[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait links to a beautiful music video showing highlights of the Moon.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about failure as a learning experience.


• Centauri Dreams writes about sensory associations, of how memories unite films and planets with things here on Earth.


• D-Brief notes that Japan's Hayabusa2 probe is looking for a place to land on asteroid Ryugu.


• Hornet Stories notes the plans of Russell T. Davies to launch a new dramatic series looking at the impact of AIDS in the UK in the 1980s.


• JSTOR Daily links to a paper suggesting Adam Smith would be unhappy with modern inequality, for the disincentives it provides the wealthy to be productive and not rentiers.


• The Planetary Society Blog explores what India has to do to meet its goal of launch an astronaut into space by 2022.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that not many worlds--not outer-system moons, not even the Kuiper belt--will survive the sun's red giant phase intact.


• Window on Eurasia reports on a rebellion of ethnic Russians in Grozny in 1958, protesting the return of the Chechens from Stalinist deportation.

[PHOTO] Me wearing my Montréal Metro map T-shirt on the 29 Dufferin

I took this selfie yesterday, riding a Toronto bus while wearing a T-shirt bearing a map of the Montréal subway system. Why not?

[URBAN NOTE} Five Toronto links: Honest Ed's, 411 Church, cormorants, Scarborough cycling, swimming

• Urban Toronto looks at Honest Ed's one year ago and at the site now.


• Urban Toronto looks at how the exterior of 411 Church, at Church and Carlton, is fast approaching completion.


• A highly contagious disease called Newcastle disease is killing cormorants along the Toronto waterfront. CBC reports.


• Tammy Thorne at NOW Toronto looks at the factors behind the spread of cycling in Scarborough, here.


• Jamie Bradburn shares some old articles offering advice to the Water Nymphs women's swimming club of the 1920s.

[PHOTO] Pit at the old Stollery's, Yonge and Bloor

The site of the former Stollery's clothing store on the southeast corner of Yonge and Bloor is, even now, being prepared for massive construction. A tower will soon rise here, just as they do at the other corners of this intersection.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Duisburg, Macau, San Francisco, Brussels, Rive-Sud of Montréal

• Guardian Cities notes how the German hub of Duisburg is taking on an outsized role as a linchpin in China's overseas trade.


• The SCMP reports on the terrible level of poverty, and income inequality generally, in a Macau that is one of the richest cities in the world.


• This VICE report examining how people of normal, never mind modest, incomes can afford to live in the San Francisco area is eye-opening.


• Guardian Cities reports on the new street names being given to routes in the Belgian capital of Brussels.


• This Cyberpresse report on the transit ambitions of the municipalities of the Rive-Sud, the South Shore of Montréal, reminds me of discussions about GTA transit.

[ISL] Six #PEI links: Buddhism and horses, Bernier and immigration, Pogey Beach, St. Peter's Island

• The Buddhist community of Prince Edward Island, CBC PEI reports, runs a sanctuary for horses that gives dozens a chance to live out their lives in peace.


• Russell Wangersky at The Guardian notes how utterly foolish the anti-immigration policies of Maxime Bernier would be for an Atlantic Canada that desperately needs people to come.


• This CBC feature on the marine life of "Pogey Beach", the PEI North Shore's Tracadie Beach, is a visual delight.


• CBC PEI reports on the rescue of two people off of the south shore's uninhabited St. Peters Island, an island I've seen only from above.


• From October 2016, I have a blog post sharing the photos I took of St. Peter's Island from above in a flight that summer, gathering together some links about that place.


• This Peter Rukavina blog post looking at the merits of the two outdoor pianos of Charlottetown is a delight.

[ISL] Five islands links: Reykjavik, Skye, Mayotte, Wailingding, Tangier

• Hornet Stories looks at the gay nightlife in Reykjavik, capital of Iceland.


• Writer Anna Mazzola writes at The Island Review about the factors behind her selection of the Scottish island of Skye as the environment for her new novel, the gothic The Story Keeper.


• VICE reports on how, on the French overseas department and island of Mayotte, massive immigration from the non-French remainder of the Comoros archipelago is a real problem.


• The SCMP, based in Hong Kong, introduces its readers to the sights of Wailingding island just a couple dozen kilometres away from their city.


• For Politico, Earl Swift revisits Tangier Island, an island in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay famous not only for its steady erosion under rising sea levels but for its profoundly pro-Trump attitudes.