[PHOTO] Five photos taken around Castle Frank Station

When I got off at Castle Frank Station last night around 5 o'clock, evening was already beginning to fade into twilight. The yellow leaves of fall stood out in the dim, standing east of the downtown along Yonge as the rush hour traffic inched still further east.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams takes a look at the first generation of stars, starting with newly-discovered ancient 2MASS J18082002–5104378 B.
  
• Crooked Timber takes a look at the political opinions of different generations in the United States. Is there a shift about to happen?


• The Crux takes a look at the excavation of the floating pleasure palaces of Caligula in Italy's Lake Nemi, something showing the scope of Roman construction.


• D-Brief notes how scientists managed to trigger limb regrowth in frogs, with obvious potential for humans.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the many quiet ways in which the slaves of Arkansas resisted their domination by whites.


• Lingua Franca takes a look at the strange linguistic crime of blasphemy in 21st century Europe.


• At the NYR Daily, Nicole Rudick examines the early work of underground Montréal cartoonist Julie Doucet.


• Window on Eurasia shares a warning that growing pressures on land could lead to ethnic conflict in the North Caucasus.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Mapping Toronto (#topoli), Museum of Illusions, transit, Art Shoppe

• Sean Marshall maps out the Toronto election, focusing on the concentrated regional support of Jennifer Keesmaat (in the west downtown) and Faith Goldy (in some suburbs).


• Toronto Life shares some photos from the new Museum of Illusions.


• CBC Toronto notes Mayor John Tory's interest in appointing a transit czar to try to push things through an increasingly complicated transit environment in Toronto.


• Ben Spurr at the Toronto Star reports on how the TTC is making use of "gap trains" to alleviate overcrowding.


• Urban Toronto takes a look at the new Art Shoppe condo towers at Yonge and Eglinton, rising more than two dozen stories over midtown.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Fort Worth, Dundee, Shenzhen

• The City of Montréal is now following Québec provincial laws on flag displays, requiring the Québec flag to be flown most prominently alongside the Canadian and Montréal flags. CTV News reports.


• Former Toronto city councilor Betty Disero is now mayor of Niagara-on-the-Lake. The Toronto Star reports.


• CityLab reports on how the famously conservative Texas city of Fort Worth is now learning towards the Democratic Party.


• VICE takes a look at the reasons for the very high overdose rate among users of illegal drugs in the Scottish city of Dundee.


• Guardian Cities has a nice photo essay looking at some of the new green roofs in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

[NEWS] Five language links: Arabic, Cantonese, French, Inuktitut, Spanish

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[MUSIC] Five music links: Québec, multilingual pop, Paul Simon, streaming, Troye Sivan w/ Kim Petras

• Luke Ottenhof writes at MacLean's about how English Canadians miss out on the thriving Québécois popular music scene, one enormously successful and engaging with the world nicely.


• This article at Noisey looks at how global pop music is becoming increasingly multilingual, Spanish and Korean being specifically noted here.


• Daniel Drake wrote a touching essay last month about Paul Simon and his father over at the NYR Daily.


• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution reports on how streaming as a technology for music distribution altered the nature of songcraft.


• This NOW Toronto review by Natalia Manzocco of the performance by Troye Sivan at the local stop of his Bloom tour, backed by Kim Petras, still startles me. That this is mainstream pop is amazing.