[NEWS] Twenty news links

• NOW Toronto looks at the Pickering nuclear plant and its role in providing fuel for space travel.
• In some places like California, traffic is so bad that airlines actually play a role for high-end commuters. CBC reports.
• Goldfish released into the wild are a major issue for the environment in Québec, too. CTV News reports.
• China’s investments in Jamaica have good sides and bad sides. CBC reports.
• A potato museum in Peru might help solve world hunger. The Guardian reports.
• Is the Alberta-Saskatchewan alliance going to be a lasting one? Maclean’s considers.
• Is the fossil fuel industry collapsing? The Tyee makes the case.
• Should Japan and Europe co-finance a EUrasia trade initiative to rival China’s? Bloomberg argues.
• Should websites receive protection as historically significant? VICE reports.
• Food tourism in the Maritimes is a very good idea. Global News reports.
• Atlantic Canada lobster exports to China thrive as New England gets hit by the trade war. CBC reports.
• The Bloc Québécois experienced its revival by drawing on the same demographics as the provincial CAQ. Maclean’s reports.
• Population density is a factor that, in Canada, determines political issues, splitting urban and rural voters. The National Observer observes.
• US border policies aimed against migration from Mexico have been harming businesses on the border with Canada. The National Post reports.
• The warming of the ocean is changing the relationship of coastal communities with their seas. The Conversation looks.
• Archival research in the digital age differs from what occurred in previous eras. The Conversation explains.
• The Persian-language Wikipedia is an actively contested space. Open Democracy reports.
• Vox notes how the US labour shortage has been driven partly by workers quitting the labour force, here.
• Laurie Penny at WIRED has a stirring essay about hope, about the belief in some sort of future.

[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.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: extreme weather, Jodi Emery, Little Jamaica, public art, Mnandi pie

• Matt Elliott at CBC Toronto asks what, exactly, the City of Toronto is doing to prepare for the increasingly erratic and dangerous weather hitting the city.
• NOW Toronto reports on how Jodie Emery plans to start expanding her marijuana empire, and her wider influence, after opening a new café in Kensington Market.
• This NOW Toronto article reporting on some of the restaurants of Little Jamaica, along Eglinton Avenue West, is informative.
• I honestly have to say that I have taken note of Three Points Make Two Lines, down at Vaughan Road and St. Clair Avenue West. I will. Murray Whyte at the Toronto Star makes the case.
• Suresh Doss describes the Mnandi pies sold by Evis Chirowamhangu at Wychwood Barns.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Lower Bay, housing, Villiers Island, Saigon Flower, Little Jamaica

• blogTO reports on an upcoming concert scheduled for the TTC’s Lower Bay station on the 11th of March.
• A new student residence for Ryerson University with prices actually comparable to prevailing rents for a studio apartment downtown seems like not the best solution to student housing issues. blogTO reports.
• The upcoming formation of a new island, Villiers Island off the mouth of the Don, as part of the Port Lands renewal is very cool. blogTO reports.
• Julien Gignac writes at the Toronto Star about the Saigon Flower, a Vietnamese restaurant on Queen Streeet West in the shadow of the Drake with an owner who refuses to sell. I have eaten there, and enjoyed it; I applaud her.
• The disruption being inflicted on Little Jamaica, an enclave stretching along an Eglinton Avenue West being disrupted by Crosstown construction, is sad. Is there any alternative, though, if we want more transit? What can be done for the neighbourhood? The Toronto Star reports.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Buzz recommends twenty-four different novels for Valentine’s Day, drawing on the recommendations of employees of the Toronto Public Library.
• Centauri Dreams links to a new paper suggesting there are thousands of objects of extrasolar origin, some tens of kilometres in size, in our planetary system right now.
• D-Brief notes that cryptocurrency is hindering the search for extraterrestrial life, as miners buy up the graphics cards SETI researchers need.
• Lyman Stone at In A State of Migration notes how unbalanced the marriage market can be for professional women in the United States interested in similar partners, especially for African-American women.
• JSTOR Daily notes how deeply the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. for racial equality in the United States were driven by anti-colonial nationalism in Africa.
• The LRB Blog notes how the life and writing of Penelope Fitzgerald was influenced by two decades of living on the English coast, suspended between land and water.
• At the NYR Daily, Melissa Chadburn tells of what she learned from counting, and queueing, and perservering in routines.
• At The Numerati, Stephen Baker shares an excerpt from his new book, Dark Site, describing a teenager’s attempts to control a cognitive implant.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer takes issue with elements of the timing of Lyman Stone’s schedule for immigration controls imposed in the United Kingdom on Caribbean migrants.
• At the Planetary Society Blog, Emily Lakdawalla explains how scientists are keeping the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in good stead despite its age.
• At Roads and Kingdoms, Timi Siytangco explains the history of the Philippines through nine Filipino foods.
• Drew Rowsome is impressed by the power of The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
• Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang explains why black holes have to contain singularities, not merely superdense normal matter.
• Window on Eurasia notes the rather misogynistic essay of ideologue Vladimir Surkin about women and power, timed for Valentine’s Day.

[ISL] Five islands notes: Caribbean and Jamaica migration, Diomedes, Indonesia, Finland

• Lyman Stone, at In A State of Migration, takes a look at the slow population growth in even the well-off Caribbean, thanks to substantial emigration.
• At Jamaica Observer, Edward Seaga summarizes the history of Jamaican emigration–economically necessary–and worries about the impact of Trump.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at Big Diomede and Little Diomede, two islands in the Bering Strait that not only have different sovereigns (the US and Russia) but different dates, too.
• Russell Darnley takes a look at how the indigenous population of Siberut, an Indonesian island west of Sumatra, are dealing with the effects of deforestation and cultural disruption.
• Global News reports on an entrepreneur who wants to make an island in Finland into a women-only resort.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• anthro{dendum} shares an essay by digital ethnographer Gabriele de Seta on the pitfalls of digital ethnography, on the things not said.
• The Boston Globe’s The Big Picture shares photos taken in the course of a mission by dentists to provide care to rural Jamaica.
• Centauri Dreams examines the TRAPPIST-1 worlds in depth, finding that TRAPPIST-1e seems to be the relatively most Earth-like world there.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that British banks are cracking down on the use of cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin.
• Gizmodo suggests the Chixculub impactor that killed most of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous may also have played havoc with fragile tectonics of Earth. Responsibility for the Deccan Traps?
• Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders if the Democratic Party risks getting steamrollered over DACA.
• At Lingua Franca, Geoffrey Pullum dissects the claims that an orca capable of mimicking human words can use language. The two are not the same.
• The NYR Daily looks at the origins of the American system of higher education in the wealth generated by slavery.
• Towleroad notes that Bermuda has ended marriage equality. Boycott time?
• David Post at the Volokh Conspiracy is decidedly unimpressed by the behaviour of Devin Nunes.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that the Earth can easily survive without us.
• blogTO notes that the Aga Khan Museum recently made an appearance in Star Trek: Discovery, as Vulcan.
• Centauri Dreams notes the way neutron star collisions and kilonovas can be used to examine physical laws in extreme circumstances.
• Hornet Stories notes that trans political candidate Danica Roem, in Virginia, is getting lots of positive attention.
• The LRB Blog visits Gdansk only to find popular anti-Muslim xenophobia thriving.
• The NYR Daily looks at photographic and other legacies of the Jamaica dancehall scene.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at the evolution of SETI from the 1960s to the present.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at the struggle of astronomers, in West Texas and elsewhere, to preserve dark skies.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the ways in which GW170817 has confirmed the Standard Model.
• Window on Eurasia argues that reactionary conservatism in Russia is making that country’s HIV/AIDS epidemic worse.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links, from the $15 wage to parking lots, cow statues, and Jamaican patois

• Torontoist takes on Galen Weston and the $15 minimum wage and poverty in Toronto (and Loblaw’s contribution to said).
• At the Toronto Star, Shawn Micallef describes how high property values in Toronto discourage open-air parking lots.
• Noor Javed looks, in Toronto Star, at the question of who authorized the cathedral elevated cow statue in Cathedraltown, in Markham.
• The Star‘s Fatima Syed shares some old memories of Torontonians of the Centreville carousel, soon to be sold off.
• At The Globe and Mail, Dakshana Bascaramurty takes a look at Jamaican patois, Toronto black English, and the many complex ways in which this language is received.

[URBAN NOTE] Four notes about the past and future of queer life in a dynamic Toronto

• In the Toronto Star, Emma Teitel wonders how long Church and Wellesley will last as a hub as the queer community develops and migrates away.
• Trevor Corkum, also in the Toronto Star, explores the important role of the Glad Day Bookshop in modern Toronto’s gay and literary scenes.
• Brian Bradley tells the story of Craig Russell, an early drag queen who became a star and started a still-living cultural tradition of drag performances in Toronto.
• In NOW Toronto, Vaughn Grey tells the story of how he successfully escaped Jamaica to claim refugee status in Toronto.