Top picks

Anonymous blog written by a Fukushima robot operator, reveals the inner workings of the clean-up effort. He’s probably a Syrian lesbian though.

How do you freak out lampreys? Give them a whiff of death. With TERRIFYING video of deranged, leaping lampreys

The Neuroskeptic is killing it at the moment. He discusses whether sleep give us a chance to defragment out brains and your third parent – random chance – in the context of eugenics.

The illusion of asymmetric insight & how it affects perceptions of others and turns summer camps into Lord of the Flies

A *beautiful* post on resonance, by Ann Finkbeiner.

“Having a restless planet is a consequence of having a habitable one.” Phil Plait on what’s with all the quakes.

I am mightily irritated at this count of “8.7 million species“. Without bacteria and archaea? Nonsense. John Wilkins has the right idea: “It’s hardly an objective fact about the world. We may as well be cataloguing toys.”

Susan Dominus tells the story behind her NYT mag story on remarkable twins joined at the head

Tiny rainmakers: Bacteria, fungal spores & algae in the stratosphere, changing weather

I love that Nature News is the type ...