Danny's Pathologically Polymathic: November 2020

a novel of mathematical obsession - Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture [my review]

the challenges of downscaling climate models - Real Climate - Oxford Research [$/edu]

Singapore "sees racial harmony between its people as too important to be left to chance" - NextCity [via Cosma]

lessons from Australia on the UK merger of International Development and the Foreign Office - DevPolicy

"It is not just lockdown which is responsible for our economic problems. It is the virus itself. Containing it saves both lives and the economy." - politics

seventeen essays on British transport policy - Transport Matters [my review]

how Oslo got pedestrian and cyclist deaths to zero - Wired

searching for books in translation, by language - Publishers Weekly

I didn't realise Nicolas Bourbaki was still alive! - Quanta Magazine

Conservative MPs want anti-historical history teaching - SchoolsWeek

the word "penguin" plausibly comes from the Welsh - @garicgymro

cycling in the 1890s: factory workers and women - Bolton News

1978: the last smallpox outbreak triggers a public health emergency in Birmingham - Guardian

Covid is overloading the hospital system in the US Midwest - Atlantic

"it's not just a modal shift transport scheme, it's a neighbourhood transformation scheme" - Guardian

entwined from antiquity - State and Religion in China: Historical and Textual Perspectives [my review]

despite electoral fraud, the kakapo wins "New Zealand Bird of the Year" - CNN

OpenStreetMap and the corporates - Joe Morrison

Stegosaurus plates as an example of sexual dimorphism in dinosaurs? - Verge

is Macron defanging or pandering to Islamophobia? - Art Goldhammer

how much did lockdown affect child learning? - Solomon Kingsnorth

retention of most material over summer is poor at the best of times

an underwater sculpture park to stop illegal fishing - Guardian

Rotterdam is prepared for Brexit border checks, but UK ports are not - Sky

a London hospital trust is funding Low Traffic Neighbourhoods because of their health benefits - Guardian

in 1985 Philadelphia bombed one of its own suburbs, killing 11 people and destroying 61 homes - Guardian

Britain's working poor are as badly off now as the unemployed were thirty years ago - Guardian

Virgin Hyperloop invents the world's crappiest high-speed rail - Defector [via @stilgherrian]

short stories by Serge Pey - The Treasure of the Spanish Civil War [my review]

restaurants, gyms and other indoor venues are where most covid infections happen - NYT

civil war looms in Ethiopia - New Humanitarian

now the Department for Education has outsourced its pandemic response too... - Monbiot

"the government seems to care more about handing contracts to favoured corporations than about the health of the nation"

Brexit: which lie will Boris Johnson choose now? - Guardian

how Oxford's junctions inhibit walking and cycling - Oxford Blog

a city of dawdlers and loafers? we all need more aylyak! - BBC

Sweden's regional "coronavirus recommendations" don't seem so different to England's lockdown rules - The Local se

the UK government's latest plan is for Welsh farmers to export lamb to New Zealand and Australia... - BBC

next up: exporting rice to Bangladesh and Thailand

the Netherlands isn't keen on e-scooters - DutchNews