[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links, from the $15 wage to parking lots, cow statues, and Jamaican patois

• Torontoist takes on Galen Weston and the $15 minimum wage and poverty in Toronto (and Loblaw’s contribution to said).
• At the Toronto Star, Shawn Micallef describes how high property values in Toronto discourage open-air parking lots.
• Noor Javed looks, in Toronto Star, at the question of who authorized the cathedral elevated cow statue in Cathedraltown, in Markham.
• The Star‘s Fatima Syed shares some old memories of Torontonians of the Centreville carousel, soon to be sold off.
• At The Globe and Mail, Dakshana Bascaramurty takes a look at Jamaican patois, Toronto black English, and the many complex ways in which this language is received.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Centauri Dreams notes the exobiological potential of Titamn after the detection of acrylonitrile. Cryogenic life?
• This guest essay at Lawyers, Guns and Money on the existential problems of Brazil, with politics depending on people not institutions, is a must-read.
• The LRB Blog considers, in the context of Brexit, what exactly might count for some as a marker of dictatorship.
• Did the 15th century construction of the Grand Canal in China lead the Ming away from oceanic travel? Marginal Revolution speculates.
• The NYR Daily considers</a. the disconcertingly thorough and apparently effective of Kagame's Rwanda.
• Out There explores the reasons why the most massive planets all have the same size.
• The Planetary Society Blog notes the 5th anniversary of the arrival of Curiosity on Mars.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that, with regards to Venezuela, the United States has no good options.
• Roads and Kingdoms considers the febrile political mood of Kenya.
• Window on Eurasia argues that Putin is making the mistake of seeing the United States through the prism of Russia.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes a proposal for British mayors to have representation at Brexit talks makes no sense.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links, from nuclear war to the TTC to poverty to pop culture

• Worrying about the relationship of Toronto and nuclear weapons seems very 1980s. What’s old is new again, as noted at NOW Toronto.
• Steve Munro points out that talk of a fare freeze on the TTC ignores the underlying economics. Who, and what, will pay for this?
• It’s nice that the Little Free Pantry is being supported, as Global News observes, but what does it say about our city that this is a thing?
• Clifton Joseph notes the Toronto Caribbean Festival has never achieved its goals of emancipation. Cue Bakhtin …
• Global News notes the new Drake music video promoting his OVO Fest store at Yorkdale. I should go.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links, from Ken Pagan to Stepgate to House of Lords to the TTC to rent

• Torontoist takes issue with the positive take CBC provided of Blue Jays beer-thrower Ken Pagan, softpeddling racism.
• Councillor Shelley Carroll does a great job deconstructing “Stepgate”. (You get what you pay for, to start.)
• House of Lords, a hairdressing shop a half-century old on Yonge below Bloor, is set to close. The Toronto Star‘s Jaren Kerr reports.
• Mayor John Tory would like to freeze TTC fare increases for 2018. Can his government pull it off? The Toronto Star‘s Ben Spurr reports.
• Rents in Toronto are near the level of Brooklyn, two thousand per one bedroom, and tenants are desperate.

[NEWS] Four links on Canada, from economics to language to poverty to greenhouses

• Bloomberg reports on how Canada-Mexico relations will be tested by NAFTA and Trump.
• Canada, the 2016 Census reported, is marked by noteworthy linguistic diversity (Tagalog does particularly well.)
• Vice notes how Galen Weston’s opposition to the minimum wage increase for workers at Loblaws is not in his self-interest.
• Vice’s Motherboard looks at how greenhouse agriculture in Nunavut could help drastically reduce food insecurity in that territory.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links, from Ken Pagan to real estate to Leslie Street Spit to Blockobana

• This U>long-form CBC article looking at Ken Pagan, the man who became infamous through his beer can toss, has insight.
• I like Christopher Hume’s article describing changes of zoning around apartment highrises, to allow shops.
• John Lorinc’s suggestion that taxes collected from foreign buyers be put towards social housing is provocative.
• Robert Zunke is the man, sometime construction worker, assembling shrines on the Leslie Street spit.
• Torontoist describes Blockobana, the queer black space at this year’s Toronto Caribbean Festival.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams reports on the apparent rarity of exomoons of close-orbiting planets.
• The collapse of the nuclear renaissance is touched on at Crooked Timber. Is it all down to renewables now?
• Language Hat shares</a. a lovely passage taking a look at writing and memory from an ethnography of central Africa.
• The outlawing of the Uygur language from the schools of Xinjiang was mentioned at Language Log. This is terrible.</li?
• The anti-Semitism barely veiled in a Texas campaign against the Democratic Party, noted by Lawyers, Guns and Money, frightens me.
• The LRB Blog notes that Sylvia Plath stayed in the United Kingdom, far from home, substantially because of the NHS.
• Marginal Revolution looks at the extent to which the economy and the wealth of the South depends on slavery.
• Had Mexican-American relations gone only trivially differently, Noel Maurer suggests, Mexico could either have been much larger or substantially smaller.