Economist, Aug 25, 2018

choi

There is no need to read the rest in any of the three.

(1) Lithuanian-Americans | The Diaspora's Capital. Chicago is the second-biggest Lithuanian city. (in the "United States" section)

Quote:

"The country [Lithuania] suffered under Soviet [1940], Nazi [1941] and again Soviet [1944] occupations for 50 years, and before that under tsarist rule. 'We used to be the largest country in Europe and then we just disappeared from the map,' says Marijus Gudynas of the Lithuanian Foreign Office, in Vilnius. These traumas have left 1.3m Lithuanians )from a country of barely 3m [CIA World Factbook estimated 2.8m in 2017] living abroad. Chicago is their undisputed capital. Around 100,000 residents [in and around Chicago] still call themselves Lithuanians, though they are often third- or even fourth-generation immigrants. Valdas Adamkus [born in 1926 in Lithuania; born Voldemaras Adamkavičius; still alive; in US from 1949 (as a displaced person) to 1997; shortened his name in 1995; president of Lithuania 1998 to 2003 and again from 2004 to 2009], twice president of newly independent Lithuania, went back after living in Chicago for decades.

"Lithuanian immigrants came to Chicago in three waves. At the turn of the 20th century thousands of Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) fled the pogroms under Russian rules, while mostly blue-collar workers came for jobs in the stockyards [for cattle]. * * * After the second world war a second wave of refugees fleeing the Soviet occupation arrived via displaced-person (DP) camps in Western Europe. And, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a third wave of immigrants were drawn to Chicago because their compatriots sponsored them to come.

"At one point the Windy City [Chicago's nickname] was home to some 300,000 Lithuanians, 11 Catholic Lithuanian parishes * * * But however attached their elders may be to the homeland, few if any of the youngsters  * * * intend to return. Almost 1m Lithuanians have emigrated since 1990, draining the country of talent and youth. * * * this year, centenary of the counry's independence

Note:
(a) czarism (n; less commonly tsarism): "the government of Russia under the czars  -- [derivative] czarist or less commonly tsarist"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tsarist

The same online dictionary indicates the etymology of the English noun czar: "New Latin czar, from Russian tsar', [ultimately] from Latin Caesar."
(b) Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish–Lithuanian_Commonwealth
(1569–1795; table: Official languages Polish and Latin)

After 3 partitions in 1772, 1793 and 1795 between Habsburg Austria [1526–1804 (when it upgraded itself to Austrian Empire)], Prussia and Russia, both Poland and Lithuania were wiped out from the map. Both countries were reconstituted in 1918 (at the end of World War I).

The capital and the largest city in Lithuania is Vilnius (after Vilnia River).

choi

2)
(a) In praise of air-conditioning | Rebirth of the Cool; How to spread the benefits of air-conditioning -- without frying the plant. (in the "Leader" section, as introduction to a more detailed article)
("Air-conditioning is one of the world's great overlooked industries. Automobiles and air-conditioning were invented at roughly the same time, and both had a huge impact on where people live and work. Unlike cars, though, air-conditioning has drawn little criticism for their social impact, emissions and or energy efficiency. * * * Yet air-conditioning has done more than most things to benefit humankind. Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, called it 'perhaps one of signal inventions of history.' It has transformed productivity in the tropics and helped turn southern China into the workshop of the world. * * * For children, air-conditioned classrooms and dormitories are associated with better grades at school * * * Environmentalists who call air-conditioning 'a luxury we cannot afford' have half a point, however")

Note: signal (adj): "distinguished from the ordinary : NOTABLE  <a signal achievement>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/signal
(b) Air-conditioning | Global Cooling. Air-conditioning do more good than most people realise, but also much harm. Efforts are finally under way [sic] to get one without the other.

Quote:

air-conditioning "became universal south of the Mason-Dixon line, turning the South into an engine of prosperity * * * In Japan, the government is helping schools install coolers. In Texas, on the orders of a judgethe state government has been putting them into prison [Massachusetts prisons have it as well as heating in winter for decades].

"Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, took the view that air-conditioning 'changed the nature of civilisation by making development possible in the tropics * * * The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air-conditioning in buildings where civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency.'

"In 1990 few Chinese households had air-conditioning/ Twenty years later, the country had just under one unit per household. It now accounts for 35% of the world's stock, compared with 23% for the United States. India and Indonesia are seeing rates of increase similar to China's in the 1990s. * * * The population of the 800km long southern coast [countries: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman] of the Arabian Gulf increased from 500,000 in 1950 to 20m now, thanks to air-conditioned vertical palaces. At current rates, Saudi Arabia will be using more energy to run air-conditioning in 2030 than it now exports as oil.  At the moment, only 8% of the 3bn people in the tropics have air-conditioning, compared with over 90% of households in America and Japan. * * * after mobile phones, the middle class in emerging markets want fans or air-conditioners next. Even the proliferation of skyscrapers in the developing world's megacities encourages air-conditioners. Because tall buildings have different air pressures at top and bottom, they usually have to be sealed, and cooled in summer. * * * A study by Tord Kjellstrom of Australian National University found that, in South-East Asia, people without cooling could bot work during 15-20% of working hours.

Note:
(i) underway (adj and adv)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/underway

has only "underway for adjective, but lists "underway" as adverb but for the latter, note "less commonly under way."
(ii) Arabian Gulf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Gulf
(may refer to "The Persian Gulf, since the 1960s controversially referred to as the Arabian Gulf or The Gulf by some Arab countries: see Persian Gulf naming dispute")

choi

(3) Johnson | Nationalism of Small Differences. Classifying languages is as much as about politics as it is about linguistics.

Quote:

"Yugoslavia was cobbled together from territories mostly populated with speakers of southern Slavic tongues. It was dominated by a language called, at the time, Serbo-Croatian. Serbians wrote it with the Cyrillic alphabet, and Croats, Muslims and Montenegrins preferred the Latin one/ But a few minor dialectal differences aside, they a;; c;ear;y spoke the same language, its varieties closer even then Slovenian and Croatian are. Macedonians [Macedonia was another republic of Yugoslavia] spoke another closely related language; a minority also spoke Albanian, a non-slavic language.  But when Yugoslavia broke up and the republics went to war [nationalism in each republic cleansed its language 'foreign' borrowing]

"Max Weinreich, a linguist, made famous the wry remark that 'a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.' The usual criterion for what is a separate language, and not a nere dialect, is that speakers of two languages should find it difficult or impossible to understand each other. But factors that have nothing to do with language often supercede the linguistic ones.

"Swedens, Danes and Norwegians can understand each other pretty well too, but few say they simply speak 'Scandinavian.' Meanwhile dialects and even many dialects within Germany are more different from High German than Slovenian is from Croatian.

"Lumpers [of languages] once recognised a language called Hindustani; its disparate speakers have no trouble conversing. But a splitter [of languages)] would point to two writing systems of Hindi and Urdu, as well as communal preferences -- Muslims speak Urdu; Hindus, Hindi -- and say they are two languages. * * * The writing system a visible marker (Urdu's Arabic script connects it to Islam, Hindi's Devanagari links to Sanskrit and Hinduism [a religion]).

Note:
(a) wry (adj):
"1 : bent, twisted, or turned usually abnormally to one side  <a wry nose>
4 : cleverly and often ironically or grimly humorous  <a wry wit>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wry
(b) Historically German language was composed of Low German (spoken in low land in the north) and High German (spoken in highland in the south). From the latter developed Standard German (spoken in Germany nowadays).

Swiss-German
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-German
(may refer to "the Swiss German language" -- "any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in the German-speaking part of Switzerland")