[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the landing of the Franco-German MASCOT probe on asteroid Ryugu from the Japanese Hayabusa-2 probe.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly shares a powerful New York Times article she wrote about her health status.


• Centauri Dreams notes the continued fine-tuning of the New Horizons probe as it approaches Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, also known as Ultima Thule.


• D-Brief notes how the Gaia satellite has detected hundreds of hypervelocity stars heading towards the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, perhaps coming from other galactic neighbours like the Large Magellanic Cloud.


• At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Karen Sternheimer writes about the possibilities opened up by learning another language.


• JSTOR Daily notes that, once, working-class children regularly roamed the night.


• Language Hat notes how the Maori remembered in their proverbs the disappearance of the moa, long after that species' extinction in New Zealand.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money rejoices at the despair of the alt-right on learning their favourite pop star, Taylor Swift, supports the Democratic Party.


• Lingua Franca takes a look at the past usage of the phrase "cold civil war".


• The LRB Blog writes about the profoundly disturbing case of the apparent murder, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.


• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution has a critical take on the concept of "Airspace", the sort of shared minimalist public spaces enabled by modern technologies.


• Strange Company reports on the mysterious Napoleonic-era haunting of the Upper Silesian castle of Slawensik.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps reports on the most common last names in different European countries, finding that local variations on "Smith" are exceptionally common.