[PHOTO] Five #Halloween photos from #ChurchandWellesley

Last night, and very early this morning, I went over to Church and Wellesley to take in the customed crowds. The street was packed even after midnight with lots of people in lots of inventive costumes. I even snapped a picture of my favourite--well done, whoever you are!

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Architectuul talks about the remarkable and distinctive housing estates of south London, like Alexandra Road, currently under pressure from developers and unsympathetic governments.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at Bennu, set to be visited by the OSIRIS-REx probe.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about meeting people you've met online via social networks, making friends even. Myself, I've done this all the time: Why not use these networks to their fullest in a fragmented vast world?


• Centauri Dreams celebrates the now-completed mission of the exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope.


• D-Brief looks at the distinctive seasons of Triton, and the still-open questions surrounding Neptune's largest moon.


• At JSTOR Daily, Nancy Bilyeau writes about the import of the famous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, something often underplayed despite its potential for huge change and its connection to wider conflicts.


• Language Hat notes the name of God in the Hebrew tradition, Yahweh. Where did it come from?


• Language Log shares an interesting idea for helping to preserve marginalized languages: Why not throw a language party celebrating the language?


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the question of what historical general or military leader would do best leading the armies of the living dead.


• The NYR Daily looks at the problems with Erdogan's big investments in public infrastructure in Turkey, starting with the new Istanbul airport.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the possibility of life in the very early universe. Earth-like life could have started within a billion years of the Big Bang; Earth life might even have begun earlier, for that matter.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shows a map of Europe identifying which countries are the more chauvinistic in the continent.


• Window on Eurasia notes the strength of the relatively recent division between Tatars and Bashkirs, two closely related people with separate identities grown strong in the Soviet era.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Infinity Mirrors, TTC, tourism, Pete Forde, Shermans

• blogTO notes that the Art Gallery of Canada has begun crowdfunding to purchase one of the famed Infinity Mirror rooms of Yayoi Kusama.


• Ben Spurr notes at the Toronto Star that the TTC has begun shipping its new streetcars from Bombardier back to Québec for repairs.


• Toronto has lost out significantly, CBC reports, due to the cancellation of a visitor's rebate intended to drive international tourism more than a decade ago.


• Katherine Laidlaw at Toronto Life has an extended feature on Pete Forde, a man who casually violated the privacy of his tenants--even friends--with modern surveillance tech. Why did he do it?


• Matthew Campbell at Bloomberg writes about the strange circumstances surrounding the murder late last year of billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman, a crime that so far is unsolved.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Detroit and Windsor, Calgary, Los Angeles, London, Russian cities

• The controversy over a new bridge connecting American Detroit to Canadian Windsor continues, on and on. The National Post reports.


• Jason Markusoff at MacLean's notes the tenuous position of the tens of thousands of people who live in Calgary's flood zones.


• Wired notes how the city of Los Angeles will need to spend billions of dollars to protect itself against sea level rise.


• The Guardian notes the shocking story of a mixed-income real estate development in London that excludes subsidized tenants from access to athletic facilities.


• Window on Eurasia notes how, on the basis of current trends, relatively sizable Russian cities including Novokuznetsk, Ivanovo, and Norilsk might depopulate by the end of the 21st century.