President Biden was seen test driving the new Ford F-150 electric pick up truck earlier this week in Dearborn Michigan. Companies are racing to produce their electric pick up trucks (Tesla, Ford, General Motors, and Chevy all have plans to release an electric pick up truck).

Will the release of electric pick-ups be the push we need to those who were previously uninterested in electric cars, onboard? The Ford F-150 has been the most popular pickup truck in the U.S for 39 years. It’s one of the most sold cars in many states across the U.S.

When you imagine an electric vehicle driver they are likely not the same type of people you imagine driving a pick up truck. Maybe the new electric ford can change that.

So are the trailer-towing, pickup truck-driving residents of Middle America going to adopt these EVs? It looks like a long shot: Only 2 percent of all cars sold in the U.S. today are electric, and most of those are sold in blue states like California, Washington, and Oregon. 

Will the Ford F-150 Lightning turn Middle America onto EVs?

With a price tag of $39,974 (for the base model), the new electric F-150 is surprisingly cheap for an electric vehicle, let alone an electric pickup.

The company Tassal has plans to build an 80 hectare salmon farm with 28 large ocean cages filled with hundreds of thousands of salmon, along the coast of Tasmania.

Many along the coast are concerned about the environmental implications of salmon farming and expanding out into untouched waters. Along Macquarie harbor 21,000 tons of fish feed has ended up in the water in the past year alone, creating massive amounts of waste.

In 2015 80,000 salmon suffocated to death after a sudden drop in oxygen. The fish are often seen in distress not wanting to eat and seeking out more oxygen. Despite problems of overcrowding, the government increased the number of fish in the harbor. All this came after another smaller salmon company wrote a letter to the government stating that Tassal has totally disregarded environmental and fish health.

Recommended: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

Finding healthy sustainable fish can be difficult and expensive. Fish is often contaminated with mercury, microplastics, and other toxins. For this reason, we don’t recommend making fish a big staple in your diet.

ABC News released a video on salmon farming and the environmental concerns with it, which you can watch below.

A new study by the University of Michigan suggests that exposure to glyphosate and AMPA significantly increases the risk for preterm births.

The study was published in Environmental Health Perspective and found that the presence of glyphosate in women’s urine later in pregnancy was associated with a higher risk of premature birth. Infants born prematurely are at a greater risk for long-term health problems.

Researchers measured glyphosate and AMPA levels by testing urine. The chemicals are not metabolized by mammals. They tested 247 pregnant women between 16-20 weeks and 24-28 weeks.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

Looking at preterm births (babies born at less than 37 weeks of pregnancy) and comparing them to controls, the research team found that the odds of preterm birth were significantly elevated among women with higher urinary concentrations of glyphosate and AMPA at the third visit, while associations with levels at the first visit were largely null or inconsistent.

Glyphosate herbicide exposure linked to preterm births

With all the other health problems caused and exasperated by glyphosate it’s no surprise that it negatively affects pregnant women as well.

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we live everyday life drastically, so it’s no surprise that as we try to return to some semblance of normal, many people are questioning how that will work.

One of the current questions is how to get crowds to return to professional sporting events safely. A soccer game in Europe in February of 2020 was considered one of the first “super-spreader” events in which 7,000 of the more than 40,000 attendees contracted covid-19.

In March of 2021, a poll by the Washington Post/University of Maryland showed that only 42% of those surveyed would be comfortable attending a sporting event.

The solution for many people may lay in biometrics, the digital analysis of fingerprints or faces, designed for contactless ordering of food and drinks. Technology like this was already being worked on for sporting events, covid-19 has only pushed the timeline forward. Similar technology is being used already around the world.

Related: How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children

The use of biometric technology like this raises concerns about privacy for many people. Biometric technology gathers and stores our personal data. States in the U.S, Texas, Washington, Arkansas, New York, and California have passed biometric legislation. The European Union’s privacy watchdog called for a total ban on biometrics.

Donnie Scott, IDEMIA’s vice president of public safety, says his company allows fans to opt out of the use of their biometric data during a game — and automatically purges that data from its servers after the game is over.

Biometrics will get sports fans back in stadiums

Last spring as Covid-19 began making its way through the population 23andMe began a study to answer the question “who’s likely to get sick, or to get very sick?”

A common problem with studies like this is finding enough participants, with enough diversity for the results to be accurate. The study collected data from more than a million participants, with three percent of participants identifying as black, and 11% of participants identifying as Latino. These numbers are still lower than the diversity represented in the U.S but are higher than the diversity in most studies of this type.

People were asked about their age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and specific questions about Covid-19, such as were they diagnosed with Covid-19, were they hospitalized, and how they assessed their breathing. Of the 1.05 million respondents, 15,000 reported being diagnosed with Covid, with 1,1000 hospitalized.

The study found a strong connection between blood type and rather or not someone would test positive for Covid-19. People with the O blood type were less likely to test positive for the virus.

Related: How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children

One especially strong link popped out: the gene that determines a person’s blood type. The analysis showed that the ABO gene strongly linked to the possibility that someone would test negative for Covid-19. A person’s blood type is determined by variations in a single gene. The team found that the O blood type was less likely to test positive for the infection than expected—suggesting, though not necessarily proving, that the blood type could be more protective against the disease.

23andMe’s Huge Covid-19 Study Draws Links Between the Virus and Our Genetics

Oxitec, the biotech firm released the first round of genetically modified mosquitoes at the end of April. This is the first time in the U.S that genetically modified mosquitoes have been released.

Previously the modified Aedes aegypti modified mosquitoes have been released in Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Panama, and Malaysia. A. aegypti mosquito populations were said to drop by at least 90% in those locations. In the U.S, the mosquitoes were released in the Florida Keys.

A aegypti mosquitoes carry diseases like Zika and yellow fever. The genetically modified mosquitoes are all male and are engineered with a lethal gene that is passed on to offspring when the genetically modified mosquitoes mate with females. The lethal gene prevents female mosquitoes from developing an essential protein and causes them to die before reaching maturity. Only female mosquitoes bite people, as males exclusively drink nectar.

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The company will capture mosquitoes throughout the trial to observe how far the insects travel from their boxes, how long they live and whether female mosquitoes are actually picking up the lethal gene and dying off. To make it easier to track the modified mosquitoes, Oxitec introduced a gene that causes the mosquitoes to glow under a specific color of light.

The First Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Have Just Been Released in The US

Releasing genetically modified mosquitoes is suppose to serve as an alternative to spraying with pesticides to control the population. Currently, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District budgets a million dollars a year to control the mosquitoes by spraying aerial insecticides.

Russell Brand shared his thoughts on the prospect of vaccine passports in a recent video while examining some of the problems with tracking those who are vaccinated.

One of the biggest problems with the vaccine passport is how the vaccine data will be controlled, and who will control it. In the US, we don’t have a universal health care plan, and consequently, we don’t have a database to store information like that. Because of this, big tech has since stepped in with its own ideas for databases to track those who are vaccinated and those who aren’t. To those who pay attention to the track record of big tech, this is extremely concerning. These companies don’t have a history of protecting the best interest of the people.

Additionally, the government itself has a poor track record of keeping its word. With promises that something like a vaccine passport would only be temporary, maybe for a year or so many people are reluctant to trust this based on experiences such as the patriot act following 911.

Related: How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children

“Often disasters and times of crisis are used to leverage further power for already powerful entities” 

Vaccine Passports: THIS Is Where It Leads

Of course, not everyone wants or is able to get the vaccine. As Brand says in the video, which you can watch below, the concept of vaccine passports raises fears of a “two-tier society” in which those who are vaccinated get to enjoy everyday things like music and sporting events, traveling, or going to the movie theatre, and those who aren’t vaccinated, are shunned from activities that are considered basic freedoms. This is an even bigger problem in a world where we are already in many ways divided like this. Marginalized communities are likely the ones who would pay the consequences of not getting vaccinated. Rather unwilling or unable, many marginalized communities have good reason to reject the vaccine with a history of being hurt by our government and health care systems.