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  • Apparently upwards of 95% of dolphins are right-handed. Global News reports.

  • A dead sperm whale has been found in Scotland, choked on a hundred kilograms of plastic waste. CBC reports.

  • Tracking the heart rate of a blue whale is something that we can do. CBC reports.

  • Nearly a hundred cetaceans held in a Russian facility seem to be doing well after being released to their ocean home. CBC reports.

  • The policies of Elizabeth Warren could, if she was elected, impact the seafood industry of Atlantic Canada. (As, I think, they should.) CBC reports.

  • Whale populations can, if we treat them well, help save the climate from catastrophe. VICE makes the case.

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  • Bad Astronomy notes the very odd structure of galaxy NGC 2775.

  • Dangerous Minds reports on the 1987 riot by punks that wrecked a Seattle ferry.

  • Bruce Dorminey reports on a new suggestion from NASA that the massive dust towers of Mars have helped dry out that world over eons.

  • The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how changing technologies have led to younger people spending more social capital on maintaining relationships with friends over family.

  • This forum hosted at Gizmodo considers the likely future causes of death of people in coming decades.

  • In Media Res' Russell Arben Fox reports on the debate in Wichita on what to do with the Century II performance space.

  • Joe. My. God. reports on the decision of Hungary to drop out of Eurovision, apparently because of its leaders' homophobia.

  • JSTOR Daily reports on the debunking of the odd theory that the animals and people of the Americas were degenerate dwarfs.

  • Language Hat reports on how the classics can be served by different sorts of translation.

  • Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers how Trump's liberation of war criminals relates to folk theories about just wars.

  • The LRB Blog reports from the ground in the Scotland riding of East Dunbartonshire.

  • Marginal Revolution shares a paper suggesting that, contrary to much opinion, social media might actually hinder the spread of right-wing populism.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the nature of the proxy fighters in Syria of Turkey. Who are they?

  • Drew Rowsome interviews Sensational Sugarbum, star of--among other things--the latest Ross Petty holiday farce.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why we still need to be able to conduct astronomy from the Earth.

  • Strange Maps explains the odd division of Europe between east and west, as defined by different subspecies of mice.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how Chinese apparently group Uighurs in together with other Central Asians of similar language and religion.

  • Arnold Zwicky explores the concept of onomatomania.

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  • Adam Fish at anthro{dendum} compares different sorts of public bathing around the world, from Native America to Norden to Japan.

  • Charlie Stross at Antipope is unimpressed by the person writing the script for our timeline.

  • Architectuul reports on an architectural conference in Lisbon.

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning photos of the eruption of the Raikoke volcano in Kamchatka.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at what the Voyager spacecraft have returned about the edge of the solar system.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber takes issue with the idea of bipartisanship if it means compromising on reality, allegorically.

  • The Crux counts the number of people who have died in outer space.

  • D-Brief notes that the Andromeda Galaxy has swallowed up multiple dwarf galaxies over the eons.

  • Dead Things notes the identification of the first raptor species from Southeast Asia, Siamraptor suwati.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes a paper tracing the origins of interstellar comet 2/Borisov from the general area of Kruger 60.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the privilege allowing people access to affordable dental care.

  • Gizmodo tells how Alexei Leonov survived the first spacewalk.

  • io9 looks at the remarkable new status quo for the X-Men created by Jonathan Hickman.

  • Selma Franssen at the Island Review writes about the threats facing the seabirds of the Shetlands.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at what led Richard Nixon to make so many breaks from the American consensus on China in the Cold War.

  • Language Log notes an undergraduate course at Yale using the Voynich Manuscript as an aid in the study of language.

  • Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains her recent experience of the socialized health care system of Israel for Americans.

  • The LRB Blog looks at how badly the Fukuyama prediction of an end to history has aged.

  • The Map Room Blog shares a few maps of the new Ottawa LRT route.

  • Marginal Revolution notes a paper establishing a link between Chinese industries undermining their counterparts in Mexico and Mexican social ills including crime.

  • Sean Marshall reports from Ottawa about what the Confederation Line looks like.

  • Adam Shatz at the NYR Daily looks at the power of improvisation in music.

  • Roads and Kingdoms looks at South Williamsburg Jewish deli Gottlieb's.

  • Drew Rowsome reviews the new Patti Smith book, Year of the Monkey.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking as the factors leading into transnational movements.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the question of the direction(s) in which order in the universe was generated.

  • Window on Eurasia shares a report noting the very minor flows of migration from China to Russia.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at the politics in the British riding of Keighley.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at some penguin socks.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes new research on where the sun is located within the Milky Way Galaxy.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly considers the value of slow fashion.

  • Centauri Dreams notes the different gas giants that our early methods have yet to pick up.

  • Crooked Timber shares a lovely photo looking back at Venice from across its lagoon.

  • D-Brief notes that upcoming space telescopes might find hundreds of rogue planets thanks to microlensing.

  • io9 notes that Marvel will soon be producing Warhammer40K comics.

  • The Island Review shares some poetry and photography by Ken Cockburn inspired by the Isle of Jura.

  • JSTOR Daily notes that different humpback whale groups have different songs, different cultures.

  • Language Hat tries to find the meaning of the odd Soviet Yiddish word "kolvirt".

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the history of Elizabeth Warren as a law teacher.

  • Map Room Blog shares information from Google Maps about its use of data.

  • Marginal Revolution notes that in 2016, not a single child born in the United Kingdom was given the name Nigel.

  • Peter Watts talks about AI and what else he is doing.

  • The NYR Daily marked the centennial of a horrible massacre of African-Americans centered on the Arkansas community of Elaine.

  • Emily Margolis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at how the Apollo moon missions helped galvanize tourism in Florida.

  • Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money looks at the constitutional crisis in Peru.

  • Drew Rowsome takes a look at A Streetcar Named Desire.

  • Peter Rukavina looks at a spreadsheet revealing the distribution of PEI public servants.

  • Spacing reviews a book imagining how small communities can rebuild themselves in neoliberalism.

  • Towleroad shares the criticism of Christine and the Queens of the allegedly opportunistic use of queer culture by Taylor Swift.

  • Understanding Society considers, sociologically, the way artifacts work.

  • The Volokh Conspiracy argues that the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People's Republic of China should be a day of mourning, on account of the high human toll of the PRC.

  • Window on Eurasia suggests the Russian generation of the 1970s was too small to create lasting change.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at how underwear ads can be quite sexualized.

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  • Architectuul looks at some architecturally innovative pools.

  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait looks at Wolf 359, a star made famous in Star Trek for the Starfleet battle there against the Borg but also a noteworthy red dwarf star in its own right.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at how the NASA Deep Space Atomic Clock will play a vital role in interplanetary navigation.

  • The Crux considers the "drunken monkey" thesis, the idea that drinking alcohol might have been an evolutionary asset for early hominids.

  • D-Brief reports on what may be the next step for genetic engineering beyond CRISPR.

  • Bruce Dorminey looks at how artificial intelligence may play a key role in searching for threat asteroids.

  • The Island Review shares some poetry from Roseanne Watt, inspired by the Shetlands and using its dialect.

  • Livia Gershon writes at JSTOR Daily about how YouTube, by promising to make work fun, actually also makes fun work in psychologically problematic ways.

  • Marginal Revolution notes how the relatively small Taiwan has become a financial superpower.

  • Janine di Giovanni at the NYR Daily looks back at the 2000 intervention in Sierra Leone. Why did it work?

  • Jamais Cascio at Open the Future looks back at a 2004 futurological exercise, the rather accurate Participatory Panopticon. What did he anticipate correctly? How? What does it suggest for us now to our world?

  • The Planetary Society Blog notes that LightSail 2 will launch before the end of June.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at how the discovery of gas between galaxies helps solve a dark matter question.

  • Strange Company shares a broad collection of links.

  • Window on Eurasia makes the obvious observation that the West prefers a North Caucasus controlled by Russia to one controlled by Islamists.

  • Arnold Zwicky takes a look at American diner culture, including American Chinese food.

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  • The Inter Press Service reports on efforts to keep the fisheries of St. Vincent active, despite climate change.

  • This Guardian report on the sheer determination of the librarians of the Orkneys to service their community, even in the face of giant waves, is inspiring.

  • I am decidedly impressed by the scope of the Hong Kong plan to build a vast new artificial island. The Guardian reports.

  • This Inter Press Service report about how the stigma of leprosy in Kiribati prevents treatment is sad, and recounts a familiar phenomenon.

  • That Behrouz Boochani was able to write an award-winning book on Whatsapp while imprisoned in the Australian camp on Manus island is an inspiring story that should never have been. CBC's As It Happens reports.

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  • This map at r/imaginarymaps imagines what might have been had the unlikely Scottish colonial project in Panama, the Darien Scheme, had succeeded.

  • This r/imaginarymaps map imagines an Islamic Greece.

  • This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a revisionist Afrikaner state in eastern South Africa.

  • What organized crime networks might have sprung up in an independent Confederacy? This r/imaginarymaps post considers.

  • The organization of a Europe unified under Napoleonic hegemony in 1820 is laid out in this r/imaginarymaps map.

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  • The Cantonese language, the SCMP reports, is falling out of use among young people in Guangzhou.

  • The Muslim Hui, living outside of Xinjiang, are being pressured to shut down Arabic-medium schools. The SCMP reports.

  • The Scottish government has received only two complaints about Gaelic on bilingual road signs in the past seventeen years. The National reports.

  • HuffPost Québec notes that the French language has been displaced as the chief language of wine by English.

  • Advanced artificial intelligence has the potential to aid in the translation of ancient languages like Sumerian, with stockpiles of untranslated material just waiting for an eye's attention. The BBC explains.

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Some more population-related links popped up over the past week.



  • CBC Toronto reported on this year’s iteration of Winter Stations. A public art festival held on the Lake Ontario shorefront in the east-end Toronto neighbourhood of The Beaches, Winter Stations this year will be based around the theme of migration.

  • JSTOR Daily noted how the interracial marriages of serving members of the US military led to the liberalization of immigration law in the United States in the 1960s. With hundreds of thousands of interracial marriages of serving members of the American military to Asian women, there was simply no domestic constituency in the United States
  • Ozy reported on how Dayton, Ohio, has managed to thrive in integrating its immigrant populations.

  • Amro Ali, writing at Open Democracy, makes a case for the emergence of Berlin as a capital for Arab exiles fleeing the Middle East and North America in the aftermath of the failure of the Arab revolutions. The analogy he strikes to Paris in the 1970s, a city that offered similar shelter to Latin American refugees at that time, resonates.

  • Alex Boyd at The Island Review details, with prose and photos, his visit to the isolated islands of St. Kilda, inhabited from prehistoric times but abandoned in 1930.
  • VICE looks at the plight of people who, as convicted criminals, were deported to the Tonga where they held citizenship. How do they live in a homeland they may have no experience of? The relative lack of opportunity in Tonga that drove their family's earlier migration in the first place is a major challenge.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how, in many post-Soviet countries including the Baltic States and Ukraine, ethnic Russians are assimilating into local majority ethnic groups. (The examples of the industrial Donbas and Crimea, I would suggest, are exceptional. In the case of the Donbas, 2014 might well have been the latest point at which a pro-Russian separatist movement was possible.)

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  • CBC Montreal looks at how the city of Montréal deals with snow disposal in winter.

  • NOW Toronto reviews The World Before Your Feet, a documentary examining the life of one Matt Green, who aims to walk all the thousands of kilometres of streets of New York City.

  • VICE reports on how the mass shooting of Dunblane still affects survivors and townspeople even two decades later.

  • CityLab looks at the unique Schwebebahn mass transit system in the Ruhr town of Wuppertal, and what it says about transit culture in Germany.

  • CityLab takes a look at Cape Town, where a foodie culture is not reflected in ready access of all to food, and how some people are trying to fix this.

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  • Le Devoir took a look at the importance of the seal hunt for the Iles-de-la-Madeleine.

  • Alex Boyd at The Island Review details, with prose and photos, his visit to the now-deserted island of St. Kilda.

  • The Economist took a look at the German North Sea island of Heligoland.

  • Orlando Milesi writes at the Inter Press Service about the threats posed by climate changes to the iconic statues and marine resources of Rapa Nui.

  • VICE looks at the plight of people who, as convicted criminals, were deported to the Tonga where they held citizenship. How do they live in a homeland they may have no experience of?

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  • Sault Sainte-Marie hopes to recruit former GM workers from Oshawa to live in that less expensive city, Global News reports.

  • Robert Vandenwinkel at HuffPost Quebec makes the case for Québec City not developing a tramway but rather a subway.

  • Daily Hive notes that the British Columbia government has increased its funding into research into a high-speed rail link connecting Vancouver to points south.

  • CityLab notes that Edinburgh is imposing a tourist tax.

  • The Guardian shares images of some of the rejected designs for the famous Sydney Opera House.

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  • In the wake of the disruptions caused by a recent massive winter storm, Le Devoir made the point that the Iles-de-la-Madeleine need better conditions to the mainland.

  • The Island Review took a look at the work of Shona Main in Nunavut.

  • CityLab took a look at how Vashon Island, in Puget Sound not far from Seattle, has to prepare for disasters in the reality that it might be cut off from support from the mainland.

  • The Island Review shares some of the work, prose and art, of Brian McHenry on deserted St. Kilda.

  • This OBC Transeuropa report looks at the Romanian immigrant shepherds of Sardinia.

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  • Centauri Dreams celebrates the arrival, and successful data collection, of New Horizons at Ultima Thule, as does Joe. My. God., as does
    Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog. Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explained, before the New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule, why that Kuiper Belt object was so important for planetary science.

  • In advance of the New Year's, Charlie Stross at Antipope asked his readers to let him know what good came in 2018.

  • Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber makes the argument that, in the event of a Brexit bitterly resented by many Labour supporters, the odds that they will support a post-Brexit redistributionist program that would aid predominantly pro-Brexit voters are low.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes that many Earth-like worlds might be made uninhabitable over eons by the steady warming of their stars, perhaps dooming any hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations on these planets.

  • Far Outliers looks at the patterns of early Meiji Japan relations with Korea, noting an 1873 invasion scare.

  • L.M. Sacasas writes at The Frailest Thing, inspired by the skepticism of Jacques Ellul, about a book published in 1968 containing predictions about the technological world of 2018. Motives matter.

  • Imageo looks at the evidence from probes and confirms that, yes, it does in fact snow (water) on Mars.

  • The Island Review interviews author Adam Nicolson about his family's ownership of the Hebridean Shiant Isles. What do they mean for him, as an author and as someone experience with the sea?

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the long history of the human relationship with leather, as a pliable material for clothing of all kinds.

  • Language Hat considers the possibility that the New Year's greeting "bistraynte", used in Lebanon and by Christians in neighbouring countries, might come from the Latin "strenae".

  • Language Log notes the pressure being applied against the use of Cantonese as a medium of instruction in Hong Kong.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the many reasons why a considerable number of Latinos support Donald Trump.

  • Bernard Porter at the LRB Blog comes up with an explanation as to Corbyn's refusal to oppose Brexit.

  • Marginal Revolution notes the many problems involved with the formation of supply chains in Africa, including sheer distance.

  • The NYR Daily has a much-needed reevaluation of the Jonestown horror as not simply a mass suicide.

  • Author Peter Watts writes about a recent trip to Tel Aviv.

  • At Out There, Corey Powell writes about how planetary scientists over the decades have approached their discipline, expecting to be surprised.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shared some top images collected by Hubble in 2018.

  • Strange Company looks at the strange 1953 death of young Roman woman Wilma Montesi. How did she die, leaving her body to be found on a beach?

  • Window on Eurasia notes how Circassian refugees in Syria are asking for the same expedited status that Ukrainian refugees have received.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell takes an extended look at the politics of 4G and Huawei and the United Kingdom and transatlantic relations over the past decade.

  • Arnold Zwicky takes a look, in language and cartoons, at "Jesus fuck".

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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 Hamilton, ACORN is leading protests against housing laws that threaten to drive people onto the streets. CBC reports.

  • Québec City is dealing with its labour shortages by recruiting skilled workers from France, for starters. CTV News reports.

  • Atlas Obscura notes that there is a barge off of New York City covered in greenery, free for citizens to harvest.

  • The Guardian shares news of the renovation of the Calton Hill observatory into a cultural centre.

  • Quartz reports that the Japanese government is offering subsidies to people who move away from Tokyo, to try to promote secondary centres.

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  • The City of Montréal is now following Québec provincial laws on flag displays, requiring the Québec flag to be flown most prominently alongside the Canadian and Montréal flags. CTV News reports.

  • Former Toronto city councilor Betty Disero is now mayor of Niagara-on-the-Lake. The Toronto Star reports.

  • CityLab reports on how the famously conservative Texas city of Fort Worth is now learning towards the Democratic Party.

  • VICE takes a look at the reasons for the very high overdose rate among users of illegal drugs in the Scottish city of Dundee.

  • Guardian Cities has a nice photo essay looking at some of the new green roofs in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

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  • MTL Blog shares photos of the interior of one apartment in Montréal's Habitat 67 on sale for a mere $C 1.4 million.

  • Justin Petrone writes lyrically about his return visit to New York City.

  • CityLab considers the tax, and other, advantages that would apply to Amazon if it split its HQ2 between two cities.

  • Global News notes that the Manitoba Arctic port of Churchill, newly reconnected by rail, could thrive given global warming.

  • Guardian Cities notes controversy in Edinburgh over notes controversy in Edinburgh over possible gentrification of Leith Walk, an art deco block built of sandstone.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares photos of a dust storm over Greenland.

  • The Crux looks at the hypervelocity stars of the MIlky Way Galaxy, stars flung out towards intergalactic space by close encounters with the galactic core.

  • D-Brief notes a study suggesting that the gut bacteria of immigrants to the United States tends to Americanize over time, becoming less diverse.

  • Joe. My. God. notes yet another homophobe--this time, an ex-gay "therapist"--who has been outed as actively seeking gay sex.

  • JSTOR Daily notes that bears preparing to build up their fat stores for hibernation really have to work hard at this task.

  • Language Hat notes, after Elias Canetti, a benefit of being multilingual: You can find out if people near you are planning to kill you.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money recounts an anecdote from the 1980s revealing the great racism on the part of Donald Trump.

  • Sadakat Kadri at the LRB Blog notes a gloomy celebration in Prague of the centenary of the 1918 foundation of Czechoslovakia, gloomy not just because of the weather but because of the rhetoric of Czechia's president.

  • The Map Room Blog notes a new book examining the political and military import of mapmaking in Scotland.

  • Cheryl Thompson at Spacing writes about the long history of blackface in Canadian popular culture, looking at the representations it made and the tensions that it hid.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at how new technologies are allowing astronomers to overcome the distorting effects of the atmosphere.

  • Frances Woolley at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, looking at female employment in Canada, finds the greatest potential for further growth in older women. (Issues, including the question of how to include these women and how to fight discrimination, need to be dealt with first.)

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