• James Bow calls for an end to the US-Canada Safe Third Country agreement prohibiting people coming from American soil from claiming refugee status in Canada.
• D-Brief reports on the vast array of man-made minerals appearing in what is now being called the Anthropocene Era of Earth.
• Dangerous Minds notes the efforts of the Disco Preservation Society to ( 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... )

CBC News reports on how Toka and Thika, two elephants formerly resident at the Toronto Zoo, are adapting well to their sunset years in a California sanctuary.

For Toka and Thika, retirement is turning out just fine. There's warm sunshine, new friends to spend time with and the chance to do whatever they want ( Read more... )

Wired's Davey Alba argues that the high concentration of immigrants, even refugees, in Silicon Valley made a hostile reaction to the Trump presidency very likely even before the announced border control policies.

Any thought that Silicon Valley might work with President Trump ended when the tech industry took a decisive stand against his Muslim ( Read more... )

The Globe and Mail features Mike Huber's article suggesting that Trump's existing border controls and the fear of more have triggered an exodus of Silicon Valley talent north, to British Columbia.

British Columbia’s burgeoning tech sector is set to get a big boost from entrepreneurs and their employees fleeing Silicon Valley to dodge U.S. ( 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... )

• blogTO notes the continued rise in rental prices for apartments.
• Centauri Dreams looks at a time in the Earth's history when there was a lot of atmospheric oxygen but not much life.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting there is an authentic lack of gas giant planets beyond 10 AU.
• Itching for Eestimaa notes the British politicians who favoured ( Read more... )

Wired's Nick Stockton reports from Claifornia in the time of flooding, looking at how its water management authorities are preventing the state capital from getting overwhelmed by water so soon after the devastation of drought.

To see how close California is to being drowned by its recent winter storms, just look to the small crowd of spectators ( Read more... )

The San Francisco Chronicle's Vincent Woo writes about how an ostensible openness of San Franciscans towards immigration is not matched by their lack of support for affordable housing for immigrants (and others).

San Francisco is one of the most progressive cities in the nation, especially when it comes to national immigration. We believe so much ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes that the Toronto real estate market is now the most unaffordable of any in Canada.
• The Big Picture shares photos of melting Antarctica.
• Crooked Timber considers the economic benefits of open borders, and the costs.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos of posters from Paris in 1968.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the problems of legal education ( Read more... )