[CAT] Five #caturday links: strays, Winnipeg, scent, Instagram, paper

• This letter to the Windsor Star makes the point that city needs to tend to its stray cats. (So do all cities, I bet.)
• A cat café in Winnipeg has reopened. CBC reports.
• Phys.org reports on a paper noting that the scent of male cats is made by microbes inhabiting cat bodies.
• Apparently Instagram accounts of fat cats on diets are a thing. The Guardian reports.
• Why do cats so love cardboard and paper? MNN reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Seattle, Amsterdam, Istanbul

• A statue of Queen Victoria has been vandalized in Montréal, the act claimed by an anti-colonialist coalition. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities profiled an Instagram account, thedoorsofnyc, concentrating on the unique doors of New York City.
• Billionaire urbanism is identified by this article at The Stranger as the downfall of the waterfront of Seattle.
• CityLab notes that the government of Amsterdam is now requiring owners of new homes to live in their property, limiting the ability to rent them out.
• The Atlantic notes the criticisms of many urbanists in Istanbul that restorations of the city’s ancient heritage are actually destroying them, at least as survivals from the past.

[PHOTO] Five photo links: Jonathon Keats, architecture, Sophie Calle, QSize, Fernando Bengoecha

• Motherboard reports on the Millennium Cameras of Jonathon Keats, who will be taking photos with a thousand-year exposure from the Lake Tahoe shoreline to document climate change.
• Oliver Wainwright at The Guardian reports on the growing impact of Instagram, and social photography generally, on architecture and design.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the photography of love and obsession of Sophie Calle.
• Drew Rowsome looks at the photography of QSize.
• Peter Rukavina shared a link to a documentary telling the story of photographer Fernando Bengoecha, whose photo of Amsterdam has become iconic thanks to its IKEA association.

[PHOTO] Five photography links: camera phones, Lindsay Lozon, Instagram, nature, lighthouses

• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle writes about the positives of phone photography.
• Some time ago, Drew Rowsome wrote about the queer male photography of Lindsay Lozon.
• John Semley took issue at MacLean’s with displays too completely curated for Instagram. What are they (mis)representing?
• JSTOR Daily notes how the advent of nature photography helped change the minds of Americans about the natural environment.
• CityLab looks at how the United States Lighthouse Society is actively cultivating Instagram likes, and why.

[PHOTO] Five photography links: Flickr, Kodak vs Fujifilm, landscapes, macro, future

• Peter Bright at Ars Technica notes the potential negative import of the decision of Flickr to limit free accounts to one thousand photos. What will happen to those accounts like my own which exceed that limit? I’ll be making hard decisions this month.
• This Petapixel essay takes a look at why front-running film firm Kodak failed to adapt to the digital era while runner-up Fujifilm survived.
• This ScienceDaily article notes, via the choice of photos uploaded to online photo accounts, the importance of landscapes in the human imagination.
• At Speed River Journal, Van Waffle talks about the benefits of macrophotography, of extreme close-ups, and of curiosity about the workings of the world.
• This Sean O’Hagan article at The Guardian taking a look at the mutations of photography in the Instagram era, who artists are interrogating the technology and the social conventions of the genre, is fascinating.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Queens, Atlanta, Winnipeg, Buenos Aires

• La Presse quotes mayor Valérie Plante’s arguments that, while Montréal is enjoying something of a boom, it should takje care to prepare for a slowdown, too.
• Karim Doumar at CityLab takes a look at Queens’ new storm-resilient park, Hunters Point South Park.
• Guardian Cities takes a look at #weloveatl, the Atlanta Instagram hashtag that has gone hugely viral.
• VICE takes the city of Winnipeg to task for its sadly dispiriting election, where major issues are not being dealt with (among other things). In this, Winnipeg reminds me of Toronto.
• The Inter Press Service takes a look at how plans to rehouse the inhabitants of the shantytowns of Buenos Aires are progressing.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: Mashrou’ Leila, Raziel Reid, Vietnam, leather, The AIDS Memorial

• Eli Tareq Lynch writes at Daily Xtra about how the Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila helps them express their queer Arab identity.
• Laura Sciarpelletti at CBC interviews Raziel Reid about his new gay teen novel Kens.
• Them shares the heartwarming story of two women, contestants on Vietnam’s version of The Bachelor, who realized that they actually loved each other. That they have apparently gotten public support is an added bonus.
• Edward Siddons at The Guardian notes the threats to the leather scene, with property development threatening established venues coming at the end of a slew of menaces including HIV, the sheer cost of leather, and shifting cultural norms.
• Jeff Leavell’s personal article at VICE about impact of The AIDS Memorial Instagram is heart-felt. (Myself, I like every post there; the act of remembering can be, among other things, a victory.)

[PHOTO] Five photo links: Flickr, Instagram, cities, Tom Saint CLair, Peter Hujar

• Gizmodo has a perhaps unduly pessimistic take on the purchase of Flickr by SmugMug. I use Flickr regularly; I wish it luck.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly talks about her use of Instagram, and about what she sees as the site’s good and bad sides.
• CityLab considers the impact of Instagram, and social networking-driven photography, on the identities and representations of cities.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the photography of Tom Saint Clair. (NSFW.)
• Towleroad highlights a showing of the photography of Peter Hujar in New York City that I wish I could attend.

[MUSIC] Azealia Banks, “212”

The Azealia Banks song “212” is as fantastic a song now as it was at the end of 2011 when it was released. It’s fresh, sonically complex, and does a brilliant job of portraying Banks’ skills as a lyricist and as a vocal performer both singing and rapping.

Back in October 2012, I was in rhapsodies about Banks and her song. I predicted big things for this defiantly energetic, decidedly out queer star. I wanted them.

And then, well, we didn’t get those particular big things, of a stardom to rival Nicki Minaj. Her Wikipedia article contains an extended multi-paragraph passage about the various controversies she has been involved in, some involving people outside of the music world like Sarah Palin (!), almost all dealing with Twitter and Instagram. Four of the first ten links pulled up Google search relate to the various scandals. Billboard examined her most notable fights on Twitter recently, but Banks has even gotten into fights on her Instagram account. (That last baffles me. I don’t know how you get into flamewars on Instagram.) I ended up unfollowing her account on YouTube after she came out with statements encouraging the election of Donald Trump.

I don’t know what happened. Is this a case of an excessively familiar–excessively uninhibited–use of social networking technologies undoing a nascent star, making someone on the brink of becoming big poisonous? Does this reflect deeper issues, mental illness perhaps or racism in American society? (Banks’ support of Trump apparently does reflect an apocalyptic tinge in African-American society, a hostility towards a structurally racist society that remains so despite everything.) Am I actually well-positioned, as a cisgender gay white man, to ask these questions? I don’t know.

I’m left with Banks’ music. I still love “212”; I still hope she can be a star. Can she? I can only hope so. “212” is so good that it simply cannot stand alone in any artist’s songbook.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: Leo Koury, cruising, Man’s Country, Mike Balaban, instagays

• Hornet Stories tells of Leo Koury, a mobster who apparently kickstarted gay nigthclub life in the Virginia city of Richmond.
• VICE shares an article on an exhibit at a Berlin museum looking at the history and sociology of cruising in public washrooms.
• VICE features a tour of Man’s Country, a long-established Chicago bathhouse now closing after four decades.
• Hornet Stories points to the Instagram account of Mike Balaban, “bammer47”, whose account is full of LGBTQ-relevant photos of personal and general relevance.
• Khaleb El Khatib at VICE interviews some “instagays”, gay (or bi, or queer) Instagram users whose photos (including selfies) attract huge followings. What do we get out of them? What do they get out of it?