[PHOTO] Devonian Pond at Ryerson, under ice

Despite the disturbingly warm temperatures over the past two days, Ryerson University's Devonian Pond remained iced over yesterday, a perfect circle in the heart of the Ryerson campus.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at stellar nursery NGC 604 in the Triangulum Galaxy.


• Centauri Dreams considers what the rings of Saturn indicate about the inner structure, and formation, of Saturn.


• The Crux looks at the exciting steam-based robot WINE, capable of travelling between asteroids and hopping around larger worlds like Ceres and Europa with steam.


• D-Brief looks at how the colours of the ocean will change over time, some parts becoming bluer and others greener as phytoplankton populations change.


• Gizmodo deals critically with the idea that "permatripping" on LSD is possible. At most, the drug might expose underlying issues.


• Imageo notes that, even with the polar vortex, cold snaps in North America under global warming have been becoming less cold over time.


• JSTOR Daily looks at how Cutex, in the early 1910s, created a new market for manicures.


• Language Hat mourns linguist, and fluent speaker of Sumerian, Miguel Civil.


• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how there is not a centre in American politics to be exploited by the likes of Howard Schultz, that if anything there is an unrepresented left.


• Marginal Revolution shares a commenter's argument--misguided, I think--that a wealth tax would represent a violation of privacy rights.


• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog notes that the InSight probe on Mars has placed the Wind and Thermal Shield above its seismometer.


• At Une heure de peine ..., Denis Colombi takes issue with the use of statistics without a deeper understanding as to what they represent.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that, while a report that Belarus is investigating the possibility of autocephaly for its national church on the Ukrainian model is likely fake news, it may reflect underlying trends.


• Arnold Zwicky points readers towards the enjoyable music of Americana/folk duo Mandolin Orange.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: skiing, skating, Scarborough, UP Express and Presto, homelessness

• I am glad that the new snowfall has made the ode of Shawn Micallef in the Toronto Star last week to the joys of skiing in Toronto relevant again.


• Urban Toronto reports on the new Rink Social initiative being promoted at community ice rinks across Toronto, to encourage skating and community city-wide.


• blogTO notes a perhaps unattractive home in Scarborough, at Danforth and Warden, that literally has a TTC stop outside its door.


• Ben Spurr at the Toronto Star notes how the efforts of a Mount Dennis man to commute downtown on the UP Express were complicated by the confusions of Presto.


• At NOW Toronto, outreach worker Greg Cook calls for a better approach to homelessness, one that (for instance) acknowledges the prohibitive costs of housing for too many in Toronto.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Montréal, Queens, Berlin, Vancouver

• CBC Hamilton recently reported on a new Facebook group intended to help Torontonians find their footing in neighbouring Hamilton.


• Will the new designs of the Montreal Alouettes be enough to reverse the CFL team's dwindling fanbase? Global News considers.


• CityLab points to the overlooked architectural heritage of Queens, in New York City.


• Guardian Cities reports on plans to rehabilitate roadside grandstands in Berlin abandoned for nearly a century.


• Georgia Straight reports on a proposal for supposedly affordable rental housing in Vancouver that is no such thing. Below-market rates are not enough when prices are so high already.

[NEWS] Five Internet links: Geocities, Livejournal, Tumblr, Quora, predictions

• CityLab takes a look at Geocities, one of the first online platforms for websites, looking at how it tried to create and maintain online neighbourhoods.


• Ars Technica looks at the promise--sadly unfulfilled--of pioneering blogging platform Livejournal. It really could have been a contender.


• Think Progress notes, more than a month after the purge by Tumblr of NSFW blogs, the far right remains active there.


• This Huffington Post India article looks at the rising presence of pro-Hindutva answers put forth by Indian users on Quora.


• Ars Technica notes that researchers can now, even if you do not actively participate on social media, predict what your content would likely be.

[WRITING] Five #writing links: Yeats and Hyde-Lees, Duane, Phil Brown, Penelope Mortimer, schedules

• Starting with the W.B. Yeats and his wife, the "spirit medium" Georgie Hyde-Lees, JSTOR Daily takes a look at how women become major contributors to literature through the medium of spiritualism. (That they were unsung contributors goes without saying, sadly.)


• This Diane Duane anecdote about the importance of detail, even unseen detail, speaks to me.


• This Phil Brown article at NOW Toronto talking about his disenchantment with the journalism of Buzzfeed that never let him start is career is dispiriting.


• The NYR Daily took a look at the struggles of Penelope Mortimer to make time for her life as a writer.


• This Geoffrey Pullum post at much-missed blog Lingua Franca talking about how scheduling writing time helped hold his life together rings true, believe me.

[PHOTO] Five links about photography: seeing, selfies, Village Voice, Flickr and archives

• Van Waffle wrote late last year about the ways we see with and without cameras.


• This article in The Atlantic noting how iPhone selfies do not actually accurately represent one's face is disturbing in a few ways.


• CityLab noted the importance of the shuttered Village Voice in promoting photojournalism in New York City.


• Apparently hundreds of people have died around the world as a result of misadventures while taking selfies, VICE reported.


• This Slate article is entirely right in noting, with Flickr's conversion to a paid model and the mass deletion of photos of non-paying users, that counting on the online world to back up photos (or other data) is a mistake.