[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?

[URBAN NOTE] Six Toronto links

• blogTO notes the maps made by artist Peter Gorman showing the strange intersections of Toronto.
• This imagining of a wholly pedestrianized lower Yonge Street looks attractive. blogTO has it.

<

• Jamie Bradburn tells how couples in Toronto during the Second World War expressed their love, here.
• This condo at 701 Dovercourt Road looks amazing. blogTO reports.
• Toronto Pearson Airport failed in its obligation to provide services for French-language travelers, the Official Languages Commissioner has ruled. CTV News reports.
• So-called “unicorn poutine” is offered for sale at a north Toronto restaurant. Global News reports.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that mysterious Boyajian’s Star has nearly two dozen identified analogues, like HD 139139.
• James Bow reports from his con trip to Portland.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog notes the particular pleasure of having old friends, people with long baselines on us.
• Centauri Dreams describes a proposed mission to interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov).
• The Crux notes how feeding cows seaweed could sharply reduce their methane production.
• D-Brief notes that comet C/2019 Q4 is decidedly red.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a claim that water-rich exoplanet K2-18b might well have more water than Earth.
• Gizmodo reports on a claim that Loki, biggest volcano on Io, is set to explode in a massive eruption.
• io9 notes that Warner Brothers is planning a Funko Pop movie.
• Joe. My. God. notes the claim of Donald Trump that he is ready for war with Iran.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how people in early modern Europe thought they could treat wounds with magic.
• Language Hat considers how “I tip my hat” might, translated, sound funny to a speaker of Canadian French.
• Language Log considers how speakers of Korean, and other languages, can find word spacing a challenge.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the partisan politics of the US Supreme Court.
• At the NYR Daily, Naomi Klein makes a case for the political and environmental necessity of a Green New Deal.
• Peter Watts takes apart a recent argument proclaiming the existence of free will.
• Peter Rukavina tells how travelling by rail or air from Prince Edward Island to points of the mainland can not only be terribly inconvenient, but environmentally worse than car travel. PEI does need better rail connections.
• The Russian Demographics Blog examines how different countries in Europe will conduct their census in 2020.
• Window on Eurasia shares the arguments of a geographer who makes the point that China has a larger effective territory than Russia (or Canada).
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at a 1971 prediction by J.G. Ballard about demagoguery and guilt, something that now looks reasonably accurate.
• Arnold Zwicky considers models of segregation of cartoon characters from normal ones in comics.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber takes us from her son’s accidental cut to the electronic music of Røbic.
• D-Brief explains what the exceptional unexpected brightness of the first galaxies reveals about the universe.
• Far Outliers looks at how President Grant tried to deal with the Ku Klux Klan.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the surprising influence of the Turkish harem on the fashion, at least, of Western women.
• This Kotaku essay arguing that no one should be sitting on the Iron Throne makes even better sense to me now.
• Language Hat looks at the particular forms of French spoken by the famously Francophile Russian elites of the 19th century.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how teaching people to code did not save the residents of an Appalachia community.
• Marginal Revolution notes how, in the early 19th century, the young United States trading extensively with the Caribbean, even with independent Haiti.
• At the NYR Daily, Colm Tóibín looks at the paintings of Pat Steir.
• Peter Rukavina writes about how he has been inspired by the deaths of the Underhays to become more active in local politics.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society shares his research goals from 1976.
• Window on Eurasia notes the conflicts between the Russian Orthodox Church and some Russian nationalists over the latter’s praise of Stalin.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at dragons in history, queer and otherwise.

[NEWS] Five notes on French in Canada: Montréal, Ontario, Welland, Manitoba, New Brunswick

• La Presse notes that the bilingual greeting “Bonjour-Hi” is becoming more common in Montréal.
• This Ottawa Citizen opinion-writer was entirely right in noting that the Ontario government should not try to eliminate minority language rights and institutions for budgetary reasons.
• This TVO article about the forces facing the École secondaire Confédération in Welland is a fascinating study of minority dynamics.
• This brief article touches on efforts in the Franco-Manitoban community of Winnipeg to provide temporary shelter for new Francophone immigrants.
• Francophones in New Brunswick continue to face pressure, with their numbers despite overall population growth and with Francophones being much more likely to be bilingual than Anglophones. CBC reports.

[NEWS] Five language links: Cantonese, Arabic, Gaelic, French, Sumerian

• The Cantonese language, the SCMP reports, is falling out of use among young people in Guangzhou.
• The Muslim Hui, living outside of Xinjiang, are being pressured to shut down Arabic-medium schools. The SCMP reports.
• The Scottish government has received only two complaints about Gaelic on bilingual road signs in the past seventeen years. The National reports.
• HuffPost Québec notes that the French language has been displaced as the chief language of wine by English.
• Advanced artificial intelligence has the potential to aid in the translation of ancient languages like Sumerian, with stockpiles of untranslated material just waiting for an eye’s attention. The BBC explains.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the newly-named Neptune moon of Hippocamp, and how it came about as product of a massive collision with the larger moon of Proteus.
• Centauri Dreams also reports on the discovery of the Neptune moon of Hippocamp.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes how the attempt to revoke the citizenship of Shamima Begum sets a terribly dangerous precedent for the United Kingdom.
• D-Brief notes new evidence suggesting the role of the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions in triggering the Cretaceous extinction event, alongside the Chixculub asteroid impact.
• Far Outliers notes the problems of Lawrence of Arabia with Indian soldiers and with Turks.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing takes issue with the state of philosophical contemplation about technology, at least in part a structural consequence of society.
• Hornet Stories shares this feature examining the future of gay porn, in an environment where amateur porn undermines the existing studios.
• JSTOR Daily considers the spotty history of casting African-American dancers in ballet.
• Language Hat suggests that the Académie française will soon accept for French feminized nouns of nouns links to professionals (“écrivaine” for a female writer, for instance).
• The LRB Blog considers the implications of the stripping of citizenship from Shamima Begum. Who is next? How badly is citizenship weakened in the United Kingdom?
• Marginal Revolution notes the upset of Haiti over its banning by Expedia.
• The NYR Daily notes the tension in Turkey between the country’s liberal laws on divorce and marriage and rising Islamization.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the moment, in the history of the universe, when dark energy became the dominant factors in the universe’s evolution.
• Towleroad remembers Roy Cohn, the lawyer who was the collaborator of Trump up to the moment of Cohn’s death from AIDS.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little takes a look at Marx’s theories of how governments worked.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the existential pressures facing many minority languages in Russia.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: advertising, fluidity in art, George Quaintance, Francophones, RuPaul

• The Conversation looks at the question of how to increase the representation of same-sex couples in ads.
• Them looks at how queer artists are representing their fluidity.
• Hornet Stories looks at the art of George Quaintance.
• CBC Windsor reports on why some non-binary people Francophones in Windsor-Essex avoid treatment in the French language.
• RuPaul’s Drag Race turns out to be playing a key role in keeping many gay bars in New York City thriving, Punchdrink reports.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait explains the potential discovery of an ancient rock from Earth among the Moon rocks collected by Apollo.
• Centauri Dreams looks at what will be coming next from the New Horizons probe after its Ultima Thule flyby.
• The Crux looks at the genetic library of threatened animals preserved cryogenically in a San Diego zoo.
• Far Outliers looks at the drastic, even catastrophic, population changes of Sichuan over the past centuries.
• Language Hat looks at translations made in the medieval Kingdom of Jerusalem.
• Language Log tries to translate a possibly Indo-European sentence preserved in an ancient Chinese text.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the complexity of the crisis in Venezuela.
• The LRB Blog looks at the Mexican-American border in this era of crisis.
• Marginal Revolution notes a spike in unsolved shootings in Baltimore following protests against police racism.
• Noah Smith reviews the new Tyler Cowen book, Stubborn Attachments.
• Adam Shatz at the NYR Daily reviews what sounds like a fantastic album of anti-colonial Francophone music inspired by Frantz Fanon and assembled by French rapper Rocé.
• The Planetary Society Blog takes a look what is next for China as it continues its program to explore the Moon.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Monique Jaques about her new photo book looking at the lives of girls growing up in Gaza.
• Rocky Planets takes a look at how rocks can form political boundaries.
• Drew Rowsome interviews choreographer Christopher House about his career and the next shows at the Toronto Dance Theatre.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel takes a look at the seeming featurelessness of Uranus.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps looks at a controversial swap of land proposed between Serbia and Kosovo.
• Window on Eurasia notes the controversial possibility of China contracting Russia to divert Siberian rivers as a water supply.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at the origins of Uri and Avi, a photo of apparently showing two men, one Palestinian and one Israeli, kissing.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul shares the latest issue of the journal Archifutures, reporting on strategies for adapting to apocalyptic enviroments.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait breaks down for readers the import of the sighting of material on the fringes of the event horizon of Sagittarius A*.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly talks about zhush, the act of renewing one’s home as winter approaches.
• Centauri Dreams notes the fine-tuning of hypothetical mechanisms for delivering water to the Earth (and other inner worlds) during the Late Heavy Bombardment period.
• D-Brief notes the identification in many ancient human skeletons of deformities likely product of inbreeding.
• Dangerous Minds links to a fascinating documentary looking at the culture of tribute bands.
• Drew Ex Machina reports on the earliest stages of the space race, in both the Soviet Union and the United States.
• Hornet Stories notes that Sasha Velour is off to the Smithsonian to give a speech on the importance of drag in culture.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the parlous environment of the Mediterranean Sea, with sea level rise and pollution promising to make a mess.
• Language Hat notes how, in France, the concept of being “excited” that exists in the Anglophone world and in French Canada may not be represented in the local French.
• Language Log considers, in the context of the recent Sokal Squared hoax, the ethnographic peculiarities of academia.