Two-and-a-half Cool Things We're Working On
Dear Reader,
We're ramping back up after having settled down the past couple of weeks -- Shreya with The Xylom's workflow, and me at the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing.
Some cool things we've been working on at our site that deserve your attention though: 👇🏾
- Thanks to Farah Daou, Manasvi Verma's essay, "A Journey Through My Microbiome: An Immigrant’s Perspective on a Changing Gut" has been translated into Italian! This continues our commitment of making our coverage and perspectives more accessible to a larger swath of the global audience.
- We're partnering with the Solutions Journalism Network to pilot the What's Working Factbox! Embedded within our stories, this widget allows you to access a variety of solutions stories from us and other outlets (see it in action in Manasvi's essay!) We are the fifth newsroom in the world to debut the Factbox; if someone on our staff with no coding experience (me) could successfully install it within minutes, imagine what other legacy or more well-resourced newsrooms could do if they prioritize newsroom innovation.
- We are working towards integrating the BeeLine Reader, a plugin that improves reading speed and focus through eye-guiding color gradients. We're still smoothing out kinks with regard to how the toggle fits in with the rest of our site (again, I'm not a software developer), but if you're eagled-eye enough you'll find a button on our site that lets you beta-test its functions 👀
As we grow science with words, it's important to think about where we as a newsroom want to grow. By leveraging our youthful energy, we hope to provide you with a reading experience that you can't find elsewhere, and challenge ourselves to think deeper, broader, and bolder.
Best regards,
Alex Ip, Editor-in-Chief
Thanks to our generous reader Reid Davis, we are giving out Bluesky invite codes for the first five (5) people who reply with screenshots of any donation towards The Xylom!
TEN-ISH WORD STORIES, SUBMITTED BY OUR READERS
- She talks to plants. To the humans, she may look crazy. But when the plants talk back, the opinions of others don’t matter.
— Aadya Chidanand, Writer
- September no longer means the withdrawal of summer in 2023.
— Bhawna Gurung, Student
- Mere words rarely unseated my parents until I said " evolution ".
— Anonymous
TODAY IN THINGS YOU MUST READ
FAMILY NEWS!
- We are cohosting a meetup at ScienceWriters2023 with the Uproot Project, geared towards science writers of color! Come chat with us and take home The Xylom swag + Uproot T-Shirts.
- Would you like to be a matching donor for our upcoming NewsMatch campaign in November and December? This year, our goal is to bring back our Newsroom Fellowship for a second year (around $10,000 raised). We're looking for generous individuals and organizations that would commit as little as a couple hundred dollars to get our fundraising going. Reply to this email to get in touch.
A SOUTHERN FLAIR
- Two articles from Georgia that you can view through a "Cop City" lens — or not: Atlanta Magazine's Rachel Garbus takes us down memory lane as she compares the "Stop Cop City" movement with the "Stop the Road" movement in the eighties; meanwhile, WABE reports that residents of Hogg Hummock, one of the last intact Gullah-Geechee communities in Coastal Georgia, is moving forward with a referendum of their own across McIntosh County to stop a zoning change which may drive out descendants of enslaved people.
- Public housing across the U.S. is at high risk of being damaged by natural disasters, both due to its condition and location. Women of color are disproportionately left worse off because of this. The 19th's Jessica Kutz heads to Houma in Southern Louisiana to speak with residents who are either clinging to their original residences or facing new problems as they are forced to relocate.
- Over August, more than 250 volunteers collected temperature and air quality data around Oklahoma City to study the urban heat island effect. We previously shared about similar efforts in Atlanta so it's glad to see another initiative gaining traction! StateImpact Oklahoma's Britny Cordera followed participants of the community science program around town to see how they obtained data for this NOAA-funded project.
WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
- The Chinese feminism movement is flourishing online, despite official — and civilian antifeminist — attempts to silence in-person activism. Rest of World talks to Chinese women who press on despite losing hope in any systemic changes.
- Atmos' Jason P. Dinh dives into the fascinating world of dung beetles, where, guided by the Milky Way, they convert discarded bodily waste into diversity.
THE XYLOM'S RECENT STORIES
A Journey Through My Microbiome: An Immigrant’s Perspective on a Changing Gut
- When Manasvi Verma moved over 8,000 miles from New Delhi, India to St. Louis, she ate less of her Dadi's kadhi, but more of her roommate's mom's chicken noodle casserole. How has that changed her from the inside out and the outside in?
If Phylogenetic Sense Be Something Biologists Wish
- Nearly two decades in, researchers are still debating which creature is the closest living relative to all animals. Are new methods getting them any closer? Rohini Subrahmanyam asks.
In the Shadow of Mumbai’s Coastal Road, Fishermen Ponder Their Future — If Any
- Mumbai's Coastal Road, a $1.5B superhighway built on reclaimed land along the Arabian Coast, is set to open next year. Kang-Chun Cheng heads to Lotus Jetty to see how the megaproject has devastated Indigenous Koli fishers — and how they are fighting back.
Hyena Helpers for Human-predator Harmony
- For Pride Month, Navya Pothamsetty spoke to Christine Wilkinson, Ph.D. about her work: why humans run into conflict with hyenas and coyotes, how lived experiences and values shape these interactions, and what we can do to live with mesopredators in harmony.
Toxic Nuclear Waste is Piling up in the U.S. Where’s the Deposit?
- Decades on end and after spending billions, the U.S. still has no strategy to permanently deposit its highly radioactive nuclear waste, writes Bárbara Pinho.
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