[PHOTO] Miami Beach on my screen in Toronto

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes new research on where the sun is located within the Milky Way Galaxy.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly considers the value of slow fashion.
• Centauri Dreams notes the different gas giants that our early methods have yet to pick up.
• Crooked Timber shares a lovely photo looking back at Venice from across its lagoon.
• D-Brief notes that upcoming space telescopes might find hundreds of rogue planets thanks to microlensing.
• io9 notes that Marvel will soon be producing Warhammer40K comics.
• The Island Review shares some poetry and photography by Ken Cockburn inspired by the Isle of Jura.
• JSTOR Daily notes that different humpback whale groups have different songs, different cultures.
• Language Hat tries to find the meaning of the odd Soviet Yiddish word “kolvirt”.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the history of Elizabeth Warren as a law teacher.
• Map Room Blog shares information from Google Maps about its use of data.
• Marginal Revolution notes that in 2016, not a single child born in the United Kingdom was given the name Nigel.
• Peter Watts talks about AI and what else he is doing.
• The NYR Daily marked the centennial of a horrible massacre of African-Americans centered on the Arkansas community of Elaine.
• Emily Margolis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at how the Apollo moon missions helped galvanize tourism in Florida.
• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money looks at the constitutional crisis in Peru.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at A Streetcar Named Desire.
• Peter Rukavina looks at a spreadsheet revealing the distribution of PEI public servants.
• Spacing reviews a book imagining how small communities can rebuild themselves in neoliberalism.
• Towleroad shares the criticism of Christine and the Queens of the allegedly opportunistic use of queer culture by Taylor Swift.
• Understanding Society considers, sociologically, the way artifacts work.
• The Volokh Conspiracy argues that the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China should be a day of mourning, on account of the high human toll of the PRC.
• Window on Eurasia suggests the Russian generation of the 1970s was too small to create lasting change.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at how underwear ads can be quite sexualized.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how variable gravity is on irregular asteroid Bennu.
• Bruce Dorminey reports on how the European Southern Observatory has charted the Magellanic Clouds in unprecedented detail.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares a collection of links looking at the Precambrian Earth.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the late 1950s race to send probes to the Moon.
• Gizmodo shares some stunning astronomy photos.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the saltwater roads, the routes that slaves in Florida used to escape to the free Bahamas.
• Language Log looks at some examples of bad English from Japan. How did they come about?
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money rejects the idea of honouring people like Condoleezza Rice.
• Marginal Revolution considers the idea of free will in light of neurology.
• Corey S Powell at Out There interviews James Lovelock on his new book Novacene, in which Lovelock imagines the future world and Gaia taken over by AI.
• Window on Eurasia notes the water shortages faced by downstream countries in Central Asia.

[URBAN NOTE] Ten city links: Montréal, Lac-Mégantic, Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton …

• Tracey Lindeman writes at CityLab about how Montréal is trying to keep the redevelopment of the Molson-Coors Brewery site from killing the Centre-Sud.
• In the Montréal neighbourhood of Park-Extension, evictions–renovictions, even–are on the rise. Global News reports.
• Lac-Mégantic now has a train depot that bypasses the heart of this traumatized community. CBC Montreal reports.
• Halifax is now celebrating the Mosaic Festival, celebrating its diversity. Global News reports.
• Jill Croteau reports for Global News about Club Carousel, an underground club in Calgary that played a vital role in that city’s LGBTQ history.
• This business plan, aiming to bypass long lineups at the Edmonton outpost of the Jollibee chain, is ingenious. Global News reports.
• The Iowa town of Pacific Junction, already staggering, may never recover from a recent bout of devastating flooding. VICE reports.
• Avery Gregurich writes for CityLab about the Illinois town of Atlas, a crossroads seemingly on the verge of disappearing from Google Maps.
• The proposal for Metropica, a new sort of suburb in Florida, certainly looks interesting. VICE reports.
• Guardian Cities shares a cartoon looking affectionately at Lisbon.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at the German city of Nordlingen, formed in a crater created by the impact of a binary asteroid with Earth.
• Centauri Dreams reports on the possibility that the farside of the Moon might bear the imprint of an ancient collision with a dwarf planet the size of Ceres.
• D-Brief notes that dredging for the expansion of the port of Miami has caused terrible damage to corals there.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the last appearances of David Bowie and Iggy Pop together on stage.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that China is on track to launch an ambitious robotic mission to Mars in 2020.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog talks about what sociological research actually is.
• Gizmodo reports on the discovery of a torus of cool gas circling Sagittarius A* at a distance of a hundredth of a light-year.
• io9 reports about Angola Janga, an independent graphic novel by Marcelo D’Salete showing how slaves from Africa in Brazil fought for their freedom and independence.
• The Island Review shares some poems of Matthew Landrum, inspired by the Faroe Islands.
• Joe. My. God. looks at how creationists are mocking flat-earthers for their lack of scientific knowledge.
• Language Hat looks at the observations of Mary Beard that full fluency in ancient Latin is rare even for experts, for reasons I think understandable.
• Melissa Byrnes wrote at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the meaning of 4 June 1989 in the political transitions of China and Poland.
• Marginal Revolution notes how the New York Times has become much more aware of cutting-edge social justice in recent years.
• The NYR Daily looks at how the memories and relics of the Sugar Land prison complex outside of Houston, Texas, are being preserved.
• Jason C Davis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the differences between LightSail 1 and the soon-to-be-launched LightSail 2.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer looks in detail at the high electricity prices in Argentina.
• Peter Rukavina looks at the problems with electric vehicle promotion on PEI.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at when the universe will have its first black dwarf. (Not in a while.)
• Window on Eurasia suggests that Belarusians are not as interested in becoming citizens of Russia as an Internet poll suggests.
• Arnold Zwicky highlights a Pride Month cartoon set in Antarctica featuring the same-sex marriage of two penguins.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Innisfil, Montréal, Yellowknife, Miami Beach, Plovdiv

• CityLab notes how the effort of exurban Innisfil to use Uber as a substitute for mass transit did not work as expected.
• HuffPost Québec looks at how the Québec government is prioritizing the REM suburban light rails over the proposed Pink Line.
• Yellowknife may see the construction of a decidedly green four-story building. CBC North reports.
• CityLab looks at the experience of Miami Beach in using public art to put itself on the map.
• Guardian Cities looks at how the city of Plovdiv, second-largest city in Bulgaria, is trying to attract past emigrants from the country.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Ottawa, Montréal, Miami, Mexico City, Berlin

• CBC Ottawa reports on the complaint of an Ottawa condo-owner that his tenant is renting the unit out via Airbnb.
• CBC Montreal notes that a rent advocacy agency in the neighbourhood of Saint-Henri is being driven out of its offices by rent increases.
• VICE reports on how a Miami trailer park and its residents are set to be driven out of their home by luxury housing.
• CityLab reports on a Mexico City market, the Sonora Market, specializing in goods for religious believers.
• Reuters notes a street protest by rent activists in Berlin calling for the nationalizing of the housing stock.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Mississauga, Miami, Montréal, Jakarta, Lausanne

• Missisauga’s mayor Bonnie Crombie makes the case for her city’s independence from Peel Region, over at the Toronto Star.
• CityLab features a Richard Florida interview with sociologist Alejandro Portes on his new book examining the history and future of Miami.
• New maps showing flood risks are available to municipalities in the Montréal region, but for various reasons they are not using them yet. CBC reports.
• Guardian Cities reports on how the new president of Indonesia wants to move the country’s capital away from megacity Jakarta to a new location on the island of Borneo.
• CityLab reports on how the Swiss city of Lausanne is making use of innovative new community consultations to decide how to manage its Place de la Riponne.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: George Daniell, Black Party, Troye Sivan, Natalie Wynn, Pete Buttigieg

• Queerty profiles the new permanent exhibition in Miami of mid-20th century photographer George Daniell, whose works often including queer subjects date back to the 1940s.
• Mike Miksche writes at Slate about the import of the Black Party in New York City in 1989, for partying gay and bi men in the era of AIDS.
• This extended interview with Troye Sivan at The Guardian exposes a lot of this out star.
• This VICE interview with Contrapoints star Natalie Wynn makes me want to start watching her, now, on YouTube.
• John Aravosis is quite right to argue, at The Daily Beast, that arguing Pete Buttigieg is not gay enough is ridiculous.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes the possible discovery of Proxima Centauri c.
• D-Brief notes the discovery of a second circumbinary planet in the Kepler-47 system.
• Far Outliers notes the Union reaction to the civil war battle of Shiloh.
• Mark Graham shares a link to an article abstract examining the impact of call centres on social upgrading in South Africa.
• io9 notes plans for closer integration between the movie and television properties of the MCU.
• JSTOR Daily explains how Florida got its name.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the similarities between the Notre Dame fire and the destruction of the National Museum of Brazil last year.
• The LRB Blog notes the appeal of Gothic architecture.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting that, in the United States, negative effects of the China Shock had concluded a decade ago.
• The NYR Daily looks at Trump’s agitprop.
• Drew Rowsome interviews actor Nathaniel Bacon on the occasion of his appearance in a new Sky Gilbert show.
• Peter Rukavina shares a map of light pollution on PEI.
• Starts With A Bang shares a plan for reducing light pollution in a n urbanizing world.
• Window on Eurasia complains of a creeping annexation of Belarus by Russia.