My late winter is revving up into a state of rolling semi-controlled chaos, and so I’ve let a few items slip here at the Loom. Consider this a catch-up post.

1. On Thursday, I wrote my “Matter” column for the New York Times about an intriguing experiment on the evolution of learning. As I’ve written before, animals pay a price to become better learners, and so scientists have been investigating what the benefits are for different species. It turns out that competition for sex can drive the evolution of better learning, at least in flies. Randomly pairing flies into monogamous couples for a hundred generations leads to worse learning.

2. This week my “Matter” column is appearing today, to coincide