See the Big Winners of Nikon’s “Small World” Photo Competition

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.It wasn’t much of a break, but in my few days off, I went for a hike, saw the sun, and returned to a broken fridge and leaking freezer and everything in it thawed or spoiled, including some damn good spanakopita (recipe at recharge@motherjones.com). I also learned that Facebook had, you know, juiced its algorithm to show you less news from Mother Jones and more from dubious conservative sites, siphoning our revenue and reach—deliberately. I knew the deck was stacked but didn’t know how sabotaging the dealer was, how in the tank the house was, or, like my broken appliances, how energy-sucking and wasteful some of those behind the foul play are. Not everyone at Facebook, no, but I do feel some validation for having rained on Facebook’s FACEBOOK stunt last year. Engineering your newsfeed to actually harm you is more enraging than anything stylistic, but it’s of a piece with a company that would default to SCREAMING AS IF VOLUME WERE SUBSTANCE. It’s not a pretty picture, but there are pretty pictures: Here are some.
Nikon announced the winners of its Small World contest, and the photos are stunning. Scientists and photographers had submitted more than 2,000 images of microscopic wonders from 90 countries: a knotted human hair, the wings of a butterfly, a moth, a dinosaur bone, slime mold, and a 20 million-year-old winged ant trapped in amber resin (not Mark Zuckerberg). Not all is doom and gloom at the granular level. Sometimes the small picture is as revealing as the big. Here’s that look. Enjoy your 20 million-year-old glimpse, and if you want that spanakopita recipe, let me know.

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