[PHOTO] Me with my new Fitbit Inspire HR

I am decidedly pleased with by my new Fitbit Inspire HR.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Buzz shares a TIFF reading list, here.


• Centauri Dreams notes the growing sensitivity of radial velocity techniques in finding weird exoplanet HR 5183 b, here.


• The Crux reports on circumgalactic gas and the death of galaxies.


• Dead Things notes the import of the discovery of the oldest known Australopithecine skull.


• Dangerous Minds reports on pioneering 1930s queer artist Hannah Gluckstein, also known as Gluck.


• Gizmodo notes that, for an unnamed reason, DARPA needs a large secure underground testing facility for tomorrow.


• JSTOR Daily looks at how Jim Crow laws affected Mexican immigrants in the early 20th century US.


• Language Hat looks at a new project to study Irish texts and language over centuries.


• Language Log shares some Chinglish signs from a top university in China.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money shares an interview with Jeffrey Melnick suggesting Charles Manson was substantially a convenient boogeyman.


• Marginal Revolution shares a paper suggesting marijuana legalization is linked to declining crime rates.


• Susan Neiman at the NYR Daily tells how she began her life as a white woman in Atlanta and is ending it as a Jewish woman in Berlin.


• The Planetary Society Blog looks at Hayabusa2 at Ryugu.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel celebrated the 230th anniversary of Enceladus, the Saturn moon that might harbour life.


• Window on Eurasia notes how global warming is harming the rivers of Siberia, causing many to run short.

[PHOTO] Select fountains of Yonge-Dundas Square

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Zanzibar, Chinatown, Golden Mile, beer, ravines

• The story of Toronto nightclub Zanzibar is, indeed, a fascinating one. (Soon to go, with the rest of Yonge Street.) The Toronto Star has it.


• Will gentrification undermine Chinatown, downtown on Spadina Avenue? Global News reports.


• The Golden Mile of Scarborough, along Eglinton Avenue, is set to be radically transformed by development. blogTO reports.


• Oh, why not allow for the sale of beer at some convenience stores in TTC stops? blogTO has it.


• Alireza Nareghi looks in MacLean's at the threat posed to the ravine environments of Toronto by invasive species, and at what is being done to save them.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Sainte-Marie, Saint John, Phoenix, Paris, Singapore

• The flood-damaged community of Sainte-Marie, in the Beauce south of Québec City, may not recover from necessary demolitions of damaged and dangerous structures. CBC reports.


• Erecting a barrier at an apparently suicide-attracting bridge like the Reversing Falls Bridge in Saint John makes perfect sense to me. Global News has it.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that, happily, voters in Phoenix have voted again in support of a light rail mass transit project.


• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution notes that the department of Paris has continued to lose population, contrary to the experience of growth elsewhere in other similar world cities.


• CityLab makes the case for Changi Airport, in Singapore, as a world-class attraction in its own right.

[URBAN NOTE] Five links about cities: tennis, CFL, twin towns, coworking, space company towns

• Joshua Clipperton writes, here at CTV News, about how tennis like the Rogers Cup is much more popular in Montréal than in Toronto for a variety of reasons.


• The CFL's Montreal Alouettes and Toronto Argonauts are set to play another exhibition game in Moncton, as Touchdown Atlantic tries to gather support for an Atlantic Canadian franchise.


• Guardian Cities considers, with interviews, how Brexit might impact the town twinning that united British communities with those of wider Europe.


• Guardian Cities notes how churches and other houses of worship are starting to market themselves as spaces for coworking.


• I think it entirely possible that space settlements may end up evoking the company towns of Earth. Slate has it.

[MUSIC] Five music links: Rouge, David Bowie, Taylor Swift, Dixie Chicks, maps

• Dangerous Minds looks/u> at obscure 1970s glam punk band Rouge, from Japan.


• Dangerous Minds points readers to the excellent David Bowie fan comic, the biographical "The Side Effects of the Cocaine".


• Taylor Swift made a wonderful donation to the Regent Park School of Music.


• I do agree with Anne T. Donahue at CBC Arts Mthat country music needs more of the innovative challenges brought by the Dixie Chicks.


• CityLab shares a playlist of songs dealing, in one way or another, with maps.