[PHOTO] Looking south at Aura Condos

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: TTC, Cumbrae's, Vegandale, environment, Peter Harris

• Edward Keenan notes at the Toronto Star, drawing from an analysis of TTC budgets by Steve Munro, that things are not likely to get better for riders on the Bloor-Danforth line for at least another decade.


• blogTO notes a protest of vegans outside of Queen Street West butcher shop Cumbrae's, the protesters pretending to sell dog meat.


• Gilbert Ngabo writes at the Toronto Star about the mystery regarding the ownership of two Parkdale restaurants which loudly claim not to be part of the unpopular Vegandale.


• Priyanka Vittal writes at NOW Toronto about how it might make sense for Toronto to sue oil companies for the costs of global warming-related environmental disasters.


• Toronto Life notes the hyperrealistic city scenes of oil painter Peter Harris.

[NEWS] Five D-Brief links: T-rex, hallucinations, LIGO, bacteria, Magellanic Clouds

• D-Brief notes new evidence that the biggest Tyrannosaurus was the oldest one.


• D-Brief notes a new study suggesting that hallucinations are the responses of the body to a lack of sensory stimulation.


• D-Brief notes that LIGO has resumed its hunt for gravitational wave sources.


• D-Brief notes that antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be found in abundance at wastewater treatment plants.


• D-Brief notes a new effort to enlist human eyes to detect stellar clusters in the Magellanic Clouds.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bad Astronomy shares Hubble images of asteroid 6478 Gault, seemingly in the process of dissolving.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the experience of living in a body one knows from hard experience to be fallible.


• Gizmodo notes new evidence that environmental stresses pushed at least some Neanderthals to engage in cannibalism.


• Hornet Stories notes the 1967 raid by Los Angeles police against the Black Cat nightclub, a pre-Stonewall trigger of LGBTQ organization.


• Imageo notes the imperfect deal wrought by Colorado Basin states to minimize the pain felt by drought in that river basin.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the cinema of Claire Denis.


• Language Log reports on the work of linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, a man involved in language revival efforts in Australia after work in Israel with Hebrew.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders if the Iran-Contra scandal will be a precedent for the Mueller report, with the allegations being buried by studied inattention.


• Marginal Revolution makes a case for NIMBYism leading to street urination.


• Justin Petrone at North! looks at a theatrical performance of a modern Estonian literary classic, and what it says about gender and national identity.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw makes the case for a treaty with Australian Aborigines, to try to settle settler-indigenous relations in Australia.


• John Quiggin looks at the factors leading to the extinction of coal as an energy source in the United Kingdom.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that we are not yet up to the point of being able to detect exomoons of Earth-like planets comparable to our Moon.


• Window on Eurasia notes the occasion of the last singer in the Ket language.


• Arnold Zwicky shares some cartoon humour, around thought balloons.

[URBAN NOTE] Six Toronto links: Scarborough, TTC, aerial walkways, co-ownership, Ontario Place

• Saying that costs for the Scarborough subway extension would be contained within an order of magnitude was telling. The Toronto Star reports.


• NOW Toronto shares the warning of former mayor David Miller that the plans to upload the TTC will cost everyone involved dearly.


• Chris Bateman at blogTO reports on some of the aerial walkways of Toronto.


• The Toronto Star reports on six people in west-end Toronto who are dealing with high real estate prices by sharing a mortgage on a single home.


• blogTO notes a proposal for Ontario Place that would include a large waterpark.


• The first part of this Transit Toronto history of the TTC, looking back 65 years, is compelling, as is the second part.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Kingston, Moncton, Detroit, Brussels, Tokyo

• The reopening of the main library in Kingston is the subject of this article over at Global News.


• Moncton will host a CFL game in August, part of the league's efforts to build up a football-watching audience in the Maritimes generally. Global News reports.


• CityLab reports on the historic Hamtranck stadium in Detroit, a key element of black history.


• Politico Europe reports on the many British immigrants in Brussels, facing an uncertain fate come Brexit.


• Beth Elderkin writes at io9 about all of the cool nerd culture attractions she saw on a recent visit to Tokyo.

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: Cahun and Moore, Joe Rose, Queer Eye, Schitt's Creek, Trek

• Hornet Stories reports on Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, two Jewish stepsisters and lovers who resisted the Nazis on the Channel Islands.


• CBC Montreal recently revisited the homophobic 1989 murder of Joe Rose, a crime that galvanized gay activism in that city.


• The story of a lesbian subject of a recent Queer Eye episode who now subject of crowdfunding efforts to send her back to college is lovely. NBC News reports.


• This them article takes a look at the role played by Dan Levy in the creation of Schitt's Creek as a fictional community where LGBTQ people exist but homophobia is just not an issue. It's refreshing.


• This post at Reddit's daystrominstitute makes the argument that the "evil bisexuals" of the Mirror Universe are easily explained by Terrans living in a civilization where sexuality is a matter and vehicle of domination, not necessarily by homophobia.