[URBAN NOTE] Five links about cities: tennis, CFL, twin towns, coworking, space company towns

• Joshua Clipperton writes, here at CTV News, about how tennis like the Rogers Cup is much more popular in Montréal than in Toronto for a variety of reasons.
• The CFL’s Montreal Alouettes and Toronto Argonauts are set to play another exhibition game in Moncton, as Touchdown Atlantic tries to gather support for an Atlantic Canadian franchise.
• Guardian Cities considers, with interviews, how Brexit might impact the town twinning that united British communities with those of wider Europe.
• Guardian Cities notes how churches and other houses of worship are starting to market themselves as spaces for coworking.
• I think it entirely possible that space settlements may end up evoking the company towns of Earth. Slate has it.

[ISL] Five #PEI links: Bathygnathus borealis, real estate, CFL, bridge fees, politics

• On Prince Edward Island, footprints of the ancient pre-dinosaur predator Bathygnathus borealis have been found. Global News reports.
• VICE notes how the extreme shortage of rental housing on PEI is placing heavy pressure on the vulnerable.
• Out of Maritime solidarity, Charlottetown supports the bid of Halifax to finally host a CFL football team. Global News reports.
• CBC Prince Edward Island reports on a recent poll suggesting Islanders would overwhelmingly like the fees associated with crossing the fixed link to be radically reduced to abolished altogether.
• Prince Edward Island is again preparing to hold a referendum on electoral reform, shifting from first-past-the-post to proportional representation. Global News reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Montréal, Queens, Berlin, Vancouver

• CBC Hamilton recently reported on a new Facebook group intended to help Torontonians find their footing in neighbouring Hamilton.
• Will the new designs of the Montreal Alouettes be enough to reverse the CFL team’s dwindling fanbase? Global News considers.
• CityLab points to the overlooked architectural heritage of Queens, in New York City.
• Guardian Cities reports on plans to rehabilitate roadside grandstands in Berlin abandoned for nearly a century.
• Georgia Straight reports on a proposal for supposedly affordable rental housing in Vancouver that is no such thing. Below-market rates are not enough when prices are so high already.

[NEWS] Five culture links: conspiracies, Greater New England, Caribbean Hakka, Banksy, Aokigahara

• This feature in The Guardian examines the sufferings of the people who have been made victims of conspiracy theories.
• Global News takes a look at the strong support of New Brunswickers for the New England Patriots, rooted in a historical community that surely extends to the rest of Atlantic Canada.
• Atlas Obscura examines the communities being knitted together across the world by North American immigrants from the Caribbean of at least partial Hakka descent.
• The Guardian notes how, for many property-owners and residents, having Banksy graffiti on one of their walls might not be a blessing at all.
• The Japan Times looks at how a gatekeeper in the infamous Aokigahara forest in Japan, a favoured destination of people planning suicide, is trying to inspire them to live.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Centauri Dreams notes the hope of the controllers of Hayabusa2 to collect samples from asteroid Ryugu.
• D-Brief takes a look at how ecologists in Hawaii are using bird song to encourage invasive species of birds to eat local plants.
• Bruce Dorminey notes preliminary findings of astronomers suggesting that stars with relatively low amounts of metals might be more likely to produce potentially habitable Earth-size worlds.
• The Frailest Thing’s L.M. Sacasas considers what, exactly, it means for a technology to be considered “neutral”.
• At JSTOR Daily, Hope Reese interviews historian Jill Lepore about the crisis facing American institutions in the 21st century. Is there a way forward?
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the ongoing catastrophe in Yemen, aggravated terribly by Saudi intervention and supported by the West.
• Andrew Brownie at the LRB Blog notes how soccer in Brazil, producing stars against dictatorship like Sócrates in the early 1980s, now produces pro-Bolsonario figures.
• The NYR Daily notes the resistance of the Bedouin of al-Khan al-Ahmar to resist their displacement by Israeli bulldozers.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes how, among other things, extreme temperature swings make the Moon an unsuitable host for most observatories apart from radio telescopes.
• Window on Eurasia notes the sheer scale of Russian immigration to Crimea after 2014, the number of migrants amounting to a fifth of the peninsula’s population.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Mississauga, Kahnawake, Madrid, Helsinki, Mumbai

• Croatian-Canadian fans in Mississauga were definitely organized and ready to celebrate the Croatian team playing in the World Cup finals. Global News reports.
• People in Kahnawake are looking forward to an upcoming powwow, as a celebration of indigenous culture and a vehicle for reconciliation. Global News reports.
• CityLab notes the progress that environmental initiatives in Madrid have had in bringing wildlife back to the Spanish capital.
• Politico Europe reports on the mood in Helsinki on the eve of the Trump-Putin summit there. Avoiding a repetition of Munich was prominent in locals’ minds.
• Namrata Kolachalam at Roads and Kingdoms reports from Mumbai on the negative environmental impact of a controversial statue of Marathi conqueror Shivaji on local fishing communities.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Anthro{dendum}’s Adam Fish looks at the phenomenon of permissionless innovation as part of a call for better regulation.
• James Bow shares excerpts from his latest book, The Cloud Riders.
• Bruce Dorminey notes how data from Voyager 1’s cosmic ray detectors has been used to study dark matter.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money begins a dissection of what Roe vs Wade meant, and means, for abortion in the United States, and what its overturn might do.
• Ilan Stavans, writing for Lingua Franca at the Chronicle, considers the languages of the World Cup. The prominence of Spanish in the United States is particularly notable.
• The LRB Blog gathers together articles referencing the now-departed Boris Johnson. What a man.
• The Map Room Blog reports/u> on Matthew Blackett’s remarkably intricate transit map of Canada.
• Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution links to a study from Nature exploring how shifts in the definition of concepts like racism and sexism means that, even as many of the grossest forms disappear, racism and sexism continue to be recognized if in more minute form.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at how a Japanese experiment aimed at measuring proton decay ended up inaugurating the era of neutrino astronomy, thanks to SN1987A.
• Window on Eurasia reports on how a Russian proposal to resettle Afrikaner farmers from South Africa to the North Caucasus (!) is, unsurprisingly, meeting with resistance from local populations, including non-Russian ones.
• Linguist Arnold Zwicky takes a look at how, exactly, one learns to use the F word.

[PHOTO] Shopping for the World Cup in the parking lot at Galleria Mall

Every summer, a kiosk selling soccer merchandise sets up on the northeast corner of the Galleria Mall’s parking lot, at Dufferin and Dupont. In World Cup years like this one, the array of merchandise offered becomes particularly diverse.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Videoflicks, ghost service, Rob Ford football, parks, real estate

• blogTO notes that video rental store Videoflicks, on Avenue Road, is set to close down.
• The TTC, blogTO notes, has begun “ghost service” on its half-dozen new subway stations.
• Edward Keenan thinks that we may as well name a football stadium after Rob Ford. Why not? If it makes Ford Nation feel better …
• Spacing Toronto features John Lorinc looking at how community parks organizations, like at Ramsden, can exclude outsiders.
• VICE notes on recent study suggesting the real estate market of Toronto is the most overvalued of world cities.

[PHOTO] Playing the game, on Tichester Street in Toronto

I was exiting the northern exit of the St. Clair West subway station on Tichester Road/Heath Street when I saw a team playing on the field in late evening. A later googling brought up the below photo from 1974, revealing that even before this space became a high-end sports field for St. Michael’s College School–I think–it was still used. Continuity impresses me.