The Breads Roundup No. 107

Transcending Binary Thinking, Patagonia Ownership and Earth's Population Limit

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Hello Hitchhikers In Search Of A Guide To The Galaxy,

I’m really sorry for this GIF. But I saw it and then I had to use it. Please respect my vision for this newsletter and don’t unsubscribe.

I was thinking about celebrity the other day. Specifically I was thinking about which celeb would make me the most star struck if I were to meet them in person. I ran through a lot of names in my mind but ultimately I arrived at one decision. And it’s really the only decision there is for this. It’s The Corn Kid. I would die for that kid. If I saw him on the street I don’t know what I would say. Probably something dumb like “go corn!” or “corn is tight!” and then I would kick myself after the fact that I should have played it cooler and said something really cool like “yeah I’ve been corning for years, thanks for bringing national attention to the cause.” Anyways I bet he’s cool and I pray to the heavens he doesn’t get corrupted by his fame.

Which brings me to my next point – that being famous would be cool and I wouldn’t mind being at least a little bit famous one day. Not necessarily for the most commonly sited reasons like access to exclusive things, or free stuff, or getting to meet cool people or even for being rich but for the fact that if you’re famous and a good, cool person it leaves an indelible mark on people. It surprises them. So often are we disappointed by people (never meet your heroes, as they say) that whenever it turns out that a celeb is actually a dope person we love that person even more. So if any of you are going to become famous anytime soon, just be good, so that when people meet you they can say “damn, [insert your name here] was actually really nice.”

Actually as a matter of fact you don’t have to be famous for that shit. Just be nicer to people and leave them feeling that way all the time.

Anyways, here’s the linkies. Enjoy.

Transcending Binary Thinking Is Not Easy. But What Hope Do We Have If We Don’t Try?

Just Give Me A Synopsis:
This is a short read outlining the tendency of our minds to turn everything into a binary – "with life we get death, with day we get night and so on." This concept is called enantiodromia and was coined by Carl Jung (or Young Carl as I like to call him) but as this article implores us to do, we must start thinking beyond that binary to solve many of today's most pressing issues.

And A Quote From The Article Please:

There is another perspective, one that a mentor of mine once called “the third option.” While the logical mind sees the crest and trough of a wave as opposites, the universal mind remembers that it’s all just water. Before we delve further into this pool of thought, I want to be clear that universality is not synonymous with sameness; even in recognizing that they are two aspects of the same whole, we can’t discredit the duality of the crest and trough, for their differing vantage points are undeniably valid and real. The third or nonbinary option seeks only to open up space for possibility by transcending the inherent divisiveness of “this or that” thinking.

And Tell Me Why I should Care:
We don't always stop and think that maybe the two main options we've been presented with aren't the only two options we should be considering. Or we tend to think the two options are in stark contrast to each other and cannot both be considered in some way, to some capacity. When I studied abroad (yes I know I'm insufferable) in Sevilla, I had an ongoing argument with my host mother that chocolate and vanilla were opposites. My argument was that they are the two dominant ice cream flavors and they are not the same, so they must be on opposite ends of the ice cream spectrum (I'm sure it didn't hurt that they are basically black vs white in color). She however was insistent that they were not opposites but rather two points on the spectrum, where you have myriad other flavors from Rocky Road to Moose Tracks to Super Man. Which I guess is how I'm saying we need to start thinking about modern day problems. When you want to solve a problem sometimes chocolate, or vanilla, alone won't do the trick.

How Patagonia's Ownership Bombshell Changes The Game For American Business

Just Give Me A Synopsis:
Speaking of today’s problems, I'm sure y'all heard last week how the founder of Patagonia, Yves St. Laurent (I know that’s not his name, don’t @ me), decided to basically give the company away and dedicate all future profits to saving the world. This piece delves a bit more into the logistics of how this will work and paints a picture of how it could radically shift capitalism in American.

And A Quote From The Article Please:

We’ve heard the refrain before, “Oh it’s easier because they’re Patagonia,” when the company transformed its supply chain and when it called out politicians whose policies were killing the planet; so, of course, they’re repeating the same tired line with the news of its new ownership structure. Lorna Davis, a Seventh Generation social mission board member, former B Lab board member, and former CEO of Danone North America (formerly DanoneWave), predicts a huge consumer reaction that other companies will certainly take notice of. Back in 2016, when Patagonia announced it would be giving away all of its Black Friday sales to grassroots environmental organizations, it sold $10 million that day—a record—and signed up 24,000 new customers.

And Tell Me Why I should Care:
Whether or not you like Patagonia or think what they are doing is fully altruistic, you must at least admit that what they are doing is a major shift in how huge, multi-billion dollar companies are run. I still take some issue with trying to save the world by selling clothing, something we talk about time and time again in this newsletter as one of the worst and most wasteful industries environmentally speaking, but overall it is still more good than bad. And most importantly it gets people thinking about possible new blueprints for how businesses can "save the world." Furthermore this model or others like it don't just have to be for environmental purposes, what if Amazon dedicated their profits to fighting the education gap in America, what if McDonald's did it for food inequality, etc. This move will light a fire in people to demand more from companies. We'll see if that will actually make a difference in the long run.

How Many People Can Earth Handle?

Just Give Me A Synopsis:
A robust read, this article outlines the Earth's long history of overpopulation alarmism (yes Robert Malthus makes an appearance). It then goes through countless studies and papers that have been published on the idea of overpopulation and how to solve for it (if it even is a problem as some would argue it isn’t). If you want the overpopulation primer without reading a full book, this is it.

And A Quote From The Article Please:

This nuanced support for the idea that population growth leads to environmental degradation is backed up by many other studies – but so is the impact of spiralling demand for natural resources, especially in wealthier countries. In fact, many environmentalists now believe that the problems we're currently facing are largely due to consumption, rather than overpopulation – from this perspective, concerns about the latter unfairly shift the blame onto poorer countries.

And Tell Me Why I should Care:
Fear mongers will have you think that the entire planet will look like Times Square in a century. Which, let's be honest, if that happens we deserve to gas guzzle ourselves into oblivion like we're currently doing. This article touches on that idea of transcending binaries we discussed earlier, maybe our growing population is a little more nuanced than "we can't surpass X number of people on the planet or we'll all die," maybe there is good and bad that comes from a growing population. Maybe we should get our fuck on and have kids if we want but also should feel free to not have kids if we don't want. Anyways, great read if you ever wondered what the human toll on earth will look like far into the future.

Eli’s Free Startup Ideas But If You Use Them And Get Rich Please Give Money To Me

New section yaaaaay. Ok this is where I propose ideas for companies that are mostly jokes but also kind of serious in some ways. They’re so crazy they just might work.

Two of the three most important holidays in Judaism are happening in the next few weeks. Neither of them are the ones that involve that flat bread we know as matzo. But it got me thinking about it! Yes this is a matzo-based idea.

I don’t know what the Jewish Food Federation is doing. (I have no idea if any such organization exists, but I’m going to pretend it does. JFF for short). They should be pushing to make Matzo a popular thing. People buy those Swedish Wasa crackers all the damn time and those things have the mouthfeel of cardboard. Every freaking startup office has packs of dried seaweed in the snack cabinet. Wonderbread is a thing!

What matzo has is a branding problem. Hummus, Sushi, Kombucha all seemed yucky to the American palate before major branding initiatives and big time pushes to normalize them as delightful foods. I’m not saying most people think that matzo is gross, but most of them certainly see it as boring. It’s a polarizing topic. I personally love matzo, hence why I’m writing this. But a lot of jews strongly dislike it or at the best feel indifferent towards it.

Why is there no matzo snack marketed to the general public? To jews and goys alike. Break it up into small pieces, put it in a snack-sized (or party-sized) bag and flavor the shit out of that bitch. Tell me you wouldn’t snack on some flamin’ hot matzo chips. What about mesquite bbq? Cheddar and sour cream? Jalapeño?!?

This is fully an “if you build it they will come” situation, mark my very unaccomplished, inexperienced CPG words.

Editor’s Note: I wrote this before googling Matzo chips, like an idiot, and it turns out they sorta already exist. And it looks like a cool company. But I only found one company! So my point still stands that there is room in the market!

Other Interesting Things You May Or May Not Care About

• The Technology That Could Stop Speeders in Their Tracks
  They are called "speed governors" and no they are not politicians that campaign hard on slowing down cars, they are devices in cars that limit the speed at which a vehicle can travel, either overall or depending on geolocation. Just think of all the sweet movie scenes that could be written where someone is trying to escape from the deep state (conspiracies are in!) but the speed of the car they just had to hotwire is limited so they have to figure out how to deactivate the speed governor on the fly. But I'm not joking something like this could save lots of lives and this article goes deep on how bad speeding deaths are in the country.

• The Mysterious, Vexing, and Utterly Engrossing Search for the Origin of Eels
  The latest in the long list of "things you didn't know we didn't know anything about" list is the eel. We don't really know shit about them. We don't know how they breed, we don't know what their lifecycle is like, we barely even knew they had genitals until a hundredish years ago! But now we're trying to learn more about them to save them, because surprise, humans are killing the shit out of them.

• Why It's So Hard To Rewrite A Country's Constitution
  This looks at Chile's recent failure to rewrite its constitution and compares it to recent attempts in the US to ratify or amend parts of our current constitution. There are a lot of nuances that involve parties in power and the push and pull of bipartisanism, but another huge issue faced by this and basically any political progress today is that of misinformation. If your great aunt sally thinks the new anti-racism amendment to the constitution means that all immigrants will have the right to eat the first born child of any American they want (as Sally read about on facebook) she's probably not going to vote for such measures.

• We Spoke With the Last Person Standing in the Floppy Disk Business
  Yes, that is right, more people than just your luddite uncle are still using floppy disks. Two of the biggest industries are aviation and medicine. That airplane you fly on or that machine keeping you alive at the hospital uses a technology whose biggest claim to fame is housing The Oregon Trail (which to be fair is a pretty good claim to fame). So huge industries still rely on this tech, but no one makes it anymore because it is so outdated, so there is basically just one guy who supplies the whole world with their floppy needs.

• My Week At A Mensa Conference
  If you aren't familiar with Mensa it's the organization for people who score well on IQ exams. This reporter spends a week at their annual conference in Reno and has an interesting time. It's well reported and does a good job accounting for the variety of people who belong to the organization. They're just like us! Some of them are idiots and some of them are emotionally intelligent and some of them are into polyamory. They all just happen to be good at taking a test that tells them they're smart.

Let’s Just Looks At Art Because Reading Sucks

• The Photographer Capturing The South From Waffle House Booths

• Peter Frederiksen Draws With A Sewing Machine To Create Stunning Embroidery Artwork

• Simon Bailly’s Illustrations Give Modern Hockney Vibes

Lists Are What The Internet Was Made For!

• Food & Wine Best New Chefs 2022

• 7 New Books You Should Read This September

• Top 23 NBA Players 23 Or Under

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“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” - The Dalai Lama

Please excuse any typos or mistakes. If you want to send me corrections to feel good about yourself feel free to do so but I can assure you they will only make me cry.

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