[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Apostrophen’s ‘Nathan Smith points to his blog post about the strengths of the chosen families of queer people, in life and in his fiction.
• Beyond the Beyond’s Bruce Sterling revisits the politics behind France’s Minitel network, archaic yet pioneering.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly blogs about meeting her online friends in real life. Frankly, it would never occur to me not to do that.
• Centauri Dreams looks at how Kepler’s exoplanets fall neatly into separate classes, super-Earths and mini-Neptunes.
• The LRB Blog has a terrible report from Grenfell Tower, surrounded by betrayed survivors and apocalypse.
• The Map Room Blog notes the inclusion of Canada’s First Nations communities on Google Maps.
• The NYRB Daily’s Robert Cottrell explores the banalities revealed by Oliver Stone’s interviews of Putin.
• The Planetary Society Blog’s Jason Davis considers the likely gains and challenges associated with missions to the ice giants of Uranus and Neptune.
• Towleroad notes the new Alan Cumming film After Louie, dealing with a romance between an ACT-UP survivor and a younger man
• The Volokh Conspiracy’s Ilya Somin does not find much good coming from Trump’s announced Cuba policy.
• Window on Eurasia warns about the threat posed by Orthodox Christian fundamentalists in Russia.