[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• In a guest post at Antipope, researcher and novelist Heather Child writes about the extent to which Big Data has moved from science fiction to reality.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the very recent discovery of a massive crater buried under the ice of Greenland, one that may have impacted in the human era and altered world climate. Are there others like it?


• Crooked Timber responds to the Brexit proposal being presented to the British parliament. Is this it?


• D-Brief notes the discovery of the unusually large and dim, potentially unexplainable, dwarf galaxy Antlia 2 near the Milky Way Galaxy.


• Gizmodo notes that the size of mysterious 'Oumuamua was overestimated.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the life and achievements of Polish-born scholar Jósef Czapski, a man who miraculously survived the Soviet massacre of Polish officers at Katyn.


• At the LRB Blog, Ken Kalfus writes about his father's experience owning a drycleaner in a 1960s complex run by the Trump family.


• Marginal Revolution starts a discussion over a recent article in The Atlantic claiming that there has been a sharp drop-off in the sex enjoyed by younger people in the United States (and elsewhere?).


• At Roads and Kingdoms, T.M. Brown shares a story of the crazy last night of his bartending days in Manhattan's Alphabet City.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel imagines what the universe would have been like during its youth, during peak star formation.


• Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs takes a look at different partition plans for the United States, aiming to split the country into liberal and conservative successor states.


• Window on Eurasia notes that some Ingush, after noting the loss of some border territories to neighbouring Chechnya, fear they might get swallowed up by their larger, culturally related, neighbours.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alexander Harrowell predicts that there will not be enough Tory MPs in the United Kingdom willing to topple Theresa May over the Brexit deal.