Whether the United States will attain herd immunity against COVID-19 is a hot-button issue right now. Vaccine administration in the United States has fallen by almost 30%, from a peak of about 3.5 million doses a day to about 2.5 million, largely due to flagging demand. The New York Times surveyed experts and found a
The Senate has passed a large, bipartisan clean water act. The $35 billion dollar infrastructure bill aims to ensure that Americans consistently have access to clean, untainted water. There’s a chlorine shortage. Some pool supply stores are imposing purchasing caps. Higher demand for pool activities mixed with a devastating chemical plant fire have created these
Andy Weir’s The Martian — both the novel and Ridley Scott’s film adaptation — is one of our favourite stories here at The Prepared. Astronaut and botanist Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon in the film) finds himself stranded on Mars fighting to survive without much more than his brain. One of the keys to Watney’s
The deadline to obtain a Real ID has been extended to 2023: California tells Nestlé to stop stripping the state of water during serious drought conditions. The order requires approval from the Water Resources Control Board. The company is accused of taking tens of millions of gallons per year more than it is purportedly entitled
85% of Mexico is suffering from drought and dry conditions. Lakes and reservoirs are drying up, and dust storms are brewing. It’s the worst set of drought conditions the country has seen in decades. California plans to ban fracking by 2024. Although a post-petroleum energy industry is needed to help fight climate change, it’s unclear
On April 15, 2021, Arizona congressional aide and Afghanistan veteran Alexander Lofgren was found dead in a remote part of the Death Valley park. His girlfriend Emily Henkel was found alive with a severe foot injury. Some of the details about this story stood out to us as a unique learning opportunity, eg. how they
The US Post Office has a formerly covert “situational awareness” program whereby they trawl social media posts and amass open-source intelligence data about planned protests. The information is shared with US intelligence agencies. Although it’s reasonable for the Post Office to want to keep employees safe and away from actively dangerous areas of civil unrest,
Does it ever seem like people are having a harder and harder time conceiving children? Do men seem less “manly” than they used to be (so-called “soy boys”)? Many of us have laughed at conspiracy theorists screaming about how “they’re turning the fricking frogs gay,” but there is something to it after all, and it
The US is bracing for the possibility of a “not guilty” verdict in the Chauvin trial and the civil unrest that verdict would precipitate. Cities like Beverly Hills are placing concrete barriers on sidewalks. The National Guard is present in Minneapolis and has already faced danger in the form of a drive-by shooting. There’s a
Note: This post shows killing animals. If you keep livestock, the sad reality is that you need to be willing to slaughter them when the time comes, whether to euthanize them or to harvest them for food. That’s especially true with chickens, even if you aren’t specifically raising them for meat. The thing about chickens
The chip shortage is serious business, and the US needs to decouple its supply chain from China if it wants to stay competitive and be free from the kind of supply and demand shocks that we’re currently facing. The chip shortage could last into 2023. The US will be building more of its own factories
COVID-19 caused demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) to skyrocket, including face shields, goggles, and masks. Many people have also started regularly wearing disposable medical gloves. Now that people have stockpiled gloves at home, we’ve been asked “do medical gloves expire?” The short answer is that if you don’t notice anything odd about them, such
We’ve got ketchup shortages in the US, of all things. Increased demand on takeout meals has increased demand on ketchup packets. This demand couples with continued shipping and logistics problems means less ketchup on the shelves. There have been large and repeated eruptions in St. Vincent. Many are without power now, and parts of St.
A lot of people try gardening by putting seeds in the ground and waiting. When nothing comes up, or plants barely grow, they chalk it up to being bad at gardening or not having a green thumb. In reality, their soil probably just doesn’t have the nutrients plants need. Soil testing is your chief weapon
There’s been rioting in Northern Ireland for six days in a row, and most of the tension is over Brexit-induced trade and border woes. Leaders from all sides are calling for calm, but few are engineering solutions to the problems driving the unrest. The US is exporting a whole lot of corn, and we’ve blown
