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    <title>Yes, That&#39;s a Huge Floating Mass of Live Fire Ants in Texas  - The Atlantic</title>

    

        
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            <h1 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Yes, That's a Huge Floating Mass of Live Fire Ants in Texas </h1>
            
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        <section id="article-section-1"><p>When there is flooding along the Gulf Coast, there are fire ants. The invasive ants congregate into living rafts, drifting through water until they reach solid ground again. It’s a time-honed survival strategy.</p><p>But when there is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/the-houston-hospital-running-out-of-food/538266/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'0',r'538365'">Hurricane</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/will-flooding-in-texas-lead-to-more-mosquito-borne-illness/538242/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'1',r'538365'">Harvey-</a><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/08/hurricane-harvey-leaves-houston-under-water/538215/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'2',r'538365'">level</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/1857/11/hurricane-harvey-flooding/538044/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'3',r'538365'">flooding</a>, there are not just small rafts but huge, dense mats of fire ants.</p><p>“Holy crap. I have never, in my entire career as an ant researcher, seen *anything* like this,” <a href="https://twitter.com/Myrmecos/status/902540566612901888" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'4',r'538365'">tweeted</a> <a href="http://www.alexanderwild.com/About-Alex-Wild" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'5',r'538365'">Alex Wild</a>, curator of entomology at University of Texas at Austin, in response to the image below.</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Meanwhile, in Cuero, the river has brought my aunt all of the fire ants. Yes, those are all (of the) fire ants. <a href="https://t.co/dEibWYxAdl" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'6',r'538365'">pic.twitter.com/dEibWYxAdl</a></p>
— Bill O'Zimmermann (@The_Reliant) <a href="https://twitter.com/The_Reliant/status/902536760038711296" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'7',r'538365'">August 29, 2017</a></blockquote><p>Of course, Wild told me, it is all perfectly logical. “They actually love floods,” says Wild. “It’s how they get around.” Fire ants displaced by water form rafts; a lot of fire ants displaced by a lot of water will form really big rafts. But still! The sheer size of them is incredible.</p></section><div class="ad-boxinjector-wrapper"><gpt-ad id="boxinjector1" targeting-pos="boxinjector1" class="ad ad-boxinjector" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="1" data-object-name="boxinjector"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [320, 350], [300, 350], [1, 3], [320, 520], [320, 430], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[760, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1050, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1024, 350], [1, 3], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-2"><p>After Hurricane Katrina, <a href="http://www.lsuagcenter.com/profiles/lhooper" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'8',r'538365'">Linda Bui</a>, an entomologist at Louisiana State University, remembers seeing evacuees from New Orleans come into a field hospital with bands of unexplained rashes around their legs and waists after wading through floodwaters. “They were like something none of the medical professionals had ever seen,” she says. “I was like, ‘Those are literally fire ant stings on top of fire ant stings.’”</p><p>The episode stuck in Bui’s head, and later, she investigated the venom of flooded fire ants. The <a href="https://www.csuchico.edu/biol/Sociobiology/volume/sociobiologyv57n22011.html#8" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'9',r'538365'">study</a>, published in 2011, found that flooded fire ants deliver higher doses of venom because they have 165 percent as much venom inside them as normal fire ants. The flooding made them more aggressive and dangerous. It is also important, she says, to be careful during post-hurricane cleanup. Piles of debris can act like islands, where fire ants have congregated during the flood.</p><aside class="pullquote instapaper_ignore">“Dawn is a not a registered insecticide, but it will break up the surface tension and they will sink.”</aside><p>Fire ant rafts do have a kryptonite: dish soap. “Dawn is a not a registered insecticide, but it will break up the surface tension and they will sink,” says Bui.</p><p>Hurricane Katrina ended up permanently depressing fire-ant populations around New Orleans. The rafts can last as long as three weeks, says Bui, but most start to fall apart after a week. Because parts of New Orleans stayed flooded for weeks in the time it took water to be pumped out from behind the levees, a lot of those ants ultimately drowned. Afterwards, Bui and her colleagues also initiated a pesticide <a href="http://www.lsuagcenter.com/portals/communications/publications/agmag/archive/2007/fall/fast-prevention-fire-ants-in-new-orleans-postkatrina" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'10',r'538365'">program to prevent fire ants</a> from returning and colonizing the previously flooded areas. It seems to have worked so far.</p><p>What will happen to the fire ant rafts in Texas will depend in part on how fast the waters recede. It could also depend on who exactly is in these rafts. Fire ants originally formed colonies around a single queen (monogyne), but somewhere along the line, some populations lost the ability to recognize other colonies. These mutant fire ants live in one big interconnected colony with multiple queens (polygyne). “If they’re polygyne, then that’s basically one giant interconnected colony and they’ll disembark and spread out but they’ll be fine,” says Wild. “If they’re monogyne, it’s going to be a territorial mess. Fights. Battles.”</p><p>Whoever lives will have the land all to themselves. There is at least one possible upside: Fire ants love to eat ticks. The area where the fire ants landed may be crawling with stinging ants for a while. “But it’ll have absolutely no ticks. So it’ll be lovely from that perspective,” says Wild.</p></section>
    
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        <p class="dek">The special counsel detailed how a Russian effort to widen divisions in American society launched in 2014 morphed into active support for the candidacy of Donald Trump.</p>
        
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            <p>A <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/rosenstein-mueller-indictment-russia/553601/">37-page indictment </a>filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday lays out the most detailed picture of how the Russian government sought to interfere in the 2016 election, meddling with voters to sow division in American society, and encouraging the election of Donald Trump in what the defendants referred to as “information warfare against the United States of America.”</p>

<p>“The conspiracy had as its object impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable the Defendants to interfere with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the indictment states. There are 16 defendants, including three organizations and 13 individuals, who are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing enforcement of election law as well as wire fraud and bank fraud.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The Swiss Have Liberal Gun Laws, Too</h3>
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        <p class="dek">But they also have fewer gun-related deaths than the U.S.</p>
        
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            <p>In February 2011, Swiss citizens voted in a referendum that called for a national gun registry and for firearms owned by members of the military to be stored in public arsenals.</p>

<p>“It is a question of trust between the state and the citizen. The citizen is not just a citizen, he is also a soldier,” Hermann Suter, who at the time was vice president of the Swiss gun-rights group Pro Tell, told the BBC then. “The gun at home is the best way to avoid dictatorships—only dictators take arms away from the citizens.”</p>

<p>Apparently many of his fellow Swiss agreed. The referendum was easily defeated. Gun ownership in the country<strong> </strong>has <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4137689?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">deep historic roots</a> and it is tied to mandatory military service for Swiss men between the ages of 18 and 34. Traditionally, soldiers were allowed to keep their weapons at home in order to defend against conquering armies. These fears came close to being realized during the Franco-Prussian War on 1871; as well as World War I, when the Swiss border was threatened; and World War II, when the country feared a Nazi invasion.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline"><em>Black Panther</em> Is More Than a Superhero Movie</h3>
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        <p class="dek">The director Ryan Coogler's addition to the Marvel pantheon is a superb genre film—and quite a bit more.</p>
        
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            <p><strong><em>Note: Although this review avoids plot spoilers, it does discuss the thematic elements of the film at some length.</em></strong></p>

<p>After an animated introduction to the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda, <em>Black Panther</em> opens in Oakland in 1992. This may seem an odd choice, but it is in fact quite apt. The film’s director, Ryan Coogler, got his start in the city, having been born there in 1986. His filmmaking career has its roots there, too, as it was the setting for his debut feature, <em>Fruitvale Station</em>.</p>

<p>A bunch of schoolboys (a fictionalized young Coogler perhaps among them) play pickup hoops on a court with a milk-crate basket. But in the tall apartment building above them two black radicals are plotting a robbery. There’s a knock on the door and one of the men looks through the peephole: “Two Grace Jones–lookin’ chicks—with spears!” I won’t recount the rest of the scene, except to note that the commingling of two very different iterations of the term “Black Panther”—the comic-book hero and the revolutionary organization, ironically established just months apart in 1966—is in no way accidental, and it will inform everything that follows.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The Full Text of Mueller's Indictment of 13 Russians</h3>
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    <ul class="metadata">
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        <p class="dek">The special counsel indicted the Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election, the Department of Justice announced Friday.</p>
        
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            <p dir="ltr"><em>On Friday, February 16, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein announced that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, had indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities on charges that including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft. This is the full text of that <a href="https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download">indictment</a>.</em></p>

<hr><p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT</p>

<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA</p>

<p><br>
* * CRIMINAL NO. v. * * (18 U.S.C. §§ 2,371, 1349, 1028A)</p>

<p>UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>

<p>v.  </p>

<p>INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY LLC</p>

<p dir="ltr">        A/K/A MEDIASINTEZ LLC A/K/A</p>

<p dir="ltr">        GLAVSET LLC A/K/A MIXINFO</p>

<p dir="ltr">        LLC A/K/A AZIMUT LLC A/K/A NOVINFO LLC,</p>

<p dir="ltr">CONCORD MANAGEMENT AND CONSULTING LLC,</p>

<p dir="ltr">CONCORD CATERING,</p>

<p dir="ltr">YEVGENIY VIKTOROVICH PRIGOZHIN,</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">There’s No Longer Any Doubt</h3>
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    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/adam-serwer/" itemprop="url" title="Adam Serwer" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Adam Serwer</span></a></span></li>
        

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    <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-02-16T16:19:54" />
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    <div itemprop="description" class="article-content ">
        <p class="dek">The indictment unsealed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is unequivocal about Russian efforts to help Donald Trump become president.</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p dir="ltr">Shortly after his unexpected victory in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump told <em>Time</em> in an interview that Russia had not interfered in the 2016 election.</p>

<p dir="ltr">“I don’t believe they interfered. That became a laughing point; not a talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say ‘Oh, Russia interfered,’” <a href="http://time.com/4591183/time-person-of-the-year-2016-donald-trump-interview/">Trump said</a>. “It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”</p>

<p dir="ltr">Over the past year, Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and the federal investigation into that interference and the possibility that the Trump campaign had abetted it, have been a sore spot for the president. He’s called the Russia investigation a “hoax,” a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/politics/donald-trump-wall-hack-russia.html">political witch hunt</a>” and “fake news.” He said it was a “joke,” a “ruse,” and “phony.” “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign,” Trump insisted. Even after January of 2017, when American intelligence agencies released a report concluding that Russia had interfered in the election on Trump’s behalf, both the president and his allies continued to insist that the story was untrue. In his confirmation hearing to be attorney general, Jeff Sessions would not even acknowledge that Russia had interfered. “I have done no research into that. I know just what the media says about it,” Sessions testified.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">What's Actually Behind Cape Town's Water Crisis</h3>
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    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/richard-poplak/" itemprop="url" title="Richard Poplak" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Richard Poplak</span></a></span></li>
        

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    <div itemprop="description" class="article-content ">
        <p class="dek">Blame austerity-obsessed technocrats, irresponsible development, and willful ignorance.</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p>The city of Cape Town was plonked by its founders onto a peninsula not far from<strong> </strong>where the Indian and Atlantic oceans merge, often violently, beneath the imposing banks of Table Mountain. To its north lie the fertile fruit and wine farms that weigh down the city’s restaurant tables with unimaginable bounty. Every day when the clock strikes noon, a cannon blast echoes from Signal Hill, a reminder of the city’s colonial heritage. It was established first as a vegetable garden by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, then repurposed as a stronghold for the British until the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910; later it served as the apartheid regime’s parliamentary stronghold. In 2014, The <em>New York Times</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/10/travel/2014-places-to-go.html">declared it</a> the best place in the world to visit. Britain’s <em>Daily Telegraph</em> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/africa/south-africa/galleries/reasons-why-cape-town-is-the-best-city-in-the-world/">concurred</a>.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">So You Think Someone Might Be Mentally Ill</h3>
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    <ul class="metadata">
        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/olga-khazan/" itemprop="url" title="Olga Khazan" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Olga Khazan</span></a></span></li>
        

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        <p class="dek">In the wake of mass shootings, some blame a failure to spot the signs of mental illness. But myriad obstacles stand in the way of getting someone good mental-health treatment.</p>
        
        <div class="excerpt">
            <p>In the years before 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz allegedly killed 17 people in a Florida high school on Wednesday, his behavior was strange, but not necessarily criminal. And not necessarily suggestive of a specific mental illness, either. He seemed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/us/nikolas-cruz-florida-shooting.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=b-lede-package-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news">fixated on guns and on killing animals</a>, and his mother would sometimes call the police on him in an effort to manage his behavior. <a href="http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/nikolas-cruz-legally-purchased-ar-15-despite-long-history-of-mental-illness-warnings-10089980">Some news reports</a> have also said that Cruz has been “in and out of mental-health treatment,” though his diagnosis is not clear.</p>

<p>After mass shootings, opponents of gun control are often quick to suggest more mental-health treatment as a way to prevent further carnage. Yesterday morning, President Trump tweeted as much:</p>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!</p>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/964110212885106689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 15, 2018</a></blockquote>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">What Color Is a Tennis Ball?</h3>
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        <p class="dek">An investigation into a surprisingly divisive question</p>
        
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            <p dir="ltr">It seemed like an easy question.</p>

<p dir="ltr">The query came from <a href="https://twitter.com/cgpgrey/status/961700363131908096">a Twitter poll</a> I spotted on my news feed last week, from user @cgpgrey. “Please help resolve a marital dispute,” @cgpgrey wrote. “You would describe the color of a tennis ball as:” green, yellow, or other.</p>

<p dir="ltr"><em>Yellow, obviously</em>, I thought, and voted. When the results appeared, my jaw dropped with cartoonish effect. Of nearly 30,000 participants, 52 percent said a tennis ball is green, 42 percent said it’s yellow, and 6 percent went with “other.”</p>

<p dir="ltr">I was stunned. I’d gone from being so sure of myself to second-guessing my sanity in a matter of seconds. More than that, I could never have imagined the question of the color of a tennis ball—surely something we could all agree on, even in these times—would be so divisive.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Nominees in the 2018 World Press Photo Contest</h3>
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        <p class="dek">The top images being considered to win awards in the 61st annual World Press Photo Contest ​have just been announced.</p>
        
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            <p>The top images being considered to win awards in the 61st annual <a href="https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo/2018">World Press Photo Contest</a> ​have just been released, with the final announcement of the winners coming on April 12. Jury members selected the nominees in eight categories, including the new environment category, from submissions made by 42 photographers hailing from 22 countries. World Press Photo has been kind enough to allow us to share some of this year’s nominees here with you. A warning: some viewers may find some of the images disturbing.</p>

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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Why Romney Is Running for Senate</h3>
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        <p class="dek">The former Republican presidential nominee extolled his adoptive state’s values as a better option for his party, and his country, as he announced his bid for Senate.</p>
        
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            <p>Mitt Romney launched his long-anticipated campaign on Friday, <a href="https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/964489491682504704">tweeting</a>, “I am running for United States Senate to serve the people of Utah and bring Utah’s values to Washington.”</p>

<p>Over recent weeks, much of the national pundit chatter has focused on whether he will be returning to the political arena as a friend or foe to Donald Trump. But in interviews this week, advisers and allies close to the candidate told me he will seek to avoid direct combat with the president this year, and emerge instead as a full-throated pitchman for his adoptive home state—making the case that Utah’s distinctive brand of conservatism could offer a better way forward for the GOP and the nation.</p>

<p>“Utah has a lot to teach the politicians in Washington,” Romney said in his announcement video, presenting the Beehive State as a model for emulation. He cited its balanced budget, export-based economy, and openness to immigration. “And on Utah’s capitol hill,” he pointedly added, “people treat one another with respect.”</p>


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