[PHOTO] Red ivy on the walls, Dupont Street

[PHOTO] Twenty-five photos of the Humber River, from Old Mill up to Dundas Street West

Yesterday, I had a nice walk north up the Humber River, from Old Mill station up through Étienne Brûlé Park all the way upstream to Dundas Street. It was a beautiful early evening walk, in parklands turning yellow and other colours.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomy notes a new detailed study suggesting that asteroid Hygeia is round. Does this mean it is a dwarf planet?


• The Buzz notes that the Toronto Public Library has a free booklet on the birds of Toronto available at its branches.


• Crooked Timber looks forward to a future, thanks to Trump, without the World Trade Organization.


• D-Brief notes how the kelp forests off California were hurt by unseasonal heat and disease.


• Bruce Dorminey notes an impending collision of supergalactic clusters.


• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how judgement can complicate collective action.


• Language Hat looks at the different definitions of the word "mobile".

Language Log looks at the deep influence of the Persian language upon Marathi.
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=44807

• Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how, if anything, climate scientists make conservative claims about their predictions.


• Marginal Revolution wonders if planned power outages are a good way to deal with the threat of wildfires in California.


• The NYR Daily looks at the ethnic cleansing being enabled by Turkey in Kurdish Syria.


• Corey S. Powell at Out There interviews archeologist Arthur Lin about his use of space-based technologies to discovery traces of the past.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks at the staggering inequality in Chile, driver of the recent protests.


• At Roads and Kingdoms, Anthony Elghossain reports from the scene of the mass protests in Lebanon.


• Drew Rowsome tells how his balcony garden fared this year.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at stellar generations in the universe. (Our sun is a third-generation star.)


• Strange Company looks at the murder of a girl five years old in Indiana in 1898. Was the neighbor boy twelve years old accused of the crime the culprit?


• Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine takes a look at social mobility in France.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little considers economic historians and their study of capitalism.


• Window on Eurasia looks at the pro-Russian policies of the Moldova enclave of Gagauzia, and draws recommendations for Ukraine re: the Donbas.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links

• I do hope Toronto does something with the abandoned foot court on Queen West and John. blogTO reports.


• blogTO looks at the new Villiers Island set to occupy the mouth of the Don River in the Port Lands.


• An Ossington laneway is going to be repainted after a botched improvement project destroyed its public art. The Toronto Star reports.


• Steve Munro fisks a defense by the Toronto Board of Trade of the proposed Ontario Line, here.


• Andrew Cash, sadly not elected in my riding of Davenport, writes in the Toronto Star about the importance of Toronto having active local MPs.


• National Observer looks at how the City of Toronto is encouraging residents grow gardens for pollinators.


• Samantha Edwards writes at NOW Toronto about how the long-closed Paradise on Bloor theatre is set to reopen in December.

[AH] Six #alternatehistory maps from Reddit: Irish, Canada, Alaska, Russia, Prairies, South Africa

• This r/mapporn map shows the scale of the collapse of Irish as a spoken language across most of Ireland. Was this avoidable?


• This r/imaginarymaps map shows a Canada where the 1837 rebellions were successful, with an autonomous Upper Canada and a Lower Canada with a Patriote state. Doable?


• This r/imaginarymaps map depicts a common alternate history trope, that of an independent but culturally Russian Alaska. What would it take for this to happen?


• This r/imaginarymaps map depicts a world where Eurasia, from Germany to Korea, was dominated by a successfully industrializing Russian Empire. Was this common fear of the belle époque actually achievable?


• This r/mapporn map shows the different proposals for different territorial configurations of the Canadian Prairies. (I like the ones with north-south divisions.)


• Was a single South Africa covering most of British Southern Africa with relatively liberal racial policies, as Jan Smuts wanted, actually achievable? r/imaginarymaps hosts the map.