Content related to world events and other things happening outside my daily life
One of the two primary goals of our science road trip was to see the Trinity test site, where the first nuclear bomb was detonated. There’s no guarantee of getting in, which is why some enthusiastic travelers line up in their cars the night before. I believe this was the first occasion in my life that I waited in line overnight for anything.
Culture shapes us, and then we shape culture. The intervening time in between those things runs on the order of 30 years, which is often an explanation for reboots, revivals, and remakes of popular culture. The influence of the 1960s on the 1990s, and the 1990s on me was apparently very strong, which I realized this past fall when traveling in the Southwest.
It’s been a long year, and I was feeling too burned out for resolutions (of which I usually make at least 10). But what if I made a resolution to have more fun… and backed it up with my own data on how to do that… and employed a color-coded spreadsheet? I’m embarking on something I’ve never done before: committing to one single resolution.
My cohort of climate leaders has already met a few times to kick off our year together in the Indo-Pacific Leadership Lab. I am thrilled and honored to be part of such an incredible group of people, and I’m already wrestling with some difficult concepts – notably that I can’t solve climate change on my own, and that we won’t solve it in our lifetime.
The growing use of semaglutide drugs for people who don’t medically need them is causing harm to people who do but also ripples across the business world, with risks and surprising benefits projected in different sectors. Ultimately we need to ask ourselves why weight loss is the goal – and whether thinness is worth the cost: our money, our health, or someone else’s health.
I’ve had several friends comment on this series (publicly and privately), reminding me that body image issues are more widespread than many of us realize. In our quest for thinness over health, we turn to fad diets and products to help us feel better about ourselves. And that desperation among people who don’t really need to lose weight is causing problems for people who really do.
It was a frustrating and disappointing week at work, with some losses for public health and climate action. I told my team that “if it were easy, someone would have figured it out already.” That said, I am grateful for the opportunity to figure it out with 15 other leaders from around the world this coming year as part of the Indo-Pacific Leadership Lab.
Years of backyard composting has biased me toward aerobic compost, so when I had the opportunity to tour an anaerobic digester, I jumped at the chance. I knew very little about the process other than the fact that it created a lot of methane, which was a concern of mine. Fortunately, the team at Ecotone Renewables was patient with my multiple questions on the tour.
It’s October 1: do you know where your ballot is? In this annual election summary blog post, we will look at Pennsylvania-wide judicial races and Allegheny County government races, with a nod to the importance of local elections too. Elections in “off-years” are sparsely attended but critical for multiple reasons. If you can vote, please educate yourself and exercise your civic duty.
In honor of Climate Week and our need for stronger, swifter climate action, this post examines the new Allegheny County ordinance calling for the creation of a Climate Action Plan, which will reference Pennsylvania’s and Pittsburgh’s existing plans. Therefore, it’s important we understand the assumptions and omissions present in these example Climate Action Plans and how their approaches will shape the county’s next steps.