[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling is impressed by The Atlantic's prediction of disruptive change coming in consumer technology.


• Centauri Dreams highlights a recent study suggesting that, so long as they don't have too much water, super-Earths could have habitable land surfaces. (The study was promoted on social media as noting that Superman's Krypton could exist.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that mini-Neptunes may be very common planets than their absence in our neck of the woods suggests, and studies the circumstellar habitable zones of binary star systems.


• Eastern Approaches takes a look at what will happen in the Balkans this year. The anniversary of the start of the First World War will feature prominently.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis is critical of the recent suggestion to divide California into six states, on various grounds of plausibility.


• Joe. My. God notes the news that something like a hundred firefightiers and police in New York City have been arrested on charges for falsely claiming injuries from 9/11.


• At the Planetary Society, Van Kane argues that an inexpensive but effective mission to Jupiter's moon Europa is quite possible.


• Peter Rukavina celebrates his house's reproduction on an album cover.


• Steve Munro won't take undue criticism of streetcars based on their response to bad weather this past week.


• Supernova Condensate shares a photographer image of exoplanet Beta Pictoris b.


• Towleroad celebrates Lily Tomlin's marriage and notes that Russian actor and homophobe Ivan Okhlobystin, fresh for calling for the extermination of GLBT people in furnaces, wants gay sex to be re-illegalized in Russia.