The big news a month ago was Justice Anthony Kennedy stepping down from the Supreme Court, which led to a big discussion of what the Court will look like without its moderate tie-breaker. Reason Magazine countered that Gorsuch was more liberal than Kennedy last year. 538 can't even agree with itself about Kennedy's politics and how the President's nominee would change the Court.
The hunt for Planet Nine turned up results closer to home with the discovery of twelve new Jovian moons. This brings the total count to 79.
India tests a crew capsule abort system. Their human space program is a long way from orbital test flights, but it's reassuring to see another nation taking steps to join that exclusive club. Scott Manley discusses the test and its context.
The UK, meanwhile, is finally planned to resume launching from their own territory with a new spaceport in Scotland. The United States is also inching closer to launching crews from American soil, with the first commercial crew assignments to be announced next week.
Underreported old news: improved planetary science models explain the asymmetrical Martian magnetic field.
Scott Alexander reviews the latest attempt to resolve the Fermi Paradox. This argument is strongly early-Filter, i.e. intelligent life is extremely rare. I don't have the statistical background to comment on their reasoning, but research to pin down the base numbers continues. For instance, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is warming up before it takes over the search from Kepler.
Alyssa Vance discusses the doublethink of "meritocracy". Simply put, institutions like to play favorites while also maintaining that their scions are selected on objective merits. You obviously can't have it both ways, but realizing that this is what most people think constitutes meritocracy explains their previously-unfathomable opposition to it.
For a more extreme example of institutional failure, here's a first-hand account of cult-level abuse arising inside a college department. It's a painful read, but ultimately not very surprising given that the school provided all the risk-factors by conscious decision.
Liberal Currents tackles the claim that racism arose from the Enlightenment.
