[URBAN NOTE] Six Toronto links

• NOW Toronto reports on the long-time independent weekly’s sale to a venture capital firm, here.
• The Yonge-Eglinton Centre now hosts a venue where people can nap in peace. Toronto Life has photos, here.
• The family of North York van attack victim Anne-Marie D’Amico hopes to raise one million dollars for a women’s shelter. The National Post reports.
• Toronto Community Housing, after a terrible accident, has banned its tenants from having window air conditioners. Global News reports.
• blogTO reports on the ridiculous heights to which surge pricing took ride fares on Uber and Lyft during yesterday morning’s shutdown.
• blogTO notes that the Ontario government has provided funding to study the idea of extension of the Eglinton Crosstown west to Pearson Airport.

[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.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Anthro{dendum} features an essay examining trauma and resiliency as encountered in ethnographic fieldwork.
• Architectuul highlights a new project seeking to promote historic churches built in the United Kingdom in the 20th century.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait examines Ahuna Mons, a muddy and icy volcano on Ceres, and looks at the nebula Westerhout 40.
• Centauri Dreams notes the recent mass release of data from a SETI project, and notes the discovery of two vaguely Earth-like worlds orbiting the very dim Teegarden’s Star, just 12 light-years away.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes that having universities as a safe space for trans people does not infringe upon academic freedom.
• The Crux looks at the phenomenon of microsleep.
• D-Brief notes evidence that the Milky Way Galaxy was warped a billion years ago by a collision with dark matter-heavy dwarf galaxy Antlia 2, and notes a robotic fish powered by a blood analogue.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that India plans on building its own space station.
• Earther notes the recording of the song of the endangered North Pacific right whale.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the role of emotional labour in leisure activities.
• Far Outliers looks at how Japan prepared for the Battle of the Leyte Gulf in 1944.
• Gizmodo looks at astronomers’ analysis of B14-65666, an ancient galactic collision thirteen billion light-years away, and notes that the European Space Agency has a planned comet interception mission.
• io9 notes how the plan for Star Trek in the near future is to not only have more Star Trek, but to have many different kinds of Star Trek for different audiences.
• Joe. My. God. notes the observation of Pete Buttigieg that the US has probably already had a gay president.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which the rhetoric of Celtic identity has been used, and notes that the archerfish uses water ejected from its eyes to hunt.
• Language Hat looks at why Chinese is such a hard language to learn for second-language learners, and looks at the Suso monastery in Spain, which played a key role in the coalescence of the Spanish language.
• Language Log looks at the complexities of katakana.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the death of deposed Egypt president Mohammed Morsi looks like a slow-motion assassination, and notes collapse of industrial jobs in the Ohio town of Lordstown, as indicative of broader trends.
• The LRB Blog looks at the death of Mohamed Morsi.
• The Map Rom Blog shares a new British Antarctic Survey map of Greenland and the European Arctic.
• Marginal Revolution notes how non-religious people are becoming much more common in the Middle East, and makes the point that the laying of cable for the transatlantic telegraph is noteworthy technologically.
• Noah Smith at Noahpionion takes the idea of the Middle East going through its own version of the Thirty Years War seriously. What does this imply?
• The NYR Daily takes a look at a Lebanon balanced somehow on the edge, and looks at the concentration camp system of the United States.
• The Planetary Society Blog explains what people should expect from LightSail 2, noting that the LightSail 2 has launched.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw points readers to his stories on Australian spy Harry Freame.
• Rocky Planet explains, in the year of the Apollo 50th anniversary, why the Moon matters.
• Drew Rowsome reviews, and praises, South African film Kanarie, a gay romp in the apartheid era.
• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper examining the relationship between childcare and fertility in Belgium, and looks at the nature of statistical data from Turkmenistan.
• The Strange Maps Blog shares a map highlighting different famous people in the United States.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why different galaxies have different amounts of dark matter, and shares proof that the Apollo moon landings actually did happen.
• Towleroad notes the new evidence that poppers, in fact, are not addictive.
• Window on Eurasia warns about the parlous state of the Volga River.
• Arnold Zwicky takes an extended look at the mid-20th century gay poet Frank O’Hara.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Anthropology.net shares in the debunking of the Toba catastrophe theory.
• Architectuul features Mirena Dunu’s exploration of the architecture of the Black Sea coastal resorts of Romania, built under Communism.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the importance of sleep hygiene and of being well-rested.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the filaments of Orion, indicators of starbirth.
• Centauri Dreams notes how solar sails and the Falcon Heavy can be used to expedite the exploration of the solar system.
• D-Brief notes the discovery of debris marking the massive flood that most recently refilled the Mediterranean on the seafloor near Malta.
• Lucy Ferriss at Lingua Franca uses a recent sickbed experience in Paris to explore the genesis of Bemelmans’ Madeline.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money noted recently the 15th anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, trigger of a world-historical catastrophe.
• The LRB Blog hosts Sara Roy’s defense of UNRWA and of the definition of the Palestinians under its case as refugees.
• The NYR Daily notes how the regnant conservative government in Israel has been limiting funding to cultural creators who dissent from the nationalist line.
• Roads and Kingdoms uses seven food dishes to explore the history of Malta.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why, even though dark matter is likely present in our solar system, we have not detected signs of it.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society examines the field of machine learning, and notes the ways in which its basic epistemology might be flawed.
• Window on Eurasia notes how the dropping of the ethnonym “Mongol” from the title of the former Buryat-Mongol autonomous republic sixty years ago still makes some Buryats unhappy.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross examines the connections between bitcoin production and the alt-right. Could cryptocurrency have seriously bad political linkages?
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes GW170680, a recent gravitational wave detection that is both immense in its effect and surprising for its detection being normal.
• Centauri Dreams reports on a new study suggesting hot Jupiters are so large because they are heated by their local star.
• Crooked Timber counsels against an easy condemnation of baby boomers as uniquely politically malign.
• Daily JSTOR notes one paper that takes a look at how the surprisingly late introduction of the bed, as a piece of household technology, changed the way we sleep.
• Dangerous Minds shares a 1968 newspaper interview with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, talking about Charlie Manson and his family and their influence on him.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the opioid epidemic and the way that it is perceived.
• At A Fistful of Euros, Alex Harrowell suggests that the unsolvable complexities of Northern Ireland may be enough to avoid a hard Brexit after all.
• The LRB Blog describes a visit to a seaside village in Costa Rica where locals and visitors try to save sea turtles.
• Lingua Franca reflects on the beauty of the Icelandic language.
• The Map Room Blog shares an awesome map depicting the locations of the stars around which we have detected exoplanets.
• Marginal Revolution notes the ill health of North Korean defectors, infected with parasites now unseen in South Korea.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the revival of fonio, a West African grain that is now starting to see successful marketing in Senegal.
• Spacing reviews a fascinating book examining the functioning of urban villages embedded in the metropoli of south China.
• Strange Company reports on the mysterious 1920 murder of famous bridge player Joseph Bowne Elwell.
• Towleroad reports on Larnelle Foster, a gay black man who was a close friend of Meghan Markle in their college years.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, although Ukraine suffered the largest number of premature dead in the Stalinist famines of the 1930s, Kazakhstan suffered the greatest proportion of dead.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell has a photo essay looking at the Berlin Brandenburg Airport, still years away from completion and beset by many complex failures of its advanced systems. What does the failure of this complex system say about others we may wish to build?

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes evidence that pitted terrain, as found on Ceres and Vesta, indicates subsurface ice.
• Dead Things links to evidence suggesting insomnia and poor sleep are not disorders, but rather evolutionary inheritances that were useful in the past.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the critical human role in the ongoing sixth extinction.
• Language Hat links to speculation that the Afroasiatic language family has its origins in the Natufian Levant.
• The LRB Blog reports on a fascinating French show about espionage, Le Bureau des légendes.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw reports on an important speech by Malcolm Turnbull on politics and Australia’s Liberal Party.
• The Planetary Society Blog shares Marc Rayman’s report on the latest discoveries of Dawn at Ceres.
• Spacing’ Sean Ruthven has a review of a beautiful book on the Sea Ranch, a northern California estate.
• Back in May, Septembre Anderson argued at Torontoist that rather than embracing diversity, Canadian media was more willing to wither.
• Window on Eurasia shares an argument suggesting Baltic Russians would not follow the Donbas into revolt because the Baltics are much better off economically.