I’ve Got Your Missing Links Right Here (29 November 2015)

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Top picks

From me in the Atlantic:

• Why So Blue, Tarantulas?
• The New Gene-Editing Technique That Reveals Cancer’s Weaknesses
• Inside the Bizarre Genome of the World’s Toughest Animal

“To weather something is, after all, to survive.” The peerless Kathryn Schulz takes us on a tour of weather in literature. (Bonus: The 10 best weather events in fiction.)

Five Year Watch, an awesome new thing from Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, analysing the “in five year’s time” claims for biomedical stories.

The wild turkeys took one look at the wilderness, went “Screw this”, and moved to the city. By Yoni Appelbaum.

A beautiful MRI image of a mother and child. “We made this one because we wanted to see it.” By Rebecca Saxe

Phobos, a Martian moon, is set to become Martian rings. By Alex Witze

Life is Rescue: a beautifully told story about Icelandic rescue teams, by Nick Paumgarten

Science

Dakotaraptor, ready to take out Oblivious Guy With Spade

“The world is no better prepared for the next global health emergency than it was before the current Ebola epidemic”

An Anglerfish Discovered, Thanks to an Oil Spill

Smartphones enlisted in the battle versus crop disease

Sir David Attenborough is 90 next year!

It took 21 nutrition scientists to write this utterly unhelpful report

Why tornadoes are so hard to predict

11 Nov “could be the last day of our lifetimes in which atmospheric carbon stays below 400ppm”

Robocrop: Engineers in Sweden have managed to introduce electronic circuits into living plants.

The chemical symbol for plutonium is Pu because it’s discoverer had the sense of humour of an 8-year-old boy.

‘Digital chimp‘ trove preserves brains of retired apes

Drugs on Demand: a dangerous precedent for cancer treatment

Today in hilarious extinct animals

“We’re a hop, skip and jump away from actual gene-drive candidates for eventual release.” But is society ready for engineered, malaria-beating mosquitoes?

Six thousand years of natural selection in Europe

Apocalypse Pig: The Last Antibiotic Begins to Fail

Scientists unable to explain starling mass drownings

Miscellaneous

The Onion on the NIH’s decision to retire all research chimps

An XKCD Thing Explainer quiz in the New Yorker!

The feminist asylum redefined women’s mental health treatment with a radical approach called “dignity”

Distant Planet Terrified It Might Be Able To Someday Support Human Life

A Story Collider story from Adam Rogers, featuring an aborted research career and some sea urchin ejaculation.

“5 of the words people rated as the funniest were whong, dongl, shart, focky, and clunt.”

How “badass” became a feminist rallying cry