Rides and Strides

“There’s one last way we can cut down on emissions from the food we eat: by wasting less of it. In Europe, industrialized parts of Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, more than 20 percent of food is simply thrown away, allowed to rot, or otherwise wasted. In the United States, it’s 40 percent. That’s bad for people who don’t have enough to eat, bad for the economy, and bad for the climate. When wasted food rots, it produces enough methane to cause as much warming as 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year.”
― Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

“That room has been static for me so long:
an emptiness. a void. a silence
containing an unheard story
ready for me to unlock.

Let there be plot.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Q: Why do humans like applause? A: I suspect it is because we are at a disadvantage compared with much of the animal kingdom. We lack sharp teeth or claws. We are not the biggest or the fastest. And we evolved in an environment where we lived nomadically and were exposed daily to the terrifying forces of nature. Accordingly, we banded together in tight-knit groups to better protect ourselves. We built fires and told stories to make the dark nights pass by. Applause may be a way for us to make our weak hands sound thunderous.”
― Jenny Offill, Weather

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library