🌎📰 The OpenAI Power Struggle

Welcome to the week!

There’s still time to contribute ideas for our 2023 Gift Guide (out Friday) or suggest organizations for our Charitable Giving Guide (out the following week)! Just reply to this email with your suggestions, and we’ll check them out.

Now let’s get to the news.

This week:

• 🌍️ Meeting 1.5°C

• ☣️ Pesticides & cancer

• 🚰 Drought in Mexico

• 🤖 Robot warfare

• And more

Have a great week,

— Willow

This is science for people who give a shit.

Every week, we help 25,000+ 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 Ryn wants to help solve “clean oceans and water, reducing food waste, and natural health.“

Welcome!

👩‍💻 Beep Boop:

• Behind the scenes of OpenAI’s chaotic power struggle

• Privacy activists are alarmed at France’s AI surveillance plan for the 2024 Paris Olympics

• Most states are behind in providing pathways to recourse for teen girls victimized by deepfake nude photos

• Meta “routinely documented” and collected data on Instagram users under 13 years old

• Countries are calling for new legal constraints around “robot warfare”

⚡️ Climate change:

• Understand where we’re at in keeping global warming below 1.5°C, and the costs of not acting, with these delightful interactive charts

• The mortality risk from US coal power plants, quantified and visualized

• Clean energy start-ups are struggling to stay afloat while waiting for government funding

• Europe’s wind sector had a rough year but hasn’t given up yet (plus some context to quell solar and wind energy waste concerns)

• And some more helpful visualizations of how electricity generation is changing per country

🦠 Health & Bio:

• Meet the doctor improving the quality of healthcare for women of color around the world

• Scientists are referring to the gut as a “second brain”, where nervous system cells are integral to digestion and disease

• Just 14% of adults have received the new Covid-19 vaccine this year, despite the ongoing threat of Omicron and long-term health problems caused by viral infections

• In US clinical trials, harmed volunteers are not guaranteed support

• The California farmers believe pesticides caused their cancers, but are struggling to prove it (meanwhile Bayer is paying $1.56 billion to plaintiffs in Missouri harmed by Roundup)

💦 Food & Water:

• Another reminder that developed nations will need to eat less meat to meet global climate goals

• Drought in Mexico is leading to serious economic and political ramifications

• The Environmental Defense Fund and Intertribal Agriculture Council are collecting quantitative data on the pros and cons of investing in Indigenous-led regenerative agriculture

• The 27-year-old that is “arguably the most powerful person involved in talks on the future of the Colorado River”

• A new map on plant hardiness in the US is changing gardens across the nation, with half the country shifting into a new zone

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• Donate to Emerge to help women get elected to office.

• Volunteer with the Black Futures Lab to help Black communities build political power across all levels of government.

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• Be heard about community investments in restoration and resiliency projects that protect against climate change and improve biodiversity by urging your representatives to support the Land Restoration and Resiliency Act.

• Invest in companies that score highly on metrics that underpin the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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What is carbon removal?

Learn about the different types, why it’s necessary even though decarbonization is still priority number one, and how you can contribute with our carbon removal explainer 👇️ 

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Read the full article for more details into “the next evolution of 3D printing.” 👇️ 

🙋‍♀️ Today’s Poll

Last week, 93% of you agreed that companies using PFAS should be taxed to pay for cleanup and removal.

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