[PHOTO] Strange evening light, south on Yonge at Eglinton

I am not sure that this photograph truly caught the light of Monday evening, with what must have been a brilliant sunset shining barely through the grey clouds.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes how the warp in space-time made by the black hole in V404 Cygni has been detected.


• The Crux reports on the discovery of the remains of a chicha brewery in pre-Columbian Peru.


• D-Brief notes a new model for the creation of the Moon by impact with primordial Earth that would explain oddities with the Earth still being molten, having a magma ocean.


• Bruce Dorminey shares the idea that extraterrestrial civilizations might share messages with posterity through DNA encoded in bacteria set adrift in space.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on progress in drones and UAVs made worldwide.


• Gizmodo notes some of the privacy issues involved with Alexa.


• JSTOR Daily explains how some non-mammals, including birds and fish, nurse their young.


• Language Hat reports on the latest studies in the ancient linguistic history of East Asia, with suggestions that Old Japanese has connections to the languages of the early Korean states of Silla and Paekche but not to that of Koguryo.


• Language Log considers the issues involved with the digitization of specialized dictionaries.


• Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money remembers the start of the Spanish Civil War.


• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points towards his recent interview with Margaret Atwood.


• The NYR Daily reports on a remarkable new play, Heidi Schreck's What The Constitution Means To Me.


• Towleroad reports on what Hunter Kelly, one of the men who operatives tried to recruit to spread slander against Pete Buttigieg, has to say about the affair.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that a Russian annexation of Belarus would not be an easy affair.


• Arnold Zwicky reports on the latest signs of language change, this time in the New Yorker.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Eglinton Avenue, Union Station, Highway 401, cookie dough, Meadoway

• This imagining of what Eglinton Avenue West will look like after LRT construction is done is actually pretty compelling. blogTO has it.


• Union Station renovations might actually be complete by the end of 2020. Global News reports.


• Highway 401 is being widened in the GTA to allow for recent increases in traffic. blogTO reports.


• Queen Street West is getting a cookie dough cafe. blogTO reports.


• The Meadoway, a vast linear park connection downtown Toronto with Scarborough, looks fine in this imagining. CBC Toronto has it.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Montréal, Sudbury, Québec City, Los Angeles

• Hamilton is coming up with new strategies to better manage its alleyways. Global News reports.


• The McCord Museum in Montréal is scheduled to enjoy an impressive new expansion in coming years. CBC Montreal reports.


• This CBC Ideas feature looks at how Sudbury, once an industrial wasteland, has been carefully and effectively regreened over the past few decades.


• La Presse reports that majorities in Québec City are in favour of streetcar construction.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares this food map of Los Angeles.

[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: laufmaschine, rocket scavenging, seasteading, Jasons, Moon

• CityLab reports on a replica of a remarkable proto-bicycle, the laufmaschine, first built in 1815 in response to the climate catastrophe of Mount Tambora.


• This Wired feature looking at how northern Russians scavenged and reused rocket components launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome is evocative.


• Seasteading, it turns out, is something that should not be undertaken in waters already claimed by a sovereign power. The National Post reports.


• The Jasons, a think tank of prominent scientists on contract with the Pentagon for decades, are looking for new backers after their contract's end. NPR reports.


• Nicole Javorsky reports at CityLab on remarkable efforts to try to seriously plan the design of an outpost on the Moon.