• blogTO notes that Yonge and Dundas will soon be hosting a Zimbabwean meat pie restaurant.
• Beyond the Beyond links to a report regretful of past optimisim about geopolitics.
• Centauri Dreams considers extraterrestrial life and red dwarfs.
• Marginal Revolution looks at rent in Puerto Rico's public housing system.
• pollotenchegg maps economic change in ( Read more... )

• Antipope's Charlie Stross fears the arrival of fascism in Britain after the murder of Jo Cox.
• Centauri Dreams reports on SDSSJ1043+0855, a white dwarf apparently consuming a rocky planet.
• The Crux notes discussion of terraforming Mars.
• The Dragon's Tales notes the revealing result of a study of the crops that ancient Indonesians brought to Madagascar.
• ( Read more... )

• Centauri Dreams examines circumbinary planet Kepler-1647b.
• Crooked Timber takes issue with Peter Singer's identification of boat people as queue jumpers.
• D-Brief notes the superior design of the brains of birds.
• The Dragon's Gaze considers if the James Webb Space Telescope could detect signs of life on the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system.
• The Dragon's ( Read more... )

Bloomberg's Brian Chappatta reports on the impending financial apocalypse in the US Virgin Islands, one that seems likely to impact Puerto Rico's efforts to find a viable solution to its issues.

Congress’s plan to throw a lifeline to Puerto Rico is making waves in the U.S. Virgin Islands ( Read more... )

• The Big Picture shares photos from the eruption of Mount Sinabung in Indonesia.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the importance of colleagues for solitary writers.
• D-Brief notes the rediscovery of the Blue-Eyed Ground Dove in Brazil, once believed extinct.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes reports of the discovery of massive planets via gaps in ( Read more... )

• Centauri Dreams considers agriculture in space.
• Crooked Timber examines the tribalisms which benefit Donald Trump.
• Dangerous Minds notes an angry New York City television editorial criticizing the Sex Pistols.
• The Dragon's Tales notes the cycles of Mars' north polar gap.
• Language Log talks about Chinese script, starting with Ted Chiang's criticisms.

There may be a certain amount of trolling in James Gibney's Bloomberg View article--Cuba has to catch up quite a bit of ground with its neighbour in the Hispanic Caribbean. I wonder, though, if he might not be right about Cuba's greater potential for growth.

President Barack Obama dangles U.S. dollars before the Castros while Congress stonewalls ( Read more... )

Al Jazeera America's Kate Kilpatrick and Azure Gilman report on how Puerto Ricans in New York are reacting to the economic issues of their island homeland. The debt bomb is big, and apparently not unexpected.

María Guzmán, 63, moved to New York from Puerto Rico when she was 6 years old. She visits the island every year and planned to retire there ( Read more... )

• Anthropology.net notes the importance of anthropological knowledge in understanding the West African Ebola crisis.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the strange protoplanetary belt of GG Tauri-A.
• Discover's Crux considers requirements for a starfaring civilization.
• The Dragon's Gaze points to an apparently young and planet-forming binary star, OGLE-LMC-ECL- ( Read more... )

I wonder how this new phase in Puerto Rico's economic history, as reported by Business Week's Katherine Burton, will last.

It’s 2 a.m. at the La Factoria bar in Puerto Rico’s Old San Juan, a hipster joint with a sagging couch, tile floors, and Christmas lights that wouldn’t be out of place in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg. While Get Lucky plays, tipsy ( Read more... )