[PHOTO] Last snow of the season?

This snow, drifting gently down, was nice to see last evening as I came home.

[PHOTO] Bedroom from the Sagredo Palace, Venice, circa 1718 (@metmuseum)

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• At Anthropology.net, Kamzib Kamrani looks at the Yamnaya horse culture of far eastern Europe and their connection to the spread of the Indo-Europeans.
  
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the predicted collision of China's Tiangong-1 space station. Where will it fall?


• James Bow notes a Kickstarter funding effort to revive classic Canadian science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.


• Centauri Dreams notes the impending retirement of the pioneering Kepler telescope, and what's being done in the time before this retirement.


• D-Brief notes how nanowires made of gold and titanium were used to restore the sight of blind mice.


• Russell Darnley takes a look at the indigenous people of Riau province, the Siak, who have been marginalized by (among other things) the Indonesian policy of transmigration.


• Dead Things reports on more evidence of Denisovan ancestry in East Asian populations, with the suggestion that the trace of Denisovan ancestry in East Asia came from a different Denisovan population than the stronger traces in Melanesia.


• Hornet Stories paints a compelling portrait of the West Texas oasis-like community of Marfa.


• JSTOR Daily notes how indigenous mythology about illness was used to solve a hantavirus outbreak in New Mexico in the 1990s.


• Language Log praises the technical style of a Google Translate translation of a text from German to English.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that, under the Shah, Iran was interested in building nuclear plants. Iranian nuclear aspirations go back a long way.


• The LRB Blog looks at the unsettling elements of the literary, and other, popularity of Jordan Peterson.


• Marginal Revolution notes the continuing existence of a glass ceiling even in relatively egalitarian Iceland.


• The NYR Daily looks at the unsettling elements behind the rise of Xi Jinping to unchecked power. Transitions from an oligarchy to one-man rule are never good for a country, never mind one as big as China.


• Drew Rowsome writes about Love, Cecil, a new film biography of photographer Cecil Beaton.


• Peter Rukavina celebrates the 25th anniversary of his move to Prince Edward Island. That province, my native one, is much the better for his having moved there. Congratulations!


• Window on Eurasia looks at a strange story of Russian speculation about Kazakh pan-Turkic irredentism for Orenburg that can be traced back to one of its own posts.


• At Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Frances Woolley takes the time to determine that Canadian university professors tend to be more left-wing than the general Canadian population, and to ask why this is the case.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Toronto Fast Food, Presto, Toronto Days, photos, history

• Toronto Fast Food is apparently a thriving emerging restaurant chain in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil. Daily Hive reports.


• The TTC has suspended the installation of new Presto gates on account of widespread and apparently systemic flaws with their technology. Amazing. The Toronto Star reports.


• Shawn Micallef writes about Toronto Days, a marvelous exhibit of vintage photos taken in the Toronto of the 1980s and the 1990s, over at the Toronto Star.


• This NOW Toronto feature contrasting some of the oldest photos taken of the Toronto skyline with photos taken at those locations in our era shows the scale of our city's growth.


• Elizabeth Berks and Richard Longley write at NOW Toronto about how, at the dawn of photography, Toronto was not only a much smaller city than it is now but a much narrower one, too.

[URBAN NOTE] Five cities links: Plattsburgh, Montréal, Cincinnati, Palm Springs, Almaty

• The New York city of Plattsburgh is trying to limit Bitcoin mining locally, to avoid overusing its low electricity prices. VICE reports.


• The LA Review of Books shares a story of a visitor's engagement with the Montréal of Saul Bellow, here.


• Lyman Stone suggests that Cincinnati, even more than Pittsburgh, is in the middle of a noteworthy renaissance, over at In A State of Migration.


• Palm Springs, in the California desert, apparently is in the middle of an eye-catching renewal. The Globe and Mail reports.


• Open Democracy looks at this new effort to preserve the Soviet-era architectural heritage of Almaty, Kazakhstan's old capital city, here.