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Welcome to the week.
Before we get into it, a quick plug for our new podcast It’s Called Reality. It just launched last week, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: we watch reality TV, we notice things, and somehow it always connects back to the stuff that actually matters.
Our first two episodes are out now: an intro to the show and a deep dive into Survivor 50. Come for the strategy, stay because you give a shit!
Ok, let’s get to what you’re here for!
This Week
And more.
Have a great week,
— Willow
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⚡️ Climate change:
More World Cup news: at least half of matches face performance-impairing heat conditions (The Athletic)
And Seattle’s heat-dome preparedness exercise revealed serious gaps in emergency response capacity just weeks before 750,000 visitors arrive for the World Cup. (HEATMAP)
🌏 Extreme heat is already cutting into India’s economic growth, with millions of informal workers bearing the worst of it. (Bloomberg)
🌎 Declassified Pentagon and State Department documents show the US government war-gamed exactly this moment: El Niño disrupting food systems, heat destabilizing economies, and political fissures widening. Meanwhile, Trump is dismantling the monitoring infrastructure those same documents said we’d need. (National Security Archive)
🦠 Health & Bio:
Southern California had its smoggiest first five months in over a decade, with 39 unhealthy air days driven by record early heat waves converting exhaust into ozone. (LA Times)
Columbia scientists used base editing to precisely alter genes in human embryos, sparking an ethics debate about where medicine ends and designer babies begin. (The New York Times)
New Mexico became the first state to offer no-cost child care to all families regardless of income, with a model other states are watching closely. (Governing)
As tens of millions of people take GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, real-world data is revealing unexpected effects like muscle loss in older adults, emotional flattening, and nutritional deficiencies. (The New York Times)
💦 Food & Water:
The New World screwworm — a flesh-eating parasite that was eradicated from the US decades ago — has been detected in a Texas calf near the Mexican border 🙃 (LA Times)
As climate change threatens coffee yields, researchers are racing to scale climate-resilient alternatives and hybrids (Mongabay)
Data center water use is real but misunderstood. The actual threat is hyper-local, concentrated in drought-prone communities while Big Tech keeps consumption data private. (HEATMAP)
👩💻 Beep Boop:
A software firm used by 95% of North American transmission operators is proposing AI-enhanced dynamic line ratings that could increase grid capacity 10-20% without building a single new power line. (Canary Media)
States are losing billions subsidizing data center construction for facilities that create fewer than 150 permanent jobs each, while Big Tech lobbies to keep the tax breaks in place. (Popular Information)
Google DeepMind is funding $10 million in research into what happens when millions of AI agents interact at scale, because nobody has studied this yet and the risks are unknown. (MIT Technology Review)
Internal documents from across 1,400+ school district lawsuits reveal that Snapchat, Meta, TikTok, and YouTube deliberately targeted students during school hours, including killing safety features and paying teen ambassadors. (The New York Times)
📣 What You Can Do: Support 🌏 Data & Society, which studies the social implications of AI and proposes solutions, because someone needs to be thinking harder about this than the companies building it (go). And share The Tech Interactive with a teacher or school board member. It has lessons for grades 4+ on AI strengths, limitations, and bias (go).
Last week’s most popular Action Step was finding the best water filter for PFAS “forever chemicals.”
👉 NEW: Find every action recommended in It’s Called Science. right here.
🌎 = Global news/action steps
What did you think of this week's It's Called Science?
How evidence shows what really works
Run for Working People (And Not For Data Centers)
Today, we're gonna talk about data centers.
Now, I know these things are a hot topic amid everything else: the heat, water, prices, lack of homes, lack of childcare, you name it. But we do need to speak out about them.
So, who is the most qualified here to speak about them, and when necessary, against these just enormous data centers that are affecting the heat, the water, the prices, the lack of homes, and more?
In this second batch of conversations, in partnership with our best friends at Run For Something, we're gonna give you exactly what you asked for.
Today, we're gonna talk to an awesome candidate who is running for their town council, who is hellbent on attacking and helping people understand a huge issue in their own hometown.
You and I are gonna find out together what they're working on and where they've made progress, where they have struggled in their candidacy, and how their exact tactics and strategies might be transferable to other schools or towns or cities like yours around this fine country.
📖 Prefer to read? Get the transcript here.
▶ Or watch the full episode on YouTube.
Winter is coming (and your body knows it)
This week, guest writer Syris Valentine dives into why our circadian rhythms are at odds with our economy, and what beavers, vervet monkeys, and deciduous trees can teach us about honoring winter’s rhythms instead of fighting them.
While other species prepare for rest and social bonding, we keep plugging away at the same 9-5 schedule whether it’s June or January.
Turns out our bodies didn’t get the memo that we’re supposed to ignore the seasons, and artificial lighting just isn’t cutting it.
▶ Watch Life Finds A Way on YouTube.
Screenshot from The Last of Us videogame, which inspired the now-airing HBO series. Credit: NaughtyDog
An epidemiologist explains how science fiction has taught us—and misled us—about pandemics
If you asked a random scientist a question about zombies, they're likely to brush the undead monsters off as pure fantasy.
Epidemiologist Tara Smith, however, will take your question seriously—and proceed to thoughtfully explain what the undead can teach us about infectious disease outbreaks and preparing for disasters. In fact, Smith recently taught an entire course on the subject at Kent State University, where she studies emerging infectious diseases.
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