[PHOTO] Six photos from the last days of Target in the Stockyards, Toronto

At the beginning of April, I went to the Target location in the Stockyards shopping complex on St. Clair West to bear witness to the last days of the chain. I had heard of Target's arrival in Canada back in 2013, and I'd of course been following the news of the chain's collapse, but I had never actually managed to get there. I wanted to see once for myself, and what better location to go than the one not only closest to me but the one that was custom-built for its location? (The other stores, as it happens, were converted Zellers.)













These six photos belong to a set a twenty-nine that you can view in full at my Flickr page.

[CAT[ Shakespeare, my adorable killer

He caught a rat this morning. (I think it was a rat. A large rodent, at least.)

[CAT] "Vladimir Putin Really Loves Tigers — And It's Actually Making a Difference in the World"

Laura Dattaro of Vice reports on the resurgence of the Amur tiger in the Russian Far East, a consequence of sustained support from the highest levels of the Russian state for conservation policies.

A recent census found as many as 540 Amur tigers living in Russia's eastern forests, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). That's an improvement over the last count, in 2005, which found between 423 and 502 of the tigers. In the 1940s, their numbers were no more than 40.

"It seems to have increased quite significantly, and that's extremely encouraging," Barney Long, director of species conservation for the WWF, told VICE News. "The fact that [the Russians] can sustain that over such a large area over time is what's really impressive."

Amur tigers, also known as Siberian tigers, are the largest tiger subspecies in the world. They also live farther north than any other tiger, historically inhabiting Russia, northeast China, the Korean Peninsula, and northeast Mongolia.

But due to poaching and habitat loss, they're now confined almost entirely to Russia's Far East, where the few remaining tigers roam a vast area of nearly 700,000 square miles, about the size of Alaska. Legal hunting in the 19th century drove their numbers down so badly that by the end of the 1930s, when a Russian biologist conducted the first survey of the species, less than 30 of them remained on the planet, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

Russia has had strict anti-poaching measures in place for at least the last two decades, Long said, and has taken additional measures in recent years to create new parks and protect the tigers' prey animals. In 2010, the country banned logging of the Korean pine, which provides food for the deer and boar that tigers rely on to survive the harsh winter months.

[CAT] "Japanese robot cat Doraemon helps ease diplomatic tensions with China"

The Guardian's Justin McCurry reports on how the popularity in China of a film starring a Japanese robot cat, Doraeman, might lead to a softening of Chinese attitudes. Might.

Just a few months ago, Chinese media denounced him as a counter-revolutionary.

Now, though, Doraemon – Japan’s beloved robot cat – is easing diplomatic tensions between Tokyo and Beijing, and breaking box-office records in the process.

The 3D animated film Stand By Me Doraemon brought in 30m yuan ($4.8m) in receipts on its opening day last Thursday, and repeated the feat the following day.

As parents and children packed out Chinese cinemas, receipts surged to 85m yuan and 88m yuan on Saturday and Sunday, surpassing the previous single-day record for animated movies, held by the US film Kung Fu Panda 2.

According to estimates, revenue from the Doraemon movie accounted for more than half of China’s total box-office revenues on Sunday, easily beating the US superhero blockbuster Avengers: Age of Ultron.

[CAT] "What Cats Taught Us About Perception"

Via lostmuskrat and Laughing Squid, I came across a clip from the PBS Digital Studios show Brain Craft where host Vanessa Hill explains the significant role that cats played in the discovery of the dynamics of vision.

"What Cats Taught Us About Perception" (Watch on YouTube)

[BRIEF NOTE] How Avengers/New Avengers can illuminate the failures of contemporary politics

In the immediate aftermath of the recent British election, which gave the Conservative Party a majority and confirmed David Cameron as prime minister, an edited image from Marvel comics circulated. In it, some rather Orwellian phrases were superimposed on the speech bubbles of notorious Latverian tyrant Doctor Doom.

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I was amused, too.

The thing to remember, though, the thing that complicates all this, is that both David Cameron and Dr. Doom actually are at least somewhat justified, or at least can get away with saying what they want. In Cameron's case, this is a direct consequence of his party's crushing victory in the British elections, as the Conservatives' competitors were unable to field a strong challenger or compelling ideological platform. In the case of Dr. Doom, he can be quite right in his own right. In fact, as of current printing, Dr. Doom is very nearly a hero, as the person who saved the last shreds of the multiverse from destruction. Dr. Doom works; the heroes, not at all.

Background, first. Author Jonathan Hickman has been co-writing the two titles that are the arguable centrepieces of the Marvel line. Straddling between the two books, Hickman for the past several years has been telling the story of how incursions have been destroying the multiverse, and how the Illuminati--a self-appointed council of the wise and powerful--do nothing to stop it. A passage in New Avengers #2 demonstrated the physical phenomenon.





The only way to prevent these universes from being destroyed is to destroy an Earth in one of the universes, so avoiding this collision. For many issues, the Illuminati have been lucky, with the other Earths threatening their own being destroyed by forces native to their own universes, or having been already decimated by other interdimensional phenomenon and so being available to be destroyed by the planet-killing antimatter bombs they have built by the hundred. Then, their run of luck breaks as they come into contact with another Earth defended by heroes. After the Illuminati end up killing them, in New Avengers #21, they are left morally exhausted. They would have let their world and the heroes' world collide and end the two universes, but for the exceptionally pragmatic Namor, who realizes that their betrayed moral scruples mean nothing if they will condemn two universes to death.





This marks the end of heroism in the Marvel universe, as Black Bolt's mad brother Maximus reminds him in New Avengers #24. People who so badly betrayed their moral principles in the first place have little ability to condemn those people who do not recognize those principles at all, especially when these principles actually work.



In a telling moment, on the eve of a threatened destruction, Illuminati member Henry McCoy was condemned by his earlier self. This earlier iteration was brought forward in time by McCoy with his fellows, the other original X-Men, in Brian Michael Bendis' in the All-New X-Men book. Why did he do this, breaking the universe in the process? McCoy the elder wanted to make a point to once-friend Cyclops; he had lost his way.



Dr. Doom, meanwhile, has saved the last fragments of the multiverse from destruction by the near-omnipotent Beyonders who surrounded it, who wanted to destroy it to prove a point. What will happen next depends on the outcome of the ongoing Battleworld crossover, perhaps as much a consolidation as a remake. It is true, however, that in saving what remains of reality where the Illuminati could not Dr. Doom has proven himself more effective than any of the heroes.

What is the point of politics and heroism, Hickman has been asking, without firm principles? Might there not be situations where equivocating can cost dearly? What is to be done?

Food for thought.