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  • blogTO notes the maps made by artist Peter Gorman showing the strange intersections of Toronto.

  • This imagining of a wholly pedestrianized lower Yonge Street looks attractive. blogTO has it.
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  • Jamie Bradburn tells how couples in Toronto during the Second World War expressed their love, here.

  • This condo at 701 Dovercourt Road looks amazing. blogTO reports.

  • Toronto Pearson Airport failed in its obligation to provide services for French-language travelers, the Official Languages Commissioner has ruled. CTV News reports.

  • So-called "unicorn poutine" is offered for sale at a north Toronto restaurant. Global News reports.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that mysterious Boyajian's Star has nearly two dozen identified analogues, like HD 139139.

  • James Bow reports from his con trip to Portland.

  • Caitlin Kelly at the Broadside Blog notes the particular pleasure of having old friends, people with long baselines on us.

  • Centauri Dreams describes a proposed mission to interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov).

  • The Crux notes how feeding cows seaweed could sharply reduce their methane production.

  • D-Brief notes that comet C/2019 Q4 is decidedly red.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes a claim that water-rich exoplanet K2-18b might well have more water than Earth.

  • Gizmodo reports on a claim that Loki, biggest volcano on Io, is set to explode in a massive eruption.

  • io9 notes that Warner Brothers is planning a Funko Pop movie.

  • Joe. My. God. notes the claim of Donald Trump that he is ready for war with Iran.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how people in early modern Europe thought they could treat wounds with magic.

  • Language Hat considers how "I tip my hat" might, translated, sound funny to a speaker of Canadian French.

  • Language Log considers how speakers of Korean, and other languages, can find word spacing a challenge.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the partisan politics of the US Supreme Court.

  • At the NYR Daily, Naomi Klein makes a case for the political and environmental necessity of a Green New Deal.

  • Peter Watts takes apart a recent argument proclaiming the existence of free will.

  • Peter Rukavina tells how travelling by rail or air from Prince Edward Island to points of the mainland can not only be terribly inconvenient, but environmentally worse than car travel. PEI does need better rail connections.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog examines how different countries in Europe will conduct their census in 2020.

  • Window on Eurasia shares the arguments of a geographer who makes the point that China has a larger effective territory than Russia (or Canada).

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at a 1971 prediction by J.G. Ballard about demagoguery and guilt, something that now looks reasonably accurate.

  • Arnold Zwicky considers models of segregation of cartoon characters from normal ones in comics.

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  • Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber takes us from her son's accidental cut to the electronic music of Røbic.

  • D-Brief explains what the exceptional unexpected brightness of the first galaxies reveals about the universe.

  • Far Outliers looks at how President Grant tried to deal with the Ku Klux Klan.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the surprising influence of the Turkish harem on the fashion, at least, of Western women.

  • This Kotaku essay arguing that no one should be sitting on the Iron Throne makes even better sense to me now.

  • Language Hat looks at the particular forms of French spoken by the famously Francophile Russian elites of the 19th century.

  • Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how teaching people to code did not save the residents of an Appalachia community.

  • Marginal Revolution notes how, in the early 19th century, the young United States trading extensively with the Caribbean, even with independent Haiti.

  • At the NYR Daily, Colm Tóibín looks at the paintings of Pat Steir.

  • Peter Rukavina writes about how he has been inspired by the deaths of the Underhays to become more active in local politics.

  • Daniel Little at Understanding Society shares his research goals from 1976.

  • Window on Eurasia notes the conflicts between the Russian Orthodox Church and some Russian nationalists over the latter's praise of Stalin.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at dragons in history, queer and otherwise.

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  • La Presse notes that the bilingual greeting "Bonjour-Hi" is becoming more common in Montréal.

  • This Ottawa Citizen opinion-writer was entirely right in noting that the Ontario government should not try to eliminate minority language rights and institutions for budgetary reasons.

  • This TVO article about the forces facing the École secondaire Confédération in Welland is a fascinating study of minority dynamics.

  • This brief article touches on efforts in the Franco-Manitoban community of Winnipeg to provide temporary shelter for new Francophone immigrants.

  • Francophones in New Brunswick continue to face pressure, with their numbers despite overall population growth and with Francophones being much more likely to be bilingual than Anglophones. CBC reports.

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  • The Cantonese language, the SCMP reports, is falling out of use among young people in Guangzhou.

  • The Muslim Hui, living outside of Xinjiang, are being pressured to shut down Arabic-medium schools. The SCMP reports.

  • The Scottish government has received only two complaints about Gaelic on bilingual road signs in the past seventeen years. The National reports.

  • HuffPost Québec notes that the French language has been displaced as the chief language of wine by English.

  • Advanced artificial intelligence has the potential to aid in the translation of ancient languages like Sumerian, with stockpiles of untranslated material just waiting for an eye's attention. The BBC explains.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the newly-named Neptune moon of Hippocamp, and how it came about as product of a massive collision with the larger moon of Proteus.

  • Centauri Dreams also reports on the discovery of the Neptune moon of Hippocamp.

  • Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes how the attempt to revoke the citizenship of Shamima Begum sets a terribly dangerous precedent for the United Kingdom.

  • D-Brief notes new evidence suggesting the role of the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions in triggering the Cretaceous extinction event, alongside the Chixculub asteroid impact.

  • Far Outliers notes the problems of Lawrence of Arabia with Indian soldiers and with Turks.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing takes issue with the state of philosophical contemplation about technology, at least in part a structural consequence of society.

  • Hornet Stories shares this feature examining the future of gay porn, in an environment where amateur porn undermines the existing studios.

  • JSTOR Daily considers the spotty history of casting African-American dancers in ballet.

  • Language Hat suggests that the Académie française will soon accept for French feminized nouns of nouns links to professionals ("écrivaine" for a female writer, for instance).

  • The LRB Blog considers the implications of the stripping of citizenship from Shamima Begum. Who is next? How badly is citizenship weakened in the United Kingdom?

  • Marginal Revolution notes the upset of Haiti over its banning by Expedia.

  • The NYR Daily notes the tension in Turkey between the country's liberal laws on divorce and marriage and rising Islamization.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the moment, in the history of the universe, when dark energy became the dominant factors in the universe's evolution.

  • Towleroad remembers Roy Cohn, the lawyer who was the collaborator of Trump up to the moment of Cohn's death from AIDS.

  • Understanding Society's Daniel Little takes a look at Marx's theories of how governments worked.

  • Window on Eurasia looks at the existential pressures facing many minority languages in Russia.

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  • Architectuul shares the latest issue of the journal Archifutures, reporting on strategies for adapting to apocalyptic enviroments.

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait breaks down for readers the import of the sighting of material on the fringes of the event horizon of Sagittarius A*.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about zhush, the act of renewing one's home as winter approaches.

  • Centauri Dreams notes the fine-tuning of hypothetical mechanisms for delivering water to the Earth (and other inner worlds) during the Late Heavy Bombardment period.

  • D-Brief notes the identification in many ancient human skeletons of deformities likely product of inbreeding.

  • Dangerous Minds links to a fascinating documentary looking at the culture of tribute bands.

  • Drew Ex Machina reports on the earliest stages of the space race, in both the Soviet Union and the United States.

  • Hornet Stories notes that Sasha Velour is off to the Smithsonian to give a speech on the importance of drag in culture.

  • JSTOR Daily reports on the parlous environment of the Mediterranean Sea, with sea level rise and pollution promising to make a mess.

  • Language Hat notes how, in France, the concept of being "excited" that exists in the Anglophone world and in French Canada may not be represented in the local French.

  • Language Log considers, in the context of the recent Sokal Squared hoax, the ethnographic peculiarities of academia.

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  • Luke Ottenhof writes at MacLean's about how English Canadians miss out on the thriving Québécois popular music scene, one enormously successful and engaging with the world nicely.

  • This article at Noisey looks at how global pop music is becoming increasingly multilingual, Spanish and Korean being specifically noted here.

  • Daniel Drake wrote a touching essay last month about Paul Simon and his father over at the NYR Daily.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution reports on how streaming as a technology for music distribution altered the nature of songcraft.

  • This NOW Toronto review by Natalia Manzocco of the performance by Troye Sivan at the local stop of his Bloom tour, backed by Kim Petras, still startles me. That this is mainstream pop is amazing.

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  • David Price at {anthro}dendum considers, going through archival material from the 1950s, the number of radical anthropologists in the US as yet little known or unknown who were marginalized by the Red Scare.

  • Centauri Dreams ruminates on a paper examining 'Oumuamua that considers radiation pressure as a factor in its speed. Might it work as--indeed, be?--a lightsail?

  • D-Brief notes the various reasons why the Chinese proposal for an artificial moon of sorts, to illuminate cities at night, would not work very well at all.

  • The Dragon's Tales touches on the perhaps hypocritical anger of Russia at the United States' departure from the INF treaty.

  • Far Outliers notes the sharp divides among Nazi prisoners of war in a camp in Texas, notably between pro- and anti-Nazi prisoners.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing revisits the original sin of the Internet culture, its imagining of a split between an individual's virtual life and the remainder of their life.

  • The Island Review welcomes, and interviews, its new editor C.C. O'Hanlon.

  • JSTOR Daily explores the reasons for considering climate change to be a national security issue.
  • Language Hat is enthused by the recent publication of a new dictionary of the extinct Anatolian languages of the Indo-European family.

  • Language Log examines the existence of a distinctive, even mocked, southern French accent spoken in and around (among other cities) Toulouse.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the rise of fascism in Brazil with Bolsonaro.

  • Roger Shuy at Lingua Franca writes about the power of correspondence, of written letters, to help language learners. (I concur.)

  • At the LRB Blog, Jeremy Bernstein writes about anti-Semitism in the United States, in the 1930s and now.

  • The NYR Daily examines the life of writer, and long-time exile from her native Portugal, Maria Gabriela Llansol.

  • Haley Gray at Roads and Kingdoms reports on the life and work of Mark Maryboy, a Navajo land rights activist in Utah.

  • Window on Eurasia looks at the Russian urban myth of blonde Baltic snipers from the Baltic States who had been enlisted into wars against Russia like that of Chechnya in the 1990s.

  • Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the classic red phone booths of the United Kingdom, now almost all removed from the streets of the country and sent to a graveyard in a part of rural Yorkshire that has other claims to fame.

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  • The Crux compares the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the stories that they hold, to the sorts of oral histories that historians have traditionally been skeptical of. What, after all, is the difference?

  • D-Brief notes a proposal by scientists to reengineer the world's food system to support a larger population in a time of environmental stresses.

  • Earther notes that Gallifrey, the homeworld of Doctor Who, would be a pretty uninviting Earth-like world.

  • Peter Kaufman at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes a powerful sociological treatment of his impending death.

  • Far Outliers considers the relative firepower of the Hatfields and the McCoys.

  • JSTOR Daily links to a paper considering how, and why, different epidemics can be suitable (or not) for entertainment purposes.

  • Language Hat looks at a remarkable new book, Robert Macfarlane's Lost Words, drawing from the nature-related words dropped by the Oxford Junior Dictionary.

  • Lingua Franca at the Chronicle notes how "du coup" has ascended to become a newly prominent expression in French.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining mechanisms explaining how Communism had a lasting negative effect towards immigration.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, poor and insecure, need Russian military bases in their countries more than Russia does.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning photos taken by Hubble of distant galaxy cluster RXC J0142.9+4438, three billion light-years away.

  • The Buzz celebrates the Hugo victory of N.K. Jemisin, and points readers to her various works.

  • Centauri Dreams links to a paper considering if gravitational wave-producing events might be used as ersatz beacons by hypothetical civilizations hoping to transmit to distant observers of the event.

  • The Crux considers how we can get the four billion people alive currently without Internet access online.

  • D-Brief notes that a class of violet aurora known as STEVE is actually not an aurora at all, but a "skyglow" product of a different sort of process.

  • Far Outliers takes a look at the history of slavery in Mauritius and the nearby and associated Seychelles.

  • Kieran Healy shares a funny cartoon, "A Field Guide to Social Scientists."

  • JSTOR Daily takes a look at the story of the stolen children of Argentina, abducted by the military dictatorship, and the fight to find them again.

  • Language Hat links to an article considering the task faced by some in bringing the novel to Africans, not only creating readerships but creating new readerships in indigenous languages displaced by English and French.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money criticizes John McCain in particular connection with the mythology surrounding the POWs and MIA of the United States in the Vietnam War.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel goes through the evidence supporting the idea that our universe must be embedded in a vaster multiverse.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how Russians have come to recognize Belarusians as a nation separate from their own, if less distinctly separate than Ukrainians.

  • Arnold Zwicky considers a visual pun inspired by Route 66: Is the image a cartoon?

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  • Ostensibly bilingual New Brunswick is not having a French-language leaders' debate this election because of the weak language skills of the PC leader. Global News reports.

  • A man from Québec was able to hitchhike across Canada, as far as Alberta even, using only his French. The Toronto Star ,a href="https://www.thestar.com/edmonton/2018/08/22/quebec-man-hitchhikes-across-canada-speaking-only-french.html">reports.
  • Québec Solidaire created a minor political storm over a tweet regarding the official languages of the province. The Montreal Gazette reports.

  • Québec Solidaire also wants to give Quebec Sign Language official status. The Huffington Post reports.

  • Amazon is working hard to give its Alexa Canadian French language support, making the device fluent in the local dialect. IT World Canada reports.

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  • The chief medical officer of Toronto, Eileen de Villa, has called for the decriminalization of drugs to help deal with the opioid crisis. The Guardian reports.

  • Christopher Hume makes the case for Toronto to keep, and enhance, its dense tree coverage, over at the Toronto Star.

  • Edward Keenan notes that the failure to find some way to comfortably use the interactive art display at Pioneer Village station is more than unfortunate. The Toronto Star has it.

  • Roughly 5% of the population of Toronto lacks fluency in either English or French, making their effective participation in Toronto at large that much more difficult. Global News reports.

  • The terracotta-tiled house at 20 Jerome Street may end up being torn down, but people want to preserve the tiles. I'll have to head over myself. Richard Longley at NOW Toronto reports.

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  • Bad Astronomer reports on Kepler-90, now known to have eight planets.

  • Centauri Dreams notes a model suggesting low-mass worlds like Mars do not stay very habitable for long at all around red dwarf stars.

  • Citizen Science Salon notes how Puerto Ricans are monitoring water quality on their own after Hurricane Maria.

  • The Crux notes how climate change played a role in the fall of Rome. We know more about our environment than the Romans did, but we are not much less vulnerable.

  • D-Brief notes a feature film that has just been made about Ötzi, the man who body was famously found frozen in the Tyrolean Alps five thousand years ago.

  • Daily JSTOR notes how a postage stamp featuring an erupting volcano may have kept Nicaragua from hosting an inter-oceanic canal of its own.

  • Hornet Stories reports on some exciting queer musicians.

  • Language Hat links to an online dictionary of French slang from the 19th century.

  • Language Hat has a post dealing with some controversy created on its author's perspective on "they" as a singular pronoun. (Language changes, that's all I have to say on that.)

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes a pretty wrong-headed take from a right-wing news source on sexuality and dating and flirting. Gack.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how the recent Kepler-90 press release shows how Kepler has reached the limit of the exoplanet science it can do. We need to put better technology at work.

  • At Whatever, John Scalzi has some interesting non-spoiler thoughts about the direction of The Last Jedi. I must see this, soon.

  • Window on Eurasia features a blithe dismissal by Putin of the idea that there is language or ethnic conflict at work. Tatars just need to learn Russian, apparently, though they can also keep Tatar as an extra.

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  • CBC notes that major First Nations languages in Canada like Cree and Ojibwe may soon be supported by translators in the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa.

  • Julian Brave NoiseCat at VICE argues against an imagining of wilderness that imagines territories without indigenous peoples. Such too readily can enable abuse of the natural world.

  • Bloomberg notes how the Spanish authorities in Catalonia have overriden local governments and populations by transferring dispute art objects to a different Spanish region. This won't end well.

  • Transitions Online notes how traditionally strong Czech support for Tibet and Tibetan exiles has been fading in recent years, with China becoming a bigger player.li
  • Paul Wells at MacLean's takes a look at what might be the latest round of the language debate in Montréal. How important are greetings? (I think, for the record, they might be more important than Wells argues.)

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  • Universiy of Toronto contract staff have voted overwhelmingly for a strike mandate. CBC reports.

  • Wexford Plaza, an independent film centered around shopping guards at the Scarborough mall of the same name, has done well in Los Angeles and is set to open here in Toronto. blogTO reports.

  • NOW Toronto notes a protest by Parkdale residents for affordable housing at King and Dufferin, where a massive new development is expected to rise.

  • In response to the new $15 minimum wage, Metro is cutting service hours at some of its 23-hour grocery stores. blogTO reports.

  • I sincerely hope that staffing shortages will not lead the TDSB to cut French immersion from its list of programs. The Toronto Star reports.

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  • blogTO lists some interesting things to do and see in Toronto's American neighbour, Buffalo.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly strongly defends contemporary journalism as essential for understanding the world.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money rightly takes issue with the claim identity politics hinders the US left. Remember New Deal coalitions?

  • Marginal Revolution notes just how expensive it is to run Harvard.

  • Otto Pohl notes the upcoming 76th anniversary of the Soviet deportation of the Volga Germans.

  • The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer reports on the remarkably fluent code-switching between English and French of some Washington D.C. subway riders.

  • Strange Maps notes rival food and fabric maps of India and Pakistan.

  • Tricia Wood at Torontoist argues that, for environmental and economic reasons, Ontario needs high-speed rail.

  • Window on Eurasia suggests Tatarstan has done a poor job of defending its sovereignty from the Russian government.

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  • Charley Ross reports on an unexpected personal involvement in the disappearance of Kori Gossett. Did an informant know?

  • Citizen Science Salon reports, in the time of #sharkweek, on the sevengill sharks.

  • The Dragon's Tales links to an article on the Chinese base in Sudan.

  • Inkfish has a fascinating article describing how New Zealand's giant black swans went extinct, and were replaced.

  • Language Hat notes two obscure words of Senegalese French, "laptot" and "signare". What do they mean? Go see.

  • Language Log argues that the influx of English loanwords in Chinese is remarkable. Does it signal future changes in language?

  • Lawyers, Guns Money notes how Los Angeles and southern California were, during the American Civil War, a stronghold of secessionist sentiment, and runs down some of the problems of Mexico, including the militarization of crime.
  • Marginal Revolution reports on what books by which authors tend to get stolen from British bookstores.
  • The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer suggests that Donald Trump is not likely to be able to substantially reshape NAFTA.

  • Roads and Kingdoms reports from the recent protests in Poland against changes to the Supreme Court.

  • Understanding Society takes a look at the structure of the cities of medieval Europe, which apparently were dynamic and flexible.

  • Unicorn Booty shares some classic gay board games.

  • Window on Eurasia argues that Russia is going to try to wage a repeat of the Winter War on Ukraine.

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Global News' Tania Kohut notes Kevin O'Leary's argument that his lack of fluency in French won't hurt him. It's worth noting that the general consensus is that it will, badly.

Kevin O’Leary has no time for accusations he held off on launching his bid for the federal Conservative party leadership until after Tuesday’s French language debate.

The unapologetic O’Leary says his fluency in Canada’s third “official” language outshines all others — the language of jobs.

“There’s three official languages in Canada: There’s English, there’s French, and there’s the language of jobs,” O’Leary told Global News Wednesday.

“Now I’m sure I’m going to get better at French in the next two years, but I guarantee you when I do my first debate with Trudeau, he will remain illiterate in the language of jobs.”
O’Leary has no experience in politics, however, he is a self-made multi-millionaire businessman.

Some believe federal politicians should be able to speak both official languages; a Nielsen survey conducted last year for the Official Languages Commissioner found 86 per cent of Canadians agree the prime minister should be bilingual.

Although O’Leary was born in Montreal, he is not fluent in French. His lack of French skills didn’t stop O’Leary from stepping into the Tory leadership race on Wednesday, his sights set on being Canada’s next prime minister.

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