[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links

• Jamie Bradburn shares photos from his neighbourhood’s East Lynn Pumpkin Parade, here.
• Sidewalk Labs is going to release details of all the data it wants to collect. The Toronto Star reports.
• NOW Toronto reports on the controversy in the NDP riding association for Parkdale-High Park over the nomination, here.
• There is a napping studio in Toronto, offering people the chance to nap for 25 minutes at $10 per nap. The National Post reports.
• CBC reports on a film about Little Jamaica, a neighbourhood along Eglinton Avenue West that might be transformed out of existence, here
• Daily Xtra looks at the legacy of the Meghan Murphy visit to Toronto.
• Spacing notes that the Toronto Reference Library has a large collection of Communist newspapers available for visitors.
• The idea of Metrolinx paying for the repair of damaged Eglinton Avenue does make a lot of intuitive sense. CBC reports.

[NEWS] Ten Halloween links (#halloween)

• Jamie Bradburn took a look at now-effaced Toronto cemetery Potter’s Field, here.
• Kingston, Ontario’s Skeleton Park is a remarkable legacy. Global News reports.
• CBC Saskatoon reports on the origins of Halloween in harvest events.
• The Hong Kong protests took on a new tinge this Halloween. CBC reports.
• The Vancouver tradition of Halloween fireworks may be dying out. The National Post reports.
• Guardian Cities looks around the world, from Derry to West Hollywood, at local celebrations of Halloween.
• Gizmodo shares an image of a ghostly collision of galaxies in deep space.
• Dangerous Minds shared some album covers inspired by Halloween.
• CBC looks at the very low rate of candy tampering in Canada over the past decade.
• JSTOR Daily considers how the Great Pumpkin of Peanuts came to be so great.

[PHOTO] Nine photos from Halloween in Church and Wellesley

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: Atlanta. My.Kali, cross-dressing, Glennda Orgasm, Pride Toronto

• This Guardian Cities article asks, rhetorically, if the LGBTQ community of Atlanta has a problem with racism.
• VICE tells the story of pioneering Jordan-based LGBT magazine My.Kali, the first in its country.
• Taylor Hosking at VICE writes about how cross-dressing on Hallowe’en, for her as a queer cis black woman, was a perhaps unexpectedly powerful experience.
• Mark Simpson praises Glennda Orgasm, the drag journalist persona of his friend Glenn Belverio. Is it time for her to come back?
• Florence Ashley argues at NOW Toronto that Pride Toronto is too corporatized to be salvaged, and that it would be best to start fresh.

[PHOTO] Five #Halloween photos from #ChurchandWellesley

Last night, and very early this morning, I went over to Church and Wellesley to take in the customed crowds. The street was packed even after midnight with lots of people in lots of inventive costumes. I even snapped a picture of my favourite–well done, whoever you are!

[NEWS] Seven #Halloween links: Toronto, Fisher Rare Book Library, haunted houses, 1978, fear

• NOW Toronto shares photos from a Hallowe’en dress party held this weekend at the Toronto Reference Library.
• CBC Toronto highlights an exhibit at the Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto looking at monsters, De Monstris.
• The Crux takes a look at different Hallowe’en traditions around the world.
• Dangerous Minds reports on Hallowe’en back in 1978, when the Ramones were dressed up for a show in Virginia.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at whether or not homeowners looking to sell their property have to inform buyers if the house is haunted.
• Jamie Bradburn takes a look back in time, at Toronto’s Hallowe’en in 1978 as reported in the papers.
• Gerald Walton at The Conversation writes about fear, and about constructive ways to harness fear to engender positive change.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• D-Brief notes that CRISPR is being used to edit the genes of pigs, the better to protect them against disease.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing argues that silence on social networks is often not an option, that membership might compel one to speak. I wonder: That was not my experience with E-mail lists.
• Joe. My. God. notes that social network Gab, favoured by the alt-right, disclaims any responsibility for giving the synagogue shooter in Pittsburgh a platform.
• JSTOR Daily notes the massive, unprecedented, and environmentally disruptive growth of great mats of sargassum seaweed in the Caribbean.
• Language Hat notes the poster’s problems grappling with Dosteyevsky’s complex novel The Devils, a messy novel product of messy times.
• Language Log notes the use of pinyin on Wikipedia to annotate Chinese words.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper noting that data mining is not all-powerful if one is only mining noise.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes that, finally, we are making enough antimatter to be able to figure out whether antimatter is governed by gravity or antigravity.
• At the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin talks about how he was threatened on Facebook by mail bomber Cesar Sayoc.
• Window on Eurasia notes the 1947 deportation of more than a hundred thousand Ukrainians from the west of their country to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
• Arnold Zwicky ruminates about late October holidays and their food, Hallowe’en not being the only one.

[PHOTO] Ceramics for October, Hockridge China

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes, taking a look past more than a century of images of the famous star J1407 including its planet with massive ring system, the power of big data to reveal important things about the universe.
• D-Brief takes a look at the discoveries of the Hayabusa2 probe at asteroid Ryugu.
• Gizmodo notes that the planned landing of the Hayabusa2 probe on Ryugu has been postponed until 2019 in order to find a safe landing point on the rocky asteroid’s surface.
• Livia Gershon at JSTOR Daily takes a look at how modern Hallowe’en derives from the Celtic day of Samhain.
• Joe. My. God. reports on a Gavin McInnes speech to the Young Republicans Club of New York City in which he says, despite his Proud Boys’ crudity and violence, the two groups have much in common, that they need the Proud Boys even.
• Anne Curzon at Lingua Franca takes a look at the changing definition of “fun” in recent decades.
• The LRB Blog takes a look at the storied destruction by fire of the Soviet steamship Pobeda in the Black Sea in 1948.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution suggests</a. that a strategy for African economic development, with a big push to build basic infrastructure, has not been working in a test site in northern Ghana.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw sees the alt-right being fed by the radicalism of the far left.
• Brittney Cooper at the Planetary Society Blog shares some images of heiligenschein from throughout the solar system.
• Drew Rowsome looks at a recent horror novel by Douglas Clegg, The Infinite.
• Window on Eurasia argues the ethnic distinction confirmed by Stalin between Tatars and Bashkirs has weakened both groups versus wider Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky plays with the idea of the piñata, at multiple levels.

[PHOTO] Four photos of Church and Wellesley at the start of October