How Can We Use A.I. For Good?

Happy Monday, Shit Givers!

I’m clinging to the last weeks of summer, however hot and smoky it has been, and am technically out of the office this week to get as much vitamin D as possible before The Rain™️ comes (for context: I live in the Pacific Northwest).

But I would never let your inbox get cold, so lucky you: here’s our regularly scheduled programming of news and action steps to give a shit about.

This week:

• 🥩 Greenwashed beef

• 🍄 Psychedelic depression treatments

• 🍑 Hard times for the peach industry

• 🐶 Talking to animals using A.I.

• And more!

Have a great week,

— Willow

This is science for people who give a shit.

Every week, we help 20,000+ humans understand and unfuck the rapidly changing world around us. It feels great, and we’d love for you to join us.

👩‍💻 Beep Boop:

• The case for regulating A.I. so it can be used for good

• Like helping us talk to animals! (All of my Dr. Dolittle dreams are coming true)

• Generative A.I. could revolutionize healthcare, and STAT has created a tool to track the uses closest to helping people

• The UK government has backed down from encryption, weakening its Online Safety bill

⚡️ Climate change:

• A draft of the global plastics treaty is finally ready

• Keep an eye out for greenwashed beef

• The demand for copper is growing, and so is the need to find new methods of extraction

• Turns out extreme heat is bad for pregnant people

• Meet the Grist 50 climate leaders kicking ass on climate solutions

🦠 Health & Bio:

• A timeline of vaccine discoveries, how fun!

• How do risk factors get calculated anyway?

• Here’s a map of where in the U.S. industrial air pollution is causing cancer

• A new type of UV light could be used to reduce indoor air microbes by 98%

• Depression can be treated with a single dose of magic mushrooms or just good old-fashioned exercise

💦 Food & Water:

• Growing cities in Africa must plan for water security

• Taming the Colorado River made the West what it is today — and the drought will change everything

• What the climate crisis means for the peach harvest

• Global turmoil has led Norway to start stock-piling grain

Last week’s most popular Action Step was donating to wipe out medical debt with RIP Medical Debt.

• Donate to a local classroom so that teachers don’t have to front the cost of essential learning materials.

• Volunteer to report your tick encounters, keep your neighborhood safe, and help researchers understand the spread of disease-spreading ticks as the climate warms with The Tick App. The app also has a ton of useful information about prevention, identification, and safe removal.

• Get educated about the quality of nursing homes near you by searching ProPublica’s Nursing Home Inspect database of 90,000 nursing home inspection reports.

• Be heard about the factory farm crisis and urge your representative to support the Farm System Reform Act.

• Invest in the fight against climate change using this database to decarbonize your portfolio and find climate funds.

Together With Soapbox Project

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The best clothes dryer you can buy is a heat pump dryer.

Chances are you aren’t one of the 12% of Americans with a gas-powered dryer.

If you do fall into that category, you should definitely consider switching to an electric dryer using that sweet, sweet IRA cash.

And if you already have an electric dryer, switching to a more efficient heat pump dryer can still save you a lot of money.

Lucky for you, we’ve already researched everything you need to consider before making the switch, plus a few of our recommendations for the best models out there.

Getting started is just one click away. 👇️ 

What is carbon removal?

It’s controversial, it’s necessary, but sometimes it’s greenwashing bullshit…it’s complicated.

Learn the basics (carbon removal vs. carbon capture, different methods of removal, and what the hell you can do about it all) with our carbon removal explainer to get better equipped at sorting through the nuances.

Support Our Work

INI is 100% independent and mostly reader-supported.

This newsletter is free, but to support our work, get my popular “Not Important” book, music, and tool recommendations, connect with other Shit Givers, and attend exclusive monthly live events, please consider becoming a paid Member.

Just take the bus already.

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