• blogTO looks at deserted Mirvish Village.
• Crooked Timber reenages with the Rachel Carson and DDT myth.
• The Crux looks at the Mandela Effect, exploring false memories.
• Dangerous Minds makes the case for the musical genius of Bobbie Gentry.
• From the Heart of Europe's Nicholas Whyte recounts his visit to Albania's bunker museum.

• blogTO reports on the history of Toronto's Wellington Street.
• Dangerous Minds introduces me to the grim American gothic that is Wisconsin Death Trip. What happened to Black River Falls in the 1890s?
• The Dragon's Gaze links to hypotheses about KIC 8462852, one suggesting KIC 8462852 has four exoplanets, another talking about a planet's disintegration.
• ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes an Instagram user from Toronto, @brxson, who takes stunning photos of the city from on high.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper examining the limits of exoplanet J1407b's massive ring system.
• The Dragon's Tales notes evidence that the primordial Martian atmosphere apparently did not have carbon dioxide.
• Imageo notes that the California ( Read more... )

In the Washington Post, Greg Miller and Philip Rucker report on the train wreck of the first phone call between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. If he can't manage a functional conversation with one of the United States' closest allies, I think I'm justified in fearing for Canada.

It should have been one of the most congenial ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes the Distillery District's Toronto Light Festival.
• Border Thinking Laura Agustín looks at migrants and refugees in James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia.
• Centauri Dreams suggests that Perry's expedition to Japan could be taken as a metaphor for first contact.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a report about how brown dwarf EPIC 219388192 b.
• The LRB Blog ( Read more... )

The Inter Press Service's Andy Hazel describes how Kurdish-Iranian asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani, detailed by the Australian government on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, is striving to report on the conditions of his detention.

Despite being locked up in an Australian detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, Kurdish-Iranian ( Read more... )

• blogTO recommends five neighbourhoods for people looking for apartments.
• False Steps' Paul Drye describes a failed European-Russian project for a manned capsule.
• Language Log looks at the oddity of English pronunciations of words in foreign languages, like placenames, with no connection to how these words are pronounced in English.
• Lawyers, Guns and ( Read more... )

• blogTO praises the food court of Village by the Grange.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about the importance of self-care in times of stress.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes that KIC 8462852 does seem to have faded throughout the Kepler mission.
• The Dragon's Tales notes that Planet Nine may be especially faint in the infrared and looks at the ( Read more... )

• blogTO warned yesterday of impending snowfall.
• Centauri Dreams considers if planets in the circumstellar habitable zones of red dwarfs, like Proxima Centauri b, might tend to be ocean worlds.
• Crooked Timber tries to track down the source of some American electoral maps breaking down support for candidates finely, by demographics.
• D-Brief shares ( Read more... )

• The Boston Globe's Big Picture shares photos of Massachusetts' Mattapan trolley.
• Centauri Dreams looks at Planet Nine's effects and examines the weather of Titan.
• Both The Dragon's Tales and the Planetary Society Weblog react to the loss of the Schiaparelli lander.
• The Dragon's Gaze looks for brown dwarf exoplanets.
• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw ( Read more... )