The Ed's Up #169 - The Bye-Bye 2016 Edition

This has been a tumultuous, paradoxical year—one of lost icons and unsettling events. For me, it’s also been a year of personal happiness and professional pride. I’m deeply proud of the work I’ve been able to do at The Atlantic, overjoyed at the success of I Contain Multitudes, and grateful for anyone who read the words I put out into the world. It is perhaps the greatest of privileges to be happy in a time of intense Weltschmerz, so in the year to come—one that I fear will be even more challenging than this much-lamented one—I hope to be grateful for and mindful of that privilege, and to honour it by using this newsletter, and my other works and channels, as a reliable source of truthful information, quality journalism, social justice, wonder at the natural world, and laughter.  

I've been hearing the phrase "now more than ever..." a lot recently--and for good reason. Now is a time to reaffirm everything we stand for, and to work out who we want to stand with. Thank you all for joining me. 
 

First, a brief retrospective. Here are my 10 most-read pieces from 2016

• How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology
• A Shocking Find In a Neanderthal Cave In France
• Why Turtles Evolved Shells: It Wasn't for Protection
• The Incredible Thing We Do During Conversations
• A New Origin Story for Dogs
• Self-Control Is Just Empathy With Your Future Self
• Stunning Videos of Evolution in Action
• The Long Decline of the Dinosaurs
• Clearing the Body's Retired Cells Slows Aging and Extends Life
• Venus Flytraps Are Even Creepier Than We Thought

And here are 25 other stories that I loved writing 

• The Fairy Tales That Predate Christianity
• Natural History Museums Are Teeming With Undiscovered Species
• This Bacterium Acts Like a One-Cell Eyeball
• How Viruses Infiltrated Our DNA and Supercharged Our Immune System
• The Weird Stories Behind America's Official State Fossils
• The Mysterious Thing About a Marvelous New Synthetic Cell
• Lost for Words
• No, Wait, Short Conversations Really Can Reduce Prejudice
• Most of the Tree of Life is a Complete Mystery
• A DNA Sequencer in Every Pocket
• The Plan to Avert Our Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse
• This Fly's Sperm Is One Thousand Times Longer Than Human Sperm
• Can Neuroscience Understand Donkey Kong, Let Alone a Brain?
• The Stunning Case of Leaping Electric Eels
• Before the Hobbits There Were Smaller Hobbits
• The Contagious Cancer That Jumped Between Species
• How to Beat Dengue and Zika: Add a Microbe to Mosquitoes
• The Sharks That Live to 400
• A Tiny Jellyfish Relative Just Shut Down Yellowstone River
• The Weak Evidence Behind Brain-Training Games
• The Virus With Spider DNA
• To Make Vaccines Anywhere, Just Add Water
• A Google Maps for the Human Body
• How Trump Could Wage a War on Scientific Expertise
• Giraffes Edge Closer to Extinction

And two final ones to round off the year

Cheetahs Never Prosper

"Durant and her colleagues created a mathematical model that simulated the cheetah’s fate. It revealed that if the unprotected populations fall by just 10 percent a year, we’ll lose 50 percent of the world’s cheetah in 15 years. even if the protected populations are stable. If they’re right, and nothing is done, today’s newborn babies will graduate from high school into a world with half as many cheetahs." (Image: Christian Charisius) 
 

The CDC’s New Quarantine Rule Could Violate Civil Liberties

"But some epidemiologists, lawyers, and health organizations say that the rule, in its current form poses a serious threat to civil liberties, allowing authorities to detain and examine people with little heed to due process and informed consent. “They’re giving themselves the benefit of the doubt,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the UPMC Center for Health Security and a co-author of a recent paper criticizing the proposed rule. “I don’t worry about the CDC. I worry about people above them making them do things they don’t want to do because they’ve given themselves these broad powers. Those powers will make their jobs easier, until they don’t.”" (Image: Afolabi Sotunde) 

More good reads in science and technology

There are two Asian snails that can swing their shells to bludgeon predators. By Jennifer Frazer
This one weird trick will not convince conservatives to fight climate change. David Roberts on why it’s not a matter of facts and clever messaging.
An unpredicted shortage of vaccine threatens the international polio eradication effort. By Maryn McKenna
How white nationalists are twisting the results of modern genetics. By Sarah Zhang
Climate scientists are dividing into a “fight like hell” camp and a “keep your head down, do science” camp. By Robinson Meyer
How Danny Kahneman, a pioneer in the science of mistakes, ended up mistaken. By Daniel Engber
We finally have an effective Ebola vaccine. By Julia Belluz.
As glaciers literally crumble around him, Ludovico Einaudi plays an elegy for the Arctic.
The Last Place To Experience 2016 Will Be An Abandoned Island Full Of Bird Poop. By Cara Giaimo
The bats seemed to be particularly vocal when annoyed with other bats."
Vera Rubin Didn't Discover Dark Matter. Not a contrarian piece, but a lovely reflection on her way of thinking, by Richard Panek.
16 depressing-af science stories from 2016, as compiled by the great Buzzfeed team
There are really quite a lot of insects flying overhead
Cats, Veterinarian Come Down With A Rare Bird Flu In New York
Do Not Eat, Touch, Or Even Inhale the Air Around the Manchineel Tree. By Dan Nosowitz
“It’s a terrible analogy... because, literally, a swamp & its foliage & its growth basically hold land in place." By Jennifer Bendery
And finally… a peacock spider Christmas
 

More good reads on politics and society

Here's how The Atlantic’s politics team will be covering Trump's tweets, by looking at what prompted them, their context, and their implications. Not just "Hey, he said this."
"They lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself." Masha Gessen compares Putin and Trump.
A North Carolina professor who developed an internationally used way of measuring integrity of elections says that his state is no longer a democracy
David Farenthold's year of covering Trump, in his own words. A model journalist. 
The absurd myth of the unheard Trump voter. By Andrea Grimes
I only saw Zootopia this week and really wasn't expecting it to be the great intersectionality movie of our time. Here’s why it’s great.
Diving into the unthinkable cold truths of a nuclear war. Jonathan Golob on what such a war would really mean.
2016 was the year the feminist bubble burst. Bleak but important, from Michelle Goldberg.
How journalists covered the rise of Hitler and Mussolini. Hint: not very well.
Trump to inherit more than 100 court vacancies, plans to reshape judiciary.
Vann Newkirk II talks to an arms control expert about what Trump’s tweets on an arms race might actually mean.
And finally… leaked photos from the Rogue One sequel; read the comments for once.