[PHOTO] West on Maitland, between Yonge and Church

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait considers the possibility that the remarkably low-density 'Oumuamua might be a cosmic snowflake.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the challenges of free-lance writing, including clients who disappear before they pay their writers for their work.


• Centauri Dreams notes that observations of cosmic collisions by gravitational wave astronomy are becoming numerous enough to determine basic features of the universe like Hubble's constant.


• D-Brief notes that the Hayabusa2 probe is set to start mining samples from asteroid Ryugu.


• Dangerous Minds remembers radical priest and protester Philip Berrigan.


• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Irina Seceleanu explains why state defunding of public education in the United States is making things worse for students.


• Far Outliers notes how many of the communities in South Asia that saw soldiers go off to fight for the British Empire opposed this imperial war.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the decidedly NSFW love letters of James Joyce to Nora Barnacle. Wasn't Kate Bush inspired by them?


• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how the failure of the California high-speed rail route reveals many underlying problems with funding for infrastructure programs in the United States.


• Marginal Revolution notes the creepy intrusiveness of a new app in China encouraging people to study up on Xi Jinping thought.


• The Planetary Society Blog looks at what is to be expected come the launch of the Beresheet Moon lander by Israeli group SpaceIL.


• Daniel Little at Understanding Society considers the philosophical nature of the Xerox Corporation.


• Window on Eurasia notes that the Russian Orthodox Church seems not to be allowing the mass return of its priests who lost congregations to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to Russia.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell considers the astute ways in which El Chapo is shown to have run his business networks.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at two recent British films centering on displays of same-sex male attraction, The Pass and God's Own Country.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Netflix, McArthur, Downsview Park, Winter Stations, winter rain

• Netflix is opening up a new production hub in Toronto, creating as many as two thousand extra jobs. CBC reports.


• The inquiry into a policeman charged with unfairly dismissing a 2016 report of an attempted choking by Bruce McArthur continues. The National Post reports.


• Is there a possibility that Downsview Park might undergo a renaissance as a hub of aerospace industry? CBC reports.


• CBC Toronto reports on this year's iteration of Winter Stations, this one based around the theme of migration.


• Freezing rain is expected for Wednesday night, contributing to a winter that so far as been quite full of precipitation of all kinds. CBC reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Dunblane, Wuppertal, Cape Town

• CBC Montreal looks at how the city of Montréal deals with snow disposal in winter.


• NOW Toronto reviews The World Before Your Feet, a documentary examining the life of one Matt Green, who aims to walk all the thousands of kilometres of streets of New York City.


• VICE reports on how the mass shooting of Dunblane still affects survivors and townspeople even two decades later.


• CityLab looks at the unique Schwebebahn mass transit system in the Ruhr town of Wuppertal, and what it says about transit culture in Germany.


• CityLab takes a look at Cape Town, where a foodie culture is not reflected in ready access of all to food, and how some people are trying to fix this.

[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: Precambrian fossils, CO2 and trees, mountains, Uranus and Neptune, Mars

• Have fossils of the movements of ancient animals 2.1 billion years ago been found? CBC reports.


• Increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, it turns out, will not accelerate tree growth. CBC reports.


• Motherboard reports that vast "mountains" may exist, hidden deep inside the molten interior of the Earth.


• Universe Today reports on Hubble observations of the atmospheres of outer-system ice giants Uranus and Neptune.


• Universe Today reports on the startling assertion of Elon Musk that, in the foreseeable future, a round-trip ticket to Mars might cost only $US 100 thousand.

[NEWS] Five sci-fi links: science fiction, Farscape, climate change, Rose MacAulay, 2019

• The BBC considers what the science fiction we prefer to read says about us.


• Arkady Martine at Tor considers the ethical dilemmas of Farscape protagonist John Crichton, reminding me again that I should watch this series, some time.


• James Nicoll at Tor lists five classic SF novels examining anthropogenic climate change.


• Alison Flood at The Guardian reports on the overlooked 1918 novel What Not by Rose MacAulay, a work that may have influenced Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four.


• Adrian Lee at MacLean's considers what the three dystopian films of Blade Runner, Akira, and The Running Man, all set in 2019, have to say about the year as it was imagined and as it exists.

[AH

This r/imaginarymaps map depicts a Dutch Formosa. #alternatehistory https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/arcv3z/dutch_formosa_1900/
This r/imaginarymaps creation imagines a joint German-Polish invasion of the Soviet Union. #alternatehistory https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/anmoc4/the_germanpolish_invasion_of_the_soviet_union/

This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a different Cold War, with a largely Communist Germany opposed by a Franco-British Union. #alternatehistory https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/an6nva/europe_and_the_iron_curtain_1950/
r/imaginarymaps shares a map of an alternate Cold War circa 1960 that actually made it into a history book as our timeline. #alternatehistory https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/as2jgp/alternate_cold_war_in_1960_by_kuusinen_on_deviant/

r/imaginarymaps shares a map depicting the remarkably fragmented Central America of Marvel Comics's famous Earth-616. #alternatehistory #marvelcomics #earth616 https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/agt5yg/central_america_according_to_marvel_comics/

[AH] Five alternate history maps from r/imaginarymaps (#alternatehistory)

Reddit's imaginarymaps forum has a lot of great alternate history maps.

• This r/imaginarymaps map depicts a Dutch Formosa crica 1900.


• This creation imagines a joint German-Polish invasion of the Soviet Union.


• this map imagines a different Cold War, with a largely Communist Germany opposed by a Franco-British Union.


• This map of an alternate Cold War circa 1960 that actually made it into a history book as our timeline


• This map shows the remarkably fragmented Central America of Marvel Comics's famous Earth-616.