[BLOG] Some Monday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait considers nearby galaxy NGC 6744, a relatively nearby spiral galaxy that may look like the Milky Way.


• D-Brief notes the remarkable ceramic spring that gives the mantis shrimp its remarkably powerful punch.


• Far Outliers notes how the north Korean port of Hamhung was modernized in the 1930s, but also Japanized, with few legacies of its Korean past remaining.


• Joe. My. God. notes how the Trump administration plans to define being transgender out of existence. Appalling.


• Alexandra Samuel at JSTOR Daily notes the ways in which the Internet has undermined the traditions which support American political institutions. Can new traditions be made?


• Lawyers, Guns, and Money notes how the Trump's withdrawal from the INF treaty with Russia on nuclear weapons harms American security.


• Rose Jacobs at Lingua Franca writes about ways in which derision, specifically of other nationalities, enters into English slang.


• Marginal Revolution notes that, in an article surveying the Icelandic language, a report that sales of books in Iceland have fallen by nearly half since 2010.


• The NYR Daily looks at two recent movies, one autobiographical and one fictional, looking at dads in space.


• Jason Perry at the Planetary Society Blog reports on the latest imagery of the volcanoes of Io.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the possibility that time travel might not destroy the universe via paradoxes.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that the experience of post-Soviet Estonia with its two Orthodox churches might be a model for Ukraine.