[URBAN NOTE] Fifteen urban links

• It has been forty years since a train derailment that threatened to unleash toxic chemicals on Mississauga resulted in a remarkably successful mass evacuation. CBC reports.
• There is a Vimy display in Kingston’s Communications and Electronics Museum. Global News reports.
• It is unsettling that the Ontario city of Hamilton reports such a high levels of hate crimes. CBC reports.
• Le Devoir shares a warning that inattention to language means that Longueuil could end up becoming as English/French bilingual as the West Island.
• VICE reports on how the dying desert town of California City is hoping for a revival based on cannabis, here</u.
• MacLean’s tells the story about how an encounter of koi with local otters in Vancouver reflects a human culture clash, too.
• SCMP looks at how planners want to use big data to make Shenzhen a “smart socialist” city, here.
• CityLab hosts an article by Andrew Kenney looking at the importance of an old map of Denver for he, a newcomer to the city.
• These photos of the recent acqua alta in Venice are heartbreaking. CityLab has them.
• JSTOR Daily tells the story of an ill-timed parade in 1918 Philadelphia that helped the Spanish flu spread throughout the city.
• The LRB Blog looks at a corner of Berlin marked by the history of German Southwest Africa.
• Guardian Cities shares a remarkable ambitious plan to remake Addis Ababa into a global city.
• Durban, in South Africa, may offer lessons for other southern African metropolises. Guardian Cities reports.
• The NYR Daily recently took a look at what happened to so completely gentrify the West Village of New York City.
• Feargus O’Sullivan at CityLab takes a look at a new documentary, If New York Was Called Angouleme. What if the site of New York City was colonized by the French in the early 16th century?

[AH] Five #alternatehistory maps from r/imaginarymaps: Balkans, Ethiopia, Europe, Australia, Bengal

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a Balkans where Muslims remain in larger numbers throughout the peninsula, leading to border changes in the south, particularly.
• An Ethiopia that has conquered most of the Horn of Africa by the mid-19th century, even going into Yemen, is the subject of this r/imaginarymaps map. Could this ever have happened?
• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines, here, a unified European Confederation descending from a conquest of Europe by Napoleon. Would this have been stable, I wonder?
• Was the unification of Australia inevitable, or, as this r/imaginarymaps post suggests, was a failure to unify or even a later split imaginable?
• Was a unified and independent Bengal possible, something like what this r/imaginarymaps post depicts?

[URBAN NOTE] Five cities links: Hamilton, Boston, New York City, Pristina, Addis Ababa

• Curbed takes a look at the innovative ways in which the city government of Hamilton has helped boost the city’s strengths.
• Commonwealth Magazine shares a revived plan from the 1980s to protect Boston from sea level rise by building a great crescent-shaped dike in Boston Harbor.
• CityLab takes a look at New York City’s seemingly-inexplicable decision to back down on a years-long closure of the L Train subway line for repair work.
• Guardian Cities notes the controversy in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, about the construction of a Turkish-funded mosque there. Is this but an element of a new Turkish sphere of influence in the western Balkans?
• This fascinating CNN report takes a look at the sheer scale of Chinese influence in Addis Ababa, the booming capital of Ethiopia, on its own terms and as an example of Chinese influence in Africa at large. (The locals, incidentally, find its models quite relevant and wanted.)

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: New York City, Edmonton, London, Rio de Janeiro, Addis Ababa

• The Strand bookstore in New York City is seeking to avoid being granted heritage status, in order to avoid the complications which could drive it out of business. The Guardian reports.
• The City of Edmonton, post-2014, will not regain previous levels of per capita wealth until the 2030s. The Edmonton Journal reports.
• Henry Wismayer has a heart-felt essay at Medium talking about how a London plunged into the heart of a turbo-charged capitalism is becoming increasingly inhospitable for the non-rich. Grenfell Tower beckons on the horizon.
• Guardian Cities shares photos of the homes taken over by squatters in Rio de Janeiro.
• The National, from the UAE, praises the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa as not just a regional hub but as a worthy tourist destination in its own right.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Reese Fallon, guns, Sugar Beach North, Little Ethiopia, Parkdale

• Reese Fallon, one of the two people killed in the Danforth shooting, was a student hoping to go to the fall to McMaster University to study for a career in nursing. The Toronto Star reports.
• People in some Toronto neighbourhoods with high levels of gun violence welcome an expanded police presence, despite other issues. CBC reports.
• Urban Toronto notes an exciting plan to, among other things, build a Sugar Beach North on the waterfront.
• blogTO talks about Little Ethiopia, on Danforth by Greenwood. Speaking as someone familiar with his Little Ethiopia near Ossington, this area sounds fascinating.
• The Pia Bouman School in Parkdale, a leading dance academy for four decades, is hoping to avoid displacement by new construction. CBC reports.

[NEWS] Five technology links: geoengineering, Nile, Long March 9, space internet, hacking

• Wired reports on how climate change skeptics are starting to get interested in geoengineering.
• BBC reports on the growing stresses being placed on the Nile, but countries upstream and downstream.
• The Long March 9 rocket proposed for a 2030 date by China would be a Saturn V equivalent, capable of propelling people directly to the Moon. Universe Today reports.
• Is it necessarily worthwhile to develop an Internet suited for space? Wired reports. Wired considers.
• Are nuclear plants in Ontario at risk of hacking? NOW Toronto makes a case.

[NEWS] Four science links: new coffee, factories in Ethiopia, Mongolian nomads, Mars water

• There are, happily, new breeds of coffee plants being bred to cope with climate change. The Toronto Star reports.
• High labour and infrastructure costs means that Ethiopia is the only African power likely to challenge China in manufactures. Quartz reports.
• Wired’s Kevin Kelly is perhaps on a limb in suggesting the lifestyle of Mongolian nomads is a viable world model.
• The flowing waters of icy Mars were icy, as Universe Today reports.

[LINK] Three notes on refugees, from Toronto to Vietnam to Ethiopia

• Craig S. Smith notes the profound cynicism of Kellie Leitch in using one Syrian refugee’s abuse of his wife to criticize the entire program.
• CBC’s Carolyn Dunn notes that the story of the Trinh family, boat people from Vietnam who came to Canada, will be made into a Heritage Minute.
• James Jeffrey describes for the Inter Press Service how refugees from Eritrea generally receive warm welcome in rival Ethiopia.

[URBAN NOTE] “U of T students flock to ancient language Ge’ez course, funded in part by The Weeknd”

NOW Toronto‘s David Silverberg takes a look at the course in Ge’ez, a liturgical language of Ethiopia, newly offered by the University of Toronto thanks to funding by Ethiopian-Canadian rapper The Weeknd.

How does someone teach a language when we have no idea what it might actually sound like?

That’s one of the questions for U of T’s Robert Holmsted, who’s teaching the university’s course on the liturgical Ethiopian language Ge’ez.

In its first semester at U of T, his class has five undergraduates and five graduate students enrolled, and several more students auditing the class. They all realize that deciphering ancient languages can help us learn about a country’s ancient past.

Manuscripts in the language, which hasn’t been spoken in 1,000 years, date from as far back as the sixth century BCE. In fact, contemporary scholars of such ancient languages may not be able to ascertain the true sound of the language at all.

Holmstedt agrees that no one can truly know how centuries-old languages were pronounced, but we can get some clues from other Semitic tongues.

“Without recordings, we have to do our best to reconstruct the sound from Semitic languages,” he says. “We make an approximation and can never know for sure.”

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• blogTO notes that Toronto finally got its first test LRT from Bombardier, after many delays.
• Centauri Dreams considers some of the problems with drafting a message to extraterrestrial civilizations.
• The Dragon’s Gaze notes that an upcoming Japanese telescope could detect oxygen on, among other planets, K2-3d.
• Joe. My. God. notes that Ivanka Trump’s shoe factory is moving from China to Ethiopia in pursuit of lower wages.
• Language Hat links to a report on Alghero, the city that is the heart of a fading enclave of Catalan on the Italian island of Sardinia.
• The LRB Blog notes the ascent of François Filion in France.
• Otto Pohl describes the position of Soviet Kurds.
• pollotenchegg reports on ethnic diversity in the different raions of Ukraine.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer links to a 2013 study suggesting Cuba under Communism underperformed significantly.
• Towleroad looks at Donald Trump’s claim of voter fraud.
• Window on Eurasia argues that deniers of the Holodomor should be shamed.