[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait reports on Supernova 2018oh in nearby galaxy UGC 4780, a star that demonstrated a most unusual bump in its light curve. Did the explosion engulf a neighbouring star?


• Centauri Dreams reports on New Horizons as it approaches its next target, the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule.


• D-Brief notes new observations of a black hole suggesting that gas around them forms not a rigid donut shape but rather a looser fountain.


• Dead Things notes a new discovery that the icythosaur had blubber like modern cetaceans, demonstrating convergent evolution.


• Cody Delistraty writes about changing perceptions of painter Egon Schiele.


• Far Outliers notes how Japanese prisoners of war were often so surprised by good treatment that they reciprocated, by freely sharing information with interrogators.


• Hornet Stories notes that, at least on Reddit, RuPaul's Drag Race is the most discussed show currently playing on television.


• Joe. My. God. notes that the Indian police was seeking two American evangelical Christian missionaries for aiding another to breach North Sentinel Island, both having fled the country.


• JSTOR Daily looks back to a 1963 paper on the effects of automation on society by Leon Megginson, finding that many of his predictions were correct.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that it is a sad day for Hungary that its government was able to drive the Central European University out of Budapest into exile.


• At Lingua Franca, Roger Shuy takes a look at the dreaded PhD oral exam. (I know that seeing other students taking it was one thing putting me off from academia.)


• The LRB Blog takes a look at the disastrous state of politics in Honduras, with a corrupt leader deeply compromised by (among other things) a dependency upon the United States.


• The NYR Daily takes a look at the beautiful Tibetan Buddhist religious art on display in the Ladakh settlement of Alchi.


• Window on Eurasia notes a conference in Moscow taking a look at a Eurasianism based on a Slavic-Turkic synthesis.


• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at Santa Barbara in some of her many dimensions.