A Bit More Detail

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross bets that barring catastrophe, the US under Trump will dispatch crewed circumlunar flights.


• D-Brief takes a look at the evolution of birds, through speculation on how the beak formed.


• Language Log looks at the ways Trump is represented, and mocked, in the languages of East Asia.


• Noting the death toll in a Mexico City sweatshop, Lawyers, Guns and Money reiterates that sweatshops are dangerous places to work.


• The NYR Daily notes the many structural issues likely to prevent foreign-imposed fixes in Afghanistan.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports from a seemingly unlikely date festival held in the depths of the Saudi desert.


• Rocky Planet reports that Mount Agung, a volcano in Indonesia, is at risk of imminent eruption.


• Drew Rowsome notes a new stage adaptation in Toronto of the Hitchcock classic, North by Northwest.


• Strange Company reports on how the Lonergans disappeared in 1998 in a dive off the Great Barrier Reef. What happened to them?


• Towleroad notes how Chelsea Manning was just banned from entering Canada.


• Window on Eurasia claims that the Russian language is disappearing from Armenia.


• Arnold Zwicky maps the usage of "faggot" as an obscenity in the United States.

The row of houses was built between 1890 and 1893 on what was first Dummer Street, then William Street, then, finally, St. Patrick Street. The names of the roads in this part of the city area have been shuffled more than most: St. Patrick Street used to refer to the stretch of road that's now part of Dundas west of McCaul; McCaul used to be William Henry Street, then West William Street, for example.

For much of its past the street was blighted by poverty. Early photos show severe faces, crumbling wall cladding, and backyards strewn with detritus. More recently the area between University and Spadina has been home to a large Chinese community.

Starting in 1957, most of the block bound by Queen, McCaul, St. Patrick, and Dundas Street was purchased in pieces by Windlass Holdings Ltd., the company that developed the Village by the Grange, sometimes using aggressive tactics to secure land deeds.

The owner of 54 St. Patrick Street - once part of the original terrace - complained to the Toronto Star that the company's actions were "an extreme example of blockbusting," claiming he had received over 300 directives on his property in a single year.

Despite some resistance, the owners of the homes sold up at different times, and the row was pulled down in pieces like tooth extractions. The sole-survivor pictured here was once in the third house in the row from the south - the similar buildings next door are a later addition built on top of a laneway.

Instead, the company demolished its neighbour to the north with surgical precision, ensuring not even the woodwork on the facade of the hold-out building was disturbed. An internal supporting wall became a blank exterior when the house next door came down.

The 120-year-old residence at 54 ½ St. Patrick St. bears the scars of a development battle.

The Victorian row house was awkwardly severed from its neighbour in the 1970s when the owners refused to sell, and it lacks the symmetry of another side.

It is literally “half a house,” says its current owner, Albert Zikovitz, laughingly from his adjacent office in the Cottage Life Magazine building. “Everybody looks at it.”

The house is one of a few single-family homes left on the densely packed street near Queen and University. But Zikovitz, who purchased the house last year after the owner went into a retirement home, says he won’t tear it down.

“I love the house,” says Zikovitz, who is president of the magazine. Plans are in the works this year to restore the exterior of the building and turn the interior into office space.

• Charley Ross reflects on the story of Carla Vicentini, a Brazilian apparently abducted from New Jersey a decade ago.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog reflects on the concept of anomie.


• Far Outliers looks at the southwest Pacific campaigns of 1942, and reflects on Australian-American tensions in New Guinea in the Second World War.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reflects briefly on the disaster in Houston.


• The Map Room Blog links to two interesting longform takes on maps in fantasy.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer considers the extent to which urban policy has contributed to Houston's issues.


• Roads and Kingdoms tells the story of a Shabbat celebration in Zimbabwe, and of the country's Jewish community.


• Strange Company tells the story of the mysterious disappearance of Lieutenant Paul Byron Whipkey. What was done to him?


• Unicorn Booty reports on how the Supreme Court of India has found people have a legal right to their orientation.


• Window on Eurasia reports on the growing number of Russian citizens with Chinese connections.


• Arnold Zwicky talks about Tom Bianchi's vintage Fire Island photos.

• 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.

• Centauri Dreams looks at the potentially deadly effect of the stellar flares of red dwarfs on potentially habitable exoplanets.


• Charley Ross notes the strange 1957 disappearance of William ad Margaret Patterson from their Texas home.


• D-Brief notes the evidence for a second planet at Proxima Centauri, a super-Earth Proxima C with a 215 day orbit.


• Tom Yulsman of ImaGeo shares shares photos of the active Sun.


• The argument made by Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns and Money that Americans were learning to love Obamacare and Republicans wanted to take it away before they got used to it ... well.


• Marginal Revolution notes that, and why, restaurant servers in Maine wanted their minimum wage lowered. (Tips.)


• Roads and Kingdoms shares the story of Na De Fo, a rare Korean restaurant in Mexico City.


• The NYR Daily looks at how Macron might try to "California-ize" France, and whether he could pull this off.


• Unicorn Booty notes studies noting bisexuals have a lower quality of life than gays, and wonders why. (Stigma is an issue.)


• Window on Eurasia notes that global warming, by leading to permafrost melt, is literally undermining the infrastructure of Russia.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait is skeptical that the Trump-era EPA will deal well with global warming.


• Discover's The Crux considers the challenge of developing safer explosives for fireworkers.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper considering the (real) possibility of Earth-like worlds orbiting neutron stars.


• Language Log notes an odd use of katakana in Australia.


• The LRB Blog considers the possibly overrated import of George Osborne's move into the newspaper business.


• Marginal Revolution notes one observer's suggestion that China could sustain high-speed growth much longer than Japan.


• The NYR Daily shares Eleanor Davis' cartoon journal of her bike trip across America.


• Peter Rukavina does not like the odd way Prince Edward Island made its library card into a museum pass.


• Starts with a Bang's Ethan Siegel notes the odd galaxy MACS2129-1, young yet apparently no longer star-forming.


• Strange Company explores the strange death of 17th century New England woman Rebecca Cornell.


• Unicorn Booty looks at how early Playgirl tried to handle, quietly, its substantially gay readership.


• Window on Eurasia looks at one Russian proclaiming Russia needs to stop an imminent takeover by Muslims.

• Missing persons blog Charley Ross shares the strange story of five people who went missing in a winter wilderness in 1978.
  
• Roads and Kingdom shares an anecdote by Alessio Perrone about a chat over a drink with a Cornishman, in a Cornwall ever more dependent on tourism.


• Strange Company shares the story of Kiltie, a Scottish cat who immigrated to the United States in the First World War.


• Starts With a Bang, a science blog by Ethan Siegel, argues that there is in fact no evidence for periodic mass extinctions caused by bodies external to the Earth.


• Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, a group blog by Canadian economists, considers the value placed on Aboriginal language television programming.

• D-Brief shares rare video of beaked whales on the move.


• Dangerous Minds notes that someone has actually begun selling unauthorized action figures of Trump Administration figures like Bannon and Spencer.


• Language Log looks at a linguistic feature of Emma Watson's quote, her ending it with a preposition.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen considers, originally for Bloomberg View, if Trump could be seen as a placebo for what ails America.


• The New APPS Blog takes a Marxist angle on the issue of big data, from the perspective of (among other things) primitive accumulation.


• The Search reports on the phenomenon of the Women's History Month Wikipedia edit-a-thon, aiming to literally increase the representation of notable women on Wikipedia.


• Towleroad notes the six men who will be stars of a new Fire Island reality television show.


• The Volokh Conspiracy finds some merit in Ben Carson's description of American slaves as immigrants.


• Window on Eurasia argues that Belarusians are beginning to mobilize against their government and suggests they are already making headway.

Lower Bay Station (or, as the TTC refers to it, Bay Lower) is surely the best known of Toronto's hidden underground spaces. The ghost subway station was in service briefly in 1966 when the TTC tried its interlining system, which turned the city's two subway routes into three.

One platform serviced the Bloor-Danforth Route, while the other was a stop on the Danforth-University-Yonge Route. The experiment failed for a number of reasons, and the lower platform was promptly decommissioned.

It now serves as an area for training exercises and film shoots, though it has also been opened to the public for events like Nuit Blanche in the past.

Lower Bay isn't the only ghost station on the TTC, though. Underneath Queen Station, there's the shell of a streetcar subway station that would likely have taken the name City Hall, but is now typically referred to as Lower Queen or Queen Lower.

It was partially built in anticipation of Queen Street transit line that was never built.