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h/t to Twitter's Jay Pitter for the original image, here.

For #blackouttuesday
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  • John Lorinc at Spacing considers the complication idea of a city charter for Toronto. Is it worth it? Does it ignore other governance issues?

  • Tourism is booming in Toronto, transforming the economy of the metropolis. The Toronto Star reports.

  • NOW Toronto notes how the Toronto District School Board is introducing educational courses intended to prepare students for careers in hospitality.

  • Legal controversy surrounding the governance of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and other like cemeteries in Toronto, is ongoing. The Toronto Star reports.

  • In Milton, the owner of an illegal rooming house where one tenant died has been found financially liable. CBC reports.

  • The Toronto Star tells the story of soldiers returning from the First World War who attacked Chinatown and its inhabitants, here.

  • NOW Toronto points to an exhibition of photos created in solidarity with Hong Kong journalists.

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  • Bad Astronomer notes a new study explaining how climate change makes hurricanes more destructive.

  • Centauri Dreams shares a mosaic photo of the sky with Alpha Centauri highlighted.

  • The Crux shares a paper explaining why the bubonic plague rarely becomes mass epidemics like the Black Death of the 14th century.

  • D-Brief notes the new ESA satellite ARIEL, which will be capable of determining of exoplanet skies are clear or not.

  • Gizmodo consults different experts on the subject of smart drugs. Do they work?

  • JSTOR Daily explains why Native Americans are so prominent in firefighting in the US Southwest.

  • Language Log looks at evidence for the diffusion of "horse master" between speakers of ancient Indo-European and Sinitic languages.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the election of Chesa Boudin as San Francisco District Attorney.

  • The LRB Blog considers the apparent pact between Farage and Johnson on Brexit.

  • Marginal Revolution looks at a paper examining longer-run effects of the integration of the US military on racial lines in the Korean War.

  • The NYR Daily looks at how Big Pharma in the US is trying to deal with the opioid epidemic.

  • The Signal explains how the Library of Congress is expanding its collections of digital material.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains how future generations of telescopes will be able to directly measure the expansion of the universe.

  • The Volokh Conspiracy explains why DACA, giving succor to Dreamers, is legal.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that, after a century of tumult, the economy of Russia is back at the same relative ranking that it enjoyed a century ago.

  • Arnold Zwicky reports on an old butch cookbook.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait notes new research on where the sun is located within the Milky Way Galaxy.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly considers the value of slow fashion.

  • Centauri Dreams notes the different gas giants that our early methods have yet to pick up.

  • Crooked Timber shares a lovely photo looking back at Venice from across its lagoon.

  • D-Brief notes that upcoming space telescopes might find hundreds of rogue planets thanks to microlensing.

  • io9 notes that Marvel will soon be producing Warhammer40K comics.

  • The Island Review shares some poetry and photography by Ken Cockburn inspired by the Isle of Jura.

  • JSTOR Daily notes that different humpback whale groups have different songs, different cultures.

  • Language Hat tries to find the meaning of the odd Soviet Yiddish word "kolvirt".

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the history of Elizabeth Warren as a law teacher.

  • Map Room Blog shares information from Google Maps about its use of data.

  • Marginal Revolution notes that in 2016, not a single child born in the United Kingdom was given the name Nigel.

  • Peter Watts talks about AI and what else he is doing.

  • The NYR Daily marked the centennial of a horrible massacre of African-Americans centered on the Arkansas community of Elaine.

  • Emily Margolis at the Planetary Society Blog looks at how the Apollo moon missions helped galvanize tourism in Florida.

  • Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money looks at the constitutional crisis in Peru.

  • Drew Rowsome takes a look at A Streetcar Named Desire.

  • Peter Rukavina looks at a spreadsheet revealing the distribution of PEI public servants.

  • Spacing reviews a book imagining how small communities can rebuild themselves in neoliberalism.

  • Towleroad shares the criticism of Christine and the Queens of the allegedly opportunistic use of queer culture by Taylor Swift.

  • Understanding Society considers, sociologically, the way artifacts work.

  • The Volokh Conspiracy argues that the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People's Republic of China should be a day of mourning, on account of the high human toll of the PRC.

  • Window on Eurasia suggests the Russian generation of the 1970s was too small to create lasting change.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at how underwear ads can be quite sexualized.

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  • Bad Astronomer notes the latest news on interstellar comet 2/Borisov.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly emphasizes how every writer does need an editor.

  • Centauri Dreams notes how the gas giant GJ 3512 b, half the mass of Jupiter orbiting a red dwarf star closely, is an oddly massive exoplanet.

  • Gina Schouten at Crooked Timber looks at inter-generational clashes on parenting styles.

  • D-Brief looks at the methods of agriculture that could conceivably sustain a populous human colony on Mars.

  • Bruce Dorminey argues that we on Earth need something like Starfleet Academy, to help us advance into space.

  • Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at how the socio-spatial perspective helps us understand the development of cities.

  • Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res listens to the Paul McCartney album Flaming Pie.
  • io9 looks at Proxima, a contemporary spaceflight film starring Eva Green.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how the intense relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia began in, and reflected, the era of Jim Crow.

  • Language Hat notes a report suggesting that multilingualism helps ward off dementia.

  • Language Log takes issue with the names of the mascots of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the emergence of a ninth woman complaining about being harassed by Al Franken.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a new paper arguing that the Washington Consensus worked.

  • The NYR Daily shares an Aubrey Nolan cartoon illustrating the evacuation of war children in the United Kingdom during the Second World War.

  • At Out of Ambit, Diane Duane shares a nice collection of links for digital mapmakers.

  • The Planetary Society Blog looks at how the European Space Agency supports the cause of planetary defense.

  • Roads and Kingdoms interviews Kenyan writer Kevin Mwachiro at length.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel reports on how a mysterious fast radio burst helped illuminate an equally mysterious galactic halo.

  • Strange Company reports on the mysterious and unsolved death in 1936 of Canadian student Thomas Moss in an Oxfordshire hayrick.

  • Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps notes how Mount Etna is a surpassingly rare decipoint.

  • Understanding Society considers the thought of Kojève, after Hegel, on freedom.

  • Window on Eurasia looks at the falling numbers of Russians, and of state support for Russian language and culture, in independent Central Asia.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell looks at how individual consumer responses are much less effective than concerted collective action in triggering change.

  • Arnold Zwicky reports on some transgender fashion models.

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  • The Buzz shares a TIFF reading list, here.

  • Centauri Dreams notes the growing sensitivity of radial velocity techniques in finding weird exoplanet HR 5183 b, here.

  • The Crux reports on circumgalactic gas and the death of galaxies.

  • Dead Things notes the import of the discovery of the oldest known Australopithecine skull.

  • Dangerous Minds reports on pioneering 1930s queer artist Hannah Gluckstein, also known as Gluck.

  • Gizmodo notes that, for an unnamed reason, DARPA needs a large secure underground testing facility for tomorrow.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at how Jim Crow laws affected Mexican immigrants in the early 20th century US.

  • Language Hat looks at a new project to study Irish texts and language over centuries.

  • Language Log shares some Chinglish signs from a top university in China.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money shares an interview with Jeffrey Melnick suggesting Charles Manson was substantially a convenient boogeyman.

  • Marginal Revolution shares a paper suggesting marijuana legalization is linked to declining crime rates.

  • Susan Neiman at the NYR Daily tells how she began her life as a white woman in Atlanta and is ending it as a Jewish woman in Berlin.

  • The Planetary Society Blog looks at Hayabusa2 at Ryugu.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel celebrated the 230th anniversary of Enceladus, the Saturn moon that might harbour life.

  • Window on Eurasia notes how global warming is harming the rivers of Siberia, causing many to run short.

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  • 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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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait reports on the fragility of asteroid Ryugu.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the JUICE probe, planned to explore the three icy moons of Jupiter.

  • John Quiggin at Crooked Timber reports on the fact that Jimmy Carter was warned in the 1970s about the possibility of global warming.

  • D-Brief notes that the Earth might not be the best world for life, that watery worlds with dense atmospheres and long days might be better.

  • Jessica Poling at the Everyday Sociology Blog writes about the construction of gender.

  • Far Outliers looks at the Nigerian city of Agadez, at one point a sort of port city of the Sahel.

  • Gizmodo asks a variety of experts their opinion on which species is likely to be next in developing our sort of intelligence. (Primates come up frequently, though I like the suggestion of bacterial colonies.)

  • JSTOR Daily looks/a> at the genderless Quaker prophet Publick Universal Friend.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money comments on the interview of Amy Wax with The New Yorker.

  • Marginal Revolution shares the enthusiasm of Tyler Cowen for Warsaw and Poland.

  • Peter Pomerantsev writes at the NYR Daily about how the alt-right has taken to culture-jamming.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes the exceptional power of cosmic rays.

  • Window on Eurasia shares the lament of a Chuvash writer about the decline of her people's language.

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  • Maclean's reports on how, a century after Shoal Lake 40 First Nation was made an island to provide drinking water for Winnipeg, it finally was connected to the mainland by a road.

  • CityLab reports on how the pressures of the tourist season make it difficult for many permanent residents of Martha's Vineyard to maintain homes.

  • Fogo Island, Newfoundland, recently celebrated its first Pride Walk. CBC reports.

  • Yvette D'Entremont writes at the Toronto Star about how the diaspora of the Newfoundland fishing island of Ramea have gathered together for regular reunions.

  • J.M. Opal writes at The Conversation about the origins of white Anglo-American racism in 17th century Barbados.

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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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  • CBC Hamilton reports on the options of the City of Hamilton faced with its having hired a prominent former white supremacist.

  • CBC Ottawa reports that flood levels on the Ottawa River have reached record highs.

  • The Montreal Gazette considers possible solutions to crowding on the Montréal subway, including new cars and special buses.

  • Kingston is preparing for flooding, the city seeing a threat only in certain waterfront districts. Global News reports.

  • Vancouver is applying a zoning freeze in a future mass transit corridor. Global News reports.

  • CityLab looks at how the post-war dream of mass transit and densification for the Ohio city of Toledo never came about, and how it might now.

  • Guardian Cities looks at construction proposals for New York City that never were.

  • CityLab looks at how the California ghost town of Bodie is kept in good shape for tourists.

  • Vox notes that just over one in ten thousand people in San Francisco is a billionaire.

  • Leonid Bershidsky at Bloomberg considers why productivity in Berlin lags behind that in other European capital cities. Could it be that the young workers of Berlin are not devoted to earning income?

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  • Bad Astronomy identifies the most distant globular cluster known to exist around the Milky Way Galaxy, PSO J174.0675-10.8774 some 470 thousand light-years away.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the strange ring of the Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Haumea.

  • Crooked Timber looks at an ill-constructed biography of Eric Hobsbawm.

  • D-Brief notes an experiment that proves antimatter obeys the same laws of quantum mechanics as regular matter, at least insofar as the double-slit experiment is concerned.

  • Earther notes that life in Antarctica depends critically on the presence of penguin feces.

  • Imageo looks at awesome satellite imagery of spring storms in North America.

  • The Island Review interviews Irene de la Torre, a translator born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, about her experiences and thoughts on her insular experiences.

  • Joe. My. God. notes a new deal between Gilead Pharmaceuticals and the American government to make low-cost PrEP available to two hundred thousand people.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which The Great Gatsby reflects the norms of the Jazz Age.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money is rightly critical of the Sam Harris suggestion that white supremacism is not an ideology of special concern, being only a fringe belief.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution solicits questions for an upcoming interview with demographer of religion Eric Kaufmann.

  • Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares cute video of otters frolicking on the Singapore River.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel asks when the universe became transparent to light.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares photos of his blooming flower gardens.

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  • Reddit's r/toronto shares this photo of the level of Lake Ontario having risen above the level of the boardwalk at HTO Park. Are we in for another year of flooding, on the Toronto Islands particularly?

  • This CBC Toronto article from a week ago notes how Lake Ontario is getting close to 2017 levels.

  • Changes in the Presto system have left many people who use the Union-Pearson Express to commute in a financially costly situation. CBC Toronto reports.

  • This court case, besides setting boundaries on what planning boards can and cannot do, will also determine the fate of the Rail Deck Park. I hope it will survive. The Toronto Star reports.

  • Stefanie Marotta at the Toronto Star reports on a Jane's Walk led by MP Adam Vaughan and Bianca Wylie of the waterfront, inspired by their criticism of the Sidewalk Labs plans.

  • Shazlin Rahman writes at Spacing about the prejudices that push Muslim women away from the TTC, and what can be done to protect these women.

  • Urban Toronto shares the news of Open Doors 2019 in Toronto on 25 and 26 May, with more than 150 buildings being opened to the public.

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  • Architectuul takes a look at "infrastructural scars", at geopolitically-inspired constructions like border fences and fortifications.

  • Centauri Dreams notes what we can learn from 99942 Apophis during its 2029 close approach to Earth, just tens of thousands of kilometres away.

  • D-Brief reports on the reactions of space artists to the photograph of the black hole at the heart of M87.

  • Dangerous Minds shares the first recording of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that Germany has begun work on drafting laws to cover space mining.

  • Gizmodo reports on what scientists have learned from the imaging of a very recent impact of an asteroid on the near side of the Moon.

  • io9 makes the case that Star Trek: Discovery should try to tackle climate change.

  • Joe. My. God. notes that Verizon is seeking a buyer for Tumblr. (Wouldn't it be funny if it was bought, as other reports suggest might be possible, by Pornhub?)

  • JSTOR Daily reports on a 1910 examination of medical schools that, among other things, shut down all but two African-American medical schools with lasting consequences for African-American health.

  • Language Log asks why "Beijing" is commonly pronounced as "Beizhing".

  • Simon Balto asks at Lawyers, Guns and Money why the murder of Justine Ruszczyk by a Minneapolis policeman is treated more seriously than other police killings, just because she was white and the cop was black. All victims deserve the same attention.

  • Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares a video of the frieze of the Parthenon.

  • The NYR Daily responds to the 1979 television adaptation of the Primo Levi novel Christ Stopped at Eboli, an examination of (among other things) the problems of development.

  • Peter Rukavina is entirely right about the practical uselessness of QR codes.

  • Daniel Little at Understanding Society points readers towards the study of organizations, concentrating on Charles Perrow.

  • Window on Eurasia notes the argument of one Russian commentator that Russia should offer to extend citizenship en masse not only to Ukrainians but to Belarusians, the better to undermine independent Belarus.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares photos of some of his flourishing flowers, as his home of Palo Alto enters a California summer.

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  • Crooked Timber at John Quiggin takes issue with the idea that, now, there are many Republicans who accept Trump only conditionally, for what a Trump presidency could achieve.

  • D-Brief notes the XT2 signal, issue of a collision between two magnetars in a galaxy 6.6 billion light-years away.

  • Cody Delistraty reports on an exhibit at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris on the history of soccer in world politics.

  • Earther reports on a new satellite mission focused on studying solar-induced fluorescence, the glow of plants as they photosynthesize.

  • Far Outliers notes how U.S. Grant responded to slaves seeking freedom from the Union Army.

  • JSTOR Daily explores Lake Baikal.

  • Language Log reports on the multilingualism of Pete Buttigieg.

  • Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns and Money gives deserved praise to the Jason Lutes graphic novel Berlin.

  • Marginal Revolution looks at the ways in which dense social networks can keep stroke victims from getting quick help.

  • The NYR Daily looks at the campaigns and ideas of anti-authoritarian Chinese professor and writer Xu Zhangrun.

  • Drew Rowsome gives a largely negative review to the 2014 Easter horror film The Beaster Bunny.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why the singularities of black holes have spin.

  • Window on Eurasia notes on the report of a Muslim community leader in Norilsk that a quarter of the population of that Russian Arctic city is of Muslim background.

  • Arnold Zwicky considers the ways in which flowers and penguins and cuteness can interact, with photos.

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  • CTV News reports the exceptional popularity of a Toronto Blue Jays away game in Montréal.

  • A library n Thunder Bay is playing a critical role in helping treat the ills of that city. Tanya Talaga writes at the Toronto Star.

  • Guardian Cities reports on how poor children in mixed-use housing in London are being kept from using public playgrounds.

  • The Financial Times reports on the rapid growth of the French immigrant community in Hong Kong, now numbering tens of thousands of people.

  • Céline von Engelhardt writes at MacLean's about how Sobey's has secured for itself, in the new north-central Edmonton neighbourhood of Griesbach, restrictive covenants that exclude any possible retail competition elsewhere in the neighbourhood.

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  • HuffPostQuebec imagines what an Expo held in Montréal for 2030 would look like, and what effect it would have on the metropolis.

  • The Alaska Life notes the near-ghost town of Hyder, a community most easily accessible from Canada.

  • Guardian Cities reports on a recent expulsion of street traders from a district in Buenos Aires.

  • CityLab notes the growing unacceptability of a group parading in blackface in Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

  • Guardian Cities explains how through, among other things, canny property investments, mass transit in Hong Kong is self-supporting financially.

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  • At Antipope, Charlie Stross announces (among other things) that his series The Laundry Files has been options for television development.

  • D-Brief notes more evidence for the idea that regular exercise can help psychologically, this study suggesting help to long-term memory.

  • At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Karen Sternheimer writes about sociologists who study subjects that matter to them, subjects that might personally involve them, even.

  • Gizmodo notes that astronomers have detected the formation of dark spots on Neptune, akin to those seen by Voyager 2 in its flyby in 1989, for the first time.

  • JSTOR Daily considers how humans can live alongside crocodiles in peace.

  • Language Log considers gāngjīng 杠精, a new Chinese word that may well denote "troll".

  • Erik Loomis writes at Lawyers, Guns and Money about beers that can serve industrial purposes like film development.

  • The Map Room Blog notes new maps of a modern Westeros created by designer Jamie Shadrach.

  • Marginal Revolution notes regulatory controversy in Alexandria, Virginia, regarding a potential halal butchery facility for chickens.

  • Roads and Kingdoms interviews writer L. Kasimu Harris about the inequalities of New Orleans.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shows readers what the galaxy would look like in electromagnetic frequencies other than those of visible light.

  • Arnold Zwicky writes about progress in education.

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  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the decline of the Free Tibet movement from a recent 1990s apogee.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the extent to which lynching in the United States is broadly dispersed throughout the country, is not only a method of African-American suppression.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a look at Beto O'Rourke as a Democratic nominee for the American presidency.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue, rightfully, with the Islamophobic criticism of Ilham Omar by even her supposed allies.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the people who recently died in Bangladesh at one end of a global supply chain, and asks about our responsibility at the other end.

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  • Urban Toronto notes that Yonge and Eglinton is now being torn apart, again, for Eglinton Crosstown construction.

  • Chris Bateman writes at CityLab about the singular achievement of Mies Van der Rohe in designing the TD Centre.

  • blogTO reports that the TTC has abandoned the policy of collecting personal information from passengers accused of misconduct, an echo of police carding.

  • John Lorinc writes at Spacing about ways to reframe the language used in debating the budget of the City of Toronto.

  • Arlene Chan at Spacing tells the century-long history of Cantonese opera in Toronto.

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