[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a stunning photo of two galaxies colliding in the eternal night and considers the implications of the Milky Way’s future encounter with Andromeda.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the latest discoveries regarding FRB 121102 and fast radio bursts generally.
• Hornet Stories suggests that a recent ruling by the Inter American Court of Human Rights sets the stage for marriage equality across Latin America.
• Inkfish notes that the biomass of dead squid mothers plays a major role in the environments and ecologies of seafloors.
• JSTOR Daily suggests retirees can actually learn a lot from the lifestyles of members of the RV–recreational vehicle–community.
• Language Hat reports on wordplay, and its translations, in the works of Homer.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the turn to anti-intellectualism among American conservatives.
• At Lingua Franca, William Germano talks about telling numbers.
• The LRB Blog notes the story of the English village of Imber, intentionally depopulated by the British military during the Second World War and never allowed to be restored.
• The NYR Daily talks about a London exhibition on the art of our era of terrorism and terror.
• The Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest Juno discoveries from Jupiter.
• Progressive Download’s John Farrell reports on a debate as to whether the origin of life is a more difficult question than the origin of consciousness.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the simple pleasures of an iced coffee enjoyed in the Australian Outback.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel U>considers an interesting question: is ours the only advanced civilization in the universe?
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little tackles the concept of organizational cultures.
• Window on Eurasia suggests that post-1991 immigrants from the former Soviet Union form a tenth of the Russian labour force.