Since 2016, Half of All Coral In the Great Barrier Reef Has Died (theatlantic.com)

A new paper, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, reports that the Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals since 2016. The authors inspected every one of its reefs, surveying them on an almost species-by-species basis, and found the damage to be widespread across the entire ecosystem. "Two of its most recognizable creatures -- the amber-colored staghorn corals, and the flat, fanlike tabular corals -- suffered the worst casualties," reports The Atlantic. From the report: "On average, across the Great Barrier Reef, one in three corals died in nine months," said Terry Hughes, an author of the paper and the director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, the Australian government's federal research program devoted to corals. "You could say [the ecosystem] has collapsed. You could say it has degraded. I wouldn't say that's wrong," Hughes said. "A more neutral way of putting it is that it has transformed into a completely new system that looks differently, and behaves differently, and functions differently, than how it was three years ago."

In the summer months of 2017, warm waters again struck the reef and triggered another bleaching event. This time, the heat hit the reef's middle third. Hughes and his team have not published a peer-reviewed paper on that event, but he shared early survey results with me. Combined, he said, the back-to-back bleaching events killed one in every two corals in the Great Barrier Reef. It is a fact almost beyond comprehension: In the summer of 2015, more than 2 billion corals lived in the Great Barrier Reef. Half of them are now dead. What caused the devastation? Hughes was clear: human-caused global warming. The accumulation of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere has raised the world's average temperature, making the oceans hotter and less hospitable to fragile tropical corals.

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Re:fine...I'll kill myself.

[Priscilla Chan]

"Relax Mark," she says. I slowly unzip my pants.

The living room in this house has an incredible view. It’s as if you can see every inch of the Bay Area from up here. Is the Bay Area seeing every inch of me though?

Mark begins to sob. "My mother was right." He hangs his head in anguish. "I should have married a nice Jewish woman."

"Oh please." Priscilla rolls her eyes. "Have you ever even met a Jewish American Princess? The first JAP you would have tied the knot with would have taken half of your shit and used that money to keep the ball rolling with the next ten men."

"But look at what you’re doing now! I guess I should have expected no better from a girl I met at an AEPi party!" Mark shoots back.

"We agreed this would be the best action to take for the health of our marriage. Why are you so bitter now?"

"I don’t know. It just feels weird."

"That’s normal," Priscilla says coolly. She looks straight at me: "Let’s get this over with."

"Listen, if you guys aren’t comfortable with this, I can leave," I say, trying to keep the situation calm. A dog enters the room. It’s big, with what looks like long white pool noodles for fur. If Bob Marley had an Albino dog, this would be it. He seems confused, but he can tell Mark is agitated. The canine looks at me and begins to snarl.

"Calm down, Beast!" Priscilla shouts.

The dog immediately cowers back in fear, whimpering quietly. How did I get myself into this? Priscilla looks back at me: "No, you’re finishing this."

I shift my gaze back from the dog to the window. "So, are you comfortable, Priscilla?" Great view.

"Doctor," she corrects me.

"Doctor Priscilla?"

"Doctor Chan."

"Have you done something like this with your patients?" Mark interrupts anxiously.

"No Mark, I just prefer to be called by my proper title with strangers. Stop being so petty. You know I love you. I’m doing this for you," she replies gently.

"Yeah. I’m sorry honey. You know I’m just getting worked up," Mark begins to twiddle his thumbs.

"Ugh. You’re worse than your mother. Do you want to be like them?"

I have to interject- "Like who?"

Priscilla is quick to answer: "The Obamas. The Musks. You know."

"No, I really don’t," I answer. Because I don’t. What are these bizarre people going on about?

"Like last New Year’s eve. Elon Musk filed for divorce while everyone was out having the time of their lives," Priscilla explains.

"And the Obamas?" I inquire further.

Mark answers, "I’m pretty much on a first-name basis with Barack. The controversy is that last Christmas vacation when the Obamas flew out to Hawaii, Barack came back, but Michelle stayed an extra week. It was quite a spectacle."

"’I’m pretty much on a first-name basis with Barack.’" Priscilla repeats mockingly. "As if we don’t all know Obama’s first name."

"I don’t get it. What do those guys have to do with you?" I need to ask again, for I am not one of quick wit.

"Well, frankly, the marriage is stagnating. We married too young and never really got to explore ourselves. But we can’t get a divorce, it would be too high profile. The press wouldn’t stop harassing us about it. It would be like if Hillary and Bill got a divorce halfway through her campaign run," Priscilla explains.

"I understand." I don’t actually understand. But who knows how long this explanation of their scheming and paltry concerns will go on for? I don’t really care.

"The last thing Mark would want," Priscilla starts again, "is for me to run away from San Francisco, and travel the world alone! I’d even have a blog, where I would tell everyone that they need to quit their jobs, marry a nice Jewish boy from Harvard with a budding social network,