[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how data from Gaia may have at last nailed down the precise distance of Polaris from the Earth, at some 447 light years (more or less).


• Centauri Dreams notes the extraordinarily strong magnetic field of SIMP J01365663+0933473, a super-Jovian massing the equivalent of 12 Jupiters a mere 20 light-years away.


• D-Brief notes how the carbon fibre heat shield of the Parker Solar Probe will prevent this probe from burning up.


• Hornet Stories notes the bizarre controversy in LGBT twitter about out actor Ruby Rose playing Batwoman Kate Kane. I, for one, can't wait to see what she brings to the role!


• io9 shares a touching interview with Ruby Rose talking about her childhood experiences with the Batman family and with bats and her happiness at being a role model as Kate Kane.


• Joe. My. God. links to an audio version of the Cher version of "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)", and it is glorious.


• Language Log shares photos of text in a Chinese restaurant in New York City that combines Chinese characters with the ampersand.


• Peter Rukavina shares stories about a tunnel that may once have connected 124-126 Sydney Street in Charlottetown, then home to the cloistered Sisters of the Precious Blood and now home to Gahan House, to the St. Dunstan's Basilica.


• Arnold Zwicky continues his meditations on Montréal, concentrating on the works of Claude Cormier which include the 18 boules de gai in Monréal as well as the lovely HTO Park in Toronto.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Sunrise Propane, housing, #towaterfront, Quayside, Flemingdon Park

• Aaron D'Andrea notes that, a decade after the massive explosion in Downsview that tore apart north Toronto's Sunrise Propane, the space is still vacant. The Toronto Star has it.


• Richard Florida offers a short list of suggestions to ease the affordable housing crisis in Toronto, over at the Toronto Star.


• Deborah de Lange argues convincingly, at The Conversation, that Toronto needs a much more architecturally and aesthetically sensitive approach to its waterfront, that it needs beauty down by Lake Ontario.


• Amanda Roth at The Logic reports on the continued bureaucratic fighting over the future of Quayside.


• Some tenants in Flemingdon Park, inspired by news from Parkdale, embarked on a rent strike in protest of hikes in rent. The Toronto Star reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Socialist Modernism, capping highways, desert cities, Amazon, Google

• Guardian Cities introduces readers to the Socialist Moderism Instagram account, part of a project by Romania's Bureau for Art and Urban Research to preserve records of Eastern Bloc architecture.


• Brian Martucci at Oxy writes about how many American communities are capping their highways, burying them underground, and in so doing restoring neighbourhoods split by mid-20th century construction.


• This beautiful long-form essay at Lithub by Saritha Ramakrishna, looking at her childhood in Phoenix, imagines what futures will be available to the United States' desert cities in the foreseeable future.


• Matt Taylor at VICE notes that non-rich people face being driven out of major cities and that initiatives like wooing Amazon will only make things worse.


• Via the Map Room Blog, I found Jack Nicas' New York Times article noting how Google Maps is not only renaming old neighbourhoods and creating new ones, but that these labels now stick.