[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• News of Proxima Centauri b spread across the blogosphere yesterday, to Discover‘s D-Brief and Crux, to Joe. My. God., to the Planetary Society Blog, and to Centauri Dreams and The Dragon’s Gaze.
• blogTO notes the impending opening of Toronto’s first Uniqlo and suggests TTC buses may soon have a new colour scheme.
• The Dragon’s Gaze discusses detecting exo-Titans and looks at the Kepler-539 system.
• Marginal Revolution notes Poland’s pension obligations.
• The Map Room Blog looks at how empty maps are of use to colonialists.
• Steve Munro examines traffic on King Street.
• The NYR Daily looks at what an attic of ephemera reveals about early Islam.
• Otto Pohl announces his arrival in Kurdistan.
• The Russian Demographics Blog and Window on Eurasia note that more than half of Russia’s medal-winners at the Olympics were not ethnically Russian, at least not wholly.
• Window on Eurasia looks at Ukraine’s balance sheet 25 years after independence and considers if Belarus is on the way to becoming the next Ukraine.