Welcome to the week.
We’ll be taking the next few weeks off, so this is the last It’s Called Science. of the year!
Quick reminder: If you’re doing holiday shopping, there’s still time to check out our gift guide and to get your tax-deductible donations in by the end of the year, check out our charitable giving guide!
Now for the news.
This week:
⚡Power-hungry data centers
🦠War and anti-microbial resistance
🏷Fixing food date labels
📱The TikTok ban
And more
See you in the new year,
— Willow
{{active_subscriber_count}}+ people who give a shit got this post in their email, for free.
🙋♀️ Vote!
What would you like to see more of in the newsletter in 2025?
Last week, we asked: How is this post useful to you?
You said:
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's relevant to my work (5%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's relevant to my investments (8%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's relevant to my long-term planning (5%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's relevant to my philanthropy (6%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's helps me ask better questions (26%)
“Even though I'm 69 I've always been an activist in thought. It's most compelling now that we deal with changes in our environment and the way we live. Cancel culture is counterproductive we have more things in common than we are different. Clear direction and implementation must be agreed upon by all.”
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 It's food for thought (48%)
“I may be 87 years old, but learning, which has been a constant in my life's development, has not dimmed in its guidance for me. ”
“Broad interests, read voraciously and find relevant stuff.”
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's not useful to me (2%)
New Shit Giver Adrian is here because “I've lost older family members to COVID-19 and had to move from Brooklyn, NY, in 2020 due to the outbreak's many impacts on the community. I'm witnessing droughts, storms, severe heat, and freezes in my hometown of San Antonio. I want to do work that helps, not harms.
I'm a husband and father of a 7-year-old son, and I think about what kind of world I'll leave to him and his future children. I'm a filmmaker, a photographer, and an 18-year commercial production/advertising veteran. One of the things I've had to carry with me in my professional career is feeling conflicted about doing work that provides stability but also helps companies that aren't committed to solving climate change and social justice.
I'm in the midst of a career transition and actively searching for ways to apply my skills and experience to a climate career or make my next job a green job by influencing and shaping sustainability strategies based on the knowledge I'm learning.“
Thank you so much for sharing and for being here!
🤝 Become an Important Member
We’re 100% independent and proudly supported by readers like you.
Members get a 30 day free trial to:
Ad-free everything
Your What Can I Do? profile: get and keep track of personalized action steps, connect with other Shit Givers
Vibe Check: Our news homepage, curated daily just for you. Never doomscroll again, thx
Seriously?: The frameworks, models, history, and pop culture we use to understand what’s happening now and next
Half Baked: Weekly briefs to help you think and act on specific, timely issues as they happen
Not Important: My favorite books, art, movies, music, apps, and more that have nothing to do with the jet stream slowing down
Lifetime thanks for directly supporting our work
⚡️ Climate change:
Exxon is planning to power Google’s data centers directly — which means they won’t have to connect to the grid — with natural gas-fired plants (Heatmap)
Texas is indeed a national leader in clean energy deployment — but it also burns more coal than any other state, due to deliberate policy choices that suggest it shouldn’t necessarily be held up as a model for other states’ energy transitions (Distilled)
Mississippi is testing out a novel type of insurance called parametric insurance in order to speed up emergency response funding after natural disasters (Mississippi Free Press)
The numbers are in: Replacing gas-powered appliances with heat pumps and electric appliances could reduce emissions by 400 million metric tons and reduce air pollutants by 300,000 tons…which would save billions of dollars in energy and health bills, and prevent thousands of deaths per year. I’m sold. (The New York Times)
🌎 Climate activists worldwide are increasingly facing criminal or civil action for peaceful protests (The Guardian)
🦠 Health & Bio:
Medicare’s expanded telehealth coverage is set to expire on January 1st — unless Congress extends it before the end of the year — impacting over 65 million Americans, especially seniors, people with mobility issues, and rural residents (Mother Jones)
Speaking of Medicare, Wall Street billionaires have been exploiting a tax loophole to avoid paying Medicare taxes, contributing to Medicare’s financial challenges (ProPublica)
🌎 Researchers have published promising results (from a very small study) to treat autoimmune conditions using donor-derived CAR T cells (Nature)
Democrats are planning to reintroduce legislation to ban data brokers from selling highly sensitive health and location data, often without consumer knowledge or consent, due to post-Dobbs concerns over data privacy in apps that track menstrual cycles and location data being used to track visits to abortion clinics (The 19th)
🌏 The devastating impacts of war extend far beyond immediate conflict zones, including damaging public health systems and infrastructure and allowing for the proliferation of antimicrobial resistance (which is predicted to kill 8 million people per year by 2050) (The New York Times)
💦 Food & Water:
🌍 Water levels in the Amazon basin dropped to record-low levels over the past few months, but are starting to show signs of recovery (Mongabay)
The Western states are at an impasse in negotiations over establishing new rules for dealing with water shortages in the Colorado River (The LA Times)
One of America’s poorest communities is facing a severe infrastructure crisis every time in rains, with flooding bringing raw sewage into streets and homes (Capital B)
Cities across the US are addressing grocery costs and food deserts by proposing city-owned grocery stores (The New York Times)
Confusing food date labels lead to food waste, which drives up emissions and grocery bills. The FDA and other federal agencies are seeking industry and public input to improve labeling practices (Bloomberg)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
🌎 Despite some security concerns, WhatsApp’s widespread adoption and compression algorithm make it an indispensable communication tool in conflict zones and disaster areas (Rest of World)
Virginia is a global hub for data centers (70% of global internet traffic goes through North Virginia alone!), which are huge contributors to the state’s GDP — but are also sucking up all of its power, and residents may have to foot the bill to increase power generation and keep up with the energy demand (WHRO Public Media)
🌎 An AI-powered app is being used as a mental health treatment to prevent suicides in Mexico (Rest of World)
A federal appeals court is prioritizing national security concerns over First Amendment protections, ruling that ByteDance must sell TikTok or face a US ban (Platformer)
26 members of Congress — 25 women and one man — have been victims of AI-generated nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes (The Markup)
🌎 = Global news
Time to reframe the climate narrative👇
Last week’s most popular Action Step was learning about community health worker programs by taking this course from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Donate to the National Center for Science Education to help ensure millions of students have access to accurate science education.
Volunteer to participate in Alzheimer’s clinical trials at the Knight Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center to advance diagnosis, care, and treatment research.
Get educated about how to request a denied insurance claim so you can appeal it with this claim file helper from ProPublica.
Be heard about giving caregivers a break with the Credit for Caring Act.
Invest in a green portfolio using Earthfolio.
NEW: Find the action steps that mean the most to you at WhatCanIDo.Earth
Together with Refind
Brain food, delivered daily.
Every day we pick the best links from around the web that make you smarter, tailored to your interests.
Refind is a must-read newsletter loved by 450k+ curious minds.
Sign up for free today.
What is immunotherapy?
Your immune system constantly fights cancer cells, and scientists have found a way to supercharge it — immunotherapy.
This potentially revolutionizing cancer treatment has fewer side effects than chemotherapy, offering new hope in the battle against one of humanity's deadliest enemies 👇
I should really just rename this section to “Bird Fact of the Week” 👇
🤝 Thanks for reading. Here’s how we can help you directly:
☎️ Work with Quinn 1:1 (slots are extremely limited) - book time to talk climate strategy, investing, or anything else.
🎯 Sponsor Important, Not Important - reach {{active_subscriber_count}} (and counting) sustainably-minded consumers across our newsletters, web, and audio.