James' World 2

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Now 86, Mr. Liu is considered the architect of modern Singapore because of his role in overseeing the development of about half of the more than one million apartments that make up public housing in the small and exceptionally prosperous city-state of 5.6 million people.

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Liu Thai Ker, known as the architect of modern Singapore, at his office, in March.

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The world of larval plainfin midshipman fish (Porichthys notatus) may look alien, but it could be as close as the cobbles beneath your feet, if you walk a rocky stretch of shore on much of the North American West Coast. Adults of this species swim each spring from ocean depths—up to 366 meters (1,200 feet) beneath the surface—to the intertidal zone to spawn in the shallows, where males excavate nests beneath large rocks. There, they set about trying to attract females and, if successful, rear young.

Perhaps because this species of toadfish is “grotesque in appearance,” as one 1948 description put it, with muddy coloring and vampiric fangs, most males rely on their voices to summon potential mates. They regularly croon at night, rapidly contracting muscles along their swimbladders to produce a monotonous tone resembling the low notes of a trombone. On occasion, they will make this call for more than an hour at a stretch. Multiple males singing at once creates a drone that’s audible through the bottom of a boat, and reportedly loud enough to disrupt conversation or wake someone who is fast asleep. And no wonder, since at least one observer compared the sound to “a huge hive of bees or a group of motorboats.”

Female midshipmen find it irresistible, however. Those drawn to a particular male’s croon will collectively lay hundreds of eggs on the stone ceiling of his watery nest, where he can fertilize them. Unless someone else does, that is. Smaller “sneaker” males often lurk nearby and sometimes inseminate eggs before the guarding male can fend them off. Sneakers don’t sing or build nests, but what they lack in vocal skills and architectural acumen they make up for in cunning—and in testes, which can be as much as seven times larger relative to their body size than those of the crooning “guarder” males.

When this courtship chaos is over, so too are the parts played by the sneaker males and the brood’s moms. Thus abandoned, the singing male braves up to four months of high and low tides to tend those eggs, even though many of them may not hold his offspring. And yet, plainfin midshipman—so named because the pattern of bioluminescent photophores on their bodies resemble the buttons on a naval uniform—are stalwart attendants. They rely on special physiological adaptations to stay put through wild temperature swings and occasional exposure to air. All the while, they ward away predators and use their fins to clean debris from and oxygenate the developing larvae.

This is hungry, even starving, work. With so many hundreds of eggs and babies available in each nest, researchers have shown that some 69 percent of guarding males snack on them, even when other food is available. Recent research suggests that this practice is largely aimed at making way for newer additions to the brood in which paternity may be more certain, since it generally occurs at the start of the egg-guarding season, rather than the end. Fortunately, there are enough babies in each brood to ensure that most survive this dubious aspect of their guardians’ tending. They eventually outgrow the golden yolks anchoring them to their nest rocks, thrashing free, and returning to the deep, where they will begin this bizarre and fascinating cycle all over again.

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The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season starts on June 1, and forecasters are predicting an exceptionally active season.

If the National Hurricane Center’s early forecast, released May 23, is right, the North Atlantic could see 17 to 25 named storms, eight to 13 hurricanes, and four to seven major hurricanes by the end of November. That’s the highest number of named storms in any NOAA preseason forecast.

Other forecasts for the season have been just as intense. Colorado State University’s early outlook, released in April, predicted an average of 23 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and five major hurricanes. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts anticipates 21 named storms.

Colorado State also forecasts a whopping 210 accumulated cyclone energy units for 2024, and NOAA forecasts the second-highest ACE on record. Accumulated cyclone energy is a score for how active a given season is by combining intensity and duration of all storms occurring within a given season. Anything over 103 is considered above normal.

These outlooks place the 2024 season in league with 2020, when so many tropical cyclones formed in the Atlantic that they exhausted the usual list of storm names: A record 30 named storms, 13 hurricanes, and six major hurricanes formed that year, combining for 245 accumulated cyclone energy units.

So, what makes for a highly active Atlantic hurricane season?

I am a climate scientist who has worked on seasonal hurricane outlooks and examined how climate change affects our ability to predict hurricanes. Forecasters and climatologists look for two main clues when assessing the risks from upcoming Atlantic hurricane seasons: a warm tropical Atlantic Ocean and a cool tropical eastern Pacific Ocean.

Warm Atlantic water can fuel hurricanes

During the summer, the Atlantic Ocean warms up, resulting in generally favorable conditions for hurricanes to form.

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When Courtney Gore ran for a seat on her local school board in 2021, she warned about a movement to indoctrinate children with “leftist” ideology. After 2 1/2 years on the board, Gore said she believes a much different scheme is unfolding: an effort by wealthy conservative donors to undermine public education in Texas and install a voucher system in which public money flows to private and religious schools.

Gore points to West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who have contributed to various political action committees that have poured millions into legislative candidates who have promoted vouchers. The men also fund or serve on the boards of a host of public policy and advocacy organizations that have led the fight for vouchers in Texas.

In recent years, the largesse from Dunn and the Wilks brothers has reached local communities across Texas, including Granbury, near Fort Worth, where fights over library books, curriculum, and vouchers have dominated the community conversation.

Gore said that she believes school board candidates are being recruited, at times without their full knowledge, in an effort “to cause as much disruption and chaos as possible” and weaken community faith in local school districts.

In 2021, two local men — former state representative Mike Lang and political consultant Nate Criswell — asked Gore to run for school board. At the time, the three were co-hosts of a web-based talk show that targeted local officials they believed were insufficiently conservative and were straying from GOP platform positions. They took frequent aim at the Granbury school district, which they alleged was allowing explicit sexual content into school libraries and teaching divisive ideas about race.

Gore broke from the group shortly after taking office in January 2022, when she concluded that the materials she had warned about on the campaign trail were not present in Granbury schools. She claims the men and other leaders of the far-right faction in Hood County, home to Granbury, dismissed her findings. They continued to pummel the district over books and curriculum, supported school board candidates who sought to remove a growing number of titles from library shelves, and worked to derail three bond elections that would have funded new and renovated buildings for the overcrowded district.

That’s when Gore said she began to piece together connections that hadn’t been previously apparent to her.

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Courtney Gore, vice president of the Granbury Independent School District Board of Trustees, listens to public comments during a February meeting.  Credit: Shelby Tauber for ProPublica and Texas Tribune

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