[NEWS] Five links about Canada and the future: Olympics, politics, demographics, Elizabeth II

• The Conversation suggests that blaming the 1976 Montréal Olympics for the reluctance of Canada to host an Olympics should stop.
• Is it possible that a Conservative majority government could be plausibly achieved by a breakthrough in Québec? Phiippe J. Fournier at MacLean’s considers.
• A Conservative majority government, again, is perfectly imaginable. MacLean’s reports.
• Don Pittis at CBC notes how worker shortages in Canada are leading to rising wages, in at least some areas.
• What will happen, in Canada and elsewhere, when Queen Elizabeth II dies? MacLean’s speculates.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: New York City, Los Angeles, Paris, Venice, Istanbul

• The OS/2 operating system is used in New York City to run that metropolis subway system. VICE reports.
• The problem of homelessness in Los Angeles, the Guardian reports, is shocking.
• CityLab reports on plans for new sorts of urban forests outside famous landmarks in Paris.
• DW reports on how people in Venice protest against the intrusions of huge cruise ships into their lagoon, threatening the delicate environment.
• Guardian Cities reports on how the hipster class in Istanbul has begun to migrate to the countryside, driven out of their city by real estate prices and by politics.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at the extreme millisecond pulsar IGR J17062−6143.
• Centauri Dreams looks at a proposal to intercept objects of extrasolar origin like ‘Oumuamua.
• The Crux looks at how researchers are discovering traces of lost hominid populations in the DNA of contemporary humans.
• D-Brief notes a crowdsourcing of a search for intermediate-mass black holes.
• Gizmodo notes the impending production of a new working Commodore 64 clone.
• The Island Review notes people of the Norway island of Sommarøy wish to make their island, home to the midnight sun, a #TimeFreeZone.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the art that has been produced in the era of digital addiction.
• Language Log looks at how, in Iran, the word “Eastoxification” has entered into usage alongside the older “Westoxification.”
• Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money looks at the many likely failings of a Corbyn foreign policy for the United Kingdom.
• The LRB Blog notes that opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu has been re-elected as mayor of Istanbul.
• The Map Room Blog links to various maps of the Moon.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper looking at markets in Lagos, suggesting they are self-regulating to some degree.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains when the earliest sunrise and latest sunset of the year is, and why.
• Towleroad shares an interview with Jack Baker and Mike McConnell, a same-sex couple married for nearly a half-century.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the open approach of the Russian Federation to Russian diasporids is not extended to diasporas of its minority groups, particularly to Muslim ones like Circassians and Tatars.
• Arnold Zwicky considers some Pride fashion, with and without rainbows.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: politics, real estate, transit, rainbow tunnel

• John Lorinc at Spacing looks at how the idea of municipal autonomy for Toronto should not be seen as a final solution.
• blogTO notes the contracting number of neighbourhoods open for first-time buyers, here.
• Airbnb, blogTO notes, is definitely impacting the wider real estate network.
• King Street’s transit operations should be taken as a model for wider Toronto. Spacing has it.
• The story of the rainbow tunnel visible on the northbound DVP is a sad one worth knowing. Global News has it.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at Westerlund-1, a massive star cluster with many bright stars in our galaxy.
• Centauri Dreams notes a finding that giant planets like Jupiter are less likely to be found around Sun-like stars.
• D-Brief notes how, in a time of climate change, birds migrated between Canada and the equator.
• Bruce Dorminey lists five overlooked facts about the Apollo 11 mission.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that the US House of Representatives has approved the creation of a US Space Corps analogous to the Marines.
• JSTOR Daily considers tactics to cure groupthink.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, looking at the experience of Hong Kong, observes how closely economic freedoms depend on political freedom and legitimacy.
• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog explains his rationale for calculating that the Apollo project, in 2019 dollars, cost more than $US 700 billion.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the star R136a1, a star in the 30 Doradus cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud that is the most massive star known to exist.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Circassians in Syria find it very difficult to seek refuge in their ancestral lands in the North Caucasus.
• Arnold Zwicky looks, in occasionally NSFW detail, at the importance of June the 16th for him as a date.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Québec City, San Jose, Tehran, Hong Kong

• Real estate in Hamilton, Ontario, is quite affordable by GTA standards. Global News reports.
• Québec City has a new farmer’s market to replace an old. CBC reports.
• San Jose, California, is set to embark on a grand experiment in cohousing, CityLab reports.
• These vast abandoned apartment blocks in the desert outside of Tehran speak of economic underperformance, to say the least. Messynessychic has it.
• Now that Hong Kong has not just competition from other cities in China but is finding itself outmatched by the likes of Shenzhen and Shanghai, the city-state’s bargaining power is accordingly limited. The SCMP reports.

[ISL] Five #PEI links: Airbnb, Charlottetown Mall, Crapaud, Région Évangéline, seaweed pie

• CBC Prince Edward Island notes the proportionally extreme impact of Airbnb on the very tight housing market in Charlottetown.
• The Guardian notes the redevelopment of the Charlottetown Mall will see new stores and several hundred new housing units.
• Peter Rukavina reports on his successful electronic mapping of every building in the community of Crapaud.
• CBC Prince Edward Island notes that a move to amalgamate the predominantly Francophone and Acadian west-end Région Évangéline into a single municipality has halted.
• Atlas Obscura reports on the PEI dish of seaweed pie, made from Irish moss, once in the community of Miminegash and now available at the Canadian Potato Museum in O’Leary.