[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait confirms the discovery of water ice on the Moon.


• Centauri Dreams reports on the latest discoveries regarding Beta Pictoris b, notably new evidence that it is a superjovian massing between 9 and 13 Jupiters.


• D-Brief notes how oil rigs can support coral reefs.


• Far Outliers takes a grim look at the Chinese market in servants and serfs and slaves.


• Hornet Stories looks at opinion polling on minorities in Germany. (Gay people do much better than Muslims.)


• JSTOR Daily looks at how makeup, at the start of the 20th century highly stigmatized, ended up going mainstream.


• Geoffrey Pullum at Lingua Franca considers if Crazy Rich Asians, and other like pop culture successes, might get more Westerners to learn Chinese.


• The Map Room Blog shares pictures from space of the smoke produced by the British Columbia wildfires.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer takes a look at the way, in federal Mexico, state-level political machines continue to work.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at how, in the very early universe, the first elements formed.


• Window on Eurasia notes that in Bashkortostan, two-thirds of students opted for Russian-medium education, a proportion considerably above the proportion of ethnic Russians in that republic.