Quick Links for Monday, June 12

New sea star species with countless arms discovered in Africa. The fuck?

The advice for writers is straightforward: Make things easy for your readers, and they will find you brilliant. The first part makes sense, but not sure the second part is a fait accompli guaranteed. (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?! BRILLIANT.)

Life’s preference for symmetry “is like a new law of nature.” Researchers analyzed thousands of protein complexes and RNA structures as well as a model network of molecules that control how genes switch on and off. They found that evolution tends toward symmetry because the instructions to produce symmetry are easier to embed in genetic code and follow.

Dinosaurs were on their way out long before Chicxulub made an appearance on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The decline in dinosaur populations likely began 76 million years ago during the Campanian period—10 million years before the asteroid. Two factors may have had the most impact on the dinosaur decline: 1) a changing climate (including cooling global temperatures) and 2) the declining diversity of herbivorous dinosaurs.

Winnie the Pooh book teaches Texas kids how to survive school shootings. This is fine.