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- blogTO notesa corner of Etobicoke, bounded by Bloor and Kipling and the Queensway and Islington, is now being banded as the neighbourhood of EtobiCo.
- Sully's Boxing Gym, once a neighbour of mine on Dupont, is now on Dundas Street West. blogTO reports.
- Sean Marshall takes a look at the problems of Don Mills Road for people not in cars, here.
- The Toronto Star explains a new study exploring why more people in the city do not bike to work, here.
- The sort of landlord-tenant conflict and mistrust described here cannot contribute to a productive city. The Toronto Star reports.
[BLOG] Some Saturday links
Sep. 14th, 2019 05:18 pm- Architectuul shares photos from a bike tour of Berlin.
- Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on new evidence that exocomets are raining on star Beta Pictoris.
- Larry Klaes at Centauri Dreams reviews the two late 1970s SF films Alien and Star Trek I, products of the same era.
- D-Brief reports on Hubble studies of the star clusters of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
- Bruce Dorminey shares Gemini telescope images of interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov).
- The Dragon's Tales shares video of Space X's Starhopper test flight.
- Far Outliers notes the import of the 13th century Norman king of England calling himself Edward after an Anglo-Saxon king.
- Gizmodo notes that not only can rats learn to play hide and seek, they seem to enjoy it.
- io9 notes the fantastic high camp of Mister Sinister in the new Jonathan Hickman X-Men run, borrowing a note from Kieron Gillen's portrayal of the character.
- Joe. My. God. notes that Guiliani's soon-to-be ex-wife says he has descended from 911 hero to a liar.
- Language Log looks at the recent ridiculous suggestion that English, among other languages, descends from Chinese.
- The LRB Blog looks at the brief history of commemorating the V2 attacks on London.
- Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the practice in Saskatchewan of sterilizing First Nations women against their consent.
- Marginal Revolution suggests that farmers in Brazil might be getting a partly unfair treatment. (Partly.)
- The Planetary Society Blog explains why C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) matters.
- Window on Eurasia notes that, for the first time, immigrants from Turkmenistan in Belarus outnumber immigrants from Ukraine.
- Hamilton, Ontario, leads the country in reports of hate crimes. The National Post reports.
- Cyclists are 42 times as likely to be ticketed for traffic violations in Montréal than in Toronto. CTV News reports.
- CBC considers if the city of Ottawa loosened unduly its requirements for its new light rail networks.
- A new report suggests that economics of a central Canadian high-frequency rail route would work better if Québec City was not included. CTV reports.
- CityLab looks at nostalgia in Los Angeles for that city's old comprehensive paper map, the Thomas Guide.
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- The city of Fredericton hopes a new strategy to attracting international migration to the New Brunswick capital will help its grow its population by 25 thousand. Global News reports.
- Guardian Cities notes the controversy in Amsterdam as users of moped find themselves being pushed from using bike lanes.
- Guardian Cities looks at how many in Athens think the city might do well to unbury the rivers covered under concrete and construction in the second half of the 20th century.
- The Sagrada Familia, after more than 130 years of construction, has finally received a permit for construction from Barcelona city authorities. Global News reports.
- Evan Gershkovich at the Moscow Times reports on how the recent ousting of the mayor of the Latvian capital of Riga for corruption is also seem through a lens of ethnic conflict.
- The city of Montréal continues to oppose the controversial Royalmount project. Global News reports?
- Will communities in the flood-prone West Island get protective dikes? CBC reports.
- Are the bike paths of Montréal getting sufficient investment? CTV News reports.
- French-language schools in booming north-end Montréal are facing overcrowding. CBC reports.
- CultMTL takes a look at what is up this year for Piknik Electronik on Ile Sainte-Hélène.
- This Shane Mitchell op-ed at Spacing warns about how plans for a new hospital in Windsor can threaten to promote sprawl.
- Debates over bike traffic laws are ongoing in Calgary. Global News reports.
- Guardian Cities looks at how the downtown of the French city of Mulhouse has been successfully regenerated.
- Guardian Cities looks at how the infamous housing estate of Scampia outside of Naples, famously derelict and a nexus for crime, is finally being torn down.
- Atlas Obscura notes an Armenian church in Dhaka, last remnant of a once-vast Armenian trading diaspora that extended out to Bengal.
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- CBC Montreal reports on how a downsizing Montréal-area convent recently put on a very large yard sale.
- Will the staged construction of a tramway in Québec City lead to the partial completion of that project? CBC examines the issue.
- The New Brunswick city of Saint John recently celebrated its Loyalist heritage. Global News reports.
- The new community garden in Moncton sounds lovely. Global News reports.
- CityLab notes the sad precedent of the privatization of an old Carnegie Library in Washington D.C. into an Apple Store.
- CityLab considers if cycling can make inroads in pro-car Dallas.
- Open Democracy examines the controversy surrounding the contested construction of an Orthodox church in Yekaterinburg.
- CityLab reports on a replica of a remarkable proto-bicycle, the laufmaschine, first built in 1815 in response to the climate catastrophe of Mount Tambora.
- This Wired feature looking at how northern Russians scavenged and reused rocket components launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome is evocative.
- Seasteading, it turns out, is something that should not be undertaken in waters already claimed by a sovereign power. The National Post reports.
- The Jasons, a think tank of prominent scientists on contract with the Pentagon for decades, are looking for new backers after their contract's end. NPR reports.
- Nicole Javorsky reports at CityLab on remarkable efforts to try to seriously plan the design of an outpost on the Moon.
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- At NOW Toronto, Rebecca Campbell pays tribute to her friend, and collaborator, the activist Justin Haynes.
- Transit Toronto notes the four generations of TTC streetcars on display in the Beaches Easter Parade tomorrow.
- NOW Toronto criticizes the politics of bike lanes in Toronto.
- NOW Toronto noted how badly Scarborough will be served by the Doug Ford subway plans.
- Happily, Toronto is one of the top cities for students in the world. blogTO reports.
- La Presse notes that the Bixi bike-sharing service in Montréal is celebrating its 11th anniversary.
- Marginal Revolution notes how better policing cut into crime in Camden, New Jersey.
- The NYR Daily looks at how Brexit and a hardened border will hit the Northern Ireland city of Derry.
- Guardian Cities reports on the gang that goes around Rome at night making illegal repairs to crumbling infrastructure.
- CityLab reports on how Cape Town is coping, one year after it nearly ran out of water.
- Roads and Kingdoms shares tips for travellers visiting Hong Kong.
- Guardian Cities reports on the families made refugees by Partition who tried to swap homes in Dhaka and Calcutta.
Tags:
- africa,
- bangladesh,
- borders,
- canada,
- china,
- cities,
- crime,
- cycling,
- environment,
- ethnic conflict,
- european union,
- hinduism,
- hong kong,
- india,
- ireland,
- islam,
- italy,
- montréal,
- northern ireland,
- québec,
- religion,
- separatism,
- south africa,
- south asia,
- tourism,
- travel,
- united kingdom,
- united states,
- urban note
[BLOG] Some Tuesday links
Mar. 19th, 2019 12:22 pm- Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes new evidence that the Pathfinder probe landed, on Mars, on the shores of an ancient sea.
- The Crux reports on tholins, the organic chemicals that are possible predecessors to life, now found in abundance throughout the outer Solar System.
- D-Brief reports on the hard work that has demonstrated some meteorites which recently fell in Turkey trace their origins to Vesta.
- Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog explores sociologist Eric Klinenberg's concept of social infrastructure, the public spaces we use.
- Far Outliers reports on a Honolulu bus announcement in Yapese, a Micronesian language spoken by immigrants in Hawai'i.
- JSTOR Daily considers the import of the autobiography of Catherine the Great.
- Language Hat reports, with skepticism, on the idea of "f" and "v" as sounds being products of the post-Neolithic technological revolution.
- Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen is critical of the idea of limiting the number of children one has in a time of climate change.
- Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reflects on death, close at hand and in New Zealand.
- Strange Company reports on the mysterious disappearance, somewhere in Anatolia, of American cyclist Frank Lenz in 1892, and its wider consequences.
- Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel identifies five types of cosmic events capable of triggering mass extinctions on Earth.
- Towleroad reports on the frustration of many J.K. Rowling fans with the author's continuing identification of queer histories for characters that are never made explicit in books or movies.
- Window on Eurasia has a skeptical report about a Russian government plan to recruit Russophones in neighbouring countries as immigrants.
- Arnold Zwicky explores themes of shipwrecks and of being shipwrecked.
Tags:
- asteroids,
- astronomy,
- bicycles,
- blogs,
- cycling,
- demographics,
- diaspora,
- disasters,
- evolution,
- extraterrestrial life,
- feminism,
- gender,
- glbt issues,
- hawaii,
- in memoriam,
- language,
- links,
- mars,
- micronesia,
- migration,
- oceans,
- oddities,
- ottoman empire,
- pacific islands,
- public art,
- russia,
- russian language,
- social sciences,
- sociology,
- solar system,
- space science,
- terrorism,
- vesta,
- writing
- CityLab notes that talk about the rent in Montréal being uniquely affordable is somewhat exaggerated.
- CityLab notes that, in New York City, the growing numbers of electric bikes are posing a major problem for traffic planners.
- Despite high levels of crime, tourism in Tijuana is thriving, VICE reports.
- CityLab has a nice photo essay looking at a "market on wheels" in Mexico City.
- Honolulu and wider Oahu are trying to regulate the construction of "monster homes" on the island, houses that occupy much too much of their lots and might not be a good response to the island's housing crisis. CityLab reports.
- Peter Rukavina argues that the ease with which Charlottetown's airport can be reached by bus and by bike should be emphasized more.
- CBC profiles Iranian immigrant Aman Sedighi, now a successful farm owner.
- The PEI Cannabis Store is finishing up training its staff for its locations in Charlottetown, Montague, and Summerside, but O'Leary in the west of the Island lags. CBC reports.
- The Guardian quotes multiple business owners on PEI saying that the temporary worker program needs to be fixed to deal with their worker shortages.
- This editorial in The Guardian of Charlottetown makes the point that, with the lowest weekly earnings of any Canadian province, PEI needs to improve its wages if it is to avoid losing more people to out-migration.
- Urban Toronto looks at Honest Ed's one year ago and at the site now.
- Urban Toronto looks at how the exterior of 411 Church, at Church and Carlton, is fast approaching completion.
- A highly contagious disease called Newcastle disease is killing cormorants along the Toronto waterfront. CBC reports.
- Tammy Thorne at NOW Toronto looks at the factors behind the spread of cycling in Scarborough, here.
- Jamie Bradburn shares some old articles offering advice to the Water Nymphs women's swimming club of the 1920s.
- Toronto Guardian recommends three activities that erstwhile CNE visitors can engage in to support the workers' strike.
- Urban Toronto highlights some of the new features being added to E Condos at Yonge and Eglinton as construction there finishes.
- NOW Toronto notes the extension of bike share programs up to Yonge and Eglinton, further north from the downtown.
- Nowhere in Toronto, May Warren reports at the Toronto Star, are rents particularly affordable, not even in the suburbs.
- CBC Toronto reports that, according to the secret city solicitor's report, there are only a limited number of ways Toronto can fight the Ontario government in court over the reduction in city council's size, with little hope of an easy victory.
- Olivia Bednar at NOW Toronto reports on a new photo exhibit examining the history of the CNE, and examines five photos particularly.
- The Toronto bike lane strategy is falling behind schedule, activists report over at the Toronto Star.
- Shawn Micallef notes the new political alliances being forged in Toronto by the shift in ward boundaries, over at the Toronto Star.
- Olivia Bednar at NOW Toronto reports on an upcoming exhibit of the art of Kent Monkman, this September at the Project Gallery.
- Urban Toronto contrasts two photos of the downtown Toronto skyline from Kensington Market, taken from the same point in 2013 and 2018, here.
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- The whole sorry story of Dafonte Miller, who was brutally beaten by two off-duty policemen whose actions were not reported to SIU and may in fact have been covered up by (among others) their cop father, is appalling. Do not trust the police. The Toronto Star reports.
- The Pacific Mall has started to crack down, again, on counterfeit goods. The Toronto Star reports.
- Extending bike share programs to Scarborough sounds like a good idea in theory, but is there yet the density and infrastructure needed to support this? The Toronto Star reports.
- Trying to avoid Toronto becoming a preserve of the rich is a key goal. Will this result in the structural change to housing markets needed? The Toronto Star reports.
- Residents of a condo complex at Bayview and Eglinton are concerned about the effects of Eglinton Crosstown construction, making it difficult for them to feel safe going to and from their homes. CBC reports.
- Transit Toronto reports on the TTC's latest overcrowding measures.
- A Toronto real estate crunch could well drive talented people and professionals away from the city, one study reports. The Toronto Star notes.
- That New York City is the safest big city in the United States, as Henry Goldman reports for Bloomberg, does not surprise me. When I was there last month, it felt safe, throughout, even at 11 o'clock at night in the middle of Brooklyn.
- This brief article about the effects of the world-record high crime in Caracas terrifies me, and makes me feel very sorry for Venezuelans.
- Cape Town may be facing water shortages, Craig Welch writes at National Geographic, but it is not alone. Los Angeles and São Paulo are also on this unhappy shortlist.
- Tracey Lindeman argues at Motherboard that bike-sharing programs in cities like Dallas, where there has been no planning to make the city bike-friendly, are doomed to fail unless the work is put in.
- Diana Karliner at Open Democracy takes a look at the plight of workers in Russia's car industry, in its heartland of the city of Tolyatti.
- Florin from G+ was the first person to share the news that someone has been arrested for first-degree murder in the case of the disappearances of two queer men. This is shocking news; I am so sorry for the people affected by these losses. CBC reports.
- Doug Ford is continuing to campaign for the mayoralty, despite an official warning that he should not start campaigning before the campaign legally starts. Ford Nation lives yet. The Toronto Star has the news.
- Global News reports on a new tactic by pro-transit groups to try to get people behind the Downtown Relief Line. Good; we need it.
- Controversy over a bike lane on Yonge Street in North York continues. The Toronto Star reports.
- blogTO reports on the appealing suggestion that Old City Hall might be turned into a library and a museum. I would quite like this, actually.
- Tess Kalinowski reports on how rising rents in Toronto are pushing more people to the 905 region, to Toronto suburbs like Mississauga and Vaughan, over at the Toronto Star.
- John Lorinc at Spacing is harshly critical of an Ontario affordable housing policy that actually does little to ensure affordable rent, giving developers and municipalities effective vetoes over development.
- blogTO notes that a massive condo tower, 64 stories high, is slated for the northwest corner of Church and Wellesley.
- VICE reports on how a string of suspicious disappearances, dead people, and outright murders is worrying people in Church and Wellesley.
- Ben Spurr notes that the Ontario government has given Toronto more than $C 25 million to improve cycling infrastructure, over at the Toronto Star.
- David Rider notes a push to investigate the idea of burying the western end of the Eglinton LRT line, over at the Toronto Star.
- Oliver Moore notes the recommendation of outgoing TTC chief Andy Byford that the one-stop Scarborough subway extension be cancelled if the cost is projected to be more than $C 3 billion, over at The Globe and Mail.
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