[PHOTO] Me, mirrored at Muji

The temptation for a selfie was obvious.

[PHOTO] "May the way forward be clear." #MUJIwellwishes

Yesterday at Yonge-Dundas Square, just across from its flagship store in the Atrium on Bay, MUJI Canada was sponsoring an event, encouraging passers-by to create an ema bearing their wishes for the future. Why not, I thought?

[PHOTO] The C64 Mini, $C 59.99

The nostalgia I felt on seeing this device yesterday felt physical to me.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait shares a video of the expansion of supernova remnant Cas A.


• James Bow shares an alternate history Toronto transit map from his new novel The Night Girl.


• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes the Boris Johnson coup.


• The Crux notes a flawed study claiming that some plants had a recognizable intelligence.


• D-Brief notes the mysterious absorbers in the clouds of Venus. Are they life?


• Dangerous Minds shares, apropos of nothing, the Jah Wabbles song "A Very British Coup."


• Cody Delistraty looks at bullfighting.


• Dead Things notes the discovery of stone tools sixteen thousand years old in Idaho which are evidence of the first humans in the Americas.


• io9 features an interview with authors Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz on worldbuilding.


• Joe. My. God. notes that a bill in Thailand to establish civil unions is nearing approval.


• JSTOR Daily looks at how using plastic in road construction can reduce pollution in oceans.


• Language Log looks to see if some police in Hong Kong are speaking Cantonese or Putonghua.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the perplexing ramblings and--generously--inaccuracy of Joe Biden.


• The LRB Blog asks why the United Kingdom is involved in the Yemen war, with Saudi Arabia.


• The Map Room Blog looks at the different efforts aiming to map the fires of Amazonia.


• Marginal Revolution reports on how some southern US communities, perhaps because they lack other sources of income, depend heavily on fines.


• The NYR Daily looks at the complex literary career of Louisa May Alcott, writing for all sorts of markets.


• Window on Eurasia reports on the apparently sincere belief of Stalin, based on new documents, that in 1934 he faced a threat from the Soviet army.


• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at fixings, or fixins, as the case may be.

[NEWS] Five links: gay genes, stone walls, US wealth, beaches, media

• That, as a new study suggests, there is no single gay gene, but rather multiple different originals for non-heterosexual sexual orientations and behaviours, makes intuitive sense to me. The Washington Post has one take.


• Atlas Obscura looks at the history behind the stone walls of New England.
  
• Justin Fox at Bloomberg examines how the once-commanding lead in incomes of the middle class of the United States over the middle classes of other countries is starting to fade.


• CityLab looks at how, too often by design, beaches in the United States are inaccessible to mass transit. (Toronto is lucky.)


• La Presse shares a proposal by Radio-Canada to move away from a media model of competing with other outlets towards one based on collaboration.