[BLOG] Five Marginal Revolution links (@margrev)

• Marginal Revolution features a critical if friendly review of the new Emmanuel Todd book, Lineages of Modernity.
• Marginal Revolution considers the problems of excessive consumer activism, here.
• Marginal Revolution notes a new book looking at natural gas economics in Europe, here.
• Marginal Revolution notes new evidence that YouTube algorithms do not tend to radicalize users, here.
• Marginal Revolution notes the few countries where the average person was richer in 2009 than in 2019, notably Greece and Venezuela.

[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 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.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: George Daniell, Black Party, Troye Sivan, Natalie Wynn, Pete Buttigieg

• Queerty profiles the new permanent exhibition in Miami of mid-20th century photographer George Daniell, whose works often including queer subjects date back to the 1940s.
• Mike Miksche writes at Slate about the import of the Black Party in New York City in 1989, for partying gay and bi men in the era of AIDS.
• This extended interview with Troye Sivan at The Guardian exposes a lot of this out star.
• This VICE interview with Contrapoints star Natalie Wynn makes me want to start watching her, now, on YouTube.
• John Aravosis is quite right to argue, at The Daily Beast, that arguing Pete Buttigieg is not gay enough is ridiculous.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: James Barry, Madonna, Maddie Blaustein, Wilton Manors, LIlly Singh

• Them notes the transphobia involved in novelist E.J. Levy’s apparent determination to note define 19th century doctor James Barry as a trans man in an upcoming novel.
• Hornet Stories notes the long history of support of Madonna for LGBTQ people and causes, from the 1980s on.
• Them tells the story of trans writer voice actor Maddie Blaustein, perhaps most famous for voicing the character of Meowth from Pokémon.
• VICE reports from Wilton Manors, the Florida town where all the government officials are LGBTQ.
• The coming-out of YouTube star Lilly Singh as bisexual is huge news, for South Asians and the wider community. (How To Be A Bawse is a great book.) VICE Congratulations! has it.

[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?

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the bizarre extrasolar visitor ‘Oumuamua, as does Centauri Dreams, as does Bruce Dorminey. Yes, this long cylindrical extrasolar visitor swinging around the sun on a hyperbolic orbit does evoke classic SF.
• The Boston Globe’s The Big Picture shares some photos of autumn from around the world.
• D-Brief examines how artificial intelligences are making their own videos, albeit strange and unsettling ones.
• Dangerous Minds shares some Alfred Stieglitz photos of Georgia O’Keefe.
• Daily JSTOR takes a look at the mulberry tree craze in the United States.
• The Dragon’s Gaze links to a paper examining at water delivery to terrestrial planets in other solar systems. Worlds with as little water as Earth are apparently difficult to produce in this model.
• Hornet Stories profiles the gay destination of Puerto Vallarta, in Mexico.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the new vulnerability of Haitian migrants in the United States.
• The LRB Blog notes the end of the Mugabe era in Zimbabwe.
• The NYR Daily features a stellar Elaine Showalter review of a Sylvia Plath exhibition at the Smithsonian National Picture Gallery.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw reports on how the production of New England Cheese reflects the modernization of Australian agriculture.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the awkward position of Rohingya refugees in India, in Jammu, at a time when they are facing existential pressures from all sides.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel shares twenty beautiful photos of Mars.
• Towleroad shares a fun video from Pink, “Beautiful Trauma”, featuring Channing Tatum.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that a Trump executive order threatening sanctuary cities has been overturned in court.
• Window on Eurasia notes one study claiming that the children of immigrant workers in Russia tend to do better than children of native-born Russians.

[NEWS] Five links: American gun owners, Japanese inequality, Polish politics, Lexit, #elsagate

• The small minority of American gun owners who own huge numbers of guns, more than they could seemingly use, is the subject of this study at The Guardian.
• The Japanese economy may be growing, but so is inequality, Bloomberg reports.
• This Open Democracy examination of the sharpening political divides in Poland, particularly outside of Warsaw, is gripping. It starts with the self-immolation of Upper Silesian Piotr Szczęsny in his country’s capital.
• Julian Savarer takes a look at the many problems with “Lexit”, the idea of a left-wing argument for Brexit.
• James Bridle looks at the complex human and artificial mechanisms behind the production of so much wrong children’s video content. #elsagate is only the tip of it all. Medium hosts the article.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Acts of Minor Treason’s Andrew Barton reacts to the series premiere of Orville, finding it oddly retrograde and unoriginal.
• Centauri Dreams shares Larry Klaes’ article considering the impact of the 1956 classic Forbidden Planet on science and science fiction alike.
• The Dragon’s Gaze links to a paper wondering if it is by chance that Earth orbits a yellow dwarf, not a dimmer star.
• Drone360 shares a stunning video of a drone flying into Hurricane Irma.
• Hornet Stories celebrates the 10th anniversary of Chris Crocker’s “Leave Britney Alone!” video. (It was important.)
• Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders if 16 years are long enough to let people move beyond taboo images, like those of the jumpers.
• The LRB Blog takes a look at the young Dreamers, students, who have been left scrambling by the repeal of DACA.
• The Map Room Blog notes how a Québec plan to name islands in the north created by hydro flooding after literature got complicated by issues of ethnicity and language.
• Marginal Revolution notes the rise of internal tourism in China, and soon, of Chinese tourists in the wider world.
• The NYR Daily has an interview arguing that the tendency to make consciousness aphysical or inexplicable is harmful to proper study.
• Roads and Kingdoms has a brief account of a good experience with Indonesian wine.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell links to five reports about Syria. They are grim reading.

[ISL] “Working Title: Indie movie filmed on P.E.I. released on YouTube”

CBC News’ Sarah Betts reports on how some young Island filmmakers are getting their work out there. This is exciting stuff: the Internet age really can unleash much creativity.

When Charlie Steele didn’t get accepted into film school, he knew there was only one thing he could do: make his own film.

Steele’s first project, Working Title, was filmed on the Island and premiered at the Silver Fox Curling Club in Summerside on Dec. 22.

“I was really nervous and unsure of what I was going to do with my year and kind of my answer to that was, ‘Well, if I didn’t get accepted to film school, if I’m gonna keep up, I’d better start writing a project right now,'” he said.

The film was made using equipment and acting skills from people he only kind of knew before filming began.

Their Facebook profile is here.