Marc Campbell has a fantastic post over at Dangerous Minds talking about the vitality of the late 1970s/early 1980s music scene in New York City, an era of remarkable popularity and productivity.

Whether playing CBGB or not I probably spent most nights in 77/78 either there or at Max’s. It was the last great era of rock and roll as far as I’m ( Read more... )

• Bad Astronomy notes the discovery of water vapour clouds in the atmosphere of nearby brown dwarf WISE 0855.
• blogTO notes the imminent arrival of winter weather.
• Centauri Dreams reports on a new theory of the Moon's origins suggesting the impact collision which create it was much more violent than we thought.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes how snowlines ( Read more... )

I shared this link on the weekend, but I thought I'd share it again. Dangerous Minds hosts some pretty cool photos of Halloween partiers in New York City's West Village circa the early 1990s.

Bloomberg's Gavin Finch notes that New York City, not necessarily any single European centre, could benefit the most from the decline of London post-Brexit as a financial centre.

New York, even more than Frankfurt or Paris, is emerging as a top candidate to lure banking talent if London’s finance industry is damaged by Britain’s divorce from the ( Read more... )

• Antipope's Charlie Stross worries about the literal survival of Britons in the post-Brexit United Kingdom.
• D-Brief notes the discovery of an ancient corpse in China shrouded in cannabis.
• Dangerous Minds reports on a 1971 BBC documentary about New York City starring a pre-stardom Patti Smith.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a study mapping the changing ( Read more... )

• 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... )

Aarian Marshall's Wired article strikes me as overly optimistic. What if people become too used to gridlock as the new normal?

The apocalypse is nigh. In 2019, New York City plans to shut down the portion of the L subway line that runs under the East River and across Manhattan, for a full 18 months of work to repair the damage wrought by ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes how expensive Toronto's rental market is.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanet system.
• Crooked Timber engages with the complexities of racism.
• The Crux shares some oral history about the detection of the first gravitational wave.
• The Dragon's Gaze reports about the difficulties involved with detecting exoplanets around red ( Read more... )

Andrew Rice's New York article paints a terrifying future for New York City, and other coastal cities.

Klaus Jacob, a German professor affiliated with Columbia’s University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is a geophysicist by profession and a doomsayer by disposition. I’ve gotten to know him over the past few years, as I’ve sought to ( Read more... )

• blogTO considers some of the spendthrift things a millionaire could do in Toronto.
• James Bow remembers his 9/11 experience.
• Crasstalk features an essay by a New Yorker reflecting on her 9/11.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog reflects on how white power and white powerlessness can co-exist.
• Language Hat shares one book's evaluation of Neapolitan dialect.