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This article is beautifully written, and makes comprehendible a difficult scientific concept (with gracious skimming of the precise mechanics involved in its discovery). 

1. #CiabattaScience was a very effective tool for explaining the new lichen model, and weirdly didn’t turn me off of baked goods entirely. 

2. The last graf felt a little forced and overly poignant, but still worked.

3. The hed, in retrospect, was accurate—but still misleading. Luckily, Ed clarified it early on in the piece.

4. I had no idea that lichen precipitated our study of symbiotic relationships. That in itself was very cool to learn. 

Really beautiful essay that not only expands the writer's understanding of theoretical physics as a tool, but leads the writer to explore new ways to apply that tool in his own life based on concepts learned from bacteria—ultimately flipping theoretical physics back on its head to teach the bacteria something new. I know this sounds really ambiguous, so if my vague summary doesn't get you to read the article, its fantastic title should. Being jazzed about interdisciplinary study when you've been under the impression that your knowledge rules only apply in very specific environments is something any nerd can get into. Application of theories interdisciplinarily, or in new ways in the same field = awesome for everyone.

"The media business is no longer a business... It’s simply content—culture’s Astroturf—around which increasingly sophisticated advertising may be targeted until no one, not even its creators, can tell the two apart."

A review of sponsored content from Jacob Silverman, a journalist who's helped write it, with some thought-provoking suggestions toward the end about how journalism should operate instead. Wish he'd also offered a 'weaning off sponsored content' plan to make his suggestions actionable.

About a year ago, I came across a story in Outside's archives (http://www.outsideonline.com/…/chernobyl-my-primeval-teemin…) about what has so far been the largest nuclear disaster in history. In addition to covering Chernobyl's superfluous detriment to the Exclusion Zone and the thousands of people who lived in the area, it introduced me to potential silver linings of the explosion: An unintentional rewilding of an industrial space (granted, with irradiated flora and fauna).

This woman is satirizing everything that annoys me and I love her.

"Everyone likes breathtaking photos of mountains and beaches, and everyone longs for a day when they can just get away from it all. But in the end, this sort of endless visual snacking feels hollow. 'I get it, it’s pretty to look at,' she says. 'But it’s so dishonest. Nobody actually lives like this. And it’s so overdone that it’s becoming boring.'"

It’s tough to write a story about a device for which even its creators can’t clarify intentions. Joe Lindsay did great work parsing Stryd designers’ explanations of their product—an electronic pod that sits on your waist and tracks posture and how you ‘bounce’ when you run, to determine your efficiency—as well as new-user coaches’ hypotheses about what the data it collects might mean for running. Where most fitness trackers measure how quickly you cover distance, and foot pods measure how your feet move in relation to one another to measure form, Stryd monitors what’s going on with the rest of your body and how it might affect your overall form. 

However, there are a few things I might have done differently. Outside writers are taught to write conversationally, but to a somewhat-insider audience—their readers don’t need to be taught what a ‘drivetrain’ or ‘cadence’ is mid-story, for instance. While readers are expected to have basic vocabulary when reading about a given topic, they shouldn’t be expected to deal with so much jargon without some kind of visual aid. This story would have benefited greatly from a video or series of gifs showing how Stryd measures things, vs. other ways people have attempted to measure running intensity. Overall, while Lindsay’s explanations were sometimes ambiguous (probably because his interviewees weren't totally sure what they want out of Stryd yet), he did as comprehensible a job as any exercise writer could be expected to with the information he had. Worth thinking about. 

Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/opinion/sunday/the-ancient-ruins-terror-cant-destroy.html?_r=1

"Old stones make time travel possible...It is their age that makes these stones worth knowing, not their condition. Decay and loss is the point... I’ll take some consolation knowing the site has been explored and recorded by waves of archaeologists for more than a century. We know Palmyra’s secrets, and cannot lose them." — Patrick Symmes

Awesome exploration of possible silver linings to ISIS's destructive vendetta against Western archaeological gems. Most interesting to me was that it's erroneous to think we've preserved many sites at all; older methods employed to protect the ancient world often incorporated rebuilding structures so that they look as they once did, not true reflections of what they've been through thus far.

Disclaimer: I’m a huge Patagonia junkie. I own a fair share of gear that’s outlasted more than 90-percent of my wardrobe, and closely follow how the company’s actions reflect, or belie, their environmental branding. So far? It’s preaching the right message—reasoned consumption—and allowing consumers to direct their rate of production. 

This article gives a holistic explanation of how Patagonia’s brand strategy has evolved over the past six years. Rich Ridgeway, VP of environmental affairs, helped the company capitalize on thriftiness’ growing value as a consumer trait by effectively plastering a ‘yield’ sign on all marketing material. Patagonia’s risk only bolstered its caché, underscoring its status as a company with seemingly genuine continued dedication to responsible growth—a company with a true ethics code. And by buying from Patagonia, consumers can self-define as “more ethical than others,” too. 

But the thing is, even if Patagonia sells fewer items at higher prices (because its gear is higher quality, and you can get it repaired whenever you need to, because you’re one of those good people willing to sacrifice for the environment—see what I mean?), that doesn't mean it’s not growing. It’s exploding, and as the author mentions, its foreign marketing plans don’t necessarily put its sustainable ethos first. (Asian countries especially are still in the brand-name-status-symbol stage defined purely by a product’s retail value rather than its integrity). But Patagonia views its global expansion as the ‘lesser of two evils’: it’s better for a responsible company to gain more market share and peddle more goods to consumers who would otherwise buy fragile gear with short lifespans. 

Key quotes: 

“That narrative explains the Patagonia paradox: there’s bad growth, and then there’s good growth.”

“Patagonia has doubled its scale of operations in the past six years, and has opened forty new stores worldwide since 2011.”

“Since Ridgeway [published his essay declaring ‘growth is a dead end’]... Patagonia’s own expansion has continued unabated: this year, the company expects to gross about six hundred million dollars.”

“The company offers D.I.Y. garment-repair tutorials...[and] a thirty-dollar “expedition sewing kit” that resembles a prop designed for the Khaki Scouts in Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom.” Click for more information on the kit and a typical marketing stratagem plays out: you will be offered six other Patagonia products.”

“The company cannot currently provide any numbers on how many people are hanging onto their Patagonia jackets and board shorts for one more year rather than buying something new.”

“Given Patagonia’s sales figures, it is clear that the company repairs and recycles only a very small fraction of the number of products sold each year. Not a revolution at this point, then, though surely a significant gesture—corporate social responsibility’s version of propaganda of the deed.”

“Environmentally literate, socially engaged, and with a clear sense that contemporary consumerism is a warm bath of contradictions, Baird is the shopper that Patagonia wants to be in business for—whether or not it really is.”

Summary: Individual products might be incredibly sustainable, but Patagonia’s still making more of all of them year over year—as a company, its goal is to sell to more people. As long as its current consumer demographics really decrease their purchasing to counteract growth in new Patagonia markets, buying from the company really will be one way to keep our collective material footprint level rather than increase it. 

The dude on top of the mountain isn't the aspiration model anymore for most consumers. I still appreciate the hardcore tropes, but as Poler's founder notes, the majority of people just want to be outdoors "in simple ways," with an emphasis on aesthetic. Clutch quotes from Axie Navas:

"Navas believes customers are turning to retailers like Lululemon because what it means to be an outdoor enthusiast today isn't necessarily congruent with the image outdoor brands promote. "There’s a whole new market of younger people that want to make outdoors a lifestyle," she says. "They are looking for the intersection of core performance and style. They aren’t looking to be outdoors every single day or weekend, but still want to have gear for when they do want to commit. They want high-performance wear that will take them from the city to the mountain."

The article also addresses something I've been thinking a lot about recently: the outdoor community's lack of diversity. Not just in what it means to "adventure," but the variety of people adventuring.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/opinion/our-land-up-for-grabs.html

Important: The 'revert federal public land back to state public land' trend doesn't mean the land will end up protected.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/carbon-capture

Jonathan Franzen tackles the double-edged sword of climate change activism's popularity. Essentially, the issue is this: Climate change is the divisive, near-universally accepted environmental issue of our time. In the shadows of this ominous call-to-arms for lowered carbon footprints are more imminent issues like bird species conservation, which stall or decay in light of the fact that they directly contradict climate change policies. As Franzen notes, a good example of this is how windmills and solar power plants can help us generate sustainable energy, but end up killing millions of birds annually; even more than that, bird protection efforts that incorporate climate change action aren't necessarily based in science, as many birds might survive in a differently-heated world. But on top of all this, even as we sacrifice these imminent conservation issues for the all-important heading off of climate change, it turns out our devotion to this big issue is pretty nominal—because it's a collective issue, responsibility is diffused among 7 BILLION people. And because it's an issue that doesn't exist in our immediate reality, and might affect our grandchildren's children but not us, it's sometimes easy to rationalize our earth-abusive actions. So in the end, we're ignoring issues that affect animals and people living in our world, at the same time that we live in it, in favor of avoiding a much more severe future issue, but because we haven't had to deal with the real fallout of that issue yet, we can, effectively, do nothing to solve anything because our commitment hasn't been 100% necessitated yet. We're saving our energy for something down the line, and secretly waiting until the 11th hour to do something.

"As long as mitigating climate change trumps all other environmental concerns, no landscape on earth is safe. Like globalism, climatism alienates. Americans today live far from the ecological damage that their consumption habits cause, and even if future consumers are more enlightened about carbon footprints, and fill their tanks with certified green fuel, they’ll still be alienated. Only an appreciation of nature as a collection of specific threatened habitats, rather than as an abstract thing that is “dying,” can avert the complete denaturing of the world."

This is why it's important to engage with your community. Develop an appreciation for something in your life, that depends on you to care for it.