INI podcast

Quinn Emmett

October 7, 2018

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‍October 5th, 2018

32 goddamn days to go

P hone Bank - Knock on Doors - Win Win Win

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Asbestos. Radiation. Mercury. If it can poison you/turn you into a supervillian, Trump and his fucking henchmen have made it more accessible to the American people. Kryptonite? Sure. That shit the Joker fell into in Tim Burton's Batman? Fuck it, why not. #MAGA

You know why you're voting. Make sure everybody else does.

PODCAST UPDATE

This week's question was Why Does Congress Need a Female Air Force Officer/Engineer/Chemistry Teacher/Mom?

Our guest: Chrissy Houlahan, candidate for the House of Representatives and Pennsylvania district six. Find out her very personal reasons for getting into the race.

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Subscribe now to get next Tuesday's episode: What’s harder: Building Clean Power Plants, or Playing in a Reputable Cover Band?

Our guest: Sean Casten, Congressional candidate for Illinois district 6. He’s got like 40 science degrees, and built profitable clean energy. Let's go.

These are both new conversations in our partnership with 314 Action, as we work to put STEM candidates in office on November 6th. Or else we die.

On to the news!

Clean Energy 💨☀️⚡️

China’s Giant Market for Really Tiny Cars

"The taste for tiny EVs has become a quirky subplot in China’s push to become a world leader in electric cars. Roughly 1.75 million micro-EVs were sold in China last year, more than twice the sales of regular EVs, of around 777,000, industry executives estimate. Most of the tiny ones were sold in a handful of rural provinces. The market is still growing rapidly, with some 400 Chinese manufacturers building countless models."

More Clean Energy:

- A Green New Deal is on the ballot in Washington state this year

- Whomever Figures Out Better Batteries Is Going To Be A Goddamn Trillionaire

- Sunrun is bringing 100 megawatts of rooftop solar to low-income communities

Food & Water 🍌🥑🥕🔬💊👩‍🌾🚰

The World Bank's latest tool to fight famine: BATMAN. I'm kidding. It's artificial intelligence.

"A year after severe food shortages threatened more than 20 million people in countries such as South Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen, a coalition of international organizations say they are partnering with tech companies in an effort to prevent future famines using technology.

The coalition — which includes the World Bank, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon — said Sunday it is launching a tool called the “Famine Action Mechanism,” a still-evolving algorithm that will use analytics to identify areas that are most likely to experience extreme food shortages."

Climate Change 🔥🌊💨

Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change.

"The vast majority of Democrats and Republicans running for federal office do not mention the threat of global warming in digital or TV ads, in their campaign literature or on social media.

Environmental activists and political scientists say it is a reflection of the issue’s perpetual low ranking among voters, even Democratic voters, and of the intense polarization along party lines that has developed around global warming, even as the science of human-caused warming has become overwhelming.

For scores of Democrats running in reddish districts and hoping to win a majority in the House, and for Democratic Senate candidates running in states President Trump won, highlighting climate change risks handing conservative voters a motivating issue to turn out against them."

+ More Climate Change:

- Google's got two new climate related tools: an AI flood predictor and an air pollution measure-r

- Reminder: Puerto Rico is still fucked.

- Time to start thinking harder about sucking the carbon out of the air.

Biology 401 💉👾💊

Just 57% of 6 month to 17 year old kids got flu vaccines last year

There's no article. Get your kids fucking vaccinated. All of them. Just do it.

+ More Bio 401:

- How smartphones plugged vaccine gaps in rural Pakistan

- Wiping Out the Brain’s Retired Cells Prevents a Hallmark of Alzheimer's

- Tiny Device Is a ‘Huge Advance’ for Treatment of Severe Heart Failure

Fuck Cancer, Volume CIX 🖕

Customized immunotherapy is way too fucking expensive

"Kymriah is priced between $373,000 and $475,000 per patient, depending on the type of cancer, and Yescarta at $373,000. When the costs of other necessary medical support is tallied up, the total average cost for treatment rises to anywhere from $500,000 to $850,000 per patient.

The extraordinary cost of these treatments presents a tragic dilemma: We may soon have a miracle drug for cancer whose cost, when multiplied across the population that needs it, could bankrupt the country."

+ More Cancer:

- First Neuroblastoma Patient Successfully Dosed with Natural Killer T Cells

- Cancer cells evade immunotherapy by hiding telltale marker, fuck them

- Lung cancer drug cuts deaths by almost a third

The Final Frontier/Escape Hatch 🚀

Moon is stepping stone to MARS, NASA says

""The moon is the proving ground, and Mars is the goal," Bridenstine said during testimony before the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, part of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation."

+ He said, 40 years after we proved we could go to the moon six times