[BLOG] Some Saturday links

[rfmcdonald]

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the import of the discovery of asteroid 2019 AQ3, a rare near-Venus asteroid.


• Centauri Dreams notes the how the choice of language used by SETI researchers, like the eye-catching "technosignatures", may reflect the vulnerability of the field to criticism on Earth.


• John Holbo at Crooked Timber considers what is to be done about Virginia, given the compromising of so many of its top leaders by secrets from the past.


• The Crux notes how the imminent recovery of ancient human DNA from Africa is likely to lead to a revolution in our understanding of human histories there.


• D-Brief notes how astronomers were able to use the light echoes in the accretion disk surrounding stellar-mass black hole MAXI J1820+070 to map its environment.


• JSTOR Daily considers the snow day as a sort of modern festival.


• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to his consideration of the plans of the German Empire to build superdreadnoughts, aborted only by defeat. Had Germany won the First World War, there surely would have been a major naval arms race.


• The NYR Daily looks at two exhibitions of different photographers, Brassaï and Louis Stettner.


• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog shares an evocative crescent profile of Ultima Thule taken by New Horizons, and crescent profiles of other worlds, too.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the mystery of why there is so little antimatter in the observable universe.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shares a map exploring the dates and locations of first contact with aliens in the United States as shown in film.


• Window on Eurasia notes a new push by Circassian activists for the Circassian identity to be represented in the 2020 census.