[CAT] Shakespeare, with one ear folded

[PHOTO] Racing for the northbound shuttle bus at St. Clair

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the import of the discovery of asteroid 2019 AQ3, a rare near-Venus asteroid.


• Centauri Dreams notes the how the choice of language used by SETI researchers, like the eye-catching "technosignatures", may reflect the vulnerability of the field to criticism on Earth.


• John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers what is to be done about Virginia, given the compromising of so many of its top leaders by secrets from the past.


• The Crux notes how the imminent recovery of ancient human DNA from Africa is likely to lead to a revolution in our understanding of human histories there.


• D-Brief notes how astronomers were able to use the light echoes in the accretion disk surrounding stellar-mass black hole MAXI J1820+070 to map its environment.


• JSTOR Daily considers the snow day as a sort of modern festival.


• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to his consideration of the plans of the German Empire to build superdreadnoughts, aborted only by defeat. Had Germany won the First World War, there surely would have been a major naval arms race.


• The NYR Daily looks at two exhibitions of different photographers, Brassaï and Louis Stettner.


• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares an evocative crescent profile of Ultima Thule taken by New Horizons, and crescent profiles of other worlds, too.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the mystery of why there is so little antimatter in the observable universe.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map exploring the dates and locations of first contact with aliens in the United States as shown in film.


• Window on Eurasia notes a new push by Circassian activists for the Circassian identity to be represented in the 2020 census.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: 1932 streetcar map, Oakwood, Graphic Arts, evictions, Lil Berete

• Artist Jake Berman's map of the Toronto streetcar network circa 1932 is a thing of beauty. r/Toronto has it.


• Urban Toronto takes a look at a new midrise condo development on Oakwood near Eglinton.


• CBC Toronto notes the complaints of tenants at the Graphic Arts building on Richmond and Bay that people in an adjoining condo tower keep flicking garbage onto their building.


• What effect would the Ford government's proposal to streamline the process of landlords evicting tenants have, overall? The Toronto Star considers.


• NOW Toronto reports that rising Toronto rapper Lil Berete, from Regent Park, has been ordered to stop filming his videos at the Toronto Community Housing project he shares with his mother on pain of eviction.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Brooklyn and Queens, Calgary, El Paso, Sheffield, Nairobi

• Curbed looks at what is happening with the proposed new streetcar route connecting Brooklyn and Queens.


• Urban farm Grow Calgary has found a new home in the southeast of that city. Global News reports.


• The claim of Donald Trump that Texas border city El Paso was a criminalized disaster spinning out of control is, of course, provably wrong. VICE has it.


• This Guardian feature shares the responses of readers to an article looking at the decline of the high street of the English city of Sheffield.


• CityLab looks at the impact of terrorism on Nairobi, at the growing presence of elements of security theatre on the street and at the targeting of ethnic Somalis in Eastleigh.

[NEWS] Five JSTOR Daily links: Black History Month, TSA, Vannevar Bush, jazz, Great Migration

• JSTOR Daily links to a selection of past posts relating to Black History Month.


• JSTOR Daily answers the question of why the TSA cannot go on strike easily.


• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the life of Vannevar Bush, the man who triggered the United States' building of the nuclear bomb and contributed much else, too.


• JSTOR Daily looks back to the 1920s, when jazz music began to be seen as a public health crisis by many.


• JSTOR Daily considers the extent to which the Great Migration of African-Americans was a forced migration, driven not just by poverty but by systemic anti-black violence.