[CAT] Five #caturday links: Newfoundland, Australia, tracking, body language, bodies

• The rescue of cats from the Newfoundland outport of Little Bay Islands, now abandoned, was a success. Global News reports.
• Cats in Australia may be in a position to ravage vulnerable survivors of the wildfires. Wired reports.
• The Purrsong Pendant is a new fitness tracker for cats. CNET reports.
• Humans do need to be able to read the body language of cats, and not only to figure out when they are in pain. CP24 reports.
• Is anyone surprised cats might eat human corpses? Newsweek reports.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that Betelgeuse is very likely not on the verge of a supernova, here.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the mapping of asteroid Bennu.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber reposted, after the election, a 2013 essay looking at the changes in British society from the 1970s on.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares a collection of links about the Precambrian Earth, here.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about fear in the context of natural disasters, here.
• Far Outliers reports on the problems of privateers versus regular naval units.
• Gizmodo looks at galaxy MAMBO-9, which formed a billion years after the Big Bang.
• io9 writes about the alternate history space race show For All Mankind.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the posters used in Ghana in the 1980s to help promote Hollywood movies.
• Language Hat links to a new book that examines obscenity and gender in 1920s Britain.
• Language Log looks at the terms used for the national language in Xinjiang.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with Jeff Jacoby’s lack of sympathy towards people who suffer from growing inequality.
• Marginal Revolution suggests that urbanists should have an appreciation for Robert Moses.
• Sean Marshall writes, with photos, about his experiences riding a new Bolton bus.
• Caryl Philips at the NYR Daily writes about Rachmanism, a term wrongly applied to the idea of avaricious landlords like Peter Rachman, an immigrant who was a victim of the Profumo scandal.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper looking at the experience of aging among people without families.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why the empty space in an atom can never be removed.
• Strange Maps shares a festive map of London, a reindeer, biked by a cyclist.
• Window on Eurasia notes how Mongolia twice tried to become a Soviet republic.
• Arnold Zwicky considers different birds with names starting with x.

[NEWS] Seven Christmas links: Bowie and Bing, horror, ghosts, holidays, xenophobia, Elf on the Shelf

• Dangerous Minds shares the story of the remarkable duet between Bing Crosby and David Bowie.
• Dangerous Minds looks at the 1980 horror film To All A Goodnight.
• Strange Company shares a strange story, of a ghostly choir reportedly heard in 1944, here.
• Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog writes about why she and her husband each take Christmas seriously.
• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the xenophobia behind the idea of a War on Christmas, going back to the anti-Semitism of Henry Ford.
• JSTOR Daily carries suggestions that the idea of the Grinch, from Dr. Seuss, has anti-Semitic origins.
• VICE makes the case for the creepiness of the Elf on the Shelf in the context of a surveillance society, here.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Charlie Stross at Antipope shares an essay he recently presented on artificial intelligence and its challenges for us.
• P. Kerim Friedman writes at {anthro}dendum about the birth of the tea ceremony in the Taiwan of the 1970s.
• Anthropology net reports on a cave painting nearly 44 thousand years old in Indonesia depicting a hunting story.
• Architectuul looks at some temporary community gardens in London.
• Bad Astronomy reports on the weird history of asteroid Ryugu.
• The Buzz talks about the most popular titles borrowed from the Toronto Public Library in 2019.
• Caitlin Kelly talks at the Broadside Blog about her particular love of radio.
• Centauri Dreams talks about the role of amateur astronomers in searching for exoplanets, starting with LHS 1140 b.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber looks at what is behind the rhetoric of “virtue signalling”.
• Dangerous Minds shares concert performance from Nirvana filmed the night before the release of Nevermind.
• Bruce Dorminey notes new evidence that, even before the Chixculub impact, the late Cretaceous Earth was staggering under environmental pressures.
• Myron Strong at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about how people of African descent in the US deal with the legacies of slavery in higher education.
• Far Outliers reports on the plans in 1945 for an invasion of Japan by the US.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing gathers together a collection of the author’s best writings there.
• Gizmodo notes the immensity of the supermassive black hole, some 40 billion solar masses, at the heart of galaxy Holm 15A 700 million light-years away.
• Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res writes about the issue of how Wichita is to organize its civic politics.
• io9 argues that the 2010s were a decade where the culture of the spoiler became key.
• The Island Review points readers to the podcast Mother’s Blood, Sister’s Songs, an exploration of the links between Ireland and Iceland.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of the lawyer of the killer of a mob boss that the QAnon conspiracy inspired his actions. This strikes me as terribly dangerous.
• JSTOR Daily looks at a study examining scholarly retractions.
• Language Hat shares an amusing cartoon illustrating the relationships of the dialects of Arabic.
• Language Log lists ten top new words in the Japanese language.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the dissipation of American diplomacy by Trump.
• The LRB Blog looks at the many problems in Sparta, Greece, with accommodating refugees, for everyone concerned.
• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting the decline of the one-child policy in China has diminished child trafficking, among other crimes.
• Sean Marshall, looking at transit in Brampton, argues that transit users need more protection from road traffic.
• Russell Darnley shares excerpts from essays he wrote about the involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War.
• Peter Watts talks about his recent visit to a con in Sofia, Bulgaria, and about the apocalypse, here.
• The NYR Daily looks at the corporatization of the funeral industry, here.
• Diane Duane writes, from her own personal history with Star Trek, about how one can be a writer who ends up writing for a media franchise.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections considers the job of tasting, and rating, different cuts of lamb.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at a nondescript observatory in the Mojave desert of California that maps the asteroids of the solar system.
• Roads and Kingdoms interviews Eduardo Chavarin about, among other things, Tijuana.
• Drew Rowsome loves the SpongeBob musical.
• Peter Rukavina announces that Charlottetown has its first public fast charger for electric vehicles.
• The Russian Demographics Blog considers the impact of space medicine, here.
• The Signal reports on how the Library of Congress is making its internet archives more readily available, here.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers how the incredibly isolated galaxy MCG+01-02-015 will decay almost to nothing over almost uncountable eons.
• Strange Company reports on the trial and execution of Christopher Slaughterford for murder. Was there even a crime?
• Strange Maps shares a Coudenhove-Kalergi map imagining the division of the world into five superstates.
• Understanding Society considers entertainment as a valuable thing, here.
• Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine announces his new book, Où va l’argent des pauvres?
• John Scalzi at Whatever looks at how some mailed bread triggered a security alert, here.
• Window on Eurasia reports on the massive amount of remittances sent to Tajikistan by migrant workers, here.
• Arnold Zwicky notes a bizarre no-penguins sign for sale on Amazon.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer considers how a stellar-mass black hole of 70 solar masses got so unaccountably huge.
• Alex Tolley at Centauri Dreams considers the colours of photosynthesis, and how they might reveal the existence of life on exoplanets.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares some links on humans in the Paleolithic.
• Jonathan Wynn at the Everyday Sociology Blog considers the scripts of jokes.
• Gizmodo reports on the repurposed China-Netherlands radio telescope operating from an orbit above the far side of the Moon.
• JSTOR Daily considers the political rhetoric of declinism.
• Language Log considers the controversy over the future of the apostrophe.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog notes a YouGov prediction of a Conservative majority in the UK and how this prediction is not value-neutral.
• Marginal Revolution shares a paper from India noting how caste identities do affect the labour supply.
• Ursula Lindsay at the NYR Daily considers if the political crisis in Lebanon, a product of economic pressures and sectarianism, might lead to a revolutionary transformation of the country away from sectarian politics.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections looks at some of the many complicated and intermingled issues of contemporary Australia.
• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest projects funded by the ESA.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel shares ten beautiful photos taken in 2019 by the Hubble.
• Strange Company reports on the strange unsolved disappearance of Lillian Richey from her Idaho home in 1964.
• Window on Eurasia shares a Russian criticism of the Ukrainian autocephalous church as a sort of papal Protestantism.
• Arnold Zwicky considers the positive potential of homoeros.

[URBAN NOTE] Eight Toronto links

• blogTO notes the strange house, a fantasia inspired by Greece, at 1016 Shaw Street.
• blogTO shares photos from inside Paradise Theatre on Bloor, reopened after 13 years.
• blogTO notes that GO Transit will now be offering customers unlimited rides on Sundays for just $C 10.
• Photos of infamous Toronto chair girl Marcella Zoia celebrating her 20th birthday are up at blogTO, here.
• Many residents displaced by the Gosford fire in North York have been moved to hotels. Global News reports.
• A TTC worker has launched a court case against the TTC and city of Toronto over issues of air quality. Global News reports.
• Jamie Bradburn reports on how the Toronto press covered the opening of the Suez Canal, here.
• Transit Toronto explains what, exactly, workers are building at Eglinton station and Yonge and Eglinton more generally.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the findings that the LISA Pathfinder satellite was impacted by hypervelocity comet fragments.
• Centauri Dreams reports on what we have learned about interstellar comet Borisov.
• Bruce Dorminey notes the ESA’s Matisse instrument, capable of detecting nanodiamonds orbiting distant stars.
• Gizmodo reports a new study of the great auk, now extinct, suggesting that humans were wholly responsible for this extinction with their hunting.
• The Island Review links to articles noting the existential vulnerability of islands like Venice and Orkney to climate change.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the claim of Tucker Carlson–perhaps not believably retracted by him–to be supporting Russia versus Ukraine.
• Language Hat reports on the new Indigemoji, emoji created to reflect the culture and knowledge of Aboriginal groups in Australia.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes one of the sad consequences of the American president being a liar.
• James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the optimism of the spending plans of Labour in the UK, a revived Keynesianism.
• Marginal Revolution notes the exceptional cost of apartments built for homeless people in San Francisco.
• Strange Maps looks at some remarkable gravity anomalies in parts of the US Midwest.
• Towleroad notes the support of Jamie Lee Curtis for outing LGBTQ people who are homophobic politicians.
• Understanding Society looks at organizations from the perspective of them as open systems.
• Whatever’s John Scalzi gives a generally positive review of the Pixel 4.
• Arnold Zwicky notes the irony of sex pills at an outpost of British discount chain Poundland.

[PHOTO] Two maps, Dupont Street

The juxtaposition of these two tapestry maps in adjacent storefront windows of a building apparently converted to residential uses, one a map of the Bermuda Triangle and a one of the map of the Junction Triangle neighbourhood where the building is located, is very funny.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Montréal links

• Renovating the Oratoire St. Joseph will surely be costly. CTV News reports.
• CBC Montreal looks back to when the Montreal Expos seemed like they might not be bought.
• Le Devoir notes how, in Québec, the Liberals are concentrated on the islands of Montreal and in Laval, in their fortress.
• An old Montreal metro car has been repurposed as a hangout for Polytechnique students. CBC reports
• CBC Montreal reports on the proposal of Matt McLauchlin to name a plaza at Frontenac metro station after murdered activist Joe Rose. I like the idea.

[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.