[PHOTO] Graffiti for a queer future (#haikuforyouto)

I saw this graffiti in a Church Street establishment's washroom stall and liked it enough to want to preserve it. Having options, choice, is grand.

[PHOTO] Two Andrew Jacksons in Manhattan

These dollar bills fresh from a Chase ATM in Manhattan on Seventh seemed intrinsically photogenic. I had a right to find it: certainly with each Canadian dollar being worth only 80 cents US I paid for the privilege. The mass of small differences between English Canada and the United States--more accurately, I suppose, between Toronto and New York City--is the sort of thing that is always worth documenting for me.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Hornet Stories reports that there is now an out K-Pop star, the new Holland.


• Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res calls for the defeat of the disastrous Trump through crushing electoral defeats.


• JSTOR Daily notes the profound impact, social and otherwise, that Richardson's pioneering novel Pamela had on 18th century Europe.


• Language Log notes the declining use of the definite article in Agatha Christie and Ross Macdonald.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the need for a proper understanding of the political thought of Martin Luther King.


• The NYR Daily looks at an exhibition of the portraits of Jean-Honoré Fragonard.


• Drew Rowsome treats Get Out as a documentary, as much as a compelling horror movie about race relations.


• Window on Eurasia worries about the effective of private military groups, if allowed to become bigger, on Russian foreign policy. Question: what has their impact been on American foreign policy?

[NEWS] Seven notes about changing climes: winter, men, zoos, childcare minimum wage, Sears, NAFTA

• Global News reports on how Canadian zoos protect their animals from the unexpected cold of our country's winters.


• Emma Teitel wonders over at the Toronto Star why men underdress in winter. Is it some effort to prove a suitability for mating? (Me, I just tend to be warm, honestly.)


• Laurie Monsebraaten notes over at the Star that affordable childcare has become still more impossible in Toronto with the minimum wage increase. (The previous sentence reflects two structural issues with the Ontario economy.)
  
• CBC notes lessons Ontario can take, on minimum-wage increases, from Alberta and Seattle.


• Ian Hussey of the National Observer takes issue with five major claims against minimum wage increases.


• This account, of shoppers saying goodbye to a closing Toronto Sears store, is sad. The Toronto Star has it.


• Chantal Hébert notes at the Star that Andrew Scheer and the Conservative Party are best served by a, well, conservative policy, of waiting to see what happens with NAFTA.

[NEWS] Five notes about frontiers: South Tyrol, Brexit, Alps, eastern Ukraine, Djibouti

• Alessio Colonelli takes issue with the granting of a right to Austrian citizenship to only select residents of South Tyrol, over at Open Democracy.


• Immigration to the United Kingdom may be falling, Bloomberg reports, but this is not to the advantage of the British economy.


• Migrants trying to travel from Italy to France are unwittingly risking the terrible snow-bound conditions of the Alps. The National Post has the story.


• Bloomberg View suggests one way forward for peace in eastern Ukraine. I'm not sure, frankly, that this is a plausible path (that there are any, even).


• Politico Europe takes a look at the exceptional strategic importance of Djibouti for militaries around the world, the US and China included.

[NEWS] Four links on poverty and precarity: Brazil, Appalachia, United States, Mexico

• In this searing examination of a newly-impoverished family's life, Stephanie Nolen looks at how Brazil's deep income inequality really hasn't materially changed, over at The Globe and Mail.


• At Quartz, Gwynn Guildford explains the political and economic forces that have kept Appalachia poor and coal-dependent for well over a century.


• Noah Smith suggests at Bloomberg View that greater investment in infrastructure and dense construction, along with assisting people who need to move, could really save much of the United States from decline.


• Bloomberg notes a new Mexican law that would weaken unions might be used by Trump to justify retaliation against NAFTA.