[PHOTO] Moon south on Yonge

[PHOTO] Macy's, West 34th and Broadway

I had thought I'd taken some quick photographs of part of the interior of Macy's, some bits of the ground floor menswear department, but it turns out I hadn't. Oh well. This one was taken, looking from the southeast at West 34th and Broadway.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about the long process of planning and work--almost two years!--going into the production of a trade non-fiction book.


• Centauri Dreams touches upon the new European Southern Observatory ExTrA telescope that will study Earth-like planets of red dwarfs, and shares a new model indicating the likely watery nature of the outer planets of TRAPPIST-1.


• D-Brief takes a look inside the unsettlingly thorough data-collection machineries of home assistants like Google Home and Alexa.


• JSTOR Daily looks at a paper examining the long and complicated process by which, through trade and empire, the United Kingdom ended up embracing tea.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money pays tribute to Ursula K Le Guin and Mark E. Smith of the Fall.


• Marginal Revolution links to a source arguing that regulatory costs have played the biggest role in the sharp increase of housing prices in California (and elsewhere?).


• The NYR Daily considers if Pope Francis' shocking willingness to make excuses for the abetters of child abuse in Chile has anything to do with his relationship, as an Argentine, to his home country's complicated past of church collaboration with the military regime of the dirty war.


• Out There considers what, exactly, would happen to a person if they stood completely still in relation to the universe. Where would they go (or, more accurately, where would the universe go without them)?


• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the preparations of the New Horizons probe for its encounter, at the very start of 2019, with Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69.


• Peter Rukavina shares beautiful posters he made out of last year's map calendar.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that, although the multiverse is almost certainly real, its existence hardly solves the pressing problems of physics.


• Towleroad describes Reverend Raymond Broshears, a gay preacher in San Francisco who, after one beating in 1973, organized the vigilante Lavender Panthers to defend the community and to fight back. Complicated man, he, with a complicated legacy.


• Arnold Zwicky looks into the latest sociological and psychological research on the especially warm friendships that can exist between gay men and straight women. What factors are at work?

[URBAN NOTE] Four Toronto links: Scarborough Bluffs, waterfront transit, car dealerships, CityPlace

• Edward Keenan celebrates at the Toronto Star the belated arrival of TTC bus service to Bluffers Park, at the foot of the Scarborough Bluffs. Why did it take so long, I wonder? I have walked that long narrow road too many times. Climbing the Bluffs is almost better.


• blogTO notes how, despite official hopes, TTC funding commitments will limit the extension of new services on the waterfront.


• Christopher Hume considers the aesthetics of some of the car dealerships on the east side of the downtown, clustered around the Don, over at the Toronto Star.


• Justin Skinner looks in the City Centre Mirror at the extent to which the condo-dominated CityPlace neighbourhood, in the area of the old Spadina Yards south of the CN Tower, has thrived and come to cohere.

[NEWS] Five politics links: Patrick Brown and Ontario, TPP, Canada, Brazil evangelicals, US tourism

• Enzo DiMatteo at NOW Toronto looks at the stunning speed with which the political career of Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown has ended. Among other things, this could easily win the stronger Liberals reelection.


• Chantal Hébert notes that the new TPP deal could put the NDP and allies in a stronger position relative to the Liberals, over at the Toronto Star.


• Matt Peterson at The Atlantic notes the effect that Canadian negotiations in the US-less TPP have had on the deal, slightly improving it by softening intellectual property provisions.


• The rise of evangelical political power in Brazil, led by the reactionary populist Jair Messias Bolsanaro, is the subject of this frightening article from The Atlantic.


• Justin Fox at Bloomberg View notes the extent to which falling tourist numbers in the US seem, role of the strong dollar aside, to be the consequence of Trump. People from non-rich countries are just not coming as they once were--Canada versus Mexico is instructive.

[ISL] Five links on islands: maps of absent islands, Lofoten, Palau, Iceland, Hawaii

• Greg Miller at National Geographic gathers together vintage maps showing islands that, for whatever reason, simply never existed.


• Roads and Kingdom tells the story of Bjorn Nilsen, the only mailman of the Lofoten Islands of Norway.


• Marginal Revolution notes the exceptional importance of baseball, not just as a sport but as an organizational principle, in the Pacific island country of Palau.


• Iceland, experiencing a tourism boom, is spending a billion dollars on refitting its national airport to accommodate the influx. Bloomberg reports.


• Hawaii Public Radio notes a Hawaiian protestor of Mauna Kea astronomical expansion, Kaho’okahi Kanuha, who is demanding a trial in the Hawaiian language.

[MUSIC] Azealia Banks, "212"

The Azealia Banks song "212" is as fantastic a song now as it was at the end of 2011 when it was released. It's fresh, sonically complex, and does a brilliant job of portraying Banks' skills as a lyricist and as a vocal performer both singing and rapping.

Watch on YouTube

Back in October 2012, I was in rhapsodies about Banks and her song. I predicted big things for this defiantly energetic, decidedly out queer star. I wanted them.

And then, well, we didn't get those particular big things, of a stardom to rival Nicki Minaj. Her Wikipedia article contains an extended multi-paragraph passage about the various controversies she has been involved in, some involving people outside of the music world like Sarah Palin (!), almost all dealing with Twitter and Instagram. Four of the first ten links pulled up Google search relate to the various scandals. Billboard examined her most notable fights on Twitter recently, but Banks has even gotten into fights on her Instagram account. (That last baffles me. I don't know how you get into flamewars on Instagram.) I ended up unfollowing her account on YouTube after she came out with statements encouraging the election of Donald Trump.

I don't know what happened. Is this a case of an excessively familiar--excessively uninhibited--use of social networking technologies undoing a nascent star, making someone on the brink of becoming big poisonous? Does this reflect deeper issues, mental illness perhaps or racism in American society? (Banks' support of Trump apparently does reflect an apocalyptic tinge in African-American society, a hostility towards a structurally racist society that remains so despite everything.) Am I actually well-positioned, as a cisgender gay white man, to ask these questions? I don't know.

I'm left with Banks' music. I still love "212"; I still hope she can be a star. Can she? I can only hope so. "212" is so good that it simply cannot stand alone in any artist's songbook.