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Hey Sequins, it's Max. Happy Thursday to you, and happy 47th birthday to the Voyager 1 space probe! You’re well within your rights to not remember much about Voyager because, well, “out of sight out of mind.” And there is arguably no human creation more “out of sight” than Voyager 1. It’s currently 15.2 billion miles away, making it the farthest flung object of ours in the universe. How far is that really? If you line up 15 billion one-mile-long meatball subs end-to-end, you’d still be short a couple hundred million meatball subs. (Does that help????) Anyway, I blogged about it: And I wanted to use this space to honor another cool thing. As many of you know, the world of science magazines has seen better days. This week, the synthetic biology magazine Grow released its digital issue, "Networks," … and stepped into the land of indefinite hiatus. Grow was near and dear to me professionally: I've helped edit stories in the magazine over the years. But Grow was also quite unique, making it special to me personally. For those unfamiliar, Grow stories explored the ethics and challenges of genetic engineering with a critical and (frankly) artistic eye. The first four issues released in print. Many Grow essays were unlike any stories published elsewhere and the magazine won design awards. I got involved back when Massive Science helped lead the editorial — coming up with stories independently, editing, fact checking, etc. Fellow Massive-ites Dan and Maddie helped out over the years too. Anyway, I don't want to belabor this point because we're all tired of magazines disappearing. I just wanna celebrate the work of writers and artists who made Grow possible. It's not every day that we get a nerdy magazine full of stories by top-notch essayists and reporters, punctuated by brilliant illustrations and sci-fi. So, first, here's a couple stories from the new issue that we’re running on the site this week. One is a beautiful essay from Fayth Tan about the human history of lichen. Another is an interview with Rachel Armstrong, a professor of regenerative architecture at KU Leuven in Belgium and senior TED fellow. Next, from the Grow archives, here are two recommendations from longtime producers of Grow: — Grace Chuang, Grow’s creative director “The story of DNA as code has been a useful meaningful one, but it doesn’t capture the full feeling of working with life. I love Claire Evans’ writing and the histories and feelings she captures with this piece. There’s so much more to understanding what it means to really work with biology.” – Christina Agapakis, biologist & creator of Grow, founder of oscillator.bio, a new consultancy for strategic communication in biology. Ok that’s it for me! Forward to a curious friend! Besos, Max
What we’re working on:Max: I’ll be in NYC Sept 17-24. Let me know if there’s any cool sciencey stuff goin on that I should check out. Also, I happen to be working on two bug-related projects at the moment. This is out of character for me but it’s fun nonetheless. (Not that there's anything wrong with being a Bug Guy!!) Kim: I’m writing about an attempt to save an endangered Hawaiian flower using microbial tools. The tool itself is the punchline, so I can’t say here just yet! Dan: If you liked my short essay in last week’s newsletter about metals well hold on to your butts cause I’m spending the next couple of weeks emailing scientists and essentially asking them “hey man what’s up with metals?” I’m a very good journalist. Maddie: I’m putting the finishing touches on a feature I did for my day job — will have updates to share! But I’m really glad Max took this newsletter to honor Grow. I remember helping to fact-check and proof the very first issue; much appreciation to all the editors. Mentally, I’m sending Grow off with a wonderful Viking funeral. What we’re reading:Max: In keeping with my apparent bug theme, I just read this feature about urban farming in Noema by Joanna Thompson. I knew there are so many good reasons to promote urban agriculture and community gardens, but this story really opened my eyes to some important caveats. The carbon footprint doesn't scale particularly well, especially where urban farmers have to use raised beds. Then there's a bug issue: If you don't plant native plants, then native insects won't thrive. Of course it's probably better to have some plants than just concrete, unremediated toxic soil, and abandoned lots, but it was cool to see that people are thinking about biodiversity this way and coming up with solutions, like native plants for native caterpillars. Here's a snippet, and I recommend reading the full story: Unlike mountain lions, moose or bison, many insects and small vertebrates don’t need access to acres of unbroken wilderness to thrive. Even a few square meters can provide valuable real estate for butterflies and other flying bugs, especially when those patches are dense with diverse vegetation or close to other green “islands” they can easily hop to … In New York, goldenrod provides food and shelter for over 100 different caterpillars. Willows in some northeastern U.S. counties can support around 430 species, and oaks host a staggering 557, according to Tallamy. In contrast, crape myrtle, which is native to Asia, Australia and parts of Oceania, only supports a single type of American caterpillar** Dan: Part of me is rereading some of the work I did for GROW (it was never clear to me whether the name of the magazine was Grow or GROW or Grow Magazine or whatever but I prefer all-caps because it seems like it’s shouting). My favorite was this one, about the world’s most pervasive agricultural pest, the Colorado potato beetle, and the history and future of its worldwide invasion. There continues to be a dearth of magazines, science or otherwise, willing to let writers chase their fancy and compensate them fairly for it, so I’ll be missing Grow severely. Maddie: Thoroughly enjoyed this dispatch about how the Harris campaign is using “brain rot” content (videos of soap cutting or “Subway Surfers” shown split-screen with campaign ads). I for one welcome more content made accessible for people like me who have broken brains and the attention spans of goldfish. In other news, giant baby penguin at the Melbourne Zoo. All hail Pesto!
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