[PHOTO] Six photos of the Toronto skyline at evening

A friend's balcony offers unforgettable views of the Toronto skyline and Lake Ontario beyond, so I naturally took advantage of it.

Three photos in this set--the first one here, and the last two--are panoramas kindly stitched together by Google Photos. (One must acknowledge one's collaborators.) Click on them to see their full breadth.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about her rules for life.


• The Crux explores the development of robots that can learn from each other.


• JSTOR Daily explores the legal and environmental reasons why commercial supersonic flight never took off.


• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money imagines what might have been had the F-14 Tomcat never escaped development hell.


• Peter Watts wonders if, with de-extinction becoming possible, future generations might become even less careful with the environment, knowing they can fix things and never bothering to do so.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw argues that, with MOOCs and multiple careers in a working lifespan, autodidacticism is bound to return.


• The Planetary Society Blog's Marc Rayman looks at the final orbits of the Dawn probe over Ceres and the expected scientific returns.


• Roads and Kingdoms explores the New Jersey sandwich known, alternatively, as the Taylor ham and the pork roll.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers what led to the early universe having an excess of matter over antimatter.


• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy explores why the California Supreme Court took the trifurcation of California off referendum papers.


• Window on Eurasia notes how some in independent Azerbaijan fears that Iranian ethnic Azeris might try to subvert the independent country's secularism.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Dencan Books, 1 Yonge Street, Beaches, Soulpepper, Bricks & Glitter

• Edward Keenan bids farewell to the Junction's Dencan Books, a community institution set to close this Saturday, over at the Toronto Star.


• One Yonge Street is set to house a high-rise condo tower 95 stories and over 300 metres in height. The Toronto Star notes.


• One only hopes that the repeal of a tax rebate that had the effect of encouraging owners of commercial properties in the Beaches to keep storefronts empty will increase business along Queen Street East. CBC reports.


• This extended profile in Toronto Life takes a look at the events and accusations leading to the fall of Soulpepper Theatre Company founder Albert Schultz.


• Chris Rattan at NOW Toronto writes about Bricks & Glitter, a new indie queer cultural festival in the west end with events starting today.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Mississauga, Buffalo, Surrey, Helsinki

• CBC reports on a terrible hate crime committed against a Mississauga man.


• The second Jollibee in the GTA, this one in Mississauga, is slated to open tomorrow. blogTO reports.


• Making an old elementary school in Buffalo into a platform for solar panels and community activities is ingenious. Curbed reports.


• MacLean's reports on how a growing community of feral peacocks is complicating life for people in the British Columbia city of Surrey, here.


• This description in Guardian Cities of the new central library in Helsinki makes this place, and Finland's thriving library culture, sound very attractive.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: Saskatchewan, Wojnarowicz, Trump and Putin, Scott Thompson, Blued

• This history of LGBTQ life in Saskatchewan by Valerie Korinek sounds fascinating. Has anything been done in Atlantic Canada, I wonder? Global News reports.


• This Artsy editorial is quite right about the importance of David Wojnarowicz, artistically and politically. I own a copy of his Close to the Knives.


• There is, I have to conclude, at least some homophobia in the jokes about Trump and Putin being a couple. It's quite quite possible to be a straight homophobe, for starters. Vulture deconstructs the meme, here.


• Scott Thompson is a national treasure. Read this CBC Day 6 interview.


• CBC takes a look at the roaring success of China-oriented gay dating app Blued, with tens of millions of users.

[PHOTO] Glittering, east to west

Toronto is gorgeous in the night. The Google Photos-stitched panorama is last in this series of four.