[URBAN NOTE] Nine Toronto links

• Metrolinx using paid influencers to promote the Ontario Line is certainly a choice. The Toronto Star reports.
• Union Station retiring an old mechanical system 90 years old used to control TTC vehicles is a landmark event. The Metrolinx blog reports.
• Jamie Bradburn looks at the birth of the Gardiner Expressway, here.
• Alok Mukherjee at Spacing questions why police in Toronto have stopped enforcing traffic regulations.
• Protesters charged with blocking the Bloor Viaduct during the Extinction Rebellion have had the charges dropped. Global News reports.
• Sean Marshall shared his account of his address to the Toronto Police Services board, here.
• Jamie Bradburn looks at the history behind the mid-20th century expansion of Church Street.
• NOW Toronto notes that workers at the Broadview Hotel have become unionized.
• Samantha Lui writes at NOW Toronto against the false negative stereotypes applied by so many–even briefly by Google–to Scarborough.
• CBC notes that a lawsuit surrounding benefits fraud by TTC employees has been settled, expensively.

[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] Seven Toronto links: transit, Yorkdale, Sully’s, buried, David Silber, Justin Haynes

• Steve Munro takes a look at future transit connections for the waterfront centered on Union Station.
• The location of the vast parking lot of Yorkdale Mall is under consideration for transformation into a new high-rise neighbourhood. CBC reports.
• Sully’s Boxing Gym, on Dupont in Dovercourt Village, is fighting to–if not remain in its current location–survive somewhere. The Toronto Star reports.
• Metrolinx has offered to restore direct bus service to York University if that university, in turn, paid students nearly one million dollars to compensate them for their added transit costs. The Toronto Star reports.
• blogTO identifies five particularly odd objects found underground in Toronto, here.
• Toronto Life reports on David Silber, a Scarborough-born man who has become one of the world’s most remarkable and innovative chefs.
• The Ottawa Citizen reports on the tragic death of musician Justin Haynes, who came to my attention with his moving writings in NOW Toronto on the affordable housing crisis.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams extends further consideration the roles that artificial intelligences might play in interstellar exploration.
• D-Brief notes that the genes associated with being a night owl also seem to be associated with poor mental health outcomes.
• Far Outliers looks at the lifeboat system created on the upper Yangtze in the late 19th century.
• Kashmir Hill, writing at Gizmodo, notes how blocking Google from her phone left her online experience crippled.
• Imageo notes that, even if halted, global warming still means that many glaciers well melt as they respond to temperature changes.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the racism that permeated ads in 19th century North America.
• Language Hat looks at how some Turkish-speaking Christians transcribed the Turkish language in the Greek alphabet.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how utterly ineffective the Trump Administration’s new refugee waiver system actually is.
• The LRB Blog looks at the film and theatre career of Lorenza Mazetti.
• Marginal Revolution notes, in passing, the import of being a YouTube celebrity.
• Molly Crabapple at the NYR Daily writes about the work of the New Sanctuary coalition, which among other things waits with refugees in court as they face their hearings.
• The Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle looks for traces of the elusive muskrat.
• Towleroad shares footage of New Order performing the early song “Ceremony” in 1981.
• Transit Toronto notes that Metrolinx now has an app for Presto up!
• At Vintage Space, Amy Shira Teitel looks at the Soviet Moon exploration program in 1969.
• Window on Eurasia notes the new pressures being placed by rising Islamism and instability in Afghanistan upon Turkmenistan.
• Arnold Zwicky considers, briefly, the little is known about the lives of 1980s gay porn stars Greg Patton and Bobby Pyron. How did they lead their lives?

[URBAN NOTE] Six Toronto links: real estate, CNE, Metrolinx, #650Parliament, transit politics

• Urban Toronto notes that the Toronto real estate market is getting even tighter, with higher prices too.
• blogTO notes that the CNE is offering for Christmas discounted tickets for the 2019 show, perhaps to try to recoup from this year’s strike-related losses.
• Ontario’s auditor-general is very critical of Metrolinx’s behavior with regards to the Eglinton Crosstown line, as noted in The Globe and Mail. Ontario’s auditor-general has also ruled that the locations of two GO stations by Metrolinx were selected on the basis of political pressure, as the Toronto Star noted.
• One of the tenants of 650 Parliament Street was being charged just short of a thousand dollars by Bell for not retrieving his inaccessible Bell gear, before the CBC got involved.
• Tricia Wood at Spacing takes a look at the idea that mass transit in this city is politicized. Of course it is; it needs to be done better.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Scarborough and Vaughan, Hamilton, Montréal, Edmonton, Vancouver

• The auditor of Ontario is investigating two proposed Metrolinx stations, one in Scarborough and one in Vaughan, that may have been placed for the benefit of political incumbents. CBC reports.
• CBC Hamilton reports that some Hamilton neighbourhoods continued to see strong interest and continued price rises despite a general slowdown.
• La Presse reports on the disruption to traffic and the environment that will be caused by the repair of a tunnel linking the island of Montréal to the South Shore.
• The annual ice castle in Edmonton seems to be doing well, what with cold weather locally. Global News reports.
• “Renovictions”–buyouts of tenants–are a growing trend in Vancouver that some local activists are warning against. The Toronto Star reports.

[PHOTO] Looking down at Eglinton station, mid-construction