Gull in harrying pursuit after eagle grabs one of its mates out of a nest Guess who won?

Via io9

Via io9: ‘For its size, the coffee berry borer makes your caffeine consumption look almost laughably manageable, downing an amount that relative to its body mass would be like a person taking 500 shots of espresso in one day—and its habit is becoming a real threat to coffee supplies….’

Murray Gell-Mann lecturing in 2007

Via io9: ‘After restarting to run at higher power than ever, the Large Hadron Collider has made its first proper discovery. Today, a team of scientists announced that they’ve found a new class of sub-atomic particles known as pentaquarks.

Quarks are a series of charged sub-atomic particles that come together to form larger particles—such as protons and neutrons, which are each made of three of the things (a class of particle referred to as baryons). First proposed in 1964 by American physicist Murray Gell-Mann, their existence changed the way people thought about particle physicists.

But quarks can come together to form other entities, too. For a long time, people have speculated that another class of quark ensemble, called the pentaquark, could in theory exist. The pentaquark is, perhaps unsurprisingly, supposed to be made up of five smaller entities—four quarks and an anti-quark. Now, for the first time, researchers working on the LHCb experiment at the Collider have found evidence for their existence….’

Via Vox: ‘— and he will be a particularly towering figure in the history of American progressivism….’

Via Vox: ‘Iran hawks displeased with the nuclear deal struck between Iran, Russia, China, the United States, and the European Union have an awful lot of complaints. But if you look closely at what they are saying, you’ll notice something funny. They don’t actually have any arguments about what Obama has done wrong or how a different administration would park the situation in a better place. What they have instead are a lot of talking points, MacGuffins, red herrings, and distractions that aim to divert attention from the core issue — hawks’ desire to avoid diplomacy and have a war….’

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• Here’s the full text of the Iran nuclear deal

Via Vox: ‘The political battle over the Iran deal is going to be the biggest foreign policy fight of Obama’s presidency. Congress has the power to destroy the deal, and Republicans will do their damnedest to try to use it, however unlikely it is that they’ll succeed.

But this is more than just a policy dispute, and that’s why the fighting is taking place in more than just Congress. Cable news is spinning itself into a froth over whether the Iran deal is a horrifying catastrophe or a golden day in global progress. Odds are good that you’ve already gotten sucked into, or at least worked to avoid, an argument on Facebook over this.

People have strong feelings about this deal — very strong feelings. Maybe that’s partly because they are just that emotionally invested in the details of arms control agreements, or in the triangulations of American Middle East policy. Or maybe there’s something more going on here….’

Via Vox: ‘Why nuclear experts love the Iran deal…’