[PHOTO] Black and white pigeon, Church Street

[PHOTO] Five photos from Church and Wellesley

I was on Church Street Tuesday evening, and that street was as queer as ever.

[PHOTO] Stanley Condos rising, next to Maple Leaf Gardens

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait looks at Abell 30, a star that has been reborn in the long process of dying.


• Centauri Dreams uses the impending launch of LightSail 2 to discuss solar sails in science fiction.


• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber, as part of a series of the fragility of globalization, considers if migration flows can be reversed. (He concludes it unlikely.)


• The Crux considers if the record rain in the Midwest (Ontario, too, I would add) is a consequence of climate change.


• D-Brief notes that the failure of people around the world to eat enough fruits and vegetables may be responsible for millions of premature dead.


• Dangerous Minds introduces readers to gender-bending Italian music superstar Renato Zero.


• Dead Things notes how genetic examinations have revealed the antiquity of many grapevines still used for wine.


• Gizmodo notes that the ocean beneath the icy crust of Europa may contain simple salt.


• io9 tries to determine the nature of the many twisted timelines of the X-Men movie universe of Fox.


• JSTOR Daily observes that the Stonewall Riots were hardly the beginning of the gay rights movement in the US.


• Language Log looks at the mixed scripts on a bookstore sign in Beijing.


• Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns, and Money argues that Jeremy Corbyn has a very strong hold on his loyal followers, perhaps even to the point of irrationality.


• Marginal Revolution observes that people who create public genetic profiles for themselves also undo privacy for their entire biological family.


• Sean Marshall at Marshall's Musings shares a photo of a very high-numbered street address, 986039 Oxford-Perth Road in Punkeydoodle's Corners.


• The NYR Daily examines the origins of the wealth of Lehman Brothers in the exploitation of slavery.


• The Planetary Society Blog shares a panorama-style photo of the Apollo 11 Little West Crater on the Moon.


• Drew Rowsome notes that classic documentary Paris Is Burning has gotten a makeover and is now playing at TIFF.


• Peter Rukavina, writing from a trip to Halifax, notes the convenience of the Eduroam procedures allowing users of one Maritime university computer network to log onto another member university's network.


• Dylan Reid at Spacing considers how municipal self-government might be best embedded in the constitution of Canada.


• The Speed River Journal's Van Waffle pays tribute to the wildflower Speedwell, a name he remembers from Watership Down.


• Strange Maps shares a crowdsourced map depicting which areas of Europe are best (and worst) for hitchhikers.


• Window on Eurasia notes the distribution of native speakers of Russian, with Israel emerging as more Russophone than some post-Soviet states.

[MUSIC] Twelve music links: Beatles, Annie Lennox, Shakespears Sister, Céline Dion ...

• There is now a play expanding on the urban legend--is it?--that the Beatles came close to being reunited in a meeting in an Eastern Townships library divided by the Canadian-American border. CTV reports.
• 
  
• The Annie Lennox-curated exhibit "Now I let You Go ..." at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art sounds amazing. The New York Times reports.


• This Guardian feature on the reunification, after two and a half decades, of Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit in Shakespears Sister made me very happy.


• Céline Dion seems to be in the middle of an interesting sort of renaissance. Why not a headlining appearance on Carpool Karaoke? VICE reports.


• CTV News profiles the Summerside-born and Montréal-based electropop fiddler Denique, gaining praise for his innovative music and videos.


• Noisey recently reported on an interestingly different early version of the Beyoncé song "Sorry".


• Dangerous Minds shares footage of a 1977 Bryan Ferry concert in Japan.


• Vice provides readers with an introduction and overview to the best songs of Elton John.


• Vice did readers the service of providing readers with an entry point into the discography of PJ Harvey.


• Le Devoir looks at the phenomenon of K-Pop.


• Josh Terry at Noisey makes the accurate point that the decision of the Chicago White Sox to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Disco Sucks riot, given the racism and homophobia of that movement, is a bad misstep.