Entries tagged with regionalism

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[BLOG] Five Marginal Revolution links

Marginal Revolution considers if the CFA franc system is dying out, here.

Marginal Revolution shares a link to a paper quantifying the effects of the old boys club, here.

Marginal Revolution contrasts and compares the old NAFTA and the new USMCA, here.

Marginal Revolution notes how Germany has access to nuclear weapons, here.

Marginal Revolution looks at the high rate of consainguineous marriage in Saudi Arabia, here.

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[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait shares a stunning photo taken by a friend of the Pleiades star cluster.

The Buzz, at the Toronto Public Library, shares a collection of books suitable for World Vegan Month, here.

Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber considers, with an eye towards China and the Uighurs, how panopticon attempts can stray badly on account of--among other things--false assumptions.

Gizmodo considers how antimatter could end up providing interesting information about the unseen universe.

Joe. My. God. reports from New York City, where new HIV cases are dropping sharply on account of PrEP.

JSTOR Daily shares a vintage early review of Darwin's Origin of Species.

Language Hat examines the origins of the semicolon, in Venice in 1494.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money shares a critical report of the new Jill Lepore book These Truths.

The LRB Blog reports from the Museum of Corruption in Kyiv, devoted to the corruption of the ancient regime in Ukraine.

Marginal Revolution shares a new history of the Lakota.

The NYR Daily looks at the photography of Duane Michals.

The Russian Demographics Blog looks at population trends in Russia, still below 1991 totals in current frontiers.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why some of the lightest elements, like lithium, are so rare.

Window on Eurasia shares the opinion of a Russian historian that Eastern Europe is back as a geopolitical zone.

Arnold Zwicky considers Jacques Transue in the light of other pop culture figures and trends.

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[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: housing, highways, Toronto Zoo, Dufferin Grove Park, 501 Queen

Jennifer Pagliaro and Emily Mathieu at the Toronto Star look at how 1400 subsidized housing units remain empty despite the housing crisis, and why.

Does Toronto need another 400-series highway to handle traffic? blogTO considers.

How can the Toronto Zoo move forward? The Toronto Star examines.

Dufferin Grove Park is scheduled to face an interesting redevelopment. blogTO reports.

Steve Munro looks at the factors behind longer travel times on the 501 Queen streetcar.

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[URBAN NOTE] Five Montréal links: Québec, real estate, Berri, Dorchester Square, Airbnb

La Presse writes about the lack of rapport between the government of Québec and the metropolis of Montréal, and the looks at the consequences of said.

A new CMHC study suggests that, between rising prices for housing on the island of Montréal and improved transit off-Island, it might be cheaper for many to live on the mainland. The Montreal Gazette reports.

Turning the abandoned Berri bus station into a distribution depot sounds like a good idea to me. CTV News reports.

The newly renovated Dorchester Square looks lovely. Global News reports.

The Montreal Gazette looks at new strict rules on Airbnb that will hopefully limit the impact on the rental housing sector.

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[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

Architectuul notes the recent death of I.M. Pei.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes what, exactly, rubble-pile asteroids are.

The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about definitions of home.

Centauri Dreams considers white dwarf planets.

The Crux notes how ultra-processed foods are liked closely to weight gain.

D-Brief observes that a thin layer of insulating ice might be saving the subsurface oceans of Pluto from freezing out.

Bruce Dorminey notes the critical role played by Apollo 10 in getting NASA ready for the Moon landings.

The Dragon's Tales notes the American government's expectation that China will seek to set up its own global network of military bases.

Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the Soviet Union's Venera 5 and 6 missions to Venus.

Far Outliers looks at the visit of U.S. Grant to Japan and China.

Gizmodo notes a recent analysis of Neanderthal teeth suggesting that they split with Homo sapiens at a date substantially earlier than commonly believed.

io9 notes the sheer scale of the Jonathan Hickman reboots for the X-Men comics of Marvel.

Joe. My. God. shares the argument of Ted Cruz that people should stop making fun of his "space pirate" suggestion.I am inclined to think Cruz more right than not, actually.

JSTOR Daily notes the wave of anti-black violence that hit the United States in 1919, often driven by returned veterans.

Language Hat shares a recognizable complaint, written in ancient Akkadian, of bad customers.

Language Log shares a report of a village in Brittany seeking people to decipher a mysterious etching.

This Scott Lemieux report at Lawyers, Guns and Money about how British conservatives received Ben Shapiro is a must-read summary.

Benjamin Markovits at the LRB Blog shares the reasons why he left his immigrant-heavy basketball team in Germany.

Marginal Revolution looks at one effort in Brazil to separate people from their street gangs.

The NYR Daily looks at how ISIS, deprived of its proto-state, has managed to thrive as a decentralized network.

Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw tells of his experiences and perceptions of his native region of New England, in southeastern Australia.

The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Chang'e 4 rover may have found lunar mantle on the surface of the Moon.

The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that while Argentine president Mauricio Macri is polling badly, his opponents are not polling well.

Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of things to do in see in the Peru capital of Lima.

The Signal examines how the Library of Congress engages in photodocumentation.

Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal explains how he is helping native insects by planting native plants in his garden.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how scientific illiteracy should never be seen as cool.

Towleroad notes the questions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as to why Truvada costs so much in the United States.

Window on Eurasia notes how family structures in the North Caucasus are at once modernizing and becoming more conservative.

Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the distribution of US carriers and their fleets at present does not support the idea of a planned impending war with Iran.

Arnold Zwicky examines the tent caterpillar of California.

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[BLOG] Some Thursday links

Centauri Dreams links to a paper noting that the interiors of planets play a critical role in determining planetary habitability.

Belle Waring writes at Crooked Timber about imaginative dream worlds, criticized by some as a sort of maladaptive daydreaming I don't buy that; I am interested in what she says about hers.

D-Brief notes the very recent discovery of a small tyrannosaur.

Dead Things considers the possibility that a new South African hominin, Australopithecus sediba, might actually be the ancestor of Homo sapiens.

JSTOR Daily looks at how one negative side-effect of the renewable energy boom is the mass mining of rare earth elements.

Erik Loomis writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the way in which not just history but history fandoms are gendered, the interests of women being neglected or downplayed.

Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen reports on how a new US-Chinese trade deal will not do much to deal with underlying issues.

The New APPS Blog notes the great profits made by the gun industry in the United States and the great death toll, too, associated with the guns produced.

The NYR Daily visits the Northern Ireland town of Carrickfergus, home to Louis MacNeice and made famous by violence as the whole province sits on the edge of something.

Drew Rowsome takes a look at the queer horror film The Skin of The Teeth.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains what the technical limits of the Hubble Space Telescope are, and why it needs a replacement.

Window on Eurasia notes changing patters of population change in the different regions of Russia.

Arnold Zwicky shares some photos of notable public art in Switzerland, starting with The Caring Hand in his ancestral canton of Glarus.

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[URBAN NOTE] Five library links: libraries, Ontario, costs

Bloor/Gladstone Library, as seen from Gladstone #toronto #bloorcourt #bloorgladstonelibrary #night #bloorstreetwest #gladstoneave #lights #latergram

If you are a subscribing reader to the New York Review of Books, read this Sue Halpern review essay on the public library.

CBC Hamilton reports on how Ontario provincial cuts will hurt many libraries around Hamilton, especially rural ones.

Many libraries, in the area of eastern Ontario Kingston and Perth, will also suffer from the cuts. Global News reports.

This CBC As It Happens interview with Dayna DeBenedet, CEO of the Dryden Public Library, looks at how the cuts will hurt already underserved communities hardest.

Jane Gerster at Global News notes how the library funding cuts will have a much larger negative economic effect than many might think.

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[BLOG] Some Friday links

Architectuul takes a look at "infrastructural scars", at geopolitically-inspired constructions like border fences and fortifications.

Centauri Dreams notes what we can learn from 99942 Apophis during its 2029 close approach to Earth, just tens of thousands of kilometres away.

D-Brief reports on the reactions of space artists to the photograph of the black hole at the heart of M87.

Dangerous Minds shares the first recording of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.

The Dragon's Tales notes that Germany has begun work on drafting laws to cover space mining.

Gizmodo reports on what scientists have learned from the imaging of a very recent impact of an asteroid on the near side of the Moon.

io9 makes the case that Star Trek: Discovery should try to tackle climate change.

Joe. My. God. notes that Verizon is seeking a buyer for Tumblr. (Wouldn't it be funny if it was bought, as other reports suggest might be possible, by Pornhub?)

JSTOR Daily reports on a 1910 examination of medical schools that, among other things, shut down all but two African-American medical schools with lasting consequences for African-American health.

Language Log asks why "Beijing" is commonly pronounced as "Beizhing".

Simon Balto asks at Lawyers, Guns and Money why the murder of Justine Ruszczyk by a Minneapolis policeman is treated more seriously than other police killings, just because she was white and the cop was black. All victims deserve the same attention.

Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares a video of the frieze of the Parthenon.

The NYR Daily responds to the 1979 television adaptation of the Primo Levi novel Christ Stopped at Eboli, an examination of (among other things) the problems of development.

Peter Rukavina is entirely right about the practical uselessness of QR codes.

Daniel Little at Understanding Society points readers towards the study of organizations, concentrating on Charles Perrow.

Window on Eurasia notes the argument of one Russian commentator that Russia should offer to extend citizenship en masse not only to Ukrainians but to Belarusians, the better to undermine independent Belarus.

Arnold Zwicky shares photos of some of his flourishing flowers, as his home of Palo Alto enters a California summer.

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[URBAN NOTE] Seven city links: smart cities, coffee, accessible transport, regionalism, boomtowns,

The Conversation notes the concerns of Canadians about the potential privacy concerns regarding smart cities.

This CityMetric article examines the particular role of the chain coffeeshop in the contemporary city.

Will the tragic death of young mother Malaysia Goodson, killed trying to access public transit, lead to the spread of accessible infrastructure? Guardian Cities considers.

A forced amalgamation of the different regional municipalities of Toronto could easily come into conflict with locals' identities, the Toronto Star noted.

National Geographic considers Silicon Valley-type boomtowns around the world. (Toronto is on that list.)

This Bloomberg article makes the point that, in same cases, merging cities with prosperous suburbs might be a godsends for the wider conurbations.

This Curbed article by novelist Jami Attenberg looks at what has changed for her--what she has gained--since moving from large metropolis New York City to the smaller centre of New Orleans.

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[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Superlinx, housing, rooming houses, raccoons

Urban Toronto takes a look at the revised Superlinx plan put forth by the Toronto Board of Trade for a GTA transit network.

Lauren Pelley at CBC Toronto highlights a new report examining how the shortage of affordable housing has the potential to create catastrophe.

Aparita Bhandari at The Discourse notes that, out of one Scarborough public discussion on the housing crisis, the idea of legalizing rooming houses kept coming up. I like this idea; I lived in one myself when I first moved here.

May Warren at the Toronto Star notes that one-third of young adults in Toronto live with their parents, and that this response to housing costs makes perfect sense.

Jamie Bradburn has announced that, happily, Thursday will be Trash Panda Thursday at his blog, featuring his explorations of the noble raccoon in the mass media past of Toronto.

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[URBAN NOTE] Six Toronto links: Toronto Coach Terminal, Metrolinx, TTC and subways, tech

Christopher Hume at the Toronto Star writes movingly about the neglect of the beautiful Toronto Coach Terminal. This building deserves better.

Ben Spurr at the Toronto Star notes the willingness of Metrolinx to turn customers' Presto data over to the police, even without warrants.

Transit Toronto notes that surveying for the extension of the Yonge subway line north from Finch has begun.

Metrolinx has gone on the record as saying that the Downtown Relief Line, relieving pressure on the Yonge line, must open before a northwards extension of Yonge into Richmond Hill. The Toronto Star has it.

The Globe and Mail reports that, after rising numbers of suicide attempts, the TTC is going to redouble anti-suicide measures.

Toronto is becoming a growing centre of the tech industry, the Toronto Star reports, tech sector growth driving the wider provincial economy.

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[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Metrolinx map, carding, Ontario Place, HIVE, density

Metrolinx shares a glorious map depicting traffic and trends at the different stops on its many routes.

NOW Toronto notes how Doug Ford may yet enable carding-like practices by police.

The criticism by an Ontario government minister of the state of Ontario Place is worrisome. The Toronto Star reports.

Urban Toronto shares a photo of the construction at the vast Hive site downtown.

George Popper at Spacing Toronto looks at three neighbourhoods where housing in Toronto can really densify indeed must densify, including the Bloor-Danforth corridor.

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[BLOG] Five city links: Mississauga, Simcoe County, Detrroit, Burnaby, El Paso

Hazel McCallion, the nonagenarian former mayor of Mississauga, has been appointed an advisor to the Ford government in Ontario. Global News reports.

A Simcoe County that faces a threat of amalgamation under the Ontario provincial government is already composed of communities feeling they lack adequate representation. The Toronto Star reports.

CityLab notes how a history of racism complicated efforts to plant new trees in Detroit.

Douglas Todd at the Vancouver Sun notes how ethnic tensions in multicultural South Burnaby surfaced in the former Liberal candidate's treatment of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.

The NYR Daily looks at what is going on in and around El Paso as the Mexican-American border facing further closing.

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[NEWS] Five Canada politics links: Ontario arts, Alberta vs. Québec, referendum, West, WeChat

The scale of the cuts by the Ontario government to the Ontario Arts Council, including those directed towards Indigenous artists, is appalling. Global News reports.

The provinces of Alberta and Québec are feuding over the latter province's opposition to new pipeline construction, Albertans trying to lead a boycott. CTV News reports.

Quartz notes, with reference to Brexit, that if the Oui had won the 1995 referendum on Québec independence Jean Chrétien would have held a second referendum to confirm the result.

CBC hosts an opinion piece by Monte Solberg talking about western Canadian alienation.

China-based social app WeChat has been limiting the articles its Canadian users can access on the Huawei crisis. The Toronto Star reports.

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[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: mass transit, inequality, Midwest vs Northeast, Slab City, Europe

CityLab notes that mass transit failed in the United States not because it was unsuited for American cities but, rather, because mass transit was killed there.

Geographic inequality in the United States is worsening, CityLab reports.

Bloomberg View notes that, unlike in the US Northeast where population growth is concentrated in a few major centres, the US Midwest has recently been seeing more regionally balanced growth.

Sarah Holder at CityLab takes a look at Slab City, an unrecognized settlement deep in California's Colorado Desert that has persisted for seven decades.

Feargus O'Sullivan at CityLab looks at how, in the European Union, population aging and shrinkage is most significant away from prosperous capital cities.

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[NEWS] Some economics links: Québec, Canada, Mexico, United States, Poland and China

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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[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes that far-orbiting body 2015 TC387 offers more indirect evidence for Planet Nine, as does D-Brief.
Centauri Dreams notes that data from the Gaia astrometrics satellite finds traces of past collisions between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy.

The Crux takes a look at the long history of human observation of the Crab Nebula.

Sujata Gupta at JSTOR Daily writes about the struggle of modern agriculture with the pig, balancing off concerns for animal welfare with productivity.

Language Hat shares a defensive of an apparently legendarily awful novel, Marguerite Young's Miss Macintosh, My Darling.

Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle, takes a look at the controversy over the name of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, going up to the recent referendum on North Macedonia.

The LRB Blog reports on the high rate of fatal car accidents in the unrecognized republic of Abkhazia.

Reddit's mapporn shares an interesting effort to try to determine the boundaries between different regions of Europe, stacking maps from different sources on top of each other.

Justin Petrone at North! writes about how the northern wilderness of Estonia sits uncomfortably with his Mediterranean Catholic background.

Peter Watts reports from a book fair he recently attended in Lviv, in the west of Ukraine.

Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes the new effort being put in by NASA into the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Roads and Kingdoms reports on some beer in a very obscure bar in Shanghai.

Drew Rowsome reports on the performance artist Lukas Avendano, staging a performance in Toronto inspired by the Zapotech concept of the muxe gender.

Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps examines the ocean-centric Spielhaus map projection that has recently gone viral.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the question of whether or not the Big Rip could lead to another Big Bang.

Window on Eurasia notes the harm that global warming will inflict on the infrastructures of northern Siberia.

Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell considers the ecological fallacy in connection with electoral politics. Sometimes there really are not niches for new groups.

Arnold Zwicky takes part in the #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob meme, this time looking at images of linguists.

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[NEWS] Five links on Canada and North American integration in the era of Trump

This John Ivison article noting Canada and Mexico need to be united on trade issues versus Trump's United States still makes sense, and can be read at the National Post.

MacLean's last month took a look at what Mexico's new president, AMLO, meant for bilateral Canadian-Mexican relations and wider North America.

Freezing out Canada from NAFTA negotiations is apparently a Trump tactic presented in The Art of the Deal. Business Insider reports.

The proposed terms of the NAFTA renegotiations, which involve higher wages for workers, may have a minimal effect on Canada. Global News reports.

Is it possible, as suggested at Quartz, that the renegotiated NAFTA might play to the benefit of Canada?

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[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait tells the story of how the Andromeda Galaxy ate most of its Local Group partner two billion years ago, M32p.

Centauri Dreams looks at what the preponderance of water worlds--worlds with vast amounts of water--mean for life.

Corey Robin at Crooked Timber links to an essay of his noting that the Avital Ronell scandal reveals deep problems inside academia.

D-Brief notes reactions involving protons that play a major role in powering neutron stars.

Bruce Dorminey shares five questions about the universe that bug--productively, I think--astrobiologists.

The Dragon's Tales examines the challenges facing the proposal by Modi for the creation of a manned Indian space program within a decade.

Colby King writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about challenges facing students building social networks. How broad and diverse can they be?

David Finger at the Finger Post writes, and shows, a one-day trip to Cuzco.

Hornet Stories starts a fun discussion on heroic monsters. I'm pleased to say that the Addams Family ranked highly.

Information is Beautiful shares a new infographic exploring what, exactly, a trillion dollars is.

JSTOR Daily looks at how, not just the concept of the Mediterranean as a unified region, but of the Mediterranean as uniquely attractive, came about.

The LRB Blog reports from the Edinburgh Fringe, where the Brexit-themed play Leave. To Remain is playing.

Ryan Holmberg at the NYR Daily looks at how manga in Japan have dealt with nuclear danger before and after Fukushima, looking particular at the work of Susumu Katsumata.

Strange Company tells the story of the strange hauntings that beset, in mid-19th century Normandy, the Château des Noyers.

Towleroad shares a video of older gay men reacting to the definitely out videos of queer pop singer Troye Sivan.

At Understanding Society, Daniel Little takes a look at the arguments of Andrew Hopkins regarding safety culture in an enterprise versus safety behaviour.

Window on Eurasia notes a continued Russian threat, post-Crimea, to Ukrainian sovereignty in its territorial waters on the Sea of Azov and elsewhere.

Arnold Zwicky notes the impending end of summer, between flowers and sex and more.

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[BLOG] Some Friday links

anthro{dendum} hosts Alexia Maddox's essay on her experience doing ethnographic work on Darknet drug markets.

The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about how the creative life, contrary to some imaginings, is not self-sustaining. It desperately needs external support--an outside job, perhaps.

Bruce Dorminey writes about how the climate of Chile, especially the Atacama, is perfect for astronomy.

JSTOR Daily shares a paper talking about how Alexander Pushkin, the 19th century Russian author, was demonstrably proud of his African ancestry.

Language Hat links to a new article on rongorongo, the mysterious and undeciphered script of the Rapa Nui of Polynesian Easter Island.

Lingua Franca, at the Chronicle, notes in passing the oddness of restrictions imposed by customs in Chile on taking ordinary books into the country.

Lawyers, Guns and Money notes a bizarrely parochial article from the New York Times talking down to Los Angeles.

The Map Room Blog links to some interesting articles, from The New York Times recently and from the Atlantic in 2012, about the art of gerrymandering.

The NYR Daily looks at the import of the Nunes memo for Trump and Russian-American relations.

Roads and Kingdoms considers the simple pleasures of a snack featuring canned fish by the beach in Mallorca.

Drew Rowsome quite approves of this year's gay romance film Sebastian, set here in Toronto.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that, contrary to predictions, most satellite galaxies orbit in the same plane as their hosts. This is a problem for dark matter.

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