The Ed's Up #197

I'm on Story Collider!

"This thing is only slightly smaller than the jeep, and it is about a body length away from us.  Its head is lowered, its horn is pointing at us." Tune in to hear me tell a story about an encounter with a flatulent rhino (and to hear Gifford Wong talk about resuscitating a Weddell seal named Crystal.)
 

The Origin Story of Animals Is a Song of Ice and Fire

"Around 717 million years ago, the Earth turned into a snowball. Most of the ocean, if not all of it, was frozen at its surface. The land, which was aggregated into one big supercontinent, was also covered in mile-thick ice. And then, everything changed. Volcanoes released enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to trap the sun’s heat and trigger global warming. The ice melted, and the surface of the sea reached temperatures of 120 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. By 659 million years ago, the world had transformed from snowball to greenhouse. And just 14 million years later, the ice returned and the planet became a snowball for the second time. This song of ice and fire was a momentous period for life on Earth. It liberated a flood of nutrients that permanently transformed the oceans, from a world that was dominated by bacteria to one where algae were ascendant. The algae, in turn, revolutionized the food webs in the sea, paving the way for the evolution of larger and increasingly complex organisms—like the first animals. If the Age of Algae had never dawned, we wouldn’t be here." (Image: NASA)
 

Can Dogs Smell Their ‘Reflections’?

"Consider the dogs. Dogs don’t groom each other to the same extent that apes do, so there’s no reason to expect that they would try to examine a mark on their heads. What’s more, the mirror test is a visual test, designed by visual animals (us) for other visual animals. Dogs see just fine, but they mainly live in a world of smell. If you want to know if they have a concept of self, it makes little sense to confront them with a mirror. You need to work in their world. A world of chemicals drifting through the air. A world that’s hard for us to imagine." (Image: Marc Piscotty)
 

At Last, a Big, Successful Trial of Probiotics

"For all the hype that surrounds them, probiotics—products that contain supposedly beneficial bacteria—have rarely proven their worth in large, rigorous studies. There are good reasons for this disappointing performance. The strains in most commercially produced probiotics were chosen for historical reasons, because they were easy to grow and manufacture, and not because they are well-adapted to the human body. When they enter our gut, they fail to colonize. As I wrote in my recent book, they’re like a breeze that blows between two open windows. But even though probiotic products might be underwhelming, the probiotic concept is sound. It’s just a matter of finding the right strains, and helping them to establish themselves. Many scientists are now trying to do just that, and one such team, led by Pinaki Panigrahi at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, has just scored a big win." (Image: Danish Siddiqui) 
 

Can Humans Understand Chimps?

"The videos are part of the Great Ape Dictionary, an online experiment led by Cat Hobaiter and Kirsty Graham from the University of St. Andrews. They and their team, led by the primatologist Richard Byrne, have spent years painstakingly cataloging the gestures of chimps and other apes, filming them in the wild and poring over the recordings to work out how each movement is used. And now, they want to know what people see in the footage. Do others who aren’t professional primatologists still have an intuitive sense for what ape gestures mean?" (Image: Colin Braley)
 

The Next Chapter in a Viral Arms Race

"These events provided an unprecedented view of how viruses evolve in the wild. They’ve also permeated into the popular consciousness, creating an intuitive sense that lethal viruses eventually evolve into milder forms, which are less likely to completely wipe out their hosts. But “the notion that everything’s heading toward a state of long-term co-existence and happiness is not always the case,” says Andrew Read, an evolutionary biologist based at Pennsylvania State University. “There are plenty of examples where the virus has got nastier over time.” (Image: Michaela Rehle)
 

More good reads: science and technology

• A now-infamous memo from a now-fired Google employee misrepresents the science around gender differences. Some of the best explanations of why its science is wrong come from evolutionary biologist Suzanne Sadedin, and science writers Adam Rogers and Megan Molteni. Meanwhile, computer scientist Cynthia Lee and writers Sarah Jeong and Rachel Becker explain the real reasons for the tech industry’s diversity problems.
• Racists buy ancestry genetic tests, learn that they have non-European ancestry, get sad and angry. Good read by Sarah Zhang.
• "He also began one of our phone calls by asking me if I was regretting doing this story yet." Olga Khazan on the deeply entrenched debate about whether it’s actually bad for your health to be overweight.
• In advance of next week’s eclipse, listen to David Baron’s story about eclipse-chasing.  
• Cancer is more likely to kill you if you rely on 'natural' therapies.
• Three huge flowers that look like penises and smell of rotting flesh will bloom in Washington DC on the day of the eclipse.
• "The Chinese word for eugenics, yousheng, is used explicitly as a positive in almost all conversations about PGD." China rushes to embrace embryo selection.
• What are ocean laws trying to protect? Beautiful scrolling story in the NYT.
• A beautiful Twitter thread about dung beetles from Jennifer Harrison, and a sequel from me.
• How washing your hair could help you survive a nuclear blast.
• “Deep in the belly of a giant fiberglass triceratops, eight rare bats have made a home.”

 

More good reads: politics and society

Hoo-boy.

Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists descended upon Charlottesville, and one of them murdered a woman named Heather Heyer. Here’s a selection of pieces about the events and their aftermath.

• “I advised congregants that it would be safer to leave the temple through the back entrance rather than through the front, and to please go in groups. This is 2017 in the United States of America.” Alan Zimmerman, a Charlottesville synagogue president.
• Matt Thompson argues that the “Unite the Right” gathering was a twisted pride march, where “people unadorned by masks or hoods are marching for white supremacy openly on the city’s streets and lawns.”
• Jia Tolentino says that “the belief that America is better than its white-supremacist history is an excuse masquerading as encouragement.” Similarly, Vann Newkirk II notes that Charlottesville shows how white supremacy has always hidden in plain sight.
• Rosie Gray explains how the alt-right’s attempt to rebrand itself as a bunch of non-racists has failed. Because, y’know.
• Megan Garber asks how a town that was once named “the happiest city in America” became a setting for hatred.
• What University of Virginia students saw in Charlottesville. I recommend the last story in particular, from the editor of a student newspaper who argued that the alt-right rally should be allowed to go ahead, and regrets his stance.
• Valerie Aurora explains how Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance should be our guiding light in navigating issues of free speech and hate groups.
• And here’s what the so-called “alt-left” were actually doing in Charlottesville, as told by witnesses.
• Jeff Goldberg writes about Trump’s refusal to call out radical white terrorism, which “might be the lowest moment of his presidency to date.” “There should be no real difficulty in condemning Nazis, white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan,” adds Alexandra Petri.
• After reading a prepared statement denouncing white supremacy, Trump immediately backtracks in a rambling ad-hoc presser in which he says there are “some very fine people on both sides.” Guy will always show you who he is, and he knows exactly what he’s doing, argues David Graham.
• Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman note that Trump has “buoyed the white nationalist movement as no president has done in generations" and Peter Beinart clearly explains why there’s no moral equivalence between white supremacists and the antifa movement, even if the latter has issues with violence that must be addressed.
• How Congress can deal with a 'treacherous president'—some advice from Frederick Douglass, who’s done a great job and is being recognized more and more.
•  “Across the United States, the statues are starting to topple, the streets renamed, the memorials removed.” Yoni Appelbaum on why the white supremacists are still going to lose. Dahlia Lithwick makes similar points: "They are already slinking back to their own homes, where they are also being replaced, by history..."
• Here are some excellent Twitter threads on what oppression actually looks like, on why intersectionality matters, on comparisons to Germany, and on America’s history of racial violence (with links to educational material).  
• How white people can better support people of colour, by Hannah Giorgis.
• Finally, Godwin of Godwin’s Law gives you permission to “compare these shitheads to Nazis”.

And some other stuff. 

• David Graham explains why, 7 months in, Trump is already in the lame-duck period of his presidency.
• Constant anxiety won’t save the world. Spreading fear and worry about issues you care about on social media can lead to burnout rather than action, writes Julie Beck.
• The story of the Ducktales theme—the single catchiest minute of music in history.
• And finally.

 
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