[CAT] Five #caturday links: strays, Winnipeg, scent, Instagram, paper

• This letter to the Windsor Star makes the point that city needs to tend to its stray cats. (So do all cities, I bet.)
• A cat café in Winnipeg has reopened. CBC reports.
• Phys.org reports on a paper noting that the scent of male cats is made by microbes inhabiting cat bodies.
• Apparently Instagram accounts of fat cats on diets are a thing. The Guardian reports.
• Why do cats so love cardboard and paper? MNN reports.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait considers the question of where, exactly, the dwarf galaxy Segue-1 came from.
• Centauri Dreams considers the import of sodium chloride for the water oceans of Europa, and for what they might hold.
• D-Brief wonders if dark matter punched a hole in the Milky Way Galaxy.
• JSTOR Daily warns that the increasing number of satellites in orbit of Earth might hinder our appreciation of the night sky.
• The LRB Blog looks at the complications of democracy and politics in Mauritania.
• Marginal Revolution wonders about the nature of an apparently very decentralized city of Haifa.
• Corey S. Powell at Out There notes that, while our knowledge of the Big Bang is certainly imperfect, the odds of it being wrong are quite, quite low.
• The Planetary Society Blog looks at the Hayabusa 2 exploration of asteroid Ryugu.
• Vintage Space examines how Apollo astronauts successfully navigated their way to the Moon.
• Window on Eurasia looks at press discussion in Russia around the decriminalization of soft drugs like marijuana.
• Arnold Zwicky looks at a comic depicting a “mememobile.”

[NEWS] Twelve LGBTQ links (#lgbtq, #queer)

• Daily Xtra looks at 50 years of fighting for LGBTQ rights in Canada, here.
• Them links to a variety of classic documentaries about LGBTQ life before Stonewall, here.
• Atlas Obscura explains why lesbians and potluck dinners are so closely associated with each other, here.
• Them looks at the controversies surrounding the construction of monuments to LGBTQ heroes of the past, here.
• VICE explains how venerable magazine Out was nearly ended by poor management, here.
• Wired looks at queer history in TV movies, here.
• Connor Garel at NOW Toronto writes, inspired by Paris Is Burning and the drag scene, about the importance of maintaining queer spaces, here.
• Enzo DiMatteo writes at NOW Toronto about the long history of homophobia of Doug Ford, here.
• Claire Provost writes at Open Democracy about the frighteningly well-coordinated global campaign by groups on the right against LGBTQ superheroes, here.
• Michael Waters at Daily Xtra explains the key role of young users of social media in keeping even obscure corners of LGBTQ history alive, here.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Centauri Dreams considers the recent study of near-Earth asteroid 1999 KW4, looking at it from the perspective of defending the Earth and building a civilization in space.
• Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber continues a debate on universal basic income.
• The Dragon’s Tales considers if India does need its own military space force.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how foster care in the United States (Canada, too, I’d add) was also synonymous with sending children off as unpaid farm labourers.
• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money shares a proposal, linking immigration to high-income countries to the idea of immigration as reparation for colonialism.
• The LRB Blog considers the ever-growing presence of the dead on networks like Facebook.
• Muhammad Idrees Ahmad at the NYR Daily looks at how Bellingcat and other online agencies have transformed investigative journalism.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a speech by the head of the Bank of Japan talking about the interactions of demographic change and economic growth.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the mystery behind the great mass of early black hole J1342+0928.
• Strange Company looks at the unsolved Christmas 1928 disappearance of young Melvin Horst from Orrville, Ohio. What happened?
• Window on Eurasia notes that Uzbekistan is moving the Latin script for Uzbek into closer conformity with its Turkish model.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: D-Day, pot shops, YouTube, Toronto Dance Theatre, Crossways

• Jamie Bradburn looks at how, 75 years ago, the media of Toronto responded to D-Day.
• Illegal marijuana shops in Toronto are being literally closed to the public, by the city putting large concrete blocks in their front doorways. blogTO reports.
• YouTube shutting down its space for creators in Toronto is not good news for aspiring local video stars. blogTO reports.
• Christopher House, long-time director of the Toronto Dance Theatre, is leaving his position. NOW Toronto reports.
• Amy Carlberg writes at blogTO about how the Crossways, the giant brutalist apartment towers at Dundas and Bloor, are becoming trendy, with a line of merchandise and the hashtag #crosswayswednesdays on Instagram.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait notes the first time that an exoplanet, HR 8799e, has been directly observed using optical interferometry.
• Centauri Dreams notes the possibility, demonstrated by the glimpsing of a circumplanetary disc around exoplanet PDS 70b, that we might be seeing a moon system in formation.
• The Citizen Science Salon looks what observers in Antarctica are contributing to our wealth of scientific knowledge.
• The Dragon’s Tales shares links to articles looking at the latest findings on the Precambrian Earth.
• The Frailest Thing’s L.M. Sacasas writes about his ambivalent response to a Twitter that, by its popularity, undermines the open web.
• Gizmodo notes that NASA is going to open up the International Space Station to tourists.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how croquet, upon its introduction in the 19th century United States, was seen as scandalous for the way it allowed men and women to mix freely.
• Shakezula at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the unaccountable fondness of at least two Maine Republican legislators for the Confederacy.
• Marginal Revolution suggests that the economic success of Israel in recent decades is a triumph of neoliberalism.
• Stephen Ellis at the NYR Daily writes about the gymnastics of Willem de Kooning.
• Drew Rowsome profiles out comic Brendan D’Souza.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the still strange galaxy NGC 1052-DF2, apparently devoid of dark matter.
• John Scalzi at Whatever shares his theory about a fixed quantity of flavor in strawberries of different sizes.
• Window on Eurasia looks at a contentious plan for a territorial swap between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Architectuul looks at some architecturally innovative pools.
• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait looks at Wolf 359, a star made famous in Star Trek for the Starfleet battle there against the Borg but also a noteworthy red dwarf star in its own right.
• Centauri Dreams looks at how the NASA Deep Space Atomic Clock will play a vital role in interplanetary navigation.
• The Crux considers the “drunken monkey” thesis, the idea that drinking alcohol might have been an evolutionary asset for early hominids.
• D-Brief reports on what may be the next step for genetic engineering beyond CRISPR.
• Bruce Dorminey looks at how artificial intelligence may play a key role in searching for threat asteroids.
• The Island Review shares some poetry from Roseanne Watt, inspired by the Shetlands and using its dialect.
• Livia Gershon writes at JSTOR Daily about how YouTube, by promising to make work fun, actually also makes fun work in psychologically problematic ways.
• Marginal Revolution notes how the relatively small Taiwan has become a financial superpower.
• Janine di Giovanni at the NYR Daily looks back at the 2000 intervention in Sierra Leone. Why did it work?
• Jamais Cascio at Open the Future looks back at a 2004 futurological exercise, the rather accurate Participatory Panopticon. What did he anticipate correctly? How? What does it suggest for us now to our world?
• The Planetary Society Blog notes that LightSail 2 will launch before the end of June.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at how the discovery of gas between galaxies helps solve a dark matter question.
• Strange Company shares a broad collection of links.
• Window on Eurasia makes the obvious observation that the West prefers a North Caucasus controlled by Russia to one controlled by Islamists.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at American diner culture, including American Chinese food.