Lightning Gods, Staticky Bugs, and Modern Genetics

Learning from Maya Storm Gods (The Conversation)
by James L. Fitzsimmons
The Maya god Huracán, and an earlier lightning deity, K’awiil, are kinetic beings who take many forms. Art and stories about them are a window into a way of viewing a world that depends on interconnectedness.

The Electrified World of Bugs (Quanta Magazine)
by Max G. Levy
At the scale butterflies and spiders operate on, static electricity may be a more important force than gravity, affecting a creature’s movements and its ability to detect predators and find food.

A Midwife of Death in Sardinia (Atlas Obscura)
by Emma Cieslik
Sardinian folk tales describe the accabadora as an old woman who brings death to the very ill. Whether she’s a force for good or evil is up for debate. So is whether such a woman ever existed.

Bringing Genetics Lessons into the Twenty-First Century (SAPIENS)
by Elaine Guevara
When students learn about genetics, it’s often through the lens of nineteenth-century experiments on peas. That can lead to serious misconceptions about how human genetics work, with implications for how the next generation thinks about race and racism.

Should You Fight Inflammation? (Vox)
by Keren Landman
The internet is filled with suggestions on what to eat, or not eat, to avoid inflammation. But inflammation isn’t always a bad thing, and its relationship to food, and to illness, is much more complicated than TikTok videos may suggest.

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