During a chaotic period some 50 million years ago, the strange deep-sea creatures left the ocean bottom and thrived by clamping onto their mates.

(A male anglerfish. Over time, the male can physically fuse with the female, connecting to her skin and bloodstream. Eventually, the male loses its eyes and all internal organs except for the testes.Credit…David Shale/Nature Picture Library, Alamy)

How did the ghoulish creatures known as anglerfish pull off the evolutionary feat that let them essentially take over the ocean’s sunless depths?

It took peculiar sex — extremely peculiar sex.

Finding a mate in the deep sea can be extremely difficult because of the environment’s incomprehensibly vast size. By some estimates, the dark zone amounts to more than 97 percent of the planetary space inhabited by living things, mainly because the ocean plunges to a maximum depth of nearly seven miles. In contrast, land habitats make up less than 1 percent of the planet’s biosphere because the band of life is so narrow, making its volume quite small.

Scientists at Yale University have discovered that a burst of anglerfish diversification began some 50 million years ago as the ancestral line developed a bizarre strategy to ensure successful reproduction in the dark wilderness.

To mate, tiny males would clamp with sharp teeth onto the bellies of much larger females. Some males would let go after mating while others would permanently fuse into the females. The males that stayed attached became permanent organs for sperm production.

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When President Barack Obama hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office in 2014, the Israeli leader lectured him about Gaza’s future, a Palestinian state and an Iranian nuclear deal in a tone that Obama found condescending and dismissive.

After the meeting, an aide asked how it went. Netanyahu “peed on my leg,” Obama replied, according to two people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose a private conversation.

The moment was emblematic of a dynamic that is culminating in the bitter debates over Israel now erupting across the American political landscape. Over the past 16 years, Netanyahu has departed sharply from his predecessors’ studious bipartisanship to embrace Republicans and disdain Democrats, an attitude increasingly mirrored in each party’s approach to Israel.The war in Gaza has vastly accelerated the shift, as the once-broad support from Americans for Israel is shattering along partisan and generational lines. The divide, playing out in angry protests and Democratic debates, marks a fundamental shift in U.S. politics.

“I don’t think there’s any other way to say it: Netanyahu has been an absolute disaster for Israel’s support around the world,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “Here in the United States, Netanyahu made a reckless decision to integrate himself with the Republican Party, taking very clear sides in U.S. politics, and it has come with serious consequences.”

Netanyahu is not solely responsible for the shift. Israel has moved steadily to the right and the Democratic Party to the left in recent years, while memories of the Holocaust, which long undergirded Americans’ sympathy for Israel, have increasingly faded into the past. But Netanyahu has led the change with a strategy of aligning himself with the American right, former aides say — a decision that underlies his growing rift with President Biden, who personifies the traditional Democratic affection for Israel.

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Some excerpts;

You may remember learning about RNA (ribonucleic acid) back in your high school biology class as the messenger that carries information stored in DNA to instruct the formation of proteins. Such messenger RNA, mRNA for short, recently entered the mainstream conversation thanks to the role they played in the Covid-19 vaccines. But RNA is much more than a messenger, as critical as that function may be.

Other types of RNA, called “noncoding” RNAs, are a tiny biological powerhouse that can help to treat and cure deadly diseases, unlock the potential of the human genome and solve one of the most enduring mysteries of science: explaining the origins of all life on our planet.

If RNA could both hold information and orchestrate the assembly of molecules, it was very likely that the first living things to spring out of the primordial ooze were RNA-based organisms.

There are more than 400 RNA-based drugs in development, beyond the ones that are already in use. And in 2022 alone, more than $1 billion in private equity funds was invested in biotechnology start-ups to explore frontiers in RNA research.

Although most scientists now agree on RNA’s bright promise, we are still only beginning to unlock its potential. Consider, for instance, that some 75 percent of the human genome consists of dark matter that is copied into RNAs of unknown function. While some researchers have dismissed this dark matter as junk or noise, I expect it will be the source of even more exciting breakthroughs.

We don’t know yet how many of these possibilities will prove true. But if the past 40 years of research have taught me anything, it is never to underestimate this little molecule. The age of RNA is just getting started.

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The most lethal enemies are the ones attacking with munitions. The most devastating enemies darken their victims’ soul and make them deaf to despair.

Some excerpts;

The Israeli government has responded with indignation that the ICC would have the temerity to compare it to Hamas. Israel has called the court “antisemitic.” President Biden declared the quest for arrest warrants “outrageous.”

“Let me be clear: Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said in a statement.

The notion of a humane war is a lie combatants tell themselves. The rules of engagement, the laws of war, don’t negate the reality that people die even if those people are uniformed young men and women who are loyal to a cause or who have been drafted or indoctrinated into it. Even morally defensible wars have civilian casualties, deaths that are neither heroic nor acceptable. They are simply devastating.

Democracies are glorious and admirable — the most high-minded form of government — but there is nothing that makes those who lead them inherently immune to revenge, retribution and acts of barbarity. The United States outlaws torturing its enemies until leaders find a way to justify it, rename it or alter the definition to absolve themselves from an unbearable guilt and an unfathomable crime.

It may be that Khan’s request is denied. It may be that the advisory panel’s assessment of Netanyahu’s and Gallant’s actions do not rise to the level of criminal. But the pressing question is not one of jurisdiction or outrage over who else was mentioned in the same breath, but of how a democracy — any democracy — can reach such a dire place on the world stage. How does the defense of its people and protections of its rights lead a democracy to a place where the ICC had “reasonable grounds” to question its moral compass?

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