The Most Important Question

Essay: Welcome to the Unknown Unknowns

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This week:

What we know — and more importantly, what we don’t — about what AI is capable of, and how much change we’re capable of absorbing.

Plus: the Willow Project, H-1B visas, blueberries, honeybee vaccines, climate disclosure rules, next-gen bed nets, and health insurance in North Carolina

Here's What You Can Do:

  • ⚡️ Just a few bucks buys some life-saving bed nets with Against Malaria, maybe the most effective NGO on the planet

  • ⚡️ The only thing dumber than cancer is rare cancers. Good news: you can help fund research against them (and work up a sweat at the same time) with our friends at Cycle for Survival

  • ⚡️ This is the best electric vehicle you can buy

  • ⚡️ Get educated and follow the Black Maternal Health Caucus on Twitter

  • ⚡️ Understand your home’s exposure to flooding, fires, heat and wind with Risk Factor

    • News Roundup

    Health & Medicine

    • What’s second-hand stress?

    • Next-gen bed nets are coming and could save so many lives

    • Medicaid expansion might finally be coming to North Carolina

      • Climate

      • Joe Biden approved the Willow Project in Alaska and it sucks, but on the other hand, the US is on track for a major clean energy milestone

      • The world’s first honeybee vaccine is like “magic”

      • Use this tool to see how early spring came to your neighborhood

      • In the future, it might still cost $1 trillion per ppm of CO2 removed, we should pay for it

      • The SEC’s climate disclosure rules are coming. 85% of business execs said they’re not ready.

      • Why did insurers slash Hurricane Ian payouts?

        • Food & Water

        • The EPA proposed their strongest ever standards for keeping coal plant pollution out of your water (right after they went after forever chemicals)

        • Blueberries are packed with pesticides?

        • A Supreme Court case could reshape Indigenous water rights in the (parched) southwest

          • Beep Boop

          • Some additional AI reading: Azeem Azhar on “Everything, everywhere, all at once”; Are LLM’s the new CPU’s?

          • Amid mass tech layoffs, workers on H-1B visas have 60 days to find a job, or leave the country, and we’re really just doing this all wrong

            • COVID

            • COVID made maternal health outcomes much worse (and especially among Black people)

            • There doesn’t seem to be an association between Paxlovid and a COVID rebound, which is great

              • Get more:

              • Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter

              • Got feedback? Email us at [email protected]

              • Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp

              • Subscribe to our YouTube channel

              • Get fun merch at importantnotimportant.com/store

              • Take a nap you deserve it

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