April 26, 2023
🌎 What Would You Say You Do Here
This week:
Is what you’re working on important?
Plus: The cleanest produce, a mosquito factory, lots of rooftop solar, autonomous GPT, maybe, and the latest with the Colorado River
Here's What You Can Do:
- ⚡️ Climate change and mental health are inextricably linked. Get some help with the Climate Mental Health Network.
- ⚡️ Live in or own a multi-family building? Check out how BlocPower can help electrify it.
- ⚡️ If you’re like “I wonder if my town or state has e-bike rebates”, here’s a Google Sheet with every known rebate in the country
- ⚡️ Start a student alliance for tech ethics at your university with the Techshift Alliance.
News Roundup
Health & Medicine
- The countries with the highest rates of malaria deaths have approved Oxford’s new vaccine
- Brazil built a massive mosquito factory — it’s not what you think
- Our friends at Biobot Analytics have expanded their wastewater monitoring into norovirus outbreaks
- Are we close to a combo flu and COVID vaccine?
Climate
- Why SUV’s got so big, and so popular
- Germany shut down their remaining operational nuclear plants for really no reason, but banned new gas and oil heating?
- Elon’s Twitter could break disaster response
- Jigar’s Energy Department committed $3 billion to rooftop solar access for those with lower credit scores
Food & Water
- These are EWG’s “Dirty Dozen” in produce
- Radical “seed breeding” could bring about more climate friendly crops
- The Colorado River crisis didn’t have to be this way, but big meat made it this way
- The massive batteries sloshing around beneath our feet
Beep Boop
- OpenAI’s hunger for data might come back to bite them
- State tech laws are starting to look like state marijuana laws
- How Mexico became the biggest user of Pegasus spyware
- Hype grows over “autonomous” GPT
COVID
- The NIH spent $1 billion on Long COVID research. Where’d it go?
- Ed Yong is back and asking why we’re so keen on erasing Long COVID
Get more:
- Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at https://www.importantnotimportant.com/
- Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com
- Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp
- Subscribe to our YouTube channel
- Take a nap you deserve it
Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors
Mentioned in this episode:
