??Top picks

You must read David Dobbs’ incredible story about his mother’s lost love. It’s a masterclass in storytelling. Buy it for the Kindle, iPad or iPhone. It’s cheap; you can thank me later. Also, read his eulogy to his mum, a companion piece to the story.

Richard Fisher shows you what it’s like to defend a company from a concerted cyberattack. Great piece.

How I Failed, Failed, And Finally Succeeded At Learning How To Code. Great piece about teaching and failure.

Competition to choose common names for 10 new species. I name the wasp Bob.

From the Wellcome Blog: looking at an obscure branch of life to find out where we all came from

A cracking (“nuanced even!”) analysis of Twitter by Megan Garber. Is it text or oral?

How antibiotics may have triggered the E. Coli outbreak, but not how you might’ve thought. A great piece by Marian Turner about phages. Also read: The E. coli outbreak, what we know, and need to, by Maryn McKenna.

David Sloan Wilson turns from “arcane” evolution debates to helping a faltering city.

“Their stories reveal the tragedy of a terrible experiment on a very young boy which would haunt him ...