Let's Go Back To The Basics

Welcome back, Shit Givers.

Surprise! It’s me, Willow. Hello, bonjour! Nice to meet you.

Quinn’s under the weather, so I’m stepping out from behind the scenes to keep your inbox warm this week.

Never fear, we’ll get back to his thoughtful and “refreshingly snarky” essays next week, but for now, I’ve got you covered with this week’s news roundup, Action Steps, and an introduction to Basic Shit, INI’s explainer series.

Let’s do this.

Members received an exclusive Top of Mind post about Melatonin (and other supplements) this week. Don’t miss out on the next one.

⚡️ Last week’s most popular Action Step was finding e-bike rebates in your town or state with this Google Sheet of every known incentive program in the country.

👩‍💻 You can read this on the website

🎧 Or you can listen to it (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)

📺️ Like to watch? Check out our YouTube channel

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What We Can Do

⚡️ Campaign to electrify everything in your school by pointing your school board to Rewiring America’s school electrification handbook.

⚡️ The boreal forest is quite literally getting flushed down the toilet. Find TP brands that use recycled or alternative fibers using the NRDC’s Toilet Paper Sustainability Scorecard.

⚡️ Monitoring the CO2 levels in your home is a great way to monitor air quality. The Aranet4 will let you know when it’s time to open a window.

⚡️ Protect people from malaria by donating to the Against Malaria Foundation. Just $2 buys a long-lasting insecticidal net.

⚡️ Project Drawdown’s new Drawdown Roadmap is a science-based strategy to guide governments and businesses prioritize climate actions. Read it, share it, live it.

This is Basic Shit

Most of the issues we cover at INI are big and complex. Climate change, health care, A.I. coming for your job — these are all broad, complicated issues, and it can be overwhelming to try and wrap your head around all of it.

The newsletter and podcast usually look at all of these issues from a 30,000 ft view, and we don’t often go into the basics of what we cover.

Until now.

We started Basic Shit, an explainer series that breaks down many of the science topics we cover into 101 lessons, so you can be better informed and focus on giving a shit.

So far we’ve covered topics ranging from forever chemicals and ocean acidification to environmental justice and immunotherapy.

Get up to speed, and let me know in the comments of this post (see button below) any other topics you’d like to see covered in the future.

Thanks for letting me commandeer the newsletter this week!

Have a great weekend,

— Willow

News From Quinn’s Notebook

Health & medicine

• Here’s how microplastics are impacting our health

• Trouble sleeping? Taking a sleeping pill could reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s

• A vaccine for Lyme disease could be on the horizon

Climate

• Where are the bottlenecks when it comes to implementing climate solutions?

• The courts rebuff delay tactics in climate lawsuits

• Tesla’s battery-storage business is booming

Food & water

• The Colorado River drought has dire consequences

• The oceans are reaching record-breaking temperatures

• The most impactful climate solutions needed in the Farm Bill

Beep Boop

• Apple and Google compete for AI engineers

• The tech firm at the center of the US-China chip war

COVID

• What to know about the Arcturus variant and its symptoms

• The CDC has approved new booster shots. Who’s eligible and when?

Got YouTube?

Let’s stop gatekeeping climate solutions.