyche.

  • D-Brief notes that ISRO, the space agency of India, is planning on launching a mission to Venus, and is soliciting outside contributions.

  • Drew Ex Machina's Andrew LePage writes about his efforts to photograph, from space, clouds over California's Mount Whitney.

  • Earther notes that geoengineering is being considered as one strategy to help save the coral reefs.

  • Gizmodo takes a look at the limits, legal and otherwise, facing the Internet Archive in its preservation of humanity's online history.

  • JSTOR Daily explains why the Loch Ness monster has the scientific binominal Nessiteras rhombopteryx.
  • Language Hat links to "The Poor Man of Nippur", a short film by Cambridge academic Martin Worthington that may be the first film in the Babylonian language.

  • The LRB Blog notes the conflict between West Bank settlers and Airbnb. Am I churlish to wish that neither side wins?

  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper noting how quickly, after Poland regained its independence, human capital differences between the different parts of the once-divided country faded.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel takes a look at what it takes, in terms of element abundance and galactic structure, for life-bearing planets to form in the early universe, and when they can form.

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  • In a guest post at Antipope, researcher and novelist Heather Child writes about the extent to which Big Data has moved from science fiction to reality.

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the very recent discovery of a massive crater buried under the ice of Greenland, one that may have impacted in the human era and altered world climate. Are there others like it?

  • Crooked Timber responds to the Brexit proposal being presented to the British parliament. Is this it?

  • D-Brief notes the discovery of the unusually large and dim, potentially unexplainable, dwarf galaxy Antlia 2 near the Milky Way Galaxy.

  • Gizmodo notes that the size of mysterious 'Oumuamua was overestimated.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the life and achievements of Polish-born scholar Jósef Czapski, a man who miraculously survived the Soviet massacre of Polish officers at Katyn.

  • At the LRB Blog, Ken Kalfus writes about his father's experience owning a drycleaner in a 1960s complex run by the Trump family.

  • Marginal Revolution starts a discussion over a recent article in The Atlantic claiming that there has been a sharp drop-off in the sex enjoyed by younger people in the United States (and elsewhere?).

  • At Roads and Kingdoms, T.M. Brown shares a story of the crazy last night of his bartending days in Manhattan's Alphabet City.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel imagines what the universe would have been like during its youth, during peak star formation.

  • Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs takes a look at different partition plans for the United States, aiming to split the country into liberal and conservative successor states.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that some Ingush, after noting the loss of some border territories to neighbouring Chechnya, fear they might get swallowed up by their larger, culturally related, neighbours.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alexander Harrowell predicts that there will not be enough Tory MPs in the United Kingdom willing to topple Theresa May over the Brexit deal.

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  • Earther shares a world map produced by a group predicting where political conflicts over water scarcity will be likely to develop.

  • Ozy notes that the fastest-growing cities in the world will be in Africa.

  • This Project Syndicate essay suggests that the economy of Japan is actually doing a better job than some metrics suggest, at least on per capita measures. Is Japan pointing a way towards a better future in the high-income world?

  • The Irish Times visits the Poland-Ukraine borders to see how well, or not, traffic there flows. Of special note to the Irish readers is the fact that, despite everything else, Ukraine is trying to get closer to the EU, not further away as with the Brexit UK.

  • This essay at The Atlantic looks at how the Pakistan of Imran Khan is negotiating multiple spheres of influence, the West and China and the Middle East, all at once.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the landing of the Franco-German MASCOT probe on asteroid Ryugu from the Japanese Hayabusa-2 probe.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly shares a powerful New York Times article she wrote about her health status.

  • Centauri Dreams notes the continued fine-tuning of the New Horizons probe as it approaches Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, also known as Ultima Thule.

  • D-Brief notes how the Gaia satellite has detected hundreds of hypervelocity stars heading towards the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, perhaps coming from other galactic neighbours like the Large Magellanic Cloud.

  • At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Karen Sternheimer writes about the possibilities opened up by learning another language.

  • JSTOR Daily notes that, once, working-class children regularly roamed the night.

  • Language Hat notes how the Maori remembered in their proverbs the disappearance of the moa, long after that species' extinction in New Zealand.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money rejoices at the despair of the alt-right on learning their favourite pop star, Taylor Swift, supports the Democratic Party.

  • Lingua Franca takes a look at the past usage of the phrase "cold civil war".

  • The LRB Blog writes about the profoundly disturbing case of the apparent murder, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution has a critical take on the concept of "Airspace", the sort of shared minimalist public spaces enabled by modern technologies.

  • Strange Company reports on the mysterious Napoleonic-era haunting of the Upper Silesian castle of Slawensik.

  • Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps reports on the most common last names in different European countries, finding that local variations on "Smith" are exceptionally common.

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  • Despite strong economic growth recently, it is unlikely that the CAQ will be able to fulfill its promise to make Québec no longer a net receiver of equalization payments. The National Post reports.

  • Canadians may well be relieved that NAFTA has been superseded smoothly enough by the USMCA, but Canadians are also not forgetting their country's treatment by the Trump Administration. The Canadian Press, via CTV News, reports.

  • MacLean's explains the NAFTA/USMCA situation from the perspective of Mexicans, who seem to have felt their country simply did not have many good choices.

  • Do the wage increases given to workers by Amazon promise higher wages for American workers more generally and a strong economy? Maybe, maybe not. CBC's Don Pittis reports.

  • So far, Poland has not benefited as much as it might hope from Chinese investments in the country. Transitions Online reports.

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  • This Ryan Diduck article at CultMTL taking a look at the MUTEK electronic music festival and Never Apart, evoking what I suppose might be called midtown Montréal, is wonderfully evocative.

  • The mayor of Québec City wants to increase immigration to his metropolis, the better to deal with labour shortages. CBC reports.

  • Guardian Cities takes a look at the famously Italianate 1930s capital of Eritrea, Asmara. What future does it face as the country opens up?

  • Guardian Cities reports on how lethal being a graffiti artist can be in São Paulo.

  • This Dara Bramson article at Protocols sharing a first-hand perspective on the revival of Jewish life in Krakow is beautiful.

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  • 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.)

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  • Adam Fish at Anthro{dendum} takes a look at the roles of drones in capitalism, here.

  • Bad Astronomy talks about the discovery of a nascent planet in orbit of young star PDS 70.

  • Centauri Dreams notes what the discovery of a Charon eclipsing its partner Pluto meant, for those worlds and for astronomy generally.

  • D-Brief notes a demographic study of Italian centenarians suggesting that, after reaching the age of 105, human mortality rates seem to plateau. Does this indicate the potential for further life expectancy increases?

  • Dead Things shares the result of a genetics study of silkworms. Where did these anchors of the Silk Road come from?

  • Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers the role of the side hustle in creative professions.

  • Far Outliers reports on the time, in the 1930s, when some people in Second Republic Poland thought that the country should acquire overseas colonies.

  • Hornet Stories reports on how, in earlier centuries, the English word "pinke" meant a shade of yellow.

  • JSTOR Daily reports on how, nearly two decades later, Sex and the City is still an influential and important piece of pop culture.

  • Language Hat links to Keith Gessen's account, in The New Yorker, about how he came to teach his young son Russian.

  • Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle of Higher Education, reports on the decent and strongly Cuban Spanish spoken by Ernest Hemingway.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the mystique surrounding testosterone, the powerful masculinizing hormone.

  • The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer shares his thoughts on the election, in Mexico, of left-leaning populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Worst-case scenarios aren't likely to materialize in the short and medium terms, at least.

  • Vintage Space notes how, at the height of the Cold War, some hoped to demonstrate American strength by nuking the Moon. (Really.)

  • Window on Eurasia links to an essayist who suggests that Russia should look to America as much as to Europe for models of society.

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  • In response to a desire to remove an almost bizarre controversial statue of a cow from its location in a neighbourhood in Markham, the owner has sued the city for $C 4 million. The Toronto Star reports.

  • The mayor of Hamilton, Ontario, would like housing incorporated into shopping malls, to deal with issues of housing and retail in one go. Global News reports.

  • Brexit threatens to decidedly destabilize the picture for the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. The Independent reports.

  • Bloomberg notes that the controversial Chinese-owned port of Hambantota, in Sri Lanka, is doing terrible business.

  • Newly-discovered documents provide confirmation of the belief that the Nazis planned to utterly destroy Warsaw. The National Post reports.

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