Storefronts in Koreatown on Bloor Street West at Manning Avenue in 2008. This image was taken as a "beauty shot" for City promotional materials. https://ow.ly/CgIj50YQzGk

Scenes from Gerrard Street East from around 1975 to 1988. From the Urban Design series: https://ow.ly/XzjZ50YTbXa #Toronto

'The Inner Light' - Star Trek: TNG

the more I think about it, the more I feel like “Odysseus is from Boston” is true in a sort of ecstatic truth way

While I'm nerding about birds, everyone should get to know the Black-and-Chestnut Eagle, an endangered raptor from South American mountain forests. One of the Most Birds Ever.

This is why it's important authors read a lot, Murakami has no idea this has been done already

I know it's gauche to quote tolkien but genuinely the most interesting thing in his letters to me is this one from 1963 wherein he laid out in very plain terms what I think is THE fundamental thing that makes so much art have a life in your head beyond what you see on a page or play in a game

I personally love to read shit like "U.S. Pauses 'Project Freedom'" in headlines. Not all good jokes need to be complicated.

There's always a bigger fish 🐟

Coast Guard Station 🛥

Driving the Port Liner (Not really. It's automated. Like Skytrain!)

got into birdwatching recently which might secretly be the best hobby in the world. like you go outside and if you see a bird it’s great and if you don’t you’re still outside looking at trees and things of that nature

Urban Decay.. Torontos ravines have long been "places of refuse" where people had dumped their unwanted items. Walk through enough ravines, history of household technology will reveal itself. In this case in Curren Hall Ravine, vintage (60s?) oven & 80s typewriter. #LoveTheRavines #RavineRamble

This week it's 'He Mele A Hilo' by Ryka Aoki. Hula, Hawaiian food, colonial legacies, and tech bros. Fun and thoughtful at the same time! (And also 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot, which I've been reading for ages because it's loooooooong)

BlueSky users when we get the chance to post about how trains are neat

View from my hotel in Kobe

New city, new utility hole covers

Osaka Station has a cool roof and is gigantic.

Turned my fluffy pancake breakfast into a murder scene

Unless the movies have lied to me, I'm about to go on an adventure

This was a jump-scare on the streets of Osaka

On the train 🚃

The security guard at the entrance saw my Blue Jays cap and yelled "Go Blue Jays!" I have friends everywhere

Osaka Castle: site of the Winter War *and* the Summer War Fortunately, it's Spring 🌸

On the road to Osaka Castle

Me wearing a cool jacket: 😎 Me falling down the stairs at IKEA while wearing a cool jacket: 😎

thanks to Japanese breakfasts I have developed a crippling pickled plum addiction

Every book I read in April: 📺🤖💌🌱 🦠🔎👑 (Not pictured: the first half of Middlemarch)

Fukushima Station, Osaka Loop Line 🅾️

Cow bench? Cow bench

Osaka street art 🎨

The only reason I was able to build savings throughout my 20's and early 30's was because in that whole time I spent precisely $0 on buying, maintaining, insuring, or fueling a car. If I'd had a car I would have been left with nothing at the end of every month

This part hits. I've been carless in the US (by choice and without shame), and even in some of the most public transit-friendly cities it is difficult and wearing. It's not just the challenge of getting places, it's the sense of hostility.

We have discovered, yet again, that pedestrianization *raises* traffic to stores & *boosts* sales. All the fear-mongering was baseless! I'm sure this time the lesson will stick & the *next* group of merchants around the *next* proposed pedestrian street won't raise a bunch of nonsense objections!

"Benches are where optimistic visions of civic life meet reality. To remove them, or to curate who gets to sit, is to abandon the work of defining a civic ideal and determining, together, how to live up to it." NEW: Why benches are slowly disappearing from public spaces — and why we need them back:

I have to go to work and this is not my cat.

announcing ILÚVATAR, my multi-billion dollar company which will specialize in the dismantling of all other idiotically tolkien-named entities, that they shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite

Went to Korean BBQ for birthday dinner and saw one of my favorite things in the world: inexplicable signage

Behold the snake.

Umeda, the area our pre-conference meeting was held in. You don't see many lawns in Japanese cities (we saw, like, two the whole entire trip), but lots of buildings have little gardens and ponds around or on them

little daoist comic. he has a name but i'm holding onto it for now.

incredible photos of a walrus falling off a pontoon in scotland. source www.facebook.com/groups/scotl...

My favourite thing to do on game night when I am a block from the Rogers Centre dressed up in no fewer than three pieces of Blue Jays paraphernalia, and someone asks me if I'm going to the game, is to say "What game?!" and act for as long as I can like I have never heard of baseball in my life

A wholesome story for nerds: On Saturday, I was signing books at a local bookstore for Independent Bookstore Day. The store had a signing-palooza with new authors every hour; toward the end of my hour, a woman came up and asked what my book was about. "Dictionaries," I said, and she lit up. 1/n

went to sleep soon after I got home from my flight last night and woke up at 7am Tokyo time. Which would be perfect, except I'm in Toronto and it was 6pm 😬

View from the conference pre-meeting in Osaka

Me when my hotel has a view of the train tracks and railway station: Oh yes Me when I have to listen to trains roll by while I'm trying to fall asleep: Oh no

When you miss your connecting flight and have to hang around Haneda Airport for a couple of hours, you go and get a bowl of noodles, obviously

no posts for the past two weeks because I was in Japan 🇯🇵🌸🏯🗼⛩️🎏🍙🍜