Essay: Insurance, for you and me

This week:

Everyone needs insurance. But what kind? And what does it mean to have it, or not?

Well, there’s actual insurance, which is a policy where you and an insurer contract with one another in case things go south with (usually) your home, your car, or your body.

That’s the layman’s technical explanation, but more colloquially, and for our purposes today, “insurance” can mean just having a buffer or a back up plan, or a “thing you might do to make sure a big decision (like buying a home, having a child, or just generally being a person) doesn’t go to hell in a hand basket.”

All of these decisions are usually the result of understanding that just by being alive you’re really putting yourself out there. While you believe in your choices, and the odds of actual calamity are (usually) reasonable, the costs of calamity can be devastating.

My friends: We are in a time of calamity. It’s time to get some insurance.

Here's What You Can Do:

• ⚡️Understand your home's flood and fire risk with Risk Factor
• ⚡️ Work for a local government? Get real-time flood forecasting with FloodMapp
• ⚡️ Wildfire season is around the corner -- get an outdoor monitor and check the map with PurpleAir
• ⚡️ Get ahead of COVID and more. Get your town's wastewater monitored with Biobot
• ⚡️ Over 60? Use your life experiences to organize for climate action with Third Act
• ⚡️ Find the best "green" bank near you with Bank.Green

News Roundup

Health & Medicine

• Parents #1 concern for their kids: mental health
• Teen's leukemia gains into remission after experimental gene-editing therapy
• An ALS patient set a record for communicating via brain implant
• Medicaid continuous enrollment is ending. That's bad.

Climate

• $1.1 trillion was invested in climate tech of all kinds last year. That's the new floor
• The UK will offer £600 million to industry to switch to green steel (Europe's going to need to throw way more money to catch up to the US)
• 1/3 of the Amazon is degraded, and Lula's just started fighting back

Food & Water

• The FDA unveiled limits for lead in baby food, the same week the top food safety official publicly resigned
• Minnesota is one step closer to requiring 100% clean electricity by 2040

Beep Boop

• You'll never guess who's the world's biggest face recognition dealer
• The BlackCat ransomware attack showed how vulnerable health care records are
• Apparently the Xbox is woke now

COVID

• Two new studies suggested the bivalent COVID vaccines are more effective against severe illness than the previous ones, please get them

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