The Ed's Up #163

Notable!

I'm delighted to say that I Contain Multitudes was selected by the New York Times as one of its 100 notable books of 2016. It's a great list, too. I especially recommend White Rage by Carol Anderson, which I'm on the verge of finishing. It's about the history of black rights in America, from the end of the Civil War to the finale of the Obama administration, showing how every advancement has been met by an insidious rollback, not from obvious quarters like the Klan, but from bureaucrats and legislators. “With so much attention on the flames,” she writes, “everyone had ignored the kindling.” It’s shocking, beautifully written, and, with white supremacy resurgent, more important than ever. 
 

Microbes Might Explain Why Many Diets Backfire

"Even when people successfully manage to lose weight, in the majority of cases, the vanished pounds return within a year—and often with reinforcements. For many people, weight loss isn’t just hard, it’s Sisyphean. No one really understands the reasons behind this “weight cycling”, this so-called “yo-yo effect”. “There’s a lot of speculation but very little knowledge,” says Eran Elinav from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Now, by studying mice, Elinav has shown that the yo-yo effect might be at least partly driven by the microbiome—the huge community of bacteria and other microbes that share our bodies." (Image: Akhtar Soomro)

 

Why Are Gorillas Committing Mob Violence?

"It started with a scream. It either came from a fleeing gorilla named Inshuti, or from the three males who were chasing him. Whatever the case, seconds later, Inshuti was on the ground, surrounded by a mob of 25 other gorillas. They pinned him down by his arms and legs. They screamed and grunted as they bit, kicked, and hit him. They pulled out chunks of his hair. The biggest of the attacking silverbacks repeatedly sank his teeth into Inshuti’s body and shook his head, like a dog with a bone." (Image: Kenny Katombe)
 

Science's Minority Talent Pool Is Growing—but Draining Away

"Gibbs gathered figures on the numbers of Ph.D. graduates and assistant professors in the science departments of medical schools throughout the country, from 1980 to 2014. The data were stark. During that time, the number of newly minted Ph.D. holders from underrepresented groups grew by nine times, but the number of assistant professors from those groups grew by just 2.6 times. No such gulf existed for well-represented groups like whites and Asians; there, the Ph.D. graduate pool grew by 2.2 times while the assistant professor pool rose proportionally, by 1.7 times. “If you assume the system will take care of itself naturally as you diversify the talent pool, this calls that in to question,” he says." (Image: Shannon Stapleton)
 

The World’s Biggest Fish in a Bucket of Water

"If you lean over the side of a boat and scoop up some water with a jug, you have just taken a census of the ocean. That water contains traces of the animals that swim below your boat—flecks of skin and scales, fragments of mucus and waste, tiny cells released from their bodies. All of these specks contain DNA. And by sequencing that DNA gathered from the environment—which is known as environmental DNA, or eDNA—scientists can work out exactly what’s living in a patch of water, without ever having to find, spot, or identify a single creature. And that helps, even when the creature in question is 18 meters long." (Image: Steffen Sanvig Bach) 
 

More good reads

• How DNA Evidence Confirmed a Soviet Cover-Up of an Anthrax Accident. Sarah Zhang on science in a post-truth environment.
• Emily Graslie, creator of the Brain Scoop, encourages us to embrace curiosity, check our biases, and be more like dung beetles
• Lab chimps were moved to Chimp Haven. Were they better off in labs? Cassandra Willyard discusses.
• These Fijian ants farm plants for food.
• The Battle for the Great Apes: Inside the Fight for Non-Human Rights. By George Johnson.
• Maybe all leaves are spiders.
• A hilarious piece on soulless tech conferences, by Sam Kriss
• And election stuff: 
  • “Hail Trump!” The Atlantic’s reporters captured an utterly disgusting video of Trump supporters cheering him with Nazi salutes. And a response from the Holocaust Museum in DC: “The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words.”
  • On the fearful power of the attorney general, and the man who will soon wield it. By Garrett Epps.
  • “The electors, Hamilton believed, would prevent someone with “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” from becoming president.” Peter Beinart on why the electoral college was meant to stop demagogues.
  • What does Trump think about climate change? He doesn’t know either, argues Robinson Meyer. Similarly, Jonathan Chait offers a “portrait of a man who knows nothing about climate change”
  •  “He truly doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment. He thinks we are supposed to say what he says & that’s it." On Trump and the press, by David Remnick.
  • “We really have to figure out how to tell the truth and not just report the facts.” Masha Gessen on how journalists should cover administrations that abandon norms.  
  • “No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along.” Some catharsis from Charles M Blow.
  • Clare Foran analyzes the recent call for an audit/recount: “There’s a case to be made for routine election audits—but not for spreading unsubstantiated claims or speculation.”
  • An excellent Q&A with a former White House ethics czar on Trump’s innumerable conflicts of interest, why they matter, and how they could be averted. See also, the WaPo on Trump’s absurd views on COIs, and the NYT on his fight with a British wind farm.
  • “Normalization is psychic armour. But so is resistance.” Laurie Penny on how to stay mentally healthy in a world gone mad.
  • "We don’t make excuses for bigotry, and we don’t normalize the abuse.” Great profile of Marisa Franco, an actual leader, by Colby Itkowitz.
  • Talking about "identity politics" is just the left's way of siding with white supremacy. By Marcus Johnson
  • A Republican governor in North Carolina is currently trying to steal an election. By Mark Joseph Stern.
  • What it’s like to teach 1984 in 2016. By Andrew Simmons
  • Two important Twitter threads: from John Paul Brammer on how poor rural whites see themselves, and from Jody Rosen on cities and “elites”
• And finally… a story of kindness.

You can also follow me on Twitter or find my writing at The Atlantic. My New York Times-bestselling book, I Contain Multitudes, is out now. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you can sign up yourself.

And that's it. Thanks for reading.

- Ed