[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Buzz shares a TIFF reading list, here.
• Centauri Dreams notes the growing sensitivity of radial velocity techniques in finding weird exoplanet HR 5183 b, here.
• The Crux reports on circumgalactic gas and the death of galaxies.
• Dead Things notes the import of the discovery of the oldest known Australopithecine skull.
• Dangerous Minds reports on pioneering 1930s queer artist Hannah Gluckstein, also known as Gluck.
• Gizmodo notes that, for an unnamed reason, DARPA needs a large secure underground testing facility for tomorrow.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how Jim Crow laws affected Mexican immigrants in the early 20th century US.
• Language Hat looks at a new project to study Irish texts and language over centuries.
• Language Log shares some Chinglish signs from a top university in China.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money shares an interview with Jeffrey Melnick suggesting Charles Manson was substantially a convenient boogeyman.
• Marginal Revolution shares a paper suggesting marijuana legalization is linked to declining crime rates.
• Susan Neiman at the NYR Daily tells how she began her life as a white woman in Atlanta and is ending it as a Jewish woman in Berlin.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at Hayabusa2 at Ryugu.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel celebrated the 230th anniversary of Enceladus, the Saturn moon that might harbour life.
• Window on Eurasia notes how global warming is harming the rivers of Siberia, causing many to run short.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Atlanta, Barcelona, Copenhagen

• Montréal may yet get a new park to commemorate victims of the Irish famine of the 1840s. CTV reports.
• CityLab reports on the new spectacular Hudson Yards development in Manhattan.
• The nightclubs of Atlanta in the 1990s played a critical role in that decade’s hip-hop. VICE reports.
• CityLab reports that, dealing with a housing crisis, city authorities in Barcelona have taken to finding the owners of empty buildings.
• Guardian Cities reports on how civic authorities in Copenhagen hope to create an offshore archipelago, a sort of floating Silicon Valley.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Atlanta, Barcelona, Verona

• Huffington Post Québec notes that the iconic Silo no 5 on the Montréal waterfront is now the subject of a redevelopment bid.
• Emily Raboteau writes in the NYR Daily about life in the metropolis of New York City as it faces the threats of climate change.
• CityLab remembers Lightning, the African-American neighbourhood of Atlanta displaced by the construction of the stadium where the Superbowl is now playing.
• CityLab looks at the reasons behind a surge of petty crime in Barcelona.
• Claudia Torrisi writes< at Open Democracy about the growing strength of the neo-traditionalist right in the northern Italian city of Verona.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: Atlanta. My.Kali, cross-dressing, Glennda Orgasm, Pride Toronto

• This Guardian Cities article asks, rhetorically, if the LGBTQ community of Atlanta has a problem with racism.
• VICE tells the story of pioneering Jordan-based LGBT magazine My.Kali, the first in its country.
• Taylor Hosking at VICE writes about how cross-dressing on Hallowe’en, for her as a queer cis black woman, was a perhaps unexpectedly powerful experience.
• Mark Simpson praises Glennda Orgasm, the drag journalist persona of his friend Glenn Belverio. Is it time for her to come back?
• Florence Ashley argues at NOW Toronto that Pride Toronto is too corporatized to be salvaged, and that it would be best to start fresh.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Atlanta, Greenville, Sutera, Hong Kong

• Québec premier François Legault might well be convinced to support the Pink Line subway route favoured by Montréal mayor Valérie Plante. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities reports on the popularity of the new soccer team of Atlanta in this perhaps unlikely locale.
• The North Carolina city of Greenville is trying to work towards settling its racist past with a new park, CityLab reports.
• Lorenzo Tondo at The Guardian reports on how new immigrants might save his father’s native village of Sutera in Sicily, but only if they are allowed to.
• Bloomberg View notes that a bridge alone will not be enough to bind Hong Kong to the emergent Pearl River megalopolis.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Pittsburgh, Saskatoon, Atlanta, Calgary

• CityLab takes a look at how Montréal took care of the problem of an excess of raccoons in that city’s Mount Royal Park, particularly around the Camillien-Houd lookout.
• CityLab takes a look at the city-defining design of Pittsburgh-based architect Tasso Katselas.
• The Yellow Quill First Nation is setting up an urban reserve in the city of Saskatoon. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities looks at the roots of the black art renaissance in Atlanta.
• Joe McFarland at Global News argues that, particularly with its skepticism over the 2026 Olympics, Calgary is starting to retreat into an anti-development mood.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Brampton, Milton and Markham, New York City, Atlanta, London, Lisbon

• The Ontario government’s cancellation of new post-secondary campuses years in the planning for booming Brampton, Milton, and Markham hurts these centres needlessly. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities notes how the scale of voter repression in Georgia may not be enough to prevent the election of Stacey Abrams, given the scale of black migration to Atlanta.
• Feargus O’Sullivan at CityLab takes a look at a new report noting both the importance of venues for experimental music in New York City (and other cities) and these venues’ vulnerability to gentrification.
• A long-abandoned street of Victorian London has been remade, CityLab reports, into a component of London Bridge Station.
• CityLab reports on the beautiful, but dangerous, tiled sidewalks of Lisbon. Is it worth keeping them?

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Regina, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Masson-Angers, Richmond

• Many of the old private clubs of Regina, including the Legion and ethnic community halls, are facing closure as their own user bases decline. Global News reports.
• CityLab notes the questionable plausibility of the goal of the city of Milwaukee to create ten thousand affordable homes to ease its housing crunch.
• Guardian Cities notes the significant threat posed by gentrification to poor, perhaps particularly African-American, neighbourhoods in Atlanta.
• National Observer notes that the small Québec town of Masson-Angers, near Ottawa, has been transformed by the growth of the cannabis industry there.
• This National Post article looks at the challenges facing the British Columbia city of Richmond, near Vancouver, in light of its Asian-majority population.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Crooked Timber links to John Quiggin’s article in the Guardian about how formerly public companies should be renationalized.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that Lockheed has just signed a $US 150 million dollar contract to deliver a 60 kilowatt laser weapon to the US navy by 2020.
• Hornet Stories ranks the different performances at last night’s Grammies, giving Kesha top placing.
• JSTOR Daily looks back to contemporary coverage of the 1918 flu epidemic. How did people react, how did they cope?
• Language Hat looks at a multilingual comic by Japan-born artist Ru Kawahata, Stuck in the Middle.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that, rather than hoping for Trump to perform to minimal expectations in the upcoming State of the Union address, it might be more profitable (and enjoyable?) to wait for the inevitable meltdown. What will it be?
• Marginal Revolution notes a proposal in Rotterdam for police to arrest people wearing expensive clothes and jewellery and, if they cannot explain where they got them, confiscate them. Of course this policy could not be misused.
• Towleroad notes that drag queens have quit Burkhart’s, a prominent gay bar in Atlanta, in response to that bar’s owner’s racist and alt-right statements on Facebook.
• Paul Cassell at the Volokh Conspiracy argues Judge Rosemarie Aquilina was entirely correct in allowing all the victims of Nassar to speak at sentencing.
• Window on Eurasia notes that radical Islamists are increasingly using Russian to communicate, not the traditional languages of Russia’s Muslim populations. Linguistic assimilation does not equal cultural assimilation.

[URBAN NOTE] Five cities links: Basel, Montréal, United Kingdom, black America, Duisburg

• CityLab looks at the streetcar system of the Swiss city of Basel, which extends over national frontiers into France (Alsace) and Germany (Baden-Württemburg).
• Global News suggests retail vacancies along rue Sainte-Catherine in Montréal reflects the impact of online shopping.
• CityMetric suggests that the secondary cities of Britain, i.e. cities that aren’t the cosmopolis of London, are underperforming by the standards of their western European peers.
• Fast Company examines how and why black entrepreneurship is taking off in the Southern cities of Memphis, Atlanta, and Alabama’s Montgomery.
• Politico Europe notes that the German city of Duisburg, painfully transitioned from its industrial Ruhr past, has become a major node in China’s New Silk Road initiative.