As Warming Waters Make Shellfish Toxic, A Way Of Life Becomes Deadly For Alaskans
Coastal states have developed statewide systems to keep their recreational and subsistence harvesters safe from paralytic shellfish poisoning. Alaska has no such system. State environmental health officials say the sheer length of its coast makes monitoring shellfish for the toxin impossible.
The Diabolical Genius Of The Baby Advice Industry
Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer. While there might indeed be one right way to do things, you will never get to find out what it is.
The End Of Farming?
Over the past 20 years or so, ad hoc coalitions of politicians, activists and conscience-stricken billionaires, have rewilded millions of acres of mostly failed agricultural and grazing land. Their guiding philosophy upends the long-dominant view that land should be cleared, plowed and wrung ever more efficiently for food.
How The Government Came To Decide The Color Of Your Food
Tomatoes are red, margarine is yellow, and oranges, are, well, orange. We expect certain foods to be in certain colors. What we don’t realize is that these colors are not necessarily a product of nature but rather of historical controversies and deliberate decisions by various actors—including the government.
How To Fight Lies, Tricks And Chaos Online
It took me years to really understand where all the information I saw online was coming from. So this isn’t just a guide to spotting when something is fake. It’s a system for slowing down and thinking about information — whether that information is true, false, or something in between.
She Was The PTA Mom Everyone Knew. Who Would Want To Harm Her?
Kelli Peters, 49, with short blond hair and a slightly bohemian air. As the volunteer director of the Afterschool Classroom Enrichment program at Plaza Vista, she was a constant presence on campus, whirling down the halls in flip-flops and bright sundresses. Who would want to harm her?
Life Under The Algorithm
Increase your output, get paid more. Wages go up with productivity. Until, it turns out, they don’t anymore. The unwinding of this agreement in recent decades, such that workers must continue to produce more without expecting it to show up in their pay stubs, has now been the subject of a good deal of discussion and debate.
Everyone Needs To Stop Building Giant Glass Skyscrapers
Any building playing host to hundreds of people is going to have a huge climate footprint, but the glass is particularly problematic. The sunlight has unlimited access into the building, but no way to get out. That’s great for tomatoes, but for people it just means more air conditioning.
Ranking Veggie Chips By How Healthy They Are
“The darker-colored items with fewer ingredients will be the best.” This is because dark-colored vegetables are particularly rich in an assortment of plant compounds called phytochemicals, which help ward off diseases and tend to make them healthier than their lighter counterparts.
The World’s Last Great Undiscovered Cuisine
Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan is home to a fantastical rising skyline, rose-scented markets, and cooking influenced by everything from the Ottoman Empire to the USSR. You’ll dine on fisinjan and other saucy (though un-nailed) stews called khurush, along with ethereal pilafs bejeweled with dried fruits, nuts, and barberries.
Can We Actually Stop Using Fossil Fuels?
Even some of the people who favor wind, solar, and hydro think total reliance on it is a bad idea. Is it smart—or crazy stupid—to rely solely on wind, solar, and hydro?
How A Group Of Citizens Revived A British Era Lake In India
The lake was built by the British for irrigating nearby farmlands. But gradually it became a dumpsite for Salem’s municipal solid waste. In 2010 the Salem Citizen’s Forum (SCF) took over the work of cleaning the lake. Using the silt of the lake, the SCF created 45 small islands.
A Trip To The Cirque Of The Unclimbables
It’s among the most beautiful eyefuls of landscape I’ve ever seen — its rock walls more overpowering than Zion’s, in Utah, its evening light more perfect than Hawaii’s, its peaks more menacing than Denali, and its stillness more complete than the deep rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula.
‘The Big House And The Picket Fence’
Tonya Crowder still dreams that she and her fiance, Roosevelt Myles—who’s been in prison for decades fighting what he says is a wrongful conviction—will one day build a life together somewhere “nice, quiet, and simple.”
The Frontier Couple Who Chose Death Over Life Apart
Artist Eric Bealer was living the remote, rugged good life in coastal Alaska with his wife, Pam, an MS sufferer, when they made a dramatic decision: to exit this world together, leaving behind precise instructions for whoever entered their cabin first.
This Land Is No Longer Your Land
The fight over preserving public land during the Trump era is taking a strange, angry twist in Montana’s Crazy Mountains. Both sides are armed.
How Earth Would Look If All The Ice Melted
As National Geographic showed us, sea levels would rise by 216 feet if all the land ice on the planet were to melt. This would dramatically reshape the continents and drown many of the world’s major cities.
Can Mission-Driven Food Companies Scale Up Without Selling Out?
When just 10 companies—including Nestlé, Unilever, and General Mills—control the vast majority of food brands, it raises serious questions about the ability of mission-driven companies to hold on to their original intentions.
The End Of Babies
Fertility rates have been dropping precipitously around the world for decades — in middle-income countries, in some low-income countries, but perhaps most markedly, in rich ones. Something is stopping us from creating the families we claim to desire. But what?
This Was The Decade Climate Change Slapped Us In The Face
Broken temperature records, unnatural disasters, and homes lost would show just how catastrophically humans had transformed the planet. It’s been a decade of adapting to a new normal while clumsily figuring out how to safeguard the future from a climate crisis that’s only going to get worse.
Why Do We Work So Hard?
Work, in this context, means active, billable labour. But in reality, it rarely stops. It follows us home on our smartphones, tugging at us during an evening out or in the middle of our children’s bedtime routines. It becomes our lives if we are not careful. It becomes us.