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10 stories to read this weekend • Issue 257 • December 14, 2018

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The Race to Understand Antarctica’s Most Terrifying Glacier (Wired)

Thwaites has long been the subject of dark speculation. If this mysterious glacier were to “go bad”—glaciologist-­speak for the process by which a glacier breaks down into icebergs and eventually collapses into the ocean—it might be more than a scientific curiosity. Indeed, it might be the kind of event that changes the course of civilization.

Also see: An Upheaval at the Ends of the World 

Susan Potter gave her body to science. Her cadaver became immortal. (National Geographic Magazine)

Susan Potter donated her body to science. It was frozen, sawed into four blocks, sliced 27,000 times, and photographed after each cut. The result: a virtual cadaver that will speak to medical students from the grave. National Geographic has been documenting Potter’s journey for 16 years.

How personalized medicine is transforming your health care (National Geographic Magazine)

Stunning advances in gene research and data mining will predict diseases and devise treatments tailored to each of us.

How the brain’s face code might unlock the mysteries of perception (Nature) 

Doris Tsao mastered facial recognition in the brain. Now she’s looking to determine the neural code for everything we see.

The Mass Extinction Detectives (Methods - Science Friday)

No one knows how the dinosaurs rose to dominate the planet. But the answers may lie within a mysterious mass extinction that wiped out their competition.

Rise of the Colossus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (History Magazine - National Geographic) 

Standing for a little more than 50 years in the third century B.C., Rhodes’s titanic statue of Helios made a colossal impact on Western art, history, and imagination.

The Next Great Chess Boom Is Here (The Ringer)

The unpredictable champion Magnus Carlsen and a YouTube-trained, Twitch-streaming generation of young fans has revived one of our oldest games. Is the next great chess boom here?

The Case of Agatha Christie (London Review of Books)

Her great talent for fictional murder is to do with her understanding of, and complete belief in, human malignity. She knew that people could hate each other, and act on their hate. Her plots are complicated, designedly so, and the backstories and red herrings involved are often ornate, but in the end, the reason one person murders another in her work comes down to avarice and/or hate. She believed in evil, not necessarily in a theological sense – that’s a topic she doesn’t explore – but as a plain fact about human beings and their actions. She isn’t much interested in the ethics or metaphysics of why people do the bad things they do. But she is unflinchingly willing to look directly at the truth that they do them.

Kelly Slater’s Shock Wave (The New Yorker) 

The best surfer in history made a machine that creates perfect conditions on demand. Will his invention democratize surfing or despoil it?

A Tragedy in Yemen, Made in America (The New York Times Magazine) 

Tracing an airstrike halfway around the world back to an American bomb factory.

Note:10 stories to read this weekend” is a weekly feature of this blog. New issues are published every Friday at 22:00 IST / 16:30 GMT

weekend reads

10 stories to read this weekend • Issue 256 • December 7, 2018

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The Riddle of the Roaming Plastics (Hakai Magazine) 

It is one of the modern world’s biggest mysteries—99 percent of the plastics that enter the ocean are missing.

Palm oil is unavoidable. Can it be sustainable? (National Geographic) 

Our appetite for the oil hurts the environment and wildlife. But Gabon hopes to show how to build an industry while protecting its forests.

Also See: Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe. (From last week’s edition

The Hidden Struggle to Save the Coffee Industry From Disaster (The New New - Medium) 

Scientists are scrambling to head off one unexpected impact of climate change

These dusty young stars are changing the rules of planet-building (Nature)

Astronomers peer inside planetary nurseries for clues about how our Solar System and others came to be.

Frauchiger-Renner Paradox Clarifies Where Our Views of Reality Go Wrong (Quanta Magazine)

A thought experiment has shaken up the world of quantum foundations, forcing physicists to clarify how various quantum interpretations (such as many-worlds and the Copenhagen interpretation) abandon seemingly sensible assumptions about reality.

Why language might be the optimal self-regulating system (Aeon) 

Bound by rules, yet constantly changing, language might be the ultimate self-regulating system, with nobody in charge

The Woman Who Outruns the Men, 200 Miles at a Time (The New York Times) 

Courtney Dauwalter specializes in extremely long races. But her success in winning them has opened a debate about how men’s innate strength advantages apply to endurance sports.

The Thai Cave Rescue: Miracle At Tham Luang (GQ) 

The story of the Thai cave rescue—in which a team of young soccer players and their coach survived for 18 days before being extracted by divers—got even more unbelievable the closer we looked.

Syria’s Last Bastion of Freedom (The New Yorker)

Amid the brutal civil war, a town fought off the regime and the fundamentalists—and dared to hold an election. Can its experiment in democracy survive?

Inside China’s audacious plan for global media dominance (The Guardian) 

Beijing is buying up media outlets and training scores of foreign journalists to ‘tell China’s story well’ – as part of a worldwide propaganda campaign of astonishing scope and ambition.

Note:10 stories to read this weekend” is a weekly feature of this blog. New issues are published every Friday at 22:00 IST / 16:30 GMT

weekend reads

10 stories to read this weekend • Issue 255 • November 30, 2018

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The Insect Apocalypse Is Here (The New York Times Magazine)

With so much abundance, it very likely never occurred to most entomologists of the past that their multitudinous subjects might dwindle away.

Awesome ears: The weird world of insect hearing (Knowable Magazaine)

Evolution made insect ears many times over, resulting in a dazzling variety of forms found in spots all over the body. Biologists are digging deep into some of those ears to figure out how and why they came to be. 

(via @laurahelmuth)

Inside the mind of a bee is a hive of sensory activity (Aeon)

Are insects ‘philosophical zombies’ with no inner life? Close attention to their behaviours and moods suggests otherwise

Searching for Life in a Martian Landscape (The Atlantic) 

In the Martian landscape that is the Atacama desert, astrobiologists are learning how to recognize extraterrestrial organisms.

The World Needs to Quit Coal. Why Is It So Hard? (The New York Times)

It’s there by the millions of tons under the ground. Powerful companies, backed by powerful governments, often in the form of subsidies, are in a rush to grow their markets before it is too late. Banks still profit from it. Big national electricity grids were designed for it. Coal plants can be a surefire way for politicians to deliver cheap electricity — and retain their own power.

Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe. (The New York Times Magazine) 

A decade ago, the U.S. mandated the use of vegetable oil in biofuels, leading to industrial-scale deforestation — and a huge spike in carbon emissions.

An Oasis of Open Water (Hakai Magazine)

Inuit in Canada and Greenland want to protect an ecological wonder—a massive Arctic polynya—at the center of their world.

The Land That Failed to Fail (The New York Times)

China’s Communist leaders have defied expectations again and again. They embraced capitalism even as they continued to call themselves Marxists. They used repression to maintain power but without stifling entrepreneurship or innovation. Surrounded by foes and rivals, they avoided war, with one brief exception, even as they fanned nationalist sentiment at home. And they presided over 40 years of uninterrupted growth, often with unorthodox policies the textbooks said would fail.

Before the canon: the non-European women who founded philosophy (Aeon) 

Philosophy was once a woman’s world, ranging across Asia, Africa and Latin America. It’s time to reclaim that lost realm

Field of dreams: heartbreak and heroics at the World Ploughing Championships (The Guardian)

Some compare it to snooker, others to figure skating. But for those who have given their lives to competitive ploughing, it’s more than a sport, it’s a way of life.

Note:10 stories to read this weekend” is a weekly feature of this blog. New issues are published every Friday at 22:00 IST / 16:30 GMT

weekend reads

10 stories to read this weekend • Issue 254 • November 23, 2018

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How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet (The New Yorker) 

With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable. But the fossil-fuel industry continues its assault on the facts.

Why extreme rains are gaining strength as the climate warms (Nature)

From Atlantic hurricanes to the Indian monsoons, storms are getting worse and becoming more erratic.

Cracking the Cambrian (Science Magazine)

New fossils and sites are helping make sense of the mysterious flowering of animal life half a billion years ago.

Do Proteins Hold the Key to the Past? (The New Yorker)

New methods are allowing a group of scientists to reëxamine the world’s libraries and archives, in search of the hidden lives of authors.

The microscope revolution that’s sweeping through materials science (Nature) 

Technological advances are transforming what researchers can study at the atomic scale.

How to Control a Machine with Your Brain (The New Yorker)

A scientist’s work linking minds and machines helps a paralyzed woman escape her body.

The big sleep: how the world’s most troubled country is beating a deadly disease (The Guardian)

Beset by war, violence and political instability, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not the ideal place to be trying to stamp out sleeping sickness, a killer illness. But that is what is happening 

(via @DamnInteresting)

Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’ (The New York Times)

Cash is disappearing in the country faster than anyone thought it would. Now, officials are trying to slow its demise as they determine the societal costs.

The Cavernous World under the Woods (Hakai Magazine) 

On Vancouver Island, karst researchers hustle to save one of Earth’s most under-appreciated—and fragile—ecosystems: an ecosystem hidden in plain sight.

Shetland Islands: Scenery, Sheep and Knitters Galore on Britain’s Northern Tip (The New York Times)

Shetland Wool Week is hailed as the worldwide mecca of knitting festivals but the islands have a rich, complex history beyond that of the textiles industry.

Note:10 stories to read this weekend” is a weekly feature of this blog. New issues are published every Friday at 22:00 IST / 16:30 GMT

weekend reads

10 stories to read this weekend • Issue 253 • November 16, 2018

Note: Now you can sign up to receive “10 stories to read this weekend” by email.

The plastic backlash: what’s behind our sudden rage – and will it make a difference? (The Guardian) 

Decades after it became part of the fabric of our lives, a worldwide revolt against plastic is under way.

Instant Ocean (Hakai Magazine)

Originally built as a gateway to space colonization, Biosphere 2 has a new purpose: to breed supercorals strong enough to survive swiftly changing seas. First, scientists must revive the simulated ocean.

How biologists are creating life-like cells from scratch (Nature)

Built from the bottom up, synthetic cells and other creations are starting to come together and could soon test the boundaries of life.

When Tulips Kill (The Atlantic)

Thanks to the compounds used to protect precious flowers, antifungal resistance is here—and it could be just as dangerous to humans as antibiotic resistance.

What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick? (The New York Times Magazine)

New research is zeroing in on a biochemical basis for the placebo effect — possibly opening a Pandora’s box for Western medicine.

The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome (The New Yorker) 

Unexplained brain injuries afflicted dozens of American diplomats and spies. What happened?

We still live in the long shadow cast by the idea of Man-the-Hunter (Aeon)

We still live in the long shadow of Man-the-Hunter: a midcentury theory of human origins soaked in strife and violence

A brief history of timekeeping (Physics World)

From sticks in the ground to caesium atomic clocks, humans have been keeping track of time with increasing accuracy for millennia. Helen Margolis looks at how we reached our current definition of the second, and where clock technology is going next

Where Will Science Take Us? To the Stars (The New York Times)

A monthlong visit to observatories in Chile, Hawaii and Los Angeles revealed spellbinding visions of the heavens.

My Father’s SOS—From the Middle of the Sea (Outside Magazine)

Richard Carr, a retired psychologist who had long dreamed of sailing around the world, was in the middle of the Pacific when he started sending frantic messages that said pirates were boarding his boat. Two thousand miles away in Los Angeles, his family woke up to a nightmare: he might be dying alone, and there was almost nothing they could do about it.

Note:10 stories to read this weekend” is a weekly feature of this blog. New issues are published every Friday at 22:00 IST / 16:30 GMT

weekend reads