Richard Waite
LightNews LightNews
banner
waiterich.bsky.social
Richard Waite
@waiterich.bsky.social
42K followers 2K following 13K posts
Director, Agriculture Initiatives, World Resources Institute. Working with colleagues around the world to create a sustainable food future. DC-based. Own views.
Posts Replies Media Videos
waiterich.bsky.social
First wintry day of the fall, first frost coming tonight, and this tree is still hanging on to its bright red leaves
A tall tree with very bright red leaves with partly cloudy skies behind it
November 10, 2025 at 8:14 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
Chris had some unconventional business practices, but the original apostrophe placement would have at least passed high school English (that said, the apostrophe without an s after a name ending in s also bothers me)
The original Chris' Steak House (1927–1965) edit Chris' Steak House was founded on February 27, 1927 by New Orleans entrepreneur Chris Matulich.[5] It was located at 1100 North Broad Street near the Fair Grounds Race Course, seated 60 people, and had no parking lot. During Matulich's 38-year management, the business was sold six times. Each time it was sold the business failed and Matulich bought the restaurant back cheaply from the purchasers.[6][7] In 2022, the building became the focus of a historic preservation dispute, when its new owner demolished the iconic wraparound terracotta-tile awning without the proper permits.[8][9]
November 9, 2025 at 2:58 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
Peak color this afternoon. If you look closely you can see a squirrel.
A tree with very bright red autumn leaves with a Bluesky behind it.
November 3, 2025 at 4:42 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
🎶 You can’t hurry leaves
No, you’ll just have to rake
Shred them up on your lawn now
Or compost them for goodness’ sake 🎵
A solid layer of red, orange, and brown leaves in the yard (more continue to fall).
November 3, 2025 at 1:58 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
First evening of Standard Time each fall
Astronaut meme Astronaut 1: Wait, it’s dark out at 5:30pm now? Astronaut 2: Always has been
November 2, 2025 at 10:44 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
Autumn vibes. Sound up.
October 31, 2025 at 12:03 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
Does burning more wood lead to more forests & help the climate? In a new Nature paper, WRI & Yale researchers show such claims rely on flawed accounting and models, and misinterpret underlying studies.

Read the papers: rdcu.be/eNkXX

RSVP to a webinar 10/31, 9:30 ET: hub.wri.org/events/2025/...
Reply to: Carbon implications of wood harvesting and forest management Timothy D. Searchinger, Steven Berry, Liqing Peng The critiqued study by two of the authors of this Reply uses the carbon harvest model (CHARM) to estimate carbon emissions from wood harvest as the carbon added to the atmosphere—fully accounting for silvicultural gains—relative to the carbon that forests would store if left alone. This comparison to no-human-activity is the standard approach for calculating emissions from burning oil, driving cars and other human actions, and is the same forestry-accounting approach used in land-use change models long relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Global Carbon Project and many other papers. In the accompanying Comment, Sohngen et al. reject this approach, arguing mainly that emissions of one activity should be compared with those in an economic counterfactual, which means the emissions produced by the economically estimated, most-likely alternative activities. Citing their previously published global timber model (GTM), they claim that new wood harvests “can reduce” atmospheric carbon, which means they are carbon negative. However, although economic models, when credible, can usefully project shifts in behaviour, they do not determine the emissions of these behaviours; by confusing emissions of one activity with emissions avoided by another, the approach by Sohngen et al. makes physical emissions disappear. We elaborate below and also explain how the GTM’s findings that economic forces offset new wood-use emissions by creating more forests stem from large misinterpretations of underlying studies (even by a factor of 75) and from modelling structures that largely assume their conclusions.
October 30, 2025 at 8:49 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
Looking down / looking up
Fallen yellow, orange, red, and brown leaves on the ground Green, yellow, orange, and red leaves yet to fall. Behind the tree is a Bluesky
October 30, 2025 at 7:41 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
"average person eats 1 olive per serving" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 olives per serving. Olives Georg, who posts from this account & eats all the olives in a jar in one sitting, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
Some Mezzetta garlic stuffed green olives. Nutrition Facts say the serving size is 1 olive and that there are about 30 servings per container
October 28, 2025 at 1:38 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
Man soup
Campbell’s CHUNKY SOUP THAT EATS LIKE A MEAL STEAK AND POTATO 13g PROTEIN PER CAN EXTRA METAL ON TOP
October 28, 2025 at 12:17 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
Weird AI fail just now.

I tried to ask Google what country is about 35 million hectares.

It gave me wrong answers about Angola (actually ~125 million hectares) and also the US and China (each >900 million hectares). All wildly off.

.000 batting average after 3 trips to the plate. 🤷‍♂️
My prompt in Google: "35 million hectares country size" AI overview wrongly tells me Angola is about 35 million hectares (reality: 125 million), and wrongly compares it to the US at 98 million hectares (reality: more than 900 million) and China at 96 million (reality: more than 900 million)
October 27, 2025 at 4:10 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
This is where I’m posting from
Penny looking at her computer book in Inspector Gadget circa 1983
October 27, 2025 at 3:02 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
la vache qui rit de façon automnale
The Laughing Cow limited edition pumpkin spice flavor
October 26, 2025 at 11:16 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
🍁 It’s happening 🍂
A tall tree with a range of leaf colors from green to yellow and orange. Behind it is a Bluesky
October 23, 2025 at 9:24 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_C...
Theft Over the course of several months between 2011 and 2012, the contents of 9,571 barrels, valued at $18.7M, were stolen in a suspected insider job from a FPAQ facility in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Quebec. The syrup was stored in unmarked white metal barrels inspected only once a year. Thieves used trucks to transport barrels to a remote sugar shack, where they siphoned off the maple syrup, refilled the barrels with water, then returned them to the facility.[5] As the operation progressed, the thieves started siphoning syrup directly off barrels in the reserve without refilling them. The stolen syrup was trucked to the south (Vermont) and east (New Brunswick), where it was trafficked in many small batches to reduce suspicion. It was typically sold to legitimate syrup distributors who were unaware of its origin. Discovery and investigation In July 2012, the FPAQ took its annual inventory of syrup barrels. Inspector Michel Gauvreau started climbing up the barrels and nearly fell, expecting 600-pound (270 kg) barrels but finding them to be empty.[5] Police later recovered hundreds of barrels of the syrup from an exporter based in Kedgwick, New Brunswick.[6]
October 21, 2025 at 9:38 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
Procuring these, will report back
Divina Tangerine and Chili Olives. Sweet and Spicy (and I would assume Salty)
October 21, 2025 at 12:00 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
My Lock Screen
My Lock Screen - a beach at sunrise in South Carolina, 🇺🇸. Orange sun barely peeking over the horizon, orange and blue sky reflected in dark waves, beach still in shadows. 10:25pm Saturday Oct 18
October 19, 2025 at 2:27 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
Chomping on a Stayman apple and looking at this scene
A calm lake. A hill behind it has trees with a mix of green, yellow, orange, and brown leaves. In front of the lake are green bushes with some turning red. There is a Bluesky above
October 18, 2025 at 8:05 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
thanks for the #protip, subway
A Subway sandwich wrapper that contains the advice EAT WITH YOUR MOUTH
October 17, 2025 at 7:36 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
Your periodic reminder that demand-side food/GHG mitigation actions that reduce ag land demand (e.g., reduce food waste, shift high-meat diets toward plants) yield a "double climate dividend" by reducing 1) agricultural production emissions & 2) land pressures. 🧪 www.carbonbrief.org/rich-nations...
Headline: Rich nations could see 'double climate dividend' by switching to plant-based foods" - 19 January 2022
October 16, 2025 at 4:30 PM
waiterich.bsky.social
Oooooooof
This teeth-shattering oddity, boasting a deep red hue that'll make a dark cherry look like a fluorescent glow stick, will destroy your helpless mouth with every unfortunate bite. A ten out of ten on the Mohs Hardness Scale, this apple would perform admirably as a drill tip in a diamond mine. While true the hardness marginally decreases if left in your refrigerator for a full year, those patient enough to plan lunch into the next decade will be sorely disappointed with a thick-skinned carbuncle that tastes and feels like an uncooked russet potato. Truly despicable.
October 16, 2025 at 2:59 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
Like come on it’s the best apple in the whole orchard! And yet
Stayman Winesap Apple Review “A Civil War Era Mistake” 41/100 Horse Food
October 16, 2025 at 2:56 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
It appears that the youngs have arranged the birthday balloons at the store
A store display of birthday balloons with 6 and 7 arranged next to each other on every hook. 1-5 and 8-up are all hidden on other hooks or behind the 6s and 7s.
October 13, 2025 at 12:23 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
Actual Squirrel Nut Zippers album cover (1998)
Squirrel Nut Zippers album cover for Perennial Favorites (1998). The font and vibe are old-timey, like from the 19th or early 20th century. There are pictures of flowers and what appears to be a head of green cabbage.
October 12, 2025 at 2:23 AM
waiterich.bsky.social
This isn’t actually a thread of different posts. It’s all just different cultivars of a single post
The “That's On Me, I Set the Bar Too Low” meme, but edited to reference Brassica oleracea. Text as follows: Jake: I'm an expert on vegetables Jess: Oh yeah? Name ten vegetables Jake: Brassica oleracea Jess: That's on me, I set the bar too low.
October 7, 2025 at 1:10 AM