[CAT] Shakespeare, drinking

[PHOTO] Crane at 1120 Dupont Street

Back in November 2016, I noted the ongoing demolition of 1120 Dupont Street. The former Harry's Motors was now going to host a six-story self-storage facility. As I went out walking this morning, I saw this crane standing tall as I have every day for the past month. The construction continues.

[PHOTO] "Take Part in a Sexual Health Revolution"

My eye was caught when I saw, on a subway train somewhere in Brooklyn, this ad advertising PrEP.



The preventative use of the drug Truvada to prevent HIV infection in HIV-negative people has come a long way. I first noted PrEP directly in a November 2014 post, that one reflecting on how far the idea of using anti-HIV medications to prevent HIV infection had come since I first heard of the idea in a 2005 article talking about how crystal meth users would take Truvada component tenofovir before heading off on drug-fueled orgies.

PrEP has gone far beyond those early days. It is now mainstream, approved of by the CDC and supported by the New York City Department of Health. Local health organizations like the Gay Men's Health Crisis and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Centre can apparently set people up with Truvada at reasonable cost and in reasonable amounts of time. It's even available in Canada, Truvada being covered since September under Ontario's provincial drug plan. I'm considering the mechanics of getting on it myself.

And yet, here in Ontario and in Toronto, home to a MSM community surely as intrisically at risk of HIV infection as New York City's, PrEP does not have nearly the same mainstream presence as in New York City. The biggest article I've seen on it on the non-LGBTQ media was Josh Dehaas' oddly dismissive article. Straight people I've talked to about the drug here in Canada have been routinely amazed by the fact of the existence of PrEP. Shouldn't Toronto, at least, try to change this?

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Anthro{dendum} reviews Peter Hempenstall's book on Derek Freeman, the anthropologist who argued Margaret Mead massively reinterpreted information on traditional Samoa. Freeman a troll?


• Centauri Dreams explores the potential of gravitational lensing to reveal detail at unheard-of distances, even intergalactic ones.


• Crooked Timber examines the nature of the gig economy, finding it a consequence of tremendous bias in modern economies against individual workers and their need for stability.


• Bruce Dorminey makes the case against sending humans beyond Earth orbit and letting robots take the lead, at least until they can build the first retreats for human explorers.


• Drone360 notes that Airbus has successfully test-flown its taxi drone.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas shares an inspiring quote from Wendell Berry, talking about education as not mere technical training but as something that can help people decide how to better live.


• Hornet Stories shares Anthony Rapp's first interview on the Kevin Spacey incident. Among other things, he wanted to create a space for others to be able to talk about their experiences.


• JSTOR Daily looks how at the Shakers of colonial America managed to appeal to women with the denomination's gender equality.


• Language Hat notes how people quickly forget what they read. Spacing things out helps memory, it seems.


• Language Log takes a look at the Tangut, subject of an upcoming conference.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with the Democrats' position on immigration, calling it politically expedient but morally a betrayal of immigrants.


• The NYR Daily looks at the gorgeous etchings of invertebrates made by Ernst Haeckel.


• Roads and Kingdoms explores the joys of fried durian.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel reports on findings suggesting that some of the colliding black holes detectable by LIGO can, in fact, create gamma-ray bursts.


• The Volokh Conspiracy shares an argument that libertarians have not sold out to support Trump.


• Window on Eurasia notes the import of a referendum-supported desire of six villages in Moldova to secede to Romania. What does this indicate about future relations?


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell examines Ronald Coase in the light of the failed move to successfully transition from coherent organizations to masses of contractual arrangements.

[URBAN NOTE] "Death in the Village"

This heart-breaking long-form article by Anthony Oliveira, published at Hazlitt, shares an insider's perspective on the Church and Wellesley community in the context of the recent revelations a serial killer has been working here for years.

It is mid January, 2018. I am sitting in the press conference for Andrew Kinsman’s family. We are in the 519 Community Centre; above the lobby bulletin board hangs a sign: “FAMILIES DEFINE THEMSELVES.” The conference is in the ballroom on the second floor. The last time I was here it was full of steamy bodies—the humid rain had moved the TreeHouse Party inside, and we danced in the microclimate of our sweat. I remember a friend’s hand in the small of my clammy back that made me wriggle and slap them away.

Now it is cold. Journalists and equipment personnel sparsely laugh and chat, milling near a hastily erected coffee station. One behind me loudly barks: “There’s probably a book in this!” The family is huddled, watching them. Watching us, I guess. They have just learned an arrest has been made. They have just learned, for certain, that their brother was killed. They are waiting for the body to be found.

They speak imperfectly, as all of us would. They think aloud of the child that Andrew was. Shelley Kinsman takes no questions after her statement. I watch her anxiously clutching and persistently rubbing a small black stone with both hands throughout. I never find out what it was. She looks like my mother, fretting at her rosary beads.

Andrew’s sister Karen tells a story about how her brother wanted to be a paleontologist, and how the family once hid a cow femur and convinced him there must be dinosaurs buried in the yard. He dug and dug until, ecstatic, he found the bones.

The room shifts uncomfortably and moves quickly past the infelicitous image.