[PHOTO] Sixteen photos of the Pacific Mall (@thepacificmall)

The Pacific Mall, on the north side of Steele's Avenue in Markham just the other side of the street from Toronto proper, is one of the GTA's best-known Chinese shopping malls. Twenty years old, it can still draw crowds late on a Friday evening.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross takes a look at the dystopian future we've created for ourselves with the help of Big Data.


• Kambiz Kamrani at Anthropology net notes the discovery of an Ancient Beringian population involved in the peopling of the Americas.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers the awesome possibility of life on pulsar planets, i.e. on planets that survived or were made by a supernova.


• Centauri Dreams suggests that dust, not ET artifacts, may explain the odd light coming from KIC 8462852, aka Boyajian's Star.


• Crooked Timber considers the surprisingly mixed emotions of unions regarding the idea of a guaranteed minimum income.


• Far Outliers takes a look at the diverse non-German soldiers serving in occupied France in the Second World War.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas considers parallels between the mentality of Silicon Valley and totalitarianism.


• Hornet Stories considers the questionable idea of a "gold star" or "platinum star" gay person. What, exactly, is being celebrated?


• JSTOR Daily notes the gendered nature of the supermarket of mid-20th century North America.


• Language Hat celebrates the establishment of Hakka as an official language in Taiwan, as does Language Log.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that the previous Oregon laws against self-service gas stations helped boost employment for the vulnerable.


• Lingua Franca considers the concept of "ghosting", linguistically at otherwise.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining how creativity has clustered in cities in the past.


• Out There shares the arguments of Charles Miller for infrastructure to support crewed expansion and settlement in space, starting with the Moon.


• Peter Rukavina talks about his last visit, with his son, to the Sears store in Charlottetown.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that 2018 may be the year we finally take a picture of a black hole, Sagittarius A* in the heart of our galaxy.


• To what extent is history probabilistic? Understanding Society considers.


• Window on Eurasia notes controversy in Siberia over Chinese investors who come in and disregard local sensitivities and regulations.

[URBAN NOTE] Six Toronto links: Metrolinx, Yonge and Bloor, transitions, Fort York, U of T, churches

• Steve Munro finds much wrong with the idea of transit fare integration across the GTA through Metrolinx, over at his blog.


• blogTO notes the possibility of a new Apple store, this one at Yonge and Bloor.


• Christopher Hume notes that 2018 is going to be a year of many transitions for Toronto, over at the Toronto Star.


• An ancient First Nations arrowhead found at Fort York eighty years ago has been turned over to the city by the woman who found it. The Toronto Star reports.


• Alex Bozikovic quite likes the architecture of the University of Toronto's downtown campus, over at The Globe and Mail.


• I have been talking about the trend of converting old church buildings in downtown Toronto into condominiums for years, even sharing photos of conversions. Why not do this? The Globe and Mail describes this trend.

[URBAN NOTE] Six links on future cities: new ones, technology, highways, recovery, density, Quayside

• Wade Shepard at Forbes notes the hundreds of entirely new cities being built up around the world.


• Ron Sullivan at Motherboard notes some of the new technologies needed to make future cities liveable.


• Douglas Murphy at The Guardian notes some of the cities around the world that fought against ill-judged highway projects, Toronto and the Spadina Expressway featuring prominently in this list.


• Will American cities left behind by the financial crash have a chance to catch up? One hopes. Bloomberg reports.


• Global News notes a Fraser Institute report suggesting Vancouver--and other Canadian cities--lag behind many peers in density. They can become more affordable, in other words, if they shift to denser residential patterns.


• Ian Austen at The New York Times takes a look at the Google project in Quayside here in Toronto, and what it might mean (and what it might threaten, too).