The Ed's Up #186

A Remote Paradise Island Is Now a Plastic Junkyard

"Henderson should be pristine. It is uninhabited. Tourists don’t go there. There’s no one around to drop any litter. The whole place was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1988. The nearest settlement is 71 miles away, and has just 40 people on it. And yet, seafaring plastic has turned it into yet another of humanity’s scrapheaps. “It’s truly one of the last paradises left on earth, and one of the least visited but heavily protected bits of land on the planet,” Lavers says. “But I don’t think I’ve stood somewhere and been so utterly and completely surrounded by plastic.” (Image: Jennifer Lavers)
 

Trump Reportedly Considering New Cuts to Biomedical Research

"The bulked-up version of the President’s budget for fiscal year 2018, which will be released next week, may not allay those fears. According to two sources within the NIH who were briefed on the issue, the administration may pursue a new strategy in its quest for cuts, by proposing a 10 percent cap on the NIH’s indirect costs—the money it gives to grantees to support administration, equipment, libraries, IT, lighting, heating, electricity, and other overhead. “It’s going to make every single university president across the country call their representative,” says one of the sources, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity." (Image: Jacquelyn Martin) 
 

Congress, the Doctors Will See You Now

"Two weeks ago, just after the House of Representatives voted to pass the AHCA—the bill that would repeal Obamacare—Tran received a call from a patient whose daughter has a brain tumor. “She works in a nail shop and she couldn’t get health care for her children until the ACA,” says Tran. “When her kid was diagnosed, she had good care—expensive, but good. After the election, we cried in my office because we realized that this was going to affect her daughter’s life soon. We didn’t think it would be this soon. She called me last week, petrified. Now that her child has a pre-existing condition, she’s terrified she won’t be able to afford her premiums.” “That’s why I’m running for Congress,” she adds." (Image: Gary Cameron) 
 

I'm making some films - help me out. 

Some of you may have heard about this before, but Tangled Bank Studios is adapting my book--I Contain Multitudes--into a series of online videos. We've shot the first six and they'll start rolling out later this year. (Here's a trailer.)  Tangled Bank are looking for people to provide feedback on sneak-previews of the videos before they're available to the public. If you're interested, you can sign up here. You'll be notified when the videos are available over the summer. Exciting! 
 

More good reads in science and tech

• We’re all living in a bubble. Humans have accidentally created a protective shield around the Earth, writes Marina Koren.
• Rich, evocative piece about Ascension Island—an exercise in terraforming. By Clare Fieseler
• American trees are moving west and no one knows why, writes Robinson Meyer
• A creationist is suing the Grand Canyon for religious discrimination, writes Sarah Zhang.
• For sharing a scientific paper, a young researcher faces jail time
• The stunning beauty of the Milky Way's footprints
• The gods of irony are laying it on a bit thick, as the Svalbard Seed Vault floods because of melting permafrost.
• A grand theory of life reframing it as a series of energy revolutions.
• Fascinating: some caterpillars don’t have any resident gut microbes
• Geneticists use CRISPR to hack tomatoes to make them better
• Orangutan mums nurse for nearly nine years!
• Ambika Kamath did not like The Evolution of Beauty, the book I recommended and enjoyed last week. You should check out her reasoning.
• A new study suggests that even slight amounts of global warming will devastate Australia and destroy the Great Barrier Reef
• Critics say plan for drifting ocean trash collectors is unmoored
• The case against a neurotoxic pesticide, which the EPA now refuses to ban
• Bad luck, racists: there’s no such thing as a 'pure' European—or anyone else. An in-depth look at what we know about human migrations.
• A Caltech Professor Harassed Two Women. Now Students Are Protesting His Return To Campus.

 

More good reads in politics and society

• There will be no politics links this week because it’s been a relatively quiet seven dayAHAHAHAAHAHAHA NO it’s been a total shitshow. Here’s a really good summary from David Graham that goes from Sally Yates’s testimony through to last Wednesday. On Monday, we learned that Trump, having recently fired his FBI chief James Comey who was investigating alleged collusion with Russia, bragged to the Russian foreign minister & ambassador about the quality of his intel, and in doing so, spilled highly classified information—really highly classified information—that turned out to have come from Israel. Those disclosures come at a terrible potential cost and Trump himself once said that leaks of this kind should be punished by execution. On Tuesday, we learned that Trump had asked Comey to stop investigating the now-fired NSA director Mike Flynn—a fact that Comey recorded in a memo. That’s either obstruction of justice or something approaching it, and even Republicans started to shift their response. On Wednesday, we learned that former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel for the Russia investigation (here’s what that means), that there’s a tape on which Republican leaders gossiping about how Trump is paid by Putin, and that Trump knew Flynn was under investigation before he brought him into the White House. On Thursday: some hilarity involving curtains. And on Friday: we learn that Trump told Russian officials: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job.” The whole saga reveals that American institutions are having some success in pushing back against Trump. And here’s a look at four possible endings to this story, and a guide to just what impeachment would actually mean.
• Meanwhile, it emerged that White House staff have been slipping hoaxes to the president (here’s what his fake news habit might mean in a crisis); that national security aides put his name in their briefing docs as much as possible so he will keep reading them; and that everyone’s nervous about his international multi-day trip. And Trump’s approval ratings continue to plumb new depths.
• This is the story of Eudocia Tomas Pulido, a Filipino woman who lived as a slave in modern America, as recounted by Alex Tizon, a member of the family that owned her. It has attracted a lot of controversy and debate—here’s one good critical thread, another rounding up view from Filipino readers, and a round-up of some reader mail. The Atlantic will be publishing a variety of follow-up pieces, of which this is the first.
• “If I have painted a bleak picture, it is because things are bleak.” Zeynep Tupfecki on the ransomware crisis.
• “Just as you flavor your name, your name flavors you.” My colleague Julie Beck goes on a quest to talk to all the other Julie Becks
• The fake news problem is going to get a lot worse when we can create realistic fake videos from photos.
• The White House’s new war on drugs could drive up the HIV rate

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And that's it. Thanks for reading.

- Ed