- Mandatory Octopus story
- On “efficiency” in human languages
- Favorably comparing Tumblr to Twitter (I’m not convinced …)
- About “brain-eating amoebas”
- Sometimes it pays to have a good grad school advisor
- The bizarre-but-not-so-bad rent-a-family industry in Japan
- Once upon a time, long before trees, there were apparently giant mushrooms
- Viruses that spy on bacteria
- The archaeologist who was beheaded for refusing to let ISIS destroy Palmyra antiquities
- The “memories” of ant colonies (I’m reminded of G.E.B. here)
- Some clouds are just weird (cover photo): Undulatus Asperatus
- This month in quirky theories: “Bizarre ‘dark fluid’ with negative mass could dominate the universe”
- An ancient board game
- C. S. Lewis on reading old books (I agree)