[PHOTO] Looking south at traffic, Yonge below Wellesley

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomy notes the detection of the birth of a neutron star binary system in the distant galaxy of IV ZW 155.


• Centauri Dreams examines the potential for M-class red dwarfs to support planets with life.


• Crooked Timber notes the death of the science fiction master Gene Wolfe.


• D-Brief notes that the TESS spacecraft has confirmed its discovery of its first exoplanet, HD 21749 c 52 light-years away.


• Language Hat considers a fascinating question: Who wrote Aladdin?


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the shameless foolishness of Donald Trump with regards to the Notre-Dame tragedy.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper noting the significant cost, in medieval Europe, of the construction of cathedrals even in rich areas like Ile-de-France.


• Towleroad notes that the Pete Buttigieg campaign has released its design toolkit to the public for downloading.


• Window on Eurasia notes the impediments put in place in Russia to limit the presence of immigrants on labour markets.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: sex work, front doors, Eglinton East, TTC, past subways

• Helen Armstrong at NOW Toronto writes against the crude repression, well short of constructive regulation, facing sex workers in Toronto.


• Donovan Vincent at the Toronto Star notes the Toronto controversy around the idea of having houses with two front doors, including one for a basement unit. Why must that unit's residents be hidden?


• blogTO notes the utter absence of the Eglinton East LRT in the new Toronto transit plan.


• Steve Munro considers the poor state of planning, and funding, for Line 1 of the subway.


• Toronto Life goes back more than a century to take a look at the many discarded plans for subways. Is it comfort, at least, that the lack of good planning is a trait apparently inherent to Torontonians?

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Detroit, New York City, Mumbai, Stratford

• La Presse interviews one owner of a calèche, an iconic horse-and-carriage from Montréal, who claims that an impending ban will be devastating.


• blogTO notes the possibility, in the early 2020s, of a new passenger rail route connecting Toronto to Detroit.


• CityLab takes a look at The Shed, the performing arts centre in the controversial Manhattan development of Hudson Yards.


• Bloomberg makes the argument for India to create a purpose-built financial centre for Mumbai.


• Stu Neatby at The Guardian looks at the shortage of rental housing in the growing Charlottetown PE suburb of Stratford.

[NEWS] Five space science links: Psyche, Proxima Centauri b and c, Voyager and Pioneer, humans

• Evan Gough at Universe Today notes the possibility that the asteroid Psyche, in its hot youth, might have had volcanoes ejecting molten iron.


• Matt Williams at Universe Today notes a new paper suggesting that, on suitable exoplanets orbiting red dwarfs like Proxima Centauri b, their stars produce environments not much more hostile than those suffered by the early Earth.


• Nadia Drake at National Geographic notes the news of the possible discovery of a second exoplanet at Proxima Centauri, c, in a five-year orbit.


• Matt Williams at Universe Today shares a study tracing the paths of the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft over millennia of movement in interstellar space.


• Jason Pontin at WIRED shares the result of a study of twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly, noting how space affected Scott Kelly in negative ways. Long-distance human spaceflight is possible, but more work is definitely needed for it to be safe, even survivable.

[AH] Five #alternatehistory maps from r/imaginarymaps: Balkans, Ethiopia, Europe, Australia, Bengal

• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a Balkans where Muslims remain in larger numbers throughout the peninsula, leading to border changes in the south, particularly.


• An Ethiopia that has conquered most of the Horn of Africa by the mid-19th century, even going into Yemen, is the subject of this r/imaginarymaps map. Could this ever have happened?


• This r/imaginarymaps map imagines, here, a unified European Confederation descending from a conquest of Europe by Napoleon. Would this have been stable, I wonder?


• Was the unification of Australia inevitable, or, as this r/imaginarymaps post suggests, was a failure to unify or even a later split imaginable?


• Was a unified and independent Bengal possible, something like what this r/imaginarymaps post depicts?