[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on Supernova 2018oh in nearby galaxy UGC 4780, a star that demonstrated a most unusual bump in its light curve. Did the explosion engulf a neighbouring star?


• Centauri Dreams reports on New Horizons as it approaches its next target, the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule.


• D-Brief notes new observations of a black hole suggesting that gas around them forms not a rigid donut shape but rather a looser fountain.


• Dead Things notes a new discovery that the icythosaur had blubber like modern cetaceans, demonstrating convergent evolution.


• Cody Delistraty writes about changing perceptions of painter Egon Schiele.


• Far Outliers notes how Japanese prisoners of war were often so surprised by good treatment that they reciprocated, by freely sharing information with interrogators.


• Hornet Stories notes that, at least on Reddit, RuPaul's Drag Race is the most discussed show currently playing on television.


• Joe. My. God. notes that the Indian police was seeking two American evangelical Christian missionaries for aiding another to breach North Sentinel Island, both having fled the country.


• JSTOR Daily looks back to a 1963 paper on the effects of automation on society by Leon Megginson, finding that many of his predictions were correct.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that it is a sad day for Hungary that its government was able to drive the Central European University out of Budapest into exile.


• At Lingua Franca, Roger Shuy takes a look at the dreaded PhD oral exam. (I know that seeing other students taking it was one thing putting me off from academia.)


• The LRB Blog takes a look at the disastrous state of politics in Honduras, with a corrupt leader deeply compromised by (among other things) a dependency upon the United States.


• The NYR Daily takes a look at the beautiful Tibetan Buddhist religious art on display in the Ladakh settlement of Alchi.


• Window on Eurasia notes a conference in Moscow taking a look at a Eurasianism based on a Slavic-Turkic synthesis.


• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at Santa Barbara in some of her many dimensions.

[PHOTO] E Condominiums, seen from the west

[URBAN NOTE] Six Toronto links: real estate, CNE, Metrolinx, #650Parliament, transit politics

• Urban Toronto notes that the Toronto real estate market is getting even tighter, with higher prices too.


• blogTO notes that the CNE is offering for Christmas discounted tickets for the 2019 show, perhaps to try to recoup from this year's strike-related losses.
  
• Ontario's auditor-general is very critical of Metrolinx's behavior with regards to the Eglinton Crosstown line, as noted in The Globe and Mail. Ontario's auditor-general has also ruled that the locations of two GO stations by Metrolinx were selected on the basis of political pressure, as the Toronto Star noted.


• One of the tenants of 650 Parliament Street was being charged just short of a thousand dollars by Bell for not retrieving his inaccessible Bell gear, before the CBC got involved.


• Tricia Wood at Spacing takes a look at the idea that mass transit in this city is politicized. Of course it is; it needs to be done better.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Mexico City, Tijuana, Mosul

• Montréal mayor Valérie Plante outlines how, in the face of provincial government cuts to immigration in Québec, her city will continue to welcome immigrants and promote their integration, over at CTV.


• Gothamist shares the argument of new MTA transit head Andy Byford to New York City's city council there that the city simply must spend $US 40 billion to keep the MTA running.CityLab looks at how access to water is a major political issue in Mexico City, one that local community groups are acting upon.


• The Central American refugees in Tijuana, CityLab reports, are facing an increasing number of issues, including deteriorating conditions and local hostility.


• A VICE interview suggests that the city of Mosul, eighteen months after ISIS, is in such a poor state of repair that a resurgence of the Islamic State is possible.

[NEWS] Five LGBT links: Freddie Mercury, Carly Rae Jepsen, Craig Russell, Toronto police, Pride

• This Daily Xtra article makes the case for Freddie Mercury as a radical, queer, brown icon.


• This CBC Arts article features six men talking about why Carly Rae Jepsen can claim such a strong fanbase in queer audiences.


• CBC Arts reintroduces readers to Canada's first drag superstar, Craig Russell.


• Carolyn Strange at The Conversation looks at the background, recent and otherwise, behind tensions between Toronto LGBTQ communities and the police, rooted in the neglect and outright criminality of the police.


• Dorianne Emmerton at Daily Xtra argues that the Pride Toronto organization may be coming to a natural end, as its financial dependency on politicized funding means that it can no longer speak to the needs of queer and trans communities.

[MUSIC] Five music links: Pete Shelley, Kate Bush, Joy Division, P.M. Dawn, East German punk

• Pete Shelley, of the Buzzcocks and a star in his own right, has died at 63, BBC reports. The 1981 Pete Shelley song "Homosapien" is one of my favourite overlooked post-punk songs. (The queer visibility is also nice.)


• The Economist makes a case for the historical importance of Kate Bush.


• Dangerous Minds asks a question, mostly rhetorically: Was Peter Sutcliffe a Joy Division fan? If nothing else, the overlap does show interesting things about patterns in northern England's cities.


• This Anil Dash essay at Medium about P.M. Dawn, a hip-hop musician so big in the 1990s and so overlooked now, provides a really useful perspective on this artist.


• Rolling Stone interviews Tim Mohr on the subject of the punk scene in East Germany, a cultural alternative that he argues helped undermine the dictatorship.

[MUSIC] Grimes, "We Appreciate Power"

I have been thinking a lot about Grimes' new single, "We Appreciate Power", since its release last week.

"Grimes - We Appreciate Power (Lyric Video)" (Watch on YouTube)

This song is incredibly catchy, a development of Grimes' dreamier earlier music in a harder direction. The lyrical direction takes an even harder turn, moving beyond the cyberpunk evoked by Grimes and her collaborator HANA in the lyric video for "We Appreciate Power" towards hard transhumanism.

Simulation, give me something good
God's creation, so misunderstood
Pray to the divinity, the keeper of the key
One day everyone will believe

[. . .]

People like to say that we're insane
But AI will reward us when it reigns
Pledge allegiance to the world's most powerful computer
Simulation: it's the future

"We Appreciate Power" is the pop music of the singularity.

Jeremy Gordon's essay at The Outline makes a compelling case for considering the techno-futurism of Grimes' partner Elon Musk as an influence on her musical direction. I can see it, though I can also see this song as being a product of an ambient cultural moment. As Erica Russell's thoughtful review at Paper Magazine makes clear, the recognition of the power of AI is becoming increasingly common.

According to a press release, the technocultural song was inspired by North Korean-formed propagandist music group Moranbong, and is "written from the perspective of a Pro-A.I. Girl Group Propaganda machine who use song, dance, sex and fashion to spread goodwill towards Artificial Intelligence — it's coming whether you like it or not."

That chilling final warning fits perfectly in line with "We Appreciate Power's" maniacal dystopian energy, which fully leans into the ever-impending cyber-apocalypse with unhinged glee: "Submit, submit, submit, submit, submit..." Grimes diabolically commands on the outro. If the rise of artificial intelligence is upon us, who are we to deny our own brainwashing at the hands of our creations? We're already glued to our laptops/cell phones just listening to this song, aren't we?

In 2018, AI is much more than just the plot device for many of our favorite sci-fi films, from Blade Runner to Ex-Machina. It's the new normal — a reality we're currently living in while simultaneously rushing even faster towards. Every day, AI infiltrates our lives, whether we realize it or not. Using facial recognition, Facebook automatically offers to tag our friends in the photos we upload; Siri helps us find that perfect restaurant we've been craving but totally forgot the name of; each week, Spotify curates an eerily on-point Discover Weekly playlist for us. AI is useful — imperative even, perhaps, in our newly advanced and increasingly tech-dependent world — but is it really more evil than necessary?

On "We Appreciate Power," Grimes crafts a complex industrial cyber-pop anthem that leans into technological determinism and the very real possibility of a future AI revolution which, depending on how you feel about living in The Matrix, might sound totally terrifying or, in the case of Grimes, exciting. "Neanderthal to human being/ Evolution, kill the gene/ Biology is superficial/ Intelligence is artificial," she sings, pointing out the cyclical and temporary nature of humanity. She also appears to celebrate tech's superiority as the next stage of societal advancement... even if it may spell doom for some. Maybe.

I will be definitely very interested to see where Grimes goes next, with her upcoming album and all. I will also be interested to see, as described in the NME, the continuing influence of these ideas on the global pop music scene. What next?