Teaching corn to save the world

Agriculture is one of the major causes of our climate crisis (livestock emissions, clearcutting of forests), but a group of biologists at the Salk Institute are trying to [breed crops that gobble up carbon from the air](https://www.salk.edu/science/power-of-plants/), while simultaneously strengthening their root systems.

The secret is in teaching them to build more suberin (aka cork) in their roots:

> By understanding and improving just a few genetic pathways in plants, Salk’s plant biologists believe they can help plants grow bigger, more robust root systems that absorb larger amounts of carbon, burying it in the ground in the form of suberin…

> Once the Salk team has developed ways to increase suberin in model plants, they will transfer these genetic traits to six prevalent crops: corn, soybean, rice, wheat, cotton/cottonseed and rapeseed/canola.

> In addition to mitigating climate change, the enhanced root systems will help protect plants from stresses caused by climate changes and the additional carbon in the soil will make the soil richer, promoting better crop yields and more food for a growing global population.

This kind of piggy-backing on existing societal practices feels very promising…not quite turning a vice into a virtue, but hopefully making it less harmful.

Food and teams

Fascinating look into how one of the most successful coaches in the world builds team strength with carefully orchestrated meals:

I was friends with every single teammate I ever had in my [time] with the Spurs. That might sound far-fetched, but it’s true. And those team meals were one of the biggest reasons why. To take the time to slow down and truly dine with someone in this day and age — I’m talking a two- or three-hour dinner — you naturally connect on a different level than just on the court or in the locker room.

Power and choice

> One might think that the most powerful man has the most choices, but in reality he has the fewest. Too much depends on his every move.

– from [Tales of the Tyrant](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/tales-of-the-tyrant/302480/), a fascinating look at Saddam Hussein’s daily life

Our bovine masters

The old joke goes that aliens might think dogs rule Earth because humans pick up after them. That might need to be modified with the news that [the United States uses 41% of its land area to raise and feed cattle](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/). That’s by far the biggest land use in America, and it’s used so that we can eat cows and drink their milk. All the other food we eat directly requires just a tenth of that; 4% of our land.

Goes with the theme from earlier this week on how [we have the resources to thrive, but don’t yet use them appropriately](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/dystopia-and-its-discontents/).

Found via the excellent [Information is Beautiful awards for 2018](https://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/showcase/3257-here-s-how-america-uses-its-land).

Dystopia and its discontents

Kim Stanley Robinson [breaks down the various flavors of utopia and dystopia](https://communemag.com/dystopias-now/) and comes out in favor of writing about, and pursuing, utopias, despite their limitations.

He concisely explains why dystopias are unable to spur real change:

> These days I tend to think of dystopias as being fashionable, perhaps lazy, maybe even complacent, because one pleasure of reading them is cozying into the feeling that however bad our present moment is, it’s nowhere near as bad as the ones these poor characters are suffering through…If this is right, dystopia is part of our all-encompassing hopelessness.

And why utopias meet such strong opposition:

> It is important to oppose political attacks on the idea of utopia, as these are usually reactionary statements on the behalf of the currently powerful, those who enjoy a poorly-hidden utopia-for-the-few alongside a dystopia-for-the-many.

It’s interesting to read his comments in the context of reactions to politically progressive efforts like the Green New Deal and universal healthcare. Some of the loudest opposition has come from those who already enjoy the desired benefits.

> Immediately many people will object that this is too hard, too implausible, contradictory to human nature, politically impossible, uneconomical, and so on. Yeah yeah. Here we see the shift from cruel optimism to stupid pessimism, or call it fashionable pessimism, or simply cynicism. It’s very easy to object to the utopian turn by invoking some poorly-defined but seemingly omnipresent reality principle. Well-off people do this all the time.

Crafting a compelling utopia–or as I sometimes put it, designing a better way to live together–is the defining project of our generation. We have the resources and capability; what we still lack is the right design and pathway.

Working less, deliberately

Interesting research on how we might be more productive working [4 days a week](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/feb/19/four-day-week-trial-study-finds-lower-stress-but-no-cut-in-output), and/or [4 hours a day](https://theweek.com/articles/696644/why-should-work-4-hours-day-according-science).

The basic premise is that humans are severely limited in our cognitive capacity, and working more than that amount of time actually causes us to do worse:

> The [productivity] curve rose steeply at first and peaked at between 10 to 20 hours per week. The curve then turned downward. Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Scientists working 35 hours a week were half as productive as their 20-hours-a-week colleagues.

I recently finished [Why We Sleep](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ1YGJ5/), which makes a persuasive argument that while studying and exercising are important, we only learn and grow when we sleep. Perhaps our cognitive capacity is capped not by the amount we work or study, but by how much we can then solidify through rest?

The 4-hours-a-day article closes with a similar thought:
> This is how we’ve come to believe that world-class performance comes after 10,000 hours of practice. But that’s wrong. It comes after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, 12,500 hours of deliberate rest, and 30,000 hours of sleep.

Our geologic legacy

The Anthropocene is still getting started, but it’s unlikely to last forever–either we’ll transform ourselves or make ourselves extinct. In 50 million years, what will be left? Probably just a few centimeters of geologic debris:

> We note that effective sedimentation rates in ocean sediment for cores with multi-million-year-old sediment are of the order of a few cm/1000 years at best, and while the degree of bioturbation may smear a short-period signal, the Anthropocene will likely only appear as a section a few cm thick, and appear almost instantaneously in the record. – [The Silurian hypothesis: would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/silurian-hypothesis-would-it-be-possible-to-detect-an-industrial-civilization-in-the-geological-record/77818514AA6907750B8F4339F7C70EC6/core-reader)

100-word utopias

Several years ago Kevin Kelly challenged people to [describe a desirable and believable future world in 100 words](https://kk.org/thetechnium/a-desirable-future-haiku/). I didn’t get my submission in at the time but just found it again in my inbox:

> Ahmad Rosencrantz skated across the sky bridge toward the empathygrove. The flowers were glowing softly as they effused dharmabiotics to be carried into the city by the morning breeze. He took a deep breath, and his sympathetic twinges sensed that his wife was happily playing with his daughter up the hill to the right. Ahmad leaned back and his shoes’ nanowheels slowed him enough to take a bite from the nearest chocolate tree. He winked to capture a VR360 of the beautiful scene as his shoes skated him uphill. “Hi guys!” he telepathed to his family.

Still interesting to me, though I might dial down the “tech” aspects in favor of more mindful experiences if I wrote it today.

Play and parent brains

A new study wired up parents and kids to watch their brains while they played together. Perhaps not surprisingly, things went better when the parents payed attention:

Parents are neurally responsive to their infants during social play, and that, when the parent is more neurally responsive, the infant is more attentive.

Or as it’s known in our house, “Dad, put down your phone!”

Cows vs. geeks

“Unlike the cow, we get better at making meat every single day” – Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown

[Launched at a tech conference](https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/impossible-launches-its-second-gen-burger-at-ces/), naturally.