[CAT] Shakespeare, on his cardboard scratching post

[CAT] Five cat links: Toronto cat parks, cat longevity, Australia, California cougars, fishing cats

• Toronto, finally, will be getting not one but two cat-themed parks in the downtown core, including one of the site of the Addisons Residence nightclub to be built by 2022. blogTO reports.


• At Atlas Obscura, Christina Couch tells the story of Texan Jake Perry, a man who claims to have found a way to give cats very extended lifespans.


• Jason Daley at Smithsonian notesthe exceptional death toll inflicted by cats on native wildlife, including reptiles, after their introduction into Australia.


• Four cougar kittens were recently found, miraculously, in a patch of California hills surrounded by roads. Annie Roth at National Geographic reports.


• Oishimaya Sen Mag at World Atlas reports/u> on the fishing cat of South Asia, a feline population facing significant enviromental pressure.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: HQ2, Geary Avenue, Yonge and Eglinton, Port Lands, Pickering subway

• Ben Fox Rubin at CNET reports on the perhaps surprisingly successful bid of Toronto to host Amazon's HQ2.


• blogTO reports on how Geary Avenue, just one street away from me, is becoming one of the most interesting streets in Toronto for nightclubbing and more.


• Many residents of Yonge and Eglinton are unhappy with the pace of condo construction in the neighbourhood. Local resources--like utilities, and local schools--are coming under pressure. blogTO reports.


• Part of Lake Ontario in the Port Lands, off Cherry Street, is being filled in for condo development. CityNews reports.


• John Lorinc at Spacing looks at the many ways in which Premier Doug Ford's proposal of extending the subway to Pickering simply does not work.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Richmond Hill, Kingston, Hamilton, Québec City, Lunenburg

• I really have to get up to Richmond Hill soon, if only to see the reopened David Dunlap Observatory. The Toronto Star reports.


• The City of Kingston and Queen's University, Global News reports, are going to collaborate to try to prevent street parties. (Student ghetto issues continue, I see.)


• blogTO provides an ambitious, if perhaps expensive, itinerary for a visit 48 hours long to Hamilton, Ontario, here.


• Gentrification is starting to place pressure on residents of some neighbourhoods in Québec City. (I am somewhat surprised by this, given that city's relative insulation from North American trends.) CBC reports.


• National Observer notes how Lunenburg, in Nova Scotia, is taking a stand against unregulated offshore drilling.

[ISL] Five islands links: Kerguelens, Faroes, Hainan, Kuril Islands, Qatar

• The albatross of France's sub-Antarctic Kerguelen Islands are facing pressure, alas. CNRS reports.


• The New Yorker takes a look at Koks, a Michelin-starred restaurant in the Faroes that takes rare advantage of local food.


• The Chinese island-province of Hainan might be trying to position itself as an international tourism destination, but restrictions on the Internet continue. Quartz reports.


• Is a bare majority of the Kuril Islands' population is of Ukrainian background? Window on Eurasia suggests it may be so.


• The intensity of the desire of Saudi Arabia's government to literally make Qatar an island through canal construction worries me, frankly. VOX reports.

[NEWS] FIve LGBTQ links: Pride in Antarctica, Marvel, Edmonton, movies, HIV/AIDS

• National Geographic let us know that, this year, Pride was celebrated around the world, even in Antarctica.


• What was the gayest Marvel movie to date? I do think Thor: Ragnarok has a good claim, myself. Vulture ranks them.


• Daily Xtra notes how queer rights--specifically, the rights of students--became a big political issue in Edmonton.


• The stories of the first movies to come out in the 1980s dealing with the AIDS crisis do need to be told. The Guardian reports.


• I entirely agree with the opinion of this Advocate writer that we need to think smartly about HIV/AIDS, especially in light of continuing technologies and new safer-sex techniques like PrEP.

[NEWS] Five language links: Macedonian, Inuktitut, Afrikaans, Slavic languages, Catalan

• The Conversation takes a look at the fierce repression faced by the Macedonian language in early 20th century Greece.


• Creating an Inuktitut word for marijuana is a surprisingly controversial task. The Toronto Star reports.


• The representation of non-whites in the Afrikaans language community--the majority population of Afrikaans speakers, actually, despite racism--is a continuing issue. The Christian Science Monitor reports.


• Far Outliers considers the question of just how many different Slavic languages there actually are. Where are boundaries drawn?


• The Catalan language remains widely spoken by ten million people in Europe, but outside of Catalonia proper--especially in French Roussillon--usage is declining.