[PHOTO] Clear blue skies and wires, north on Dufferin

The sky yesterday morning tended towards a perfect clear blue.

[PHOTO] Four photos of murals on Roncesvalles Avenue

Roncesvalles Avenue, the street at the heart of the west-end neighbourhood of Roncesvalles, stands out for its particular density in high-quality public art, the many huge murals lying in plain sight of all.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Architectuul notes the recent death of I.M. Pei.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes what, exactly, rubble-pile asteroids are.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about definitions of home.


• Centauri Dreams considers white dwarf planets.


• The Crux notes how ultra-processed foods are liked closely to weight gain.


• D-Brief observes that a thin layer of insulating ice might be saving the subsurface oceans of Pluto from freezing out.


• Bruce Dorminey notes the critical role played by Apollo 10 in getting NASA ready for the Moon landings.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the American government's expectation that China will seek to set up its own global network of military bases.


• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina reports on the Soviet Union's Venera 5 and 6 missions to Venus.


• Far Outliers looks at the visit of U.S. Grant to Japan and China.


• Gizmodo notes a recent analysis of Neanderthal teeth suggesting that they split with Homo sapiens at a date substantially earlier than commonly believed.


• io9 notes the sheer scale of the Jonathan Hickman reboots for the X-Men comics of Marvel.


• Joe. My. God. shares the argument of Ted Cruz that people should stop making fun of his "space pirate" suggestion.I am inclined to think Cruz more right than not, actually.


• JSTOR Daily notes the wave of anti-black violence that hit the United States in 1919, often driven by returned veterans.


• Language Hat shares a recognizable complaint, written in ancient Akkadian, of bad customers.


• Language Log shares a report of a village in Brittany seeking people to decipher a mysterious etching.


• This Scott Lemieux report at Lawyers, Guns and Money about how British conservatives received Ben Shapiro is a must-read summary.


• Benjamin Markovits at the LRB Blog shares the reasons why he left his immigrant-heavy basketball team in Germany.


• Marginal Revolution looks at one effort in Brazil to separate people from their street gangs.


• The NYR Daily looks at how ISIS, deprived of its proto-state, has managed to thrive as a decentralized network.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw tells of his experiences and perceptions of his native region of New England, in southeastern Australia.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes how the Chang'e 4 rover may have found lunar mantle on the surface of the Moon.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that while Argentine president Mauricio Macri is polling badly, his opponents are not polling well.


• Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of things to do in see in the Peru capital of Lima.


• The Signal examines how the Library of Congress engages in photodocumentation.


• Van Waffle at the Speed River Journal explains how he is helping native insects by planting native plants in his garden.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how scientific illiteracy should never be seen as cool.


• Towleroad notes the questions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as to why Truvada costs so much in the United States.


• Window on Eurasia notes how family structures in the North Caucasus are at once modernizing and becoming more conservative.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the distribution of US carriers and their fleets at present does not support the idea of a planned impending war with Iran.


• Arnold Zwicky examines the tent caterpillar of California.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy notes how, in galaxy 3XMM J150052.0+015452 1.8 billion light-years away, a black hole has been busily eating a star for a decade.


• Centauri Dreams considers how relativistic probes might conduct astronomy. How would their measurements be changed by these high speeds?


• The Crux reports on how scientists are trying to save the platypus in its native rivers of Australia.


• D-Brief reports on the quiet past of Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on UAV news from around the world.


• Joe. My. God. reports a statement by a Trump biography suggesting that the American president believes in not following laws because of his belief in his own "genetic superiority".


• JSTOR Daily reports on the importance of the longleaf pine in the history of the United States.


• Language Hat considers, in the case of Australia, the benefits of reviving indigenous languages.
  
• Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money considers how the success of Israel in hosting Eurovision is a blow against the Netanyahu government.


• James Butler at the LRB Blog looks at the peculiar position of private schools in the UK, and their intersection with public life.


• Marginal Revolution looks at a paper analyzing two centuries of British writers noting that productivity was boosted for the least productive if they lived in London.


• The NYR Daily notes the end of famed French periodical Les temps modernes.


• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog notes the expected crash of Chinese smallsat Longjiang-2 from its lunar orbit at the end of July.


• Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money notes how ex-president of Argentina Cristina Fernández, running for election this year, was lucky in having the economic crash occur after the end of her presidency.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains the different reasons behind the blues of the sky and the ocean.


• Window on Eurasia notes that three hundred thousand Russians have died of HIV/AIDS since the virus manifested on Soviet territory in the late 1980s, with more deaths to come thanks to mismanagement of the epidemic.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links: flooding, weather, towers, plants

• Rising water levels on the eastern beaches of Toronto are a growing concern. The Toronto Star reports.


• Earlier this month, a poster at r/toronto shared photos of Toronto Islands flooding, here.


• The City of Toronto is warning of flood risks near the Lake Ontario shoreline. CBC reports.


• blogTO notes the unusually cold weather this May.


• Urban Toronto looks at the Grenadier Square tower near High Park.


• Toronto Life shares photos of the Tokyo Smokes cannabis shop, in the old HMV at Yonge and Dundas.


• James Burt at Spacing identifies some invasive plants in the Toronto area.