[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Chinatown, neigthbourhoods, Port Lands, TTC maps, TTC open house

• Downtown Pets and Aquarium has reopened, just south of its old Chinatown location. blogTO reports.
• John Lorinc at Spacing writes about what Toronto should do as it moves towards an intensification of development in its neighbourhoods.
• Blayne Haggart writes at The Conversation about how the Sidewalk Labs plan for the Port Lands in Toronto really should become an election issue.
• Sean Marshall takes issue with some of the maps used by the TTC to advertise its different and varied routes.
• Robert Mackenzie at the Transit Toronto blog notes that, on Saturday the 21st, the TTC will be hosting open houses at the Leslie Barns and Greenwood Yard.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Toronto Coach Terminal, food banks, dogs, TTC, parties

• Tanya Mok at blogTO shares a vintage short film from 1970 at the Toronto Coach Terminal, “Depot.”
• The shortages of food in Toronto food banks are terrible. CBC Toronto reports.
• Dogs will be free to swim in select City of Toronto swimming pools this weekend. CBC Toronto reports.
• I will have to look for these TTC floor stickers installed at St. George station. blogTO reports.
• Richard Trapunski leads a roundtable discussion at NOW Toronto about the challenges facing party promoters in a gentrifying Toronto.

[CAT] Five #caturday links: Toronto, Australia, cat breeders, Taylor Swift, writers

• This blogTO video of a condo-dweller venturing onto a ledge to rescue his cat is still fresh one week later.
• Australia seeking to remove millions of feral cats for the benefit of its indigenous ecosystem makes sense, sadly. The New York Daily News reports.
• I agree entirely with the call in Wales to regulate cat breeders. BBC reports/u>.
• I am very pleased to learn that Taylor Swift is a cat person, featuring them in her videos, even. E Online reports.
• This essay by Tim Weed at Lithub examining the relationship between writers and cats is a gem.

[ISL] Five #PEI links: pets, diaspora, tourism, UPEI, Lawrence MacAulay

• A highly-publicized campaign to get Islanders to return to PEI failed to produce significant results, many arguing the government did nothing to create conditions for a return. CBC PEI reports.
• Tourism numbers have continued to grow on the Island, with 1.58 million recorded visits estimated by the end of this year. CBC PEI reports.
• Overall enrollment has continued to grow at UPEI, with particularly large spikes in international student enrollment. CBC PEI reports.
• Landlords on PEI can keep tenants from bringing their pets with them, sadly. (The contrast with other provinces is noteworthy.) CBC PEI reports.
• CBC PEI notes the political career of long-time Liberal MP Lawrence MacAulay, who has served for three decades.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Detroit, Metropolis, Seattle, Foster City, Kigali

• If ever I make it to Detroit, the John K King bookstore would surely be a must-visit. Atlas Obscura reports.
• Metropolis, Illinois, is celebrating Superman. Where better to do so? Wired reports.
• Seattle, like so many cities around North America, is apparently facing a gentrification that makes it increasingly uncomfortable for too many. Crosscut has it.
• The San Francisco Bay area community of Foster City faces imminent danger from rising sea levels. CBC reports.
• Decades after the horrors of the mid-1990s, dogs in the Rwandan capital of Kigali are starting to be treated as potential pets again. National Geographic reports.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Anthropology.net’s Kambiz Kamrani looks at the classical Mayan trade in pets, dogs and cats particularly.
• Dangerous Minds shares some vintage cheesecake ads for video and arcade games from 1980s Japan.
• Dead Things considers an examination of the thesis that the fabulous horns of some dinosaurs were used as sexual signals.
• Hornet Stories nominates some queer people to get stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
• JSTOR Daily tells the story of Bobbi Gibb, the woman who in 1966 crashed the Boston Marathon.
• Language Hattells of Toty Samed, an Angolan musician who writes songs not in the now-dominant Portuguese but in his ancestral Kimbundu.
• Steven Attewell at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the ways in which the metaphor of mutants has been used by Marvel Comics to explore themes of racism and marginalization.
• At the LRB Blog, Matthew Porges notes how European Union opposition to the annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco is counterbalanced by the need to keep Morocco as a partner.
• r/mapporn shared a beautiful map of the Great Lakes, Nayanno-Nibiimaang Gichigamiin or “The Five Freshwater Seas”, from the Ojibwe perspective.
• The Map Room Blog shares Christian Tate’s transit-style map of Middle Earth.
• Marginal Revolution links to an essay arguing against the United States’ dropping the penny and the nickel, on the grounds that these expensive coins are loss-leaders for currency generally.
• The NYR Daily takes a look at early 20th century Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyan, a man whose influence is visible in the Putin era.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the eye-catching male photography of Ekaterina Zakharova.
• David Post’s analysis at the Volokh Conspiracy of the contract between Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump is a must-read.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the Russian government has failed to cultivate soft power, or wider influence, in the West.

[NEWS] Some Tuesday links

• Bloomberg notes how an economic boom will let Sweden postpone hard decisions, looks at the popularity of the Korean Wave in China, suggests that subsidies are going to be a big issue for cash-short Arab governments, looks at the investigation in Bulgaria of groups which arrest refugees, and looks at the long-term problems of the Russian economy.
• CBC reports on a Saskatchewan woman who has a refuge for pet rats.
• Global News illustrates the dire social conditions in the Ontario North, hitting particularly strongly First Nations groups.
• The Guardian reports on speculation that Neanderthals may have died in significant numbers from African diseases brought by human migrants.
• MacLean’s notes a study of handwriting styles in ancient Israel which suggest that literacy was reasonably common.
• The Mississauga News reports on a new PFLAG support group for South Asians in Peel.
• National Geographic notes the strong pressures on island birds towards flightlessness.
• Science Mag notes subtle genetic incompatibilities between human women and male Neanderthals which would have hindered reproduction.
• The USA Today network has a story examining the recent HIV outbreak in Indiana.
• Vice reports on the huge cleavages within the NDP, something also examined at the CBC.

[LINK] Two notes on chimpanzees who drink and have pet dogs

Al Jazeera reported this from a study of chimpanzees in Guinea-Bissau.

During a 17-year study, chimps in the West African country of Guinea were observed on numerous occasions imbibing a fermented milky sap from raffia palms, tapped by local people to make into an alcoholic drink.

Incidents of lone drinkers and communal sessions were seen, according to a paper published in the British journal Royal Society Open Science.

Researchers suggested the findings give insight into the social habits of chimpanzees in the wild. They also back the “drunken monkey” theory, which holds that apes and humans share a genetic ability to break down alcohol that was handed down from a common ancestor.

Under observation, the apes scrunched up leaves in their mouths, molding them into spongy pads that they then dipped into the sap-gathering container, which villagers attach to the tree near its crown.

Tests showed that the beverage’s alcoholic content varied from 3.1 percent to 6.9 percent — the equivalent of strong beer.

Meanwhile, the New Scientist noted that gelada baboons in eastern Africa appear to have domesticated wolves.

In the alpine grasslands of eastern Africa, Ethiopian wolves and gelada monkeys are giving peace a chance. The geladas – a type of baboon – tolerate wolves wandering right through the middle of their herds, while the wolves ignore potential meals of baby geladas in favour of rodents, which they can catch more easily when the monkeys are present.

The unusual pact echoes the way dogs began to be domesticated by humans [. . .], and was spotted by primatologist Vivek Venkataraman, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, during fieldwork at Guassa plateau in the highlands of north-central Ethiopia.

Even though the wolves occasionally prey on young sheep and goats, which are as big as young geladas, they do not normally attack the monkeys – and the geladas seem to know that, because they do not run away from the wolves.

“You can have a wolf and a gelada within a metre or two of each other and virtually ignoring each other for up to 2 hours at a time,” says Venkataraman. In contrast, the geladas flee immediately to cliffs for safety when they spot feral dogs, which approach aggressively and often prey on them.

When walking through a herd – which comprises many bands of monkeys grazing together in groups of 600 to 700 individuals – the wolves seem to take care to behave in a non-threatening way. They move slowly and calmly as they forage for rodents and avoid the zigzag running they use elsewhere, Venkataraman observed.

[NEWS] Some Wednesday links

• Al Jazeera looks at Ello, considers the controversy over language fluency requirements in Navajo elections, looks at Malaysian criticism of a pro-dog event in that Muslim country, wonders what will happen to the Caucasus, looks at the issues of some religious minorities in American schools, examines the geopolitical challenges of falling oil prices, looks at Sioux problems with child custody in the United States, and notes that new British immigrants from the European Union contribute more than they cost.
• Bloomberg suggests sanctions are starting to cause a Russian brain drain, looks at controversy over reports a Japanese kidnap victim died in North Korea in 1994, and suggests North Africa will become a key natural gas supplier to Europe.
• Bloomberg view criticizes the patience of Sony shareholders in Japan, notes the Israeli prioritization of settlements over friends, provides recommendations on diminishing separatist movements, and looks at the role of immigration in possibly galvanizing the British desire to leave the European Union.
• CBC notes that former Olympian Waneek Horn-Miller is suing Kahnawake council for its racial restrictions on residence, and notes Lynn Gehl suing in Ontario to get her status back.
• The Inter Press Service suggests Israel is set to deport Bedouins from the West Bank, notes the plight of Pakistan’s Ahmadis, looks at the resettlement of Iraqi Christians in Jordan, and notes the departure of Kyrgyzstan’s teachers for higher-paying unskilled jobs.
• MacLean’s notes Vice media’s new television channel, looks at the association of Muslim converts with terrorism, and criticizes an egg-freezing program.
• Open Democracy looks at media freedom in the former Yugoslavia, and considers separatism generally and in Catalonia particularly.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• The Dragon’s Tales links to news of remarkably thorough reconstruction of Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes.
• Eastern Approaches visits eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
• Geocurrents’ Martin Lewis notes that Pakistan still apparently lays claim to the former Muslim-run princely state of Junagadh in Gujarat.
• Joe. My. God. and Towleroad both note a proposed bill before the Russian parliament that would require the fingerprinting of all HIV-positive people in a national database.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes a continuing crisis in the availability of rental spaces in the American housing market, linking it to low-density zoning.
• Torontoist notes the sad loss of a pet pigeon on Queen Street West.
• Towleroad notes continuing controversy over the use of the HIV drug Truvada as a prophylactic against infection.
• The Volokh Conspiracy visits controveries over affirmative action in the United States where different minorities (here, Asian-Americans) have different claims.
• Window on Eurasia visits the increasingly problematic lot of Crimean Tatars in their Russian-occupied homeland, notes that traditionally pro-Russian Belarus is newly wary of its eastern partner, and quotes from a journalist who predicts catastrophe from a Russian pursuit of empire.