So I've been reading about some random stuff lately, and these things have been sitting in my head for a while. You know how it is—you start with skyscrapers covered in forests, end up at the grocery store aisle, and somehow land on Bambi, of all things.
Anyway, figured I'd share. You might find them interesting too.
I love buildings covered in greenery. Walls, balconies, entire facades—just filled with plants. It's brilliant. I'm a total black thumb—I can kill a cactus—but that doesn't stop me from appreciating it. I grew up in an Appalachian town surrounded by trees. I'd sit for hours just looking at all that green. There's something calming about it. Give me a good book and a spot under some trees, and I'm happy. So, when I discovered skyscrapers with literal forests growing on them? I was hooked.
The idea isn't totally new—people have been sticking plants on buildings since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon around 600 BC. But it took until the 1980s for someone to really figure out how to do modern living walls, and even longer for someone to think: what if we didn't just add a wall of plants, but covered an entire skyscraper in an actual forest?
Enter Stefano Boeri. In 2007, he was in Dubai watching glass towers turn the city into an oven, and he had this thought: What if we just... put trees on buildings instead? By 2014, his first "Vertical Forest" had been completed in Milan. Now there are 8 completed, 8 under construction, and 24 more being designed around the world.
Milan has these two towers—Bosco Verticale, "Vertical Forest"—covered in 800 trees, 4,500 shrubs, and 20,000 plants.
And it works. These buildings absorb 44,000 pounds of CO2 yearly, drop indoor temperatures by a few degrees, and within the first year, over 1,600 birds and insects moved in.
I keep wondering, though—how do you water all that greenery on a skyscraper? What happens if it's abandoned? I picture nature taking over completely—either wild and beautiful, or a complete overgrown mess. But maybe that's the point.
Best part? The Trudo Vertical Forest in Eindhoven is social housing—rent capped at $510/month. Not some billionaire project.
What if the measure of a modern city wasn't how far it sprawls, but how much living forest it can hold in the sky?
Everyone's talking about ultraprocessed foods lately. The Lancet just published a whole series on it, California passed a law about it for school lunches, and headlines everywhere. But here's the part they're dancing around.
The takeover didn't happen overnight. In 1963, R.J. Reynolds—yes, the tobacco company—bought Hawaiian Punch. That was just the beginning. Big Tobacco went on a shopping spree—Del Monte, Nabisco, General Foods, Kraft, 7UP. They brought their addiction-engineering expertise straight to your pantry. By the 1980s, ultraprocessed foods were everywhere.
Now? 70% of U.S. grocery stores are ultraprocessed—engineered to hit the "bliss point" that hijacks your brain's "I'm full" signal. The food industry spent 60 years removing actual food from our food.
Get this: people eating ultraprocessed foods ate 500 more calories per day than people eating whole foods—even when both were equally available. They just couldn't stop.
The damage? Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, depression, and early death. Just 10% more in your diet ups your early death risk by 3%.
And food corporations made $2.9 trillion between 1962 and 2021, with over half going to ultraprocessed manufacturers. It's Big Tobacco's playbook all over again—engineer addiction, fund fake research, market to kids.
