Is Cultivated Meat Officially A Flop?

Happy Monday, Shit Givers.

This week is #BlackClimateWeek, an initiative by the Solutions Project to highlight climate solutions and environmental justice work led by the Black community. Check out their suggested reading lists!

Now onto the news.

This week:

• 🍎 Food desert fixes

• 🌊The Atlantic Ocean’s tipping point

• 💵Funding for Long Covid

• 🤖 AI tools & upgrades keep on coming

• And more

Have a great week,

— Willow

This is science for people who give a shit.

Every week, we help 27,000+ humans understand and unfuck the rapidly changing world around us. It feels great, and we’d love for you to join us.

New Shit Giver Susanne wants to help solve “helping our young adults see a world where they can have hope, can contribute, feel cared for, and appreciate IRL rather than be isolated in their thoughts and screens.“

That is 100% our goal here. Welcome!

💦 Food & Water:

• 🌏️ The cultivated meat industry is still facing major scaling hurdles, and the optimistic enthusiasm from a few years ago is fading. It could be a lesson that the necessary change to our meat-heavy diets will take a lot more than a quick tech fix

• Bringing fresh food into food deserts requires alternative grocery models (and, of course, funding)

• Prenatal supplements aren’t regulated. Is that a cause for concern?

• We’re getting better at recycling wastewater (yep, what gets flushed down your toilet) for drinking, compost, and energy. Kinda gross, kinda cool

⚡️ Climate change:

• 🌍️ New data indicates that the circulation of the Atlantic Ocean is tilting towards a tipping point that would cause an abrupt and irreversible global shift in climate patterns. It’s still unclear when that will happen, but if it does it’s bad news for humanity

• We really, really need to shift to renewable energy (see above re: inching closer to apocalyptic tipping points). If we could do that without further contributing to biodiversity decline, that would be great (sips coffee)

• 🌎️ The transition to EVs is slowing down globally, but with the right policies, there’s room for hope

• 🌏️ Google is teaming up with the Environmental Defense Fund to track (and then cap) methane emissions — from space!

🦠 Health & Bio:

• Long Covid research is getting 50% more funding, but some are concerned that it still may not be enough

• Data for a huge anti-abortion campaign was allegedly obtained by tracking people’s visits to nearly 600 Planned Parenthood locations across 48 states

• 🌏️ The results are in: taking magic mushrooms can improve your sex life for months after your trip

• 🌎️ A vaccine for Ebola not only prevents infection but also reduces fatality in people who have already been infected

• A $2 billion Medicare fraud scheme is under investigation

👩‍💻 Beep Boop:

• 🌏️ In the biggest election year ever, Meta is cutting funding for fact-checking on WhatsApp, while TikTok says it’s enhancing efforts to fight fake news in the EU

• 🌏️ Hackers are using ChatGPT to improve cyberattacks

• OpenAI has launched a new text-to-video AI model (Sora), and Google has already launched a more powerful upgrade for Gemini

• 🌍️ The European Court of Human Rights ruled that cops using backdoors to descript messages is a violation of human rights

🌎️ = Global news

Last week’s most popular Action Step was learning about how to join a clinical trial for psychedelic research near you.

• 🌍️ Donate to the Malala Fund so that more girls get access to education (one of the most impactful things you can do for climate change, btw).

• Volunteer with your local YIMBY group to advocate for affordable housing in your community.

• 🌎️ Get educated about climate change by taking The Climate Reality Project’s Climate 101 course.

• Be heard about building heat resilient cities, and share the Heat Action Platform with your city officials.

• Invest sustainably with a green investment portfolio from Earthfolio.

🌎️ = Global Action Step

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Get it now on mobile and desktop for just $5/month or $50/year (a 17% discount).

Listen up, renters!

While all the home electrification hype caters to homeowners, we know you want to ditch fossil fuels too.

And if your landlord is leaving free money available through the Inflation Reduction Act on the table, don’t worry! We’ve put together a guide that outlines your options. Read it now 👇️ 

Cancer sucks

Like really sucks. And unfortunately, the most common treatment, chemotherapy, really sucks too.

But there is a promising alternative called immunotherapy that helps our immune systems kick cancers ass.

Basically, immunotherapy is like a hype man for your immune system, jazzing it up to beat down cancer cells, without the harsh side effects of chemo.

Its effectiveness for different types of cancers is still debated, but there have been promising results for some types of cancer. Read all about it 👇️ 

Category is: Unlikely Heroes. Read for more info on the virus vs. bacteria saga 👇️ 

🙋‍♀️ Vote!

In last week’s poll, 41% of you said you don’t use public transportation because it isn’t reliable/accessible/available where you live.

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