rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait observes that a team may have discovered the elusive neutron star produced by Supernova 1987A, hidden behind a cloud of dust.

  • Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber shares a photo he made via the time-consuming 19th century wet-plate collodion method.

  • Drew Ex Machina's Andrew LePage looks at the Apollo 12 visit to the Surveyor 3 site to, among other things, see what it might suggest about future space archeology.

  • Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the story of rural poverty facing a family in Waverly, Ohio, observing how it is a systemic issue.

  • George Dvorsky at Gizmodo looks at how Mars' Jezero crater seems to have had a past relatively friendly to life, good for the next NASA rover.

  • Joe. My. God. reports on the latest ignorance displayed by Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter, this time regarding HIV.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how Climategate was used to undermine popular opinion on climate change.

  • Language Hat links to an article explaining why so many works of classical literature were lost, among other things not making it onto school curricula.

  • Language Log shares a photo of a Muji eraser with an odd English label.

  • Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests Pete Buttigieg faces a campaign-limiting ceiling to his support among Democrats.

  • The LRB Blog argues that Macron's blocking of EU membership possibilities for the western Balkans is a terrible mistake.

  • The Map Room Blog shares a map depicting regional variations in Canada towards anthropogenic climate change. Despite data issues, the overall trend of oil-producing regions being skeptical is clear.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining the slowing pace of labour mobility in the US, suggesting that home attachment is a key factor.

  • Frederic Wehrey at the NYR Daily tells the story of Knud Holmboe, a Danish journalist who came to learn about the Arab world working against Italy in Libya.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why thermodynamics does not explain our perception of time.

  • Understanding Society's Dan Little looks at Electronic Health Records and how they can lead to medical mistakes.

  • Whatever's John Scalzi shares a remarkable photo of the night sky he took using the astrophotography mode on his Pixel 4 phone.

  • Window on Eurasia shares an opinion that the Intermarium countries, between Germany and Russia, can no longer count on the US and need to organize in their self-defense.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares a photo of his handsome late partner Jacques Transue, taken as a college student.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Work on the second stage of Ion expansion, south into Cambridge, will not even start until 2028, and is expected to cost at least $C 1.36 billion. Global News reports.

  • This proposal for regular two-way GO Transit rail connections between Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo, frankly, is desperately needed. The Record reports.

  • A cyclist faces charges for careless driving leading to a collision with a LRT in Kitchener. CBC reports.

  • A GoFundMe campaign for a woman hit by a train in Kitchener has raised more than $C14 thousand. The Record reports.

  • A school bus driver has been charged for stopping his vehicle dangerously close to a rail crossing in Cambridge. The Record reports.

  • Waterloo Region is a successful testbed for virtual doctor visits. The Record reports.

  • The Charles Street bus terminal in downtown Kitchener is not going to be redeveloped for at least a couple of years. The Record reports.

  • Waterloo Region hopes to create more than 600 affordable new homes, in five developments, over the next decade. CBC reports.

  • The number of single food bank users in Kitchener-Waterloo has doubled over the past five years. CBC reports.

  • Waterloo is spending $C 3 million to renovate and modernize a handsome old Carnegie Library. CBC reports.

  • A pop-up in Kitchener, Vivid Dreams, is charging customers up to $C 20 to use one of a dozen backgrounds for their Instagram photos. CBC reports.
  • A Kitchener woman, Heidi Bechtold, has a thriving new dog-related business, Complete K9. The Record reports.
  • The new digital lab at the Kitchener Public Library sounds great! The Record reports.

  • Andrew Coppolino at CBC Kitchener-Waterloo takes a look at some of the different cuisines and restaurants in Waterloo Region featuring noodles, here.

  • Andrew Coppolino at CBC Kitchener-Waterloo looks at the pastel de nata, the Portuguese egg custard, as an emerging commercial snack in Waterloo Region.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • The Ottawa Citizen reports on the first week of the Confederation Line LRT.

  • The New Brunswick city of Moncton now has new affordable housing--20 units--for vulnerable people. Global News reports.

  • CityLab looks at one photographer's perspective of the New York City skyline, changed by the 9/11 attacks.

  • An alleyway in Calgary is being transformed by art. Global News reports.

  • Birth tourism might become an election issue in the British Columbia city of Richmond. Global News reports.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Architectuul profiles architectural photographer Lorenzo Zandri, here.

  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes a new study suggesting red dwarf stars, by far the most common stars in the universe, have plenty of planets.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly shares 11 tips for interviewers, reminding me of what I did for anthropology fieldwork.

  • Centauri Dreams notes how water ice ejected from Enceladus makes the inner moons of Saturn brilliant.

  • The Crux looks at the increasingly complicated question of when the first humans reached North America.

  • D-Brief notes a new discovery suggesting the hearts of humans, unlike the hearts of other closely related primates, evolved to require endurance activities to remain healthy.

  • Dangerous Minds shares with its readers the overlooked 1969 satire Putney Swope.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that the WFIRST infrared telescope has passed its first design review.

  • Gizmodo notes how drought in Spain has revealed the megalithic Dolmen of Guadalperal for the first time in six decades.

  • io9 looks at the amazing Jonathan Hickman run on the X-Men so far, one that has established the mutants as eye-catching and deeply alien.

  • Joe. My. God. notes that the Pentagon has admitted that 2017 UFO videos do, in fact, depict some unidentified objects in the air.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the origin of the equestrian horseback statue in ancient Rome.

  • Language Log shares a bilingual English/German pun from Berlin.

  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money reflects on the legacy of Thomas Jefferson at Jefferson's grave.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution looks at a new book arguing, contra Pinker perhaps, that the modern era is one of heightened violence.

  • The New APPS Blog seeks to reconcile the philosophy of Hobbes with that of Foucault on biopower.

  • Strange Company shares news clippings from 1970s Ohio about a pesky UFO.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why the idea of shooting garbage from Earth into the sun does not work.

  • Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps explains the appearance of Brasilia on a 1920s German map: It turns out the capital was nearly realized then.

  • Towleroad notes that Pete Buttigieg has taken to avoiding reading LGBTQ media because he dislikes their criticism of his gayness.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at diners and changing menus and slavery.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait shares images of Jupiter, imaged in infrared by ALMA.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at ocean upwelling on one class of super-habitable exoplanet.

  • D-Brief looks at how the Komodo dragon survived the threat of extinction.

  • Far Outliers reports on a mid-19th century slave raid in the Sahel.

  • Gizmodo notes that the secret US Air Force spaceplane, the X-37B, has spent two years in orbit. (Doing what?)

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the economic underpinnings of medieval convents.

  • Dave Brockington writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the continuing meltdown of the British political system in the era of Brexit, perhaps even of British democracy.

  • The LRB Blog looks at the impact of Brexit on the Common Travel Area.

  • Marginal Revolution reports on how Poland has tried to deter emigration by removing income taxes on young workers.

  • Carole Naggar writes at the NYR Daily about the photography of women photographers working for LIFE, sharing examples of their work.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why time has to be a dimension of the universe, alongside the three of space.

  • Frank Jacobs of Strange Maps shares NASA images of the forest fires of Amazonia.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that many Russophones of Ukraine are actually strongly opposed to Russia, contrary Russian stereotypes of language determining politics.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • The National Observer notes that Montréal authorities have warned against people going to flooded areas to take selfies.

  • CityLab notes the plans of Columbia University in Manhattan to become a new much denser neighbourhood, and the concerns of non-university neighbours.

  • Feargus O'Sullivan notes at CityLab how congested Brussels is gradually becoming car-free.

  • Ozy llooks at the underground nightclubs and music halls of the young people of Baghdad.

  • Sean Marshall, reporting from his recent trip to Japan, explores post-war the streetcar system of Hiroshima with photos of his own.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • NOW Toronto profiles some eye-catching exhibits part of the Contact Photography Festival.

  • Toronto Life profiles some recently recovered photos by Christopher Porter dating from the 1990s.

  • The NYR Daily took a look at the war-themed photographs of Don McCullin, here.

  • The NYR Daily examines the work of Antanas Sutkus, who began his work in Soviet Lithuania.

  • These images of the legacies of the Vietnam War in Laos, decades later, are stunning. VICE has them.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Architectuul features a photo essay made by Evan Panagopoulos in the course of a hurried three-hour visit to the Socialist Modernist and modern highlights of 20th century Kiev architecture.

  • Bad Astrronomer Phil Plait notes how the latest planet found in the Kepler-47 circumbinary system evokes Tatooine.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at tide and radiation, and their impacts on potential habitability, in the TRAPPIST-1 system.

  • Citizen Science Salon looks at how the TV show Cyberchase can help get young people interested in science and math.

  • Crooked Timber mourns historian David Brion Davis.

  • The Crux looks at how the HMS Challenger pioneered the study of the deeps of the oceans, with that ship's survey of the Mariana Trench.

  • D-Brief looks at how a snowball chamber using supercooled water can be used to hunt for dark matter.

  • Earther shares photos of the heartbreaking and artificial devastation of the Amazonian rainforest of Brazil.

  • Gizmodo shares a beautiful Hubble photograph of the southern Crab Nebula.

  • Information is Beautiful shares a reworked version of the Julia Galef illustration of the San Francisco area meme space.

  • io9 notes that, fresh from being Thor, Jane Foster is set to become a Valkyrie in a new comic.

  • JSTOR Daily explains the Victorian fondness for leeches, in medicine and in popular culture.

  • Language Hat links to an interview with linguist Amina Mettouchi, a specialist in Berber languages.

  • Language Log shares the report of a one-time Jewish refugee on changing language use in Shanghai, in the 1940s and now.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the horror of self-appointed militias capturing supposed undocumented migrants in the southwestern US.

  • Marginal Revolution reports on the circumstances in which volunteer militaries can outperform conscript militaries.

  • At the NYR Daily, Christopher Benfey reports on the surprisingly intense connection between bees and mourning.

  • Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw, responding to Israel Folau, considers free expression and employment.

  • The Planetary Society Blog shares a guest post from Barney Magrath on the surprisingly cheap adaptations needed to make an iPhone suitable for astrophotography.

  • Peter Rukavina reports on the hotly-contested PEI provincial election of 1966.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains what the discovery of helium hydride actually means.

  • Understanding Society's Daniel Little praises the Jill Lepore US history These Truths for its comprehensiveness.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on the growing divergences in demographics between different post-Soviet countries.

  • Arnold Zwicky starts with another Peeps creation and moves on from there.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Bad Astronomy notes how the occultation of distant stars by nearby asteroids can help astronomers determine stars' size.

  • D-Brief notes the remarkable achievements of some scientists in reviving the brains of pigs hours after their death.

  • Dangerous Minds takes a look at how David Bowie got involved in The Man Who Fell To Earth.

  • Dead Things looks at the recent identification of the late Cretaceous dinosaur Gobihadros.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes that astronomers have determined an interstellar meteorite likely hit the Earth in 2014.

  • Gizmodo reports on a very dim L-dwarf star 250 light-years away, ULAS J224940.13−011236.9, that experienced a massive flare. How did it do it?

  • Hornet Stories shares some vintage photos of same-sex couples from generations ago being physically affectionate.

  • At The Island Review, Nancy Forde writes about motherhood and her experience on Greenland, in the coastal community of Ilulissat.

  • JSTOR Daily notes how Paris' Notre-Dame has always been in a process of recreation.

  • Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, and Money notes the continuing oppression of workers in Bangladesh.

  • The LRB Blog notes the flaws in the defense, and in the political thinking, of Julian Assange. (Transparency is not enough.)

  • The NYR Daily reports on how photographer Claudia Andujar has regarded the Yanomami as they face existential challenges.

  • The Planetary Society Blog traces the crash of Beresheet on the Moon to a software conflict.

  • Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy warns against the idea of inevitable moral progress.

  • Window on Eurasia notes the desires of some Russian conservatives to see Russia included in a European Union dominated by neo-traditionalists.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Queerty profiles the new permanent exhibition in Miami of mid-20th century photographer George Daniell, whose works often including queer subjects date back to the 1940s.

  • Mike Miksche writes at Slate about the import of the Black Party in New York City in 1989, for partying gay and bi men in the era of AIDS.

  • This extended interview with Troye Sivan at The Guardian exposes a lot of this out star.

  • This VICE interview with Contrapoints star Natalie Wynn makes me want to start watching her, now, on YouTube.

  • John Aravosis is quite right to argue, at The Daily Beast, that arguing Pete Buttigieg is not gay enough is ridiculous.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Centauri Dreams notes the remarkable imaging of the atmosphere of HR 8799 e.

  • Crooked Timber starts a discussion about books that, once picked up, turned out to be as good as promised.

  • The Crux considers obsidian, known in the Game of Thrones world as dragonglass.

  • Bruce Dorminey notes that NASA is considering a proposal for a floating Venus probe that would be recharged by microwaves from orbit.The Dragon's Tales shares a report that Russia has developed a new satellite to work with a new anti-satellite weapons system.

  • Far Outliers notes what U.S. Grant learned from the Mexican-American War, as a strategist and as a politician.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing suggests, drawing from the image of M87*, that we have had a world disenchanted by the digital technology used to produce the image.

  • JSTOR Daily shares what critical theory has to say about the binge-watching of television.

  • Language Hat notes the Cherokee-language inscriptions on the wall of Manitou Cave.

  • Language Log considers when the first conversing automaton was built.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at a corner of 1970s feminism forgotten despite its innovative ideas.

  • Marginal Revolution considers the idea of restricting some new migrants to particular regions of the United States.

  • The NYR Daily explores the important new work by Igiaba Scego, Beyond Babylon.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel answers a surprisingly complex question: What is an electron?

  • Window on Eurasia explains why the cost of a professional military means Russia will not abandon the draft.

  • Arnold Zwicky explores "johnson" as a euphemism for penis.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • A formal inquest into the stage collapse that killed one person at a Radiohead concert at Downsview Park in 2012 is only now taking off. CBC reports.

  • The May opening of a new exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe's work at the Olga Korper Gallery, reported by NOW Toronto, is very exciting.

  • blogTO notes a new graphic novel to be put out by Dirty Water Comics dealing with the anti-Semitic Christie Pits Riot of 1933.

  • Queen Video's last location, in the Annex, is finally closing, with plenty of its titles now available to be bought before it shutters its doors at the end of April. Global News reports.

  • NOW Toronto reports on Museum II, a show part of the Myseum Intersections Festival looking at the impact of war and trauma on spaces.

  • Karon Liu, writing at the Toronto Star, explores with WeChat influencer Joanna Luo a whole universe of Chinese restaurants and social networking that was almost unknown to many Torontonians like myself.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • The Guardian reports on how selfie dysmorphia is prompting some people to seek plastic surgery.

  • The Island Review shares D Niko Holmes' beautiful photos of Brtish Columbia's Salt Spring Island.

  • The Island Review notes the volcanic photography of Joseph Wright on Lanzarote.

  • Wired shares the work of photographer Ioana Cîrlig in the factory towns of Romania.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the work of pioneering Turkish photographer Yıldız Moran.

rfmcdonald: (photo)

  • The Speed River Journal's Van Waffle writes about the positives of phone photography.

  • Some time ago, Drew Rowsome wrote about the queer male photography of Lindsay Lozon.

  • John Semley took issue at MacLean's with displays too completely curated for Instagram. What are they (mis)representing?

  • JSTOR Daily notes how the advent of nature photography helped change the minds of Americans about the natural environment.

  • CityLab looks at how the United States Lighthouse Society is actively cultivating Instagram likes, and why.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the import of the discovery of asteroid 2019 AQ3, a rare near-Venus asteroid.

  • Centauri Dreams notes the how the choice of language used by SETI researchers, like the eye-catching "technosignatures", may reflect the vulnerability of the field to criticism on Earth.

  • John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers what is to be done about Virginia, given the compromising of so many of its top leaders by secrets from the past.

  • The Crux notes how the imminent recovery of ancient human DNA from Africa is likely to lead to a revolution in our understanding of human histories there.

  • D-Brief notes how astronomers were able to use the light echoes in the accretion disk surrounding stellar-mass black hole MAXI J1820+070 to map its environment.

  • JSTOR Daily considers the snow day as a sort of modern festival.

  • Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to his consideration of the plans of the German Empire to build superdreadnoughts, aborted only by defeat. Had Germany won the First World War, there surely would have been a major naval arms race.

  • The NYR Daily looks at two exhibitions of different photographers, Brassaï and Louis Stettner.

  • Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares an evocative crescent profile of Ultima Thule taken by New Horizons, and crescent profiles of other worlds, too.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the mystery of why there is so little antimatter in the observable universe.

  • Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map exploring the dates and locations of first contact with aliens in the United States as shown in film.

  • Window on Eurasia notes a new push by Circassian activists for the Circassian identity to be represented in the 2020 census.

rfmcdonald: (photo)

  • Van Waffle wrote late last year about the ways we see with and without cameras.

  • This article in The Atlantic noting how iPhone selfies do not actually accurately represent one's face is disturbing in a few ways.

  • CityLab noted the importance of the shuttered Village Voice in promoting photojournalism in New York City.

  • Apparently hundreds of people have died around the world as a result of misadventures while taking selfies, VICE reported.

  • This Slate article is entirely right in noting, with Flickr's conversion to a paid model and the mass deletion of photos of non-paying users, that counting on the online world to back up photos (or other data) is a mistake.

rfmcdonald: (Default)
AIDS Memorial in red and white at night (2) #toronto #aidsmemorial #barbarahallpark #hiv #churchandwellesley #churchstreet



  • The Canadian government has adopted new guidelines to prevent unnecessary and unscientific criminal prosecutions in HIV non-disclosure cases. Newswire has the press release.

  • The Guardian notes, at the beginning of November, the importance of the AIDS Memorial over at Instagram, as a memorialization of so many lives cut too short.

  • Ash Kotak's reflections at Open Democracy about the continuing global impact of HIV/AIDS deserve sharing.

  • Towleroad notes the terrible record of George H.W. Bush, as president, faced with the AIDS epidemic.

  • Hornet Stories notes how, during the 1990s, Marvel Comics dealt with AIDS through the metaphor of the mutant-infecting Legacy Virus.

  • Daily Xtra notes 22 different pop culture events that shaped the perception of HIV/AIDS.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog notes the alarming shape of the HIV epidemic in Europe, with increasing success in the European Union being more than counterbalanced by an expansion of the epidemic in Russia.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog includes an interview with Vadim Pokrovsky, long-time Russian (and Soviet) expert in HIV, who expands upon the accelerating HIV epidemic in Russia.

  • Back in February, Politico explored how the prevailing social conservatism in Russia did little to prevent the continued spread of HIV in Russia, indeed making things worse.

  • CBC Arts took a look at an artist-run newspaper, The HIV Howler, that takes a look at HIV from the perspectives of individual artists from around the world.

  • VICE shares an audio clip from a speech given in 2000 by Jason Kenney, now leader of the opposition in Alberta, in which he boasts about overturning a law that gave gay people the right to visit their dying partners in hospital.

  • In a terribly sad essay at The Globe and Mail, Michael Harris describes how it was stigma and homophobia, not AIDS itself, that killed his ex "Noah."

  • NBC News praises doctor Demetre Daskalakis, a health worker in New York City whose promotion of "status-neutral" policies towards STDs generally is helping master the HIV epidemic in that city.

rfmcdonald: (Default)
Old City Hall Cenotaph



  • MacLean's a href="https://www.macleans.ca/multimedia/the-memory-remains-capturing-the-echoes-of-the-first-world-war/">highlights the photos of Peter MacDiarmid, literally blending archival photos of locations of note to Canada in the First World War with contemporary photos of those same areas now.

  • Patrick Chovanec at the NYR Daily talks about what he learned of the First World War, its contingencies and its uncertainties, through following a day-by-day Twitter account of the war.

  • Robert France at The Conversation writes movingly about the utter waste of the First World War, something made worse by the inability of some of us now to understand its lessons against war.

  • David Elstein at Open Democracy looks at failings in the BBC coverage of the First World War, particularly in its representations of other countries' actions.

  • Craig Gibson at NOW Toronto remembers the life of his grandfather William Gibson, maimed and shortened by the First World War.

  • J.L. Granatstein writes in MacLean's about the many changes imposed on Canada by the First World War, everything from industrialization to ethnic conflict to a new place in the world.

  • France Inter writes about the 140 thousand Chinese workers who came to western Europe during the First World War to relieve shortages of labour, even to the trenches.

  • Wawmeesh Hamilton writes at The Discourse about the many Indigenous veterans and victims of war, including the First World War. Were--are--their sacrifices honoured by other Canadians?

  • George M. Johnson at The Conversation writes about how, for many British writers, their work helped them and their society start to heal from the losses of the First World War.

  • Window on Eurasia shares the warning of Russian historian Leonid Mlechin that the world seems to have learned nothing from the negative lessons of the nationalist fanaticism, the desire for revenge, engendered by the First World War.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Sally Pitt at CBC PEI writes at length abot the bombing campaign of Loki 7, by far the Island's most notable terrorist, here.

  • Unsurprisingly, Anne of Green Gables: The Musical was the top show of this year's Charlottetown Festival. CBC reports.
  • Massachusetts man Charles Rogers has been visiting PEI every summer for six decades. CBC reports.

  • The health of the watersheds of Covehead and Brackley Bay, on the north shore of PEI, is open to question given falling oxygen levels and rising pollution. CBC reports.

  • Stephen Desroches at CBC PEI has assembled a beautiful collection of night photos from the Island, here.

rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Did you know that the famous Distracted Boyfriend meme is actually part of a long melodramatic storyline, involving broken marriages, dead babies, and murder? Imgur has it all.

  • Dick Powis, writing at Anthro{dendum} in the #Ror2018 series, examines the theory and the power behind visual ethnography.

  • JSTOR Daily considers how some of the portraits of Edward Curtis depicting indigenous cultures underplayed their members' engagement with the modern world, and why.

  • Lazia Kretzel, writing at the Guardian's Comment is Free, looks at how Nigel Farage's uncritical sharing of a crudely morphed photo of a Canadian supporter of refugees that she herself took is dangerous.

  • Mark Gollom takes a look at the uncontested power of a contested photo taken to illustrate the Trump Administration's separation of children from parents at the United States' border. What can a photo be taken to mean?

Profile

rfmcdonald: (Default)rfmcdonald

February 2021

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
212223242526 27
28      

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Apr. 24th, 2025 07:46 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios