By Emily Baumgaertner in The New York Times…For many, Covid is increasingly regarded like the common cold. A scratchy throat and canceled plans bring a bewildering new critique from friends: You shouldn’t have tested.
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Canada’s wildfires were a top global emitter last year, study says
by Manuela Andreoni in The New York Times…The blazes produced more planet-warming carbon than almost any country, researchers found. That could upend key calculations on the pace of global warming.
Top 6 questions answered about fall vaccines
By Katelyn Jetelina, Your Local Epidemiologist…The bottom line is: Get your fall vaccines—it will cut your risk of diseases by half.
New paper: Polycrisis Research & Action Roadmap
by the Cascade Institute, et al….The authors define the core characteristics of polycrisis
(emergent harms, multiple causes, deep uncertainty, systemic context, and new knowledge and action) and
identify gaps, opportunities, and priorities across four dimensions (theoretical foundations, empirical
research, practical applications, community building).
‘Never summon a power you can’t control’: Yuval Noah Harari on how AI could threaten democracy and divide the world
by Yuval Noah Harari in The Guardian… Forget Hollywood depictions of gun-toting robots running wild in the streets – the reality of artificial intelligence is far more dangerous, warns the historian and author in an exclusive extract from his new book
Apple Intelligence is coming. Here’s what it means for your iPhone
by Kate O’Flaherty in The Guardian…Apple is about to launch a ChatGPT-powered version of Siri as part of a suite of AI features in iOS 18. Will this change the way you use your phone – and how does it affect your privacy?
WHO leader and Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborator clashed in ‘ugly’ meeting
by Emily Kopp in US Right to Know…Tedros told the lawmakers then that “understanding the origin of COVID is a scientific and moral obligation, and it requires China to cooperate, share data, access and information fully and urgently,” the WHO said.
Global Displacement Forecast 2024
Danish Refugee Council writes in Global Displacement Forecast 2024…The fighting that has torn across Sudan since 15 April 2023 has turned the country into one of the
world’s largest displacement and protection crises, and one of the most dangerous environments for
humanitarians to operate in. The stage has been set for a long war.
Chartbook 310 The shock of the new: Dollar dominance and modern monetary macro in the 1920s. (Hegemony note 5)
by Adam Tooze in Chartbook…The denaturing of the gold standard and the emergence of the new field of monetary macroeconomics combined to pose the question of global financial leadership in a way it had never been posed before, compounding the shock of discovering that the United States was the obvious answer to that question of leadership. Basic questions of monetary governance would never again have the feeling of stark novelty they had at that moment.
Eric Schmidt’s AI prophecy: The next two years will shock you
by Azeem Azhar in Exponential View…While he doesn’t say it explicitly, it seems that Eric expects the next two years to be faster and more turbulent than the previous two.