Torontoist's Emily Macrae looks at how the Finnish city of Oulu keeps its citizens biking during winter. As always, planning is key.

With fewer than seven hours of sunlight a day at this time of year, Oulu is an unlikely leader in winter cycling. Timo Perälä discovered that his hometown’s approach was unique while doing research into winter ( Read more... )

Bloomberg's Omar Valdimarsson shares arguments that the failure of the Pirate Party to win the Icelandic elections has much to do with the ability of conventional economics and politics to deliver.

The man who probably will be Iceland’s next prime minister says he knows how to deal with the global wave of populism that’s threatening the ( Read more... )

The National Post shared Pete Rowley's post at The Conversation looking at Iceland's latest geothermal energy project.

Iceland is about to tap into water as hot as lava. Several kilometres below ground, a drilling rig named Thor will soon penetrate the area around a magma chamber, where molten rock from the inner Earth heats up water that has ( Read more... )

Omar Valdimarsson's Bloomberg article leaves me curious about how the Pirate Party will govern Iceland once in office.

Icelanders started voting in a snap election that polls show could propel the populist Pirate Party into a ruling coalition after the sitting conservative government became tainted by the Panama Papers scandal ( Read more... )

Ads for the exhibit IKEA Then & Now, running at the Design Exchange downtown between the 21st and the 30th of this month, kept appearing on my Facebook feed. Why not go? It was free, after all, and the Financial District is always fun to roam around. The exhibit's hashtag #ikeacan40 beckoned, and so, Thursday night, I went.


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CBC News' Lindsay Bird reports on an odd Viking inheritance.

Say it on your inhale: "yeeeeeeeah ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes that Toronto has its first Ethiopian food truck.
• Beyond the Beyond considers the alien ocean of Europa.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the protoplanetary disks of brown dwarfs.
• D-Brief notes that Saturn's moon Dione may have a subsurface ocean.
• The Dragon's Gaze looks at how broadly Earth-like exoplanets form their atmospheres.

• blogTO notes the growing concentration of chain stores on lower Ossington.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly describes her luck in interviewing a New York City firefighter.
• Citizen Science Salon reports on a citizen science game intended to fight against Alzheimer's.
• Language Hat starts from a report about unsold Welsh-language Scrabble games to talk ( Read more... )

• blogTO shares the new face of the Broadview Hotel.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the joys of the unscreened life.
• Dead Things reports on a study suggesting that although humans are violent by the standards of mammals, we are among the least violent primates.
• The Dragon's Gaze reports on the discovery of five sizable planets orbiting ( Read more... )

Joe O'Connor of the National Post reveals that the Norwegian king is spending his time in Toronto, on the Lake Ontario shorefront.

His Majesty King Harald V of Norway was sitting at the back of his sailboat, munching on a green apple, reflecting upon the day of sailing that had just been. A day that was not “good,” according to the king. It was ( Read more... )