[MUSIC] Röyksopp with Robyn, "The Girl and the Robot" (Kris Menace Remix)

The Kris Menace remix of the 2009 classic "The Girl and the Robot", by Röyksopp with Robyn, is my favourite song for listening in the morning. I like how this particular remix has an urgency to it, a sense of destination; it really does help me get out of bed and feel more energized, at least.

"The Girl And The Robot (Kris Menace Remix) - Röyksopp ft. Robyn" (Watch on YouTube)

What is your morning song?

[PHOTO] Six photos taken in the greening Ryerson Quad (#ryersonquad)

The Ryerson Quad, enclosed on all four sides by Ryerson University's Kerr Hall, might have been bedeviled for years by various construction-related closures, but it is still a serene place to enjoy spring in Toronto.

[PHOTO] Abraham Etungat, Bird of Spring

This casting of Bird of Spring by Inuit sculptor Abraham Etungat, known for his sculptures of birds with wings upswept, is a casting made in bronze from his original carving. Blogger Bill Andersen noted in 2016 that this particular casting is one of several made of the original "Bird of Spring", produced by a foundation that wanted to spread Canadian art across the country. Ryerson University's casting has at least two siblings, one bronze in Halifax and another bronze in Vancouver, with still another fibreglass copy in Calgary's Connaught Park. NeaTO has a 2016 post going into more detail about the history of this particular casting.

[PHOTO] Hotel Europa, Niagara Falls

I at first was not sure if the Hotel Europa, on the corner of Bridge Street and Erie Avenue in the old downtown of Niagara Falls just south of the train station and east of the bus station, was actually abandoned. I did see some open windows, and I did reason to myself that a hotel in such a prime location must surely be in use even if it might be a dive. But no, I later found out via a local that the hotel had been abandoned for years; one Flickr-hosted photo from 2007 identifies the hotel as abandoned even then. This is a shame: This building, dating back to 1910, really is in a prime location. Were I the enterprising and well-funded sort, I might well try to make a go of this place. I might even make this incarnation succeed.

[PHOTO] Niagara Falls map of the Niagara-Haldimand section of the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail

This map of the Niagara Peninsula, located outside of the Niagara Falls Transit Terminal on Erie Avenue, highlight this region's component of Ontario's Great Lakes Waterfront Trail. This section of the trail hugs the coasts of lakes Ontario and Erie and the Niagara River in between.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Architectuul takes a look at "infrastructural scars", at geopolitically-inspired constructions like border fences and fortifications.


• Centauri Dreams notes what we can learn from 99942 Apophis during its 2029 close approach to Earth, just tens of thousands of kilometres away.


• D-Brief reports on the reactions of space artists to the photograph of the black hole at the heart of M87.


• Dangerous Minds shares the first recording of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Germany has begun work on drafting laws to cover space mining.


• Gizmodo reports on what scientists have learned from the imaging of a very recent impact of an asteroid on the near side of the Moon.


• io9 makes the case that Star Trek: Discovery should try to tackle climate change.


• Joe. My. God. notes that Verizon is seeking a buyer for Tumblr. (Wouldn't it be funny if it was bought, as other reports suggest might be possible, by Pornhub?)


• JSTOR Daily reports on a 1910 examination of medical schools that, among other things, shut down all but two African-American medical schools with lasting consequences for African-American health.


• Language Log asks why "Beijing" is commonly pronounced as "Beizhing".


• Simon Balto asks at Lawyers, Guns and Money why the murder of Justine Ruszczyk by a Minneapolis policeman is treated more seriously than other police killings, just because she was white and the cop was black. All victims deserve the same attention.


• Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares a video of the frieze of the Parthenon.


• The NYR Daily responds to the 1979 television adaptation of the Primo Levi novel Christ Stopped at Eboli, an examination of (among other things) the problems of development.


• Peter Rukavina is entirely right about the practical uselessness of QR codes.


• Daniel Little at Understanding Society points readers towards the study of organizations, concentrating on Charles Perrow.


• Window on Eurasia notes the argument of one Russian commentator that Russia should offer to extend citizenship en masse not only to Ukrainians but to Belarusians, the better to undermine independent Belarus.


• Arnold Zwicky shares photos of some of his flourishing flowers, as his home of Palo Alto enters a California summer.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links: 1919, condos, Long Branch, transit, Walk-Up Weekdays, sakura

• Jamie Bradburn shares some editorials from Toronto newspapers in 1919 reacting to the city's general strike.


• CBC Toronto reports on the growing number of 311 complaints about short-term rentals in many condo complexes, like the Ice Condos.


• blogTO profiles an excellent-looking condo at 1100 Lansdowne Avenue, on Lansdowne near Davenport.


• Tess Kalinowski writes at the Toronto Star about controversies in Long Branch regarding lot severance. How can this old community densify?


• Edward Keenan writes at the Toronto Star about the point that a transit shelter enclosed on four sides did not make, and the point that it did perhaps make inadvertantly.


• The Toronto Public Library announces its Walk-Up Weekdays program, where this month possession of a library card can give someone free admission to a city museum.


• The Toronto cherry blossom festival in High Park will start this weekend, with road closures starting Saturday. Global News reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Brussels, Baghdad, Hiroshima

• The National Observer notes that Montréal authorities have warned against people going to flooded areas to take selfies.


• CityLab notes the plans of Columbia University in Manhattan to become a new much denser neighbourhood, and the concerns of non-university neighbours.


• Feargus O'Sullivan notes at CityLab how congested Brussels is gradually becoming car-free.


• Ozy llooks at the underground nightclubs and music halls of the young people of Baghdad.


• Sean Marshall, reporting from his recent trip to Japan, explores post-war the streetcar system of Hiroshima with photos of his own.

[URBAN NOTE] Five links about cities: noise, China, Central Asia, Bauhaus, suburbs

• Guardian Cities notes the growing problem of noise pollution, and how it is the poor who suffer the most from this.


• Guardian Cities shares photos depicting the scale of China's urbanization and other transformations of the very land.


• Guardian Cities shares photos of the apartment towers of post-Soviet Central Asia.


• Citylab looks at how Bauhaus and the architects who belonged to that school tried to resist Naziism.


• CityLab shares excerpts from Amanda Kolson Hurley's new book Radical Suburbs, examining the real past and potential of suburbs for change.

[DM] Some links: immigration, cities, small towns, French Canada, Eurasia, China, Brexit, music

Another links post is up over at Demography Matters!

• Skepticism about immigration in many traditional receiving countries appeared. Frances Woolley at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative took issue with the argument of Andray Domise after an EKOS poll, that Canadians would not know much about the nature of migration flows. The Conversation observed how the rise of Vox in Spain means that country’s language on immigration is set to change towards greater skepticism. Elsewhere, the SCMP called on South Korea, facing pronounced population aging and workforce shrinkages, to become more open to immigrants and minorities.


• Cities facing challenges were a recurring theme. This Irish Examiner article, part of a series, considers how the Republic of Ireland’s second city of Cork can best break free from the dominance of Dublin to develop its own potential. Also on Ireland, the NYR Daily looked at how Brexit and a hardened border will hit the Northern Ireland city of Derry, with its Catholic majority and its location neighbouring the Republic. CityLab reported on black migration patterns in different American cities, noting gains in the South, is fascinating. As for the threat of Donald Trump to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities in the United States has widely noted., at least one observer noted that sending undocumented immigrants to cities where they could connect with fellow diasporids and build secure lives might actually be a good solution.


• Declining rural settlements featured, too. The Guardian reported from the Castilian town of Sayatón, a disappearing town that has become a symbol of depopulating rural Spain. Global News, similarly, noted that the loss by the small Nova Scotia community of Blacks Harbour of its only grocery store presaged perhaps a future of decline. VICE, meanwhile, reported on the very relevant story about how resettled refugees helped revive the Italian town of Sutera, on the island of Sicily. (The Guardian, to its credit, mentioned how immigration played a role in keeping up numbers in Sayatón, though the second generation did not stay.)


• The position of Francophone minorities in Canada, meanwhile, also popped up at me.
• This TVO article about the forces facing the École secondaire Confédération in the southern Ontario city of Welland is a fascinating study of minority dynamics. A brief article touches on efforts in the Franco-Manitoban community of Winnipeg to provide temporary shelter for new Francophone immigrants. CBC reported, meanwhile, that Francophones in New Brunswick continue to face pressure, with their numbers despite overall population growth and with Francophones being much more likely to be bilingual than Anglophones. This last fact is a particularly notable issue inasmuch as New Brunswick's Francophones constitute the second-largest Francophone community outside of Québec, and have traditionally been more resistant to language shift and assimilation than the more numerous Franco-Ontarians.


• The Eurasia-focused links blog Window on Eurasia pointed to some issues. It considered if the new Russian policy of handing out passports to residents of the Donbas republics is related to a policy of trying to bolster the population of Russia, whether fictively or actually. (I'm skeptical there will be much change, myself: There has already been quite a lot of emigration from the Donbas republics to various destinations, and I suspect that more would see the sort of wholesale migration of entire families, even communities, that would add to Russian numbers but not necessarily alter population pyramids.) Migration within Russia was also touched upon, whether on in an attempt to explain the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s or in the argument of one Muslim community leader in the northern boomtown of Norilsk that a quarter of that city's population is of Muslim background.


• Eurasian concerns also featured. The Russian Demographics Blog observed, correctly, that one reason why Ukrainians are more prone to emigration to Europe and points beyond than Russians is that Ukraine has long been included, in whole or in part, in various European states. As well, Marginal Revolution linked to a paper that examines the positions of Jews in the economies of eastern Europe as a “rural service minority”, and observed the substantial demographic shifts occurring in Kazakhstan since independence, with Kazakh majorities appearing throughout the country.
  
• JSTOR Daily considered if, between the drop in fertility that developing China was likely to undergo anyway and the continuing resentments of the Chinese, the one-child policy was worth it. I'm inclined to say no, based not least on the evidence of the rapid fall in East Asian fertility outside of China.


• What will Britons living in the EU-27 do, faced with Brexit? Bloomberg noted the challenge of British immigrant workers in Luxembourg faced with Brexit, as Politico Europe did their counterparts living in Brussels.


• Finally, at the Inter Press Service, A.D. Mackenzie wrote about an interesting exhibit at the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris on the contributions made by immigrants to popular music in Britain and France from the 1960s to the 1980s.