A Bit More Detail

• Antipope's Charlie Stross has a thought experiment: If you were superwealthy and guaranteed to live a long health life, how would you try to deal with the consequence of economic inequality?


• Vikas Charma at Architectuul takes a look at the different factors that go into height in buildings.


• Bad Astronomy notes S5-HVS1, a star flung out of the Milky Way Galaxy by Sagittarius A* at 1755 kilometres per second.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly shares photos from two Manhattan walks of hers, taken in non-famous areas.


• Centauri Dreams looks at habitability for red dwarf exoplanets. Stellar activity matters.


• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber shares words from a manifesto about data protection in the EU.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos from Los Angeles punks and mods and others in the 1980s.


• Bruce Dorminey notes a ESA report suggesting crew hibernation could make trips to Mars easier.


• Gizmodo notes that the Hayabusa2 probe of Japan is returning from asteroid Ryugu with a sample.


• Imageo shares photos of the disastrous fires in Australia from space.


• Information is Beautiful reports on winners of the Information is Beautiful Awards for 2019, for good infographics.


• JSTOR Daily explains how local television stations made the ironic viewing of bad movies a thing.


• Kotaku reports on the last days of Kawasaki Warehouse, an arcade in Japan patterned on the demolished Walled City of Kowloon.


• Language Hat notes how translation mistakes led to the star Beta Cygni gaining the Arabic name Albireo.


• Language Log reports on a unique Cantonese name of a restaurant in Hong Kong.


• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to an analysis of his suggesting the military of India is increasingly hard-pressed to counterbalance China.


• The LRB Blog notes the catastrophe of Venice.


• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting states would do well not to place their capitals too far away from major population centres.


• Justin Petrone at North! remarks on a set of old apple preserves.


• The NYR Daily looks at how the west and the east of the European Union are divided by different conceptions of national identity.


• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reports from his town of Armidale as the smoke from the Australian wildfires surrounds all. The photos are shocking.


• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog lists some books about space suitable for children.


• Drew Rowsome reviews the Canadian film music stand, inspired by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.


• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting that, in Switzerland, parenthood does not make people happy.


• The Signal notes that 1.7 million phone book pages have been scanned into the records of the Library of Congress.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains the concept of multi-messenger astronomy and why it points the way forward for studies of astrophysics.


• Strange Maps looks at how a majority of students in the United States attend diverse schools, and where.


• Strange Company explores the mysterious death of Marc-Antoine Calas, whose death triggered the persecution of Huguenots and resulted in the mobilization of Enlightenment figures like Voltaire against the state. What happened?


• Towleroad hosts a critical, perhaps disappointed, review of the major gay play The Inheritance.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little looks at the power of individual people in political hierarchies.


• Window on Eurasia shares an opinion piece noting how many threats to the Russian language have come from its association with unpopular actions by Russia.


• Arnold Zwicky explores queens as various as Elizabeth I and Adore Delano.

• 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.

• Bad Astronomer notes the possibility that red dwarf exoplanets might, as AU Microscopii suggests, be made deserts. Centauri Dreams also examines the possibility that red dwarf exoplanets might be starved of volatiles.


• The Crux notes the extent to which the formation of our solar system was marked by chaos, planets careening about, looking at other planetary systems for guidance.


• D-Brief takes a look at the latest from the endangered Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica.


• Joe. My. God. notes that, in the home of the Danforth shooter in Toronto, DVDs from Alex Jones' Infowars were found along with more guns and ammunition.


• JSTOR Daily links to a paper suggesting that organic agriculture contributes to a greater extent to climate change than regular agricultural systems.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at the evolution of the Chinese air force.


• Jason Davis at the Planetary Society Blog notes that the Hayabusa2 probe is looking for touchdown sites on asteroid Ryugu for sampling.


• Roads and Kingdoms considers the humble sabich of Tel Aviv.


• Drew Rowsome reviews the Robert Leleux memoir The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy.


• Strange Company shares an old news clipping reporting on the murderous ghost that, in 1914, seems to have haunted the Croguennec family of Brittany.


• Window on Eurasia looks at the prospects for a hypothetical future Belarusian Orthodox Church.


• At Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Nick Rowe takes a look at the relationship between inflation and the debt/GDP ratio.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at the picturesque community of Mollis, in mountainous central Switzerland.

• Anthrodendum reviews the book Fistula Politics, the latest from the field of medical anthropology.


• Architectuul takes a look at post-war architecture in Germany, a country where the devastation of the war left clean slates for ambitious new designers and architects.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at newly discovered Kuiper Belt object 2008 VG 18.


• Laura Agustín at Border Thinking takes a look at the figure of the migrant sex worker.


• Centauri Dreams features an essay by Al Jackson celebrating the Apollo 8 moon mission.


• D-Brief notes how physicists manufactured a quark soup in a collider to study the early universe.


• Dangerous Minds shares some photos of a young David Bowie.


• Angelique Harris at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at what the social sciences have to say about sexuality and dating among millennial Americans.


• Gizmodo notes the odd apparent smoothness of Ultima Thule, target of a very close flyby by New Horizons on New Year's Day.


• Hornet Stories notes the censorship-challenging art by Slava Mogutin available from the Tom of Finland store.


• Imageo shares orbital imagery of the eruption of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia, trigger of a devastating volcanic tsunami.


• Nick Stewart at The Island Review writes beautifully about his experience crossing the Irish Sea on a ferry, from Liverpool to Belfast.


• Lyman Stone at In A State of Migration shares the story, with photos, of his recent whirlwind trip to Vietnam.


• JSTOR Daily considers whether or not fan fiction might be a useful tool to promote student literacy.


• Language Hat notes a contentious reconstruction of the sound system of obscure but fascinating Tocharian, an extinct Indo-European language from modern XInjiang.


• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the irreversible damage being caused by the Trump Administration to the United States' foreign policy.


• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting users of Facebook would need a payment of at least one thousand dollars to abandon Facebook.


• Lisa Nandy at the NYR Daily argues that the citizens of the United Kingdom need desperately to engage with Brexit, to take back control, in order to escape catastrophic consequences from ill-thought policies.


• Marc Rayman at the Planetary Society Blog celebrates the life and achievements of the Dawn probe.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that so many Venezuelans are fleeing their country because food is literally unavailable, what with a collapsing agricultural sector.


• The Russian Demographics Blog breaks down polling of nostalgia for the Soviet Union among Russians.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that simply finding oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet is not by itself proof of life.


• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy reports on how the United States is making progress towards ending exclusionary zoning.


• Whatever's John Scalzi shares an interview with the lawyer of Santa Claus.


• Window on Eurasia reports on a fascinating paper, examining how some Russian immigrants in Germany use Udmurt as a family language.


• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the lives of two notable members of the Swiss diaspora in Paris' Montmartre.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait, looking at the Moon, considers what a "small" crater is.


• Citizen Science Salon looks at Amino Labs, a start-up that aims to enable people--even children--to use simple kits to engage in bioengineering.


• Crooked Timber notes that the collapse in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies means good things for the global environment.


• The Crux considers the extent to which gender--gender identity, gendered roles--is unique to humans.


• A Fistful of Euros considers the generalized extremism of the "filets jaunes" of France and where this might lead that country.


• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing shares the skepticism of Jacques Ellul in a "technical" humanism, one that seeks to ameliorate the details of a dehumanizing life.


• Gizmodo considers how we can start preparing for the risks of powerful artificial intelligence to humans, even potentially existential ones.


• The Island Review interviews Nancy Campbell, a writer concerned with the islands and cultures of the Arctic like Greenland.


• Language Hat considers the idea of "efficient languages". What does this idea even mean?


• Language Log considers the potential impact of making English an official language on Taiwan.


• The LRB Blog considers the political future of France.


• Window on Eurasia notes how many people in Kyrgzystan are becoming angered by China's Xinjiang policies.


• Arnold Zwicky considers St. Bernard, in connection with dogs and otherwise.

• CityLab looks at the streetcar system of the Swiss city of Basel, which extends over national frontiers into France (Alsace) and Germany (Baden-Württemburg).


• Global News suggests retail vacancies along rue Sainte-Catherine in Montréal reflects the impact of online shopping.


• CityMetric suggests that the secondary cities of Britain, i.e. cities that aren't the cosmopolis of London, are underperforming by the standards of their western European peers.


• Fast Company examines how and why black entrepreneurship is taking off in the Southern cities of Memphis, Atlanta, and Alabama's Montgomery.


• Politico Europe notes that the German city of Duisburg, painfully transitioned from its industrial Ruhr past, has become a major node in China's New Silk Road initiative.

• Bloomberg notes how Switzerland's dispute with the European Union over migration has been complicated by Brexit.


• Bloomberg View argues that a European Union without the United Kingdom will not be friendlier to Russia, and looks at the state of Venezuela.


• The CBC notes a spike in British inquiries about moving to Canada, and looks at the way Brexit complicates the nearly-complete EU-Canada trade pact.


• The National Post looks at the strength of middle England's nostalgia.


• The Toronto Star shares Paul Wells' article about the need for the European Union to engage with its citizenry, and notes how Brexit has closed the United Kingdom off as a gateway to Europe.

• Bloomberg reports that Switzerland and the European Union will hold talks on migration after the Brexit referendum.


• CBC reports that Canada can expect a warmer and dryer summer than average, and looks at the high cost of British Columbia housing (a half-million does not buy much in some parts).


• MacLean's has an oral history of Elbowgate.


• The National Post notes women drivers are signing up for Uber and reports on the exceptional unpopularity of both Clinton and Trump as candidates.


• Open Democracy argues that the Brexit referendum is nothing but a distraction.

• Centauri Dreams looks at the nascent planets of HL Tauri, notes the water ice mountains of Titan, and notes the implications of red dwarfs for SETI searches.


• Discover's The Crux looks at the moving frontiers of nuclear fusion research.


• D-Brief suggests the Moon has a critical influence on Earth's magnetic field and notes a new effort to track down the Wow signal in two of our solar system's comets.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes that 55 Cancri e is likely a lava world and looks at starless planet PSO J318.5338−22.8603.


• The Dragon's Tales studies the magic islands of Titan's Ligeia Mare and notes that world's ethane cycle.


• The Map Room Blog shares new maps of Switzerland and a gravity map of Mars.


• The Planetary Society Blog's Emily Lakdawalla reports on Ceres, while elsewhere the massive cuts to the Russian space budget are explored.

Nestled on the banks of Lake Zurich, humidifier-maker Condair AG’s factory provided a good living for its 41 workers. Then in November 2014, beset by high manufacturing costs, the company decided to transfer production to Germany. In seven months, Condair’s only Swiss plant will wind down for good.

When the Swiss National Bank a year ago Friday lifted the cap on the franc, allowing the currency to strengthen, it confirmed the company’s decision -- and its view that the Alpine nation can’t compete in manufacturing. In 2012, the most recent year available, Switzerland had the highest labor costs in Europe, at 51.25 euros ($56) per hour, government figures show. In neighbors Austria, Germany and France, the comparable cost was 29.75 euros, 30.50 euros and 34.25 euros respectively.