🌎📰 Have We Solved The Problems With Desalination?

Welcome to the week!

Now that Veteran’s/Remembrance Day has officially passed, I will now tolerate Christmas music (is that still a faux pas before American Thanksgiving? I don’t know the rules.)

And now onto the news.

This week:

• 🌳 The Amazon’s point of no return

• ⛈️Controlling the weather

• 🧬SynBio breakthroughs

• 💾 Stock trades on a USB stick

Have a great week,

— Willow

This is science for people who give a shit.

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💦 Food & Water:

• These floating desalination machines are completely wave-powered, which is pretty dope

• Deforestation and drought are pushing the Amazon to the point of no return

• These are the companies that control the most land in California, and these are the 20 farming families using more water from the Colorado River than some entire states

• Despite growing concern over antibiotic resistance, the FDA isn’t doing much to track antibiotic use on farms

• Speaker Johnson may be backing off from major spending cuts to SNAP

⚡️ Climate change:

• Japanese scientists are trying to control the weather to weaken storms

• Regardless of nationality, the Global Rich contribute a disproportionate amount to global emissions (shocking, I know — and they aren’t doing much to solve it either, unlike Michigan!)

• Continent-wide disaster data could be used to predict the next megaflood

• EV sales are still growing more rapidly than any other segment in the US (but still more slowly than previously thought)

• An initiative on a tiny Washington island is showing how innovative financing models can help everyone afford a heat pump

🦠 Health & Bio:

• Synthetic biology has hit a major milestone, as scientists have successfully built yeast using artificial DNA

• One of the biggest problems with the US health system? It’s just so damn difficult to navigate

• There will be another pandemic, eventually. Open-sourcing drug discovery could leave us better prepared next time

• (A specific type of) therapy isn’t helping teens improve their mental health

• Pollution in Black communities is driving the reverse Great Migration

👩‍💻 Beep Boop:

• After the world’s biggest bank was hacked, traders were exchanging information via a USB stick 👍️ 

• Big Tech isn’t bothered with trust and safety, so start-ups are popping up to sell it back to you

• Microsoft wants to help US politicians spot deepfakes ahead of the 2024 elections

• A new tool seeks to disrupt terrorist activity on the Internet

• AI could help with fertility treatments and also improve the economic stability of recycling

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Last week’s most popular Action Step was finding e-bike tax incentives and rebates near you with this tool from Ride Review.

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• Be heard about providing healthy school meals for all kids and urge your Member of Congress to support the Universal School Meal Program Act.

• Invest with a financial institution that provides sustainable banking services using bank.green.

Together With Wonkette

What happens when a fun young bartender in the Confederation of Conservative States of America finds herself knocked up after a one-night stand?

It's an enigma wrapped up in an abortion inside a machine gun!

The new serial novel, "The Split", by Ellis Wiener and Steve Radlauer is like Carl Hiaasen meets...well, Wonkette.

And it's free to read every Monday over at our vulgar, hilarious, liberal friends Wonkette.com, the world's last website (and don’t worry, there’s never a paywall at Wonkette.com).

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Seeing the forest through the trees.

Sure, we need to log trees so we can make things to sit on, and things to hang on our wall so we can store or show off our other things, and so that we have space to mine the things that go into our iPhones and farm the things that end up on our plates.

But the rate at which we are doing it is entirely unsustainable and is definitely not doing us any favors when it comes to climate change and biodiversity loss.

Learn more about deforestation (and what you can do about it) by reading our explainer 👇️ 

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Tiny particle accelerators could theoretically be used as targeted cancer treatments! What the what, indeed. Click to blow your mind further👇️ 

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Last week, 30% of you said you do know how your business impacts ecosystems (for better or for worse)

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