[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes how TESS detected a star being torn apart by a distant black hole.
• Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster looks at the past and future of the blog.
• Crooked Timber takes on the sensitive issue of private schools in the United Kingdom.
• The Crux considers the question of why women suffer from Alzheimer’s at a higher frequency than men.
• D-Brief notes a study suggesting that saving the oceans of the Earth could reduce the effects of global warming by 20%.
• Bruce Dorminey considers a paper suggesting that, if not for its volcanic resurfacing, Venus could have remained an Earth-like world to this day.
• The Dragon’s Tale notes that NASA will deploy a cubesat in the proposed orbit of the Lunar Gateway station to make sure it is a workable orbit.
• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina looks at Soyuz T-10a, the first crewed mission to abort on the launch pad.
• Gizmodo reports on a paper arguing that we should intentionally contaminate Mars (and other bodies?) with our world’s microbes.
• io9 looks at how Warner Brothers is trying to control, belatedly, the discourse around the new Joker movie.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how, in industrializing London, women kidnapped children off the streets.
• Language Hat links to a page examining the Arabic and Islamic elements in Dune.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at a new documentary examining the life of Trump mentor Roy Cohn.
• The LRB Blog looks at how BBC protocols are preventing full discussion of public racism.
• The Map Room Blog looks at different efforts to reimagining the subway map of New York City.
• Marginal Revolution shares a paper claiming that increased pressure on immigrants to assimilate in Italy had positive results.
• The NYR Daily looks at the background to George Washington’s statements about the rightful place of Jews in the United States.
• Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog looks at the political explanation of the massive increase in the planetary defense budget of NASA.
• Drew Rowsome takes a look at the Rocky Horror Show, with its celebration of sexuality (among other things).
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel considers why there are so many unexpected black holes in the universe.
• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps examines why Google Street View is not present in Germany (and Austria).
• The Volokh Conspiracy reports on a ruling in a UK court that lying about a vasectomy negates a partner’s consent to sex.
• Window on Eurasia notes the controversy about some Buryat intellectuals about giving the different dialects of their language too much importance.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the newly-named Neptune moon of Hippocamp, and how it came about as product of a massive collision with the larger moon of Proteus.
• Centauri Dreams also reports on the discovery of the Neptune moon of Hippocamp.
• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes how the attempt to revoke the citizenship of Shamima Begum sets a terribly dangerous precedent for the United Kingdom.
• D-Brief notes new evidence suggesting the role of the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions in triggering the Cretaceous extinction event, alongside the Chixculub asteroid impact.
• Far Outliers notes the problems of Lawrence of Arabia with Indian soldiers and with Turks.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing takes issue with the state of philosophical contemplation about technology, at least in part a structural consequence of society.
• Hornet Stories shares this feature examining the future of gay porn, in an environment where amateur porn undermines the existing studios.
• JSTOR Daily considers the spotty history of casting African-American dancers in ballet.
• Language Hat suggests that the Académie française will soon accept for French feminized nouns of nouns links to professionals (“écrivaine” for a female writer, for instance).
• The LRB Blog considers the implications of the stripping of citizenship from Shamima Begum. Who is next? How badly is citizenship weakened in the United Kingdom?
• Marginal Revolution notes the upset of Haiti over its banning by Expedia.
• The NYR Daily notes the tension in Turkey between the country’s liberal laws on divorce and marriage and rising Islamization.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the moment, in the history of the universe, when dark energy became the dominant factors in the universe’s evolution.
• Towleroad remembers Roy Cohn, the lawyer who was the collaborator of Trump up to the moment of Cohn’s death from AIDS.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little takes a look at Marx’s theories of how governments worked.
• Window on Eurasia looks at the existential pressures facing many minority languages in Russia.