A Bit More Detail

• John Lorinc considers walking in Toronto, on Yonge Street, in the wake of the van attack, over at Spacing.


• This classic Toronto Life tour of "Ford Country", the Toronto landmarks in the career of the Ford brothers, is quite relevant in this election year.


• Royson James is quite right to note the limit of Rob Ford's outreach towards black and other minority youth, over at the Toronto Star.


• blogTO reports on the start of construction of the Finch West LRT line. I sincerely hope it won't be disrupted by election year change in the way the Eglinton subway was by the Harris government.


• Sean Grisdale at Spacing notes the highly concentrated, and negative, impact of Airbnb on housing in downtown Toronto neighbourhoods.

• Bruce Dorminey notes that a Brazilian startup hopes to send a Brazilian probe to lunar orbit, for astrobiological research.


• Far Outliers notes the scale of the Western aid funneled to the Soviet Union through Murmansk in the Second World War.


• Hornet Stories notes that Tarell Alvin McCraney, author of the play adapted into the stunning Moonlight, now has a new play set to premier on Brodway for the 2018-2019 season, Choir Boy.


• JSTOR Daily notes the conspiracy behind the sabotage that led to the destruction in 1916 of a munitions stockpile on Black Tom Island, of German spies with Irish and Indian nationalists.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money is critical of the false equivalence in journalism that, in 2016, placed Trump on a level with Hillary.


• The Map Room Blog notes that fitness app Strava can be used to detect the movements of soldiers (and others) around classified installations.
  
• Marginal Revolution links to a New York Times profile of World Bank president Jim Young Kim.


• Roads and Kingdoms talks about the joys of stuffed bread, paan, in Sri Lanka.


• Towleroad notes that a Russian gay couple whose marriage in Denmark was briefly recognized in Russia are now being persecuted.


• At Whatever, John Scalzi tells the story of his favourite teacher, Keith Johnson, and a man who happened to be gay. Would that all students could have been as lucky as Scalzi.


• Window on Eurasia notes that the pronatalist policies of the Putin regime, which have basically cash subsidies to parents, have not reversed underlying trends towards population decline.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a stunning photo of two galaxies colliding in the eternal night and considers the implications of the Milky Way's future encounter with Andromeda.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the latest discoveries regarding FRB 121102 and fast radio bursts generally.


• Hornet Stories suggests that a recent ruling by the Inter American Court of Human Rights sets the stage for marriage equality across Latin America.


• Inkfish notes that the biomass of dead squid mothers plays a major role in the environments and ecologies of seafloors.


• JSTOR Daily suggests retirees can actually learn a lot from the lifestyles of members of the RV--recreational vehicle--community.


• Language Hat reports on wordplay, and its translations, in the works of Homer.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the turn to anti-intellectualism among American conservatives.


• At Lingua Franca, William Germano talks about telling numbers.


• The LRB Blog notes the story of the English village of Imber, intentionally depopulated by the British military during the Second World War and never allowed to be restored.


• The NYR Daily talks about a London exhibition on the art of our era of terrorism and terror.


• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest Juno discoveries from Jupiter.


• Progressive Download's John Farrell reports on a debate as to whether the origin of life is a more difficult question than the origin of consciousness.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the simple pleasures of an iced coffee enjoyed in the Australian Outback.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel U>considers an interesting question: is ours the only advanced civilization in the universe?


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little tackles the concept of organizational cultures.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that post-1991 immigrants from the former Soviet Union form a tenth of the Russian labour force.

• Global News notes one report suggesting high levels of noise on the TTC could cause hearing loss.


• Massive tax increases linked to development are now subjecting West Queen West to the possibility of being developed out of existence, at least for many of its businesses. blogTO reports.


• This report suggesting architectural and other design changes to Toronto City Hall, to protect against terrorism, is saddening. The Toronto Star has it.


• More than 7% of employment in Toronto is linked to the financial sector. Will this city become a truly major international hub, I wonder? The Globe and Mail reports.

• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting exoplanet transits could start a galactic communications network.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the connections between eating and identity.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas looks at the need for a critical study of the relationship between technology and democracy.


• Language Hat notes how nationalism split Hindustani into separate Hindi and Urdu languages.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reflects on the grim outlook in Somalia after the terrible recent Mogadishu bombing.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen thinks Trump's decertification of the Iran deal is a bad idea.


• The Map Room Blog links to an article imagining a counter-mapping of the Amazon by indigenous peoples.


• Neuroskeptic considers the possibility of Parkinson's being a prion disease, somewhat like mad cow disease.


• The NYR Daily notes that a Brexit driven by a perceived need to take back control will not meet that need, at all.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw looks at the problem Sydney faces as it booms.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks at the extent to which an independent Catalonia would be ravaged economically by a non-negotiated secession.


• Peter Watts tells the sad story of an encounter between Toronto police and a homeless man he knows.


• Window on Eurasia notes a Sakhalin bridge, like a Crimea bridge, may not come off because of Russian weakness.

• Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton reacts to the series premiere of Orville, finding it oddly retrograde and unoriginal.


• Centauri Dreams shares Larry Klaes' article considering the impact of the 1956 classic Forbidden Planet on science and science fiction alike.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper wondering if it is by chance that Earth orbits a yellow dwarf, not a dimmer star.


• Drone360 shares a stunning video of a drone flying into Hurricane Irma.


• Hornet Stories celebrates the 10th anniversary of Chris Crocker's "Leave Britney Alone!" video. (It was important.)


• Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders if 16 years are long enough to let people move beyond taboo images, like those of the jumpers.


• The LRB Blog takes a look at the young Dreamers, students, who have been left scrambling by the repeal of DACA.


• The Map Room Blog notes how a Québec plan to name islands in the north created by hydro flooding after literature got complicated by issues of ethnicity and language.


• Marginal Revolution notes the rise of internal tourism in China, and soon, of Chinese tourists in the wider world.


• The NYR Daily has an interview arguing that the tendency to make consciousness aphysical or inexplicable is harmful to proper study.


• Roads and Kingdoms has a brief account of a good experience with Indonesian wine.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell links to five reports about Syria. They are grim reading.

• blogTO describes the changing designs of TTC maps over the past generations.


• Cody Delistraty links to an article of his contrasting and comparing Donald Trump to Louis XIV.


• Marginal Revolution shares facts about Qatar in this time of its issues.


• Peter Rukavina describes the latest innovations in his homebrew blogging.


• Towleroad notes the sad anniversary of the Pulse massacre in Orlando.


• Window on Eurasia argues that there is still potent for Idel-Ural, a coalition of non-Russian minorities by the Volga.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell examines how Labour and the Tories made use of Big Data, and how Labour did much better.

• Centauri Dreams describes a new type of planet, the molten hot rubble cloud "synestia".


• Far Outliers describes the Polish rebels exiled to Siberia in the 19th century.
  
• Language Hat looks at words for porridge in Bantuphone Africa.


• Language Log examines whistling as a precursor to human language.


• The LRB considers the new normal of the terrorist state of emergency.


• Marginal Revolution notes the weakness of the Indian labour market.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer tries to explain to Uruguayans how Donald Trump made his mistake on the budget.


• Savage Minds remembers the late anthropologist of Polynesia and space colonization, Ben Finney.


• Towleroad examines the rather depressing idea of a porn-dominated sexuality.


• Understanding Society examines Hindu/Muslim tensions in India.


• Window on Eurasia reports on the weakness of Belarus' opposition.


• Arnold Zwicky talks about Arthur Laurents.

Law enforcement officials in Trinidad and Tobago, a small Caribbean island nation off the coast of Venezuela, are scrambling to close a pipeline that has sent a steady stream of young Muslims to Syria, where they have taken up arms for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

American officials worry about having a breeding ground for extremists so close to the United States, fearing that Trinidadian fighters could return from the Middle East and attack American diplomatic and oil installations in Trinidad, or even take a three-and-a-half-hour flight to Miami.

President Trump spoke by telephone over the weekend with Prime Minister Keith Rowley of Trinidad and Tobago about terrorism and other security challenges, including foreign fighters, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, said.

Trinidad has a history of Islamist extremism — a radical Muslim group was responsible for a failed coup in 1990 that lasted six days, and in 2012 a Trinidadian man was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a plot to blow up Kennedy International Airport. Muslims make up only about 6 percent of the population, and the combatants often come from the margins of society, some of them on the run from criminal charges.

They saw few opportunities in an oil-rich nation whose economy has declined with the price of petroleum, experts say. Some were gang members who either converted or were radicalized in prison, while others have been swayed by local imams who studied in the Middle East, according to Muslim leaders and American officials.

Aaron Driver was a sunny, easygoing kid with knobby knees and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles obsession. Born in Regina in 1991 to Wayne, a long-haul trucker, and Linda, a stay-at-home mom, he was a late addition to his family. His sister, Eileen, was already 12, and his brother, Rob, was 10. Wayne often spent weeks on the road, and, in his absence, Aaron became inseparable from his mom. He’d do anything to make her happy—clean his room, do his homework, take out the garbage.

Wayne, a devout Christian, had always planned to become a pastor, but he never finished divinity school. Instead, he worked a succession of contract jobs. The Drivers moved around constantly, jumping across Canada from Regina to Kitchener to Port Colborne. On Sundays, they would go to church, then pack a picnic lunch and head to a nearby beach on Lake Erie.

Everything changed when Aaron was seven. Doctors discovered an inoperable tumour in his mom’s brain. Aaron didn’t understand how sick she was until his dad brought him to the hospital to see her undergo radiation. That’s when it sunk in: she wasn’t going to be okay. Aaron grew quiet and withdrawn, spending entire days in the hospital room with his mom.

A few months after Linda was diagnosed, she fell into a coma and never woke up. Aaron was inconsolable. He and his father were suddenly on their own—his older siblings had already moved out—and Aaron found the loneliness unbearable. In the following months, he often refused to get out of bed to go to school. He stopped eating his lunches, telling Wayne that, if he starved himself to death, he could be with his mom in heaven.

When Aaron was nine, his dad met a woman named Monica on a Christian dating site. Aaron seemed to like her at first, but that changed when, several months later, she and Wayne announced they were getting married. Aaron snapped. He raged and screamed, telling his dad nobody would ever replace his mom—and that he wished Wayne had died instead. Wayne took Aaron to a Christian bereavement counsellor, but his son refused to participate. He tried again with a psychiatrist and had to drag Aaron into the office; he sat through the entire appointment in silence. When Wayne brought a family counsellor in for home sessions, Aaron would storm out of the room. Eventually, Wayne stopped trying altogether.