[PHOTO] Four photos of Toronto as seen from the patio of the Yonge-Eglinton Centre

Toronto had several centimetres of spring snow fall today, a last gasp of winter at the start of spring. The city below did look nice from the rooftop patio of the Yonge-Eglinton Centre, the snow lightly covering the changing city beyond. Construction on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line was visible below, as is the Eglinton station itself as it undergoes work, preparing to become an interchange station come the Crosstown’s completion in 2021.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul profiles the construction of the Modern Berlin Temple built to a design by Mies van der Rohe in 1968.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the beauty of galaxy M61.
• D-Brief notes new evidence that Mars sustained rivers on its surface at a surprising late date.
• Gizmodo notes a theory that the oddly shaped ring moons of Saturn might be product of a collision.
• Hornet Stories suggests/u> that recent raids on gay bars in New Orleans might be driven by internecine politics within the LGBTQ community.
• Joe. My. God. notes that a court in the Cayman Islands has recently legalized same-sex marriage there.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the origins of the Chipko activists of 1960s and 1970s India, whose tree-hugging helped save forests there.
• Language Log notes the story of Beau Jessep, who got rich off of a business creating English names for Chinese children.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money, looking at the introduction of public healthcare in Saskatchewan and wider Canada, notes the great institutional differences that do not make that a close model for public healthcare in the US now.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining the close relationship over time between population growth and economic and technological change.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews documentary filmmaker Nadir Bouhmouch about a Amazigh community’s resistance to an intrusive mine on their territory.
• The Russian Demographics Blog notes, correctly, that one reason why Ukrainians are more prone to emigration to Europe and points beyond than Russians is that Ukraine has long been included, in whole or in part, in European states.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that we still do not know why antimatter does not dominate in our universe.
• Understanding Society features a guest post from Indian sociologist V.K. Ramachandran talking about two visits four decades apart to one of his subjects.
• Vintage Space makes a compelling case for people not to be afraid of nuclear rockets in space, like the vintage never-deployed NERVA.
• Window on Eurasia takes issue with the bilingual radio programs aired in Russian republics, which subtly undermine local non-Russian languages.
• Arnold Zwicky starts with lilacs, which include hybrids tolerant of the California climate, and goes on to explore lavender in all of its glories, queer and otherwise.

[PHOTO] Three photos from Long Branch, evening

The quality of the skies above Long Branch last evening, soft colours glowing in the chill, was extraordinary. I was particularly taken by Lake Ontario, scarcely different from the sky above.

[PHOTO] Clouds above wires, Annette at Keele

[PHOTO] Looking east on Eglinton at Weston Road

The blue sky above Toronto was particularly clear to me yesterday afternoon.

[PHOTO] Espresso, Caffè Cinquecento

Yesterday, I got an espresso at the Caffè Cinquecento to remind me of Italy.

[CAT] Five cat links: Toronto hoarding, vegan diets, cat content, islands, therapy cats

• blogTO notes a sad instance of cat hoarding in Toronto, with a hundred cats rescued from one home.
• ScienceAlert reports on the alarming number of pet owners in a recent poll who would like to give not only dogs but cats vegan diets.
• Viewing online cat content can actually be good for a viewer’s psychological health, 3milliondogs.com reports.
• Culls of cat populations from select, ecologically sensitive, islands do make sense to me. BBC reports.
• Vivien Fellegi writes at NOW Toronto about the uses of the therapy cats provided by the Therapeutic Paws of Canada organization.

[CAT] Shakespeare, 12:16 am

[ISL] Five #PEI links: PEI Greens, orchids, Sandstone Comics, PrEP, David Currie

• The Guardian reports on the confidence of PEI Green Party leader Peter Bevan-Baker that the April election on PEI is for his party to win.
• This guide to the wild orchids of PEI sounds very useful. CBC reports.
• I wish the team at PEI comics group Sandstone Comics the best as they prepare their issues of original material. CBC reports.
• The costs of anti-HIV drug regimen PrEP are now being covered on PEI for members of at-risk groups. CBC reports.
• The Guardian features an interview with 80-year-old Charlottetown cobbler David Currie about his life and his career six decades long.

[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: Chixculub archive, male pill, Garfield phones, Nova Scotia, ETI wars

• Journalist Douglas Preston U>writes in The New Yorker about a potentially amazing site in North Dakota, a rich fossil bed that may well have been formed in the first hour after the Chixculub asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous.
• Arielle Pardes writes at WIRED about how a potential lack of demand among men might hinder the sale of male contraceptives.
• Vulture reports the identification of the source, at last, of the components of Garfield phones that have been washing up on the French coast in a lost shipping crate from the 1980s.
• CBC reports on the meticulous reports of environmental changes by Nova Scotia students more than a century ago, collected over years under the order of their teacher Alexander Mackay, that provide invaluable information about climate change.
• Matt Williams writes at Universe Today about the possibility that the lack of self-replicating probes visible to us might be explainable by conflict between some of these probes and others.