Exothermic is the leader in self-reliance brand marketing, but we like to share our wisdom with the world. Here are the top stories we’ve identified this week in our markets:

Survivalism

• Disaster Agency To Weather Hurricane Season With No Leader, Proposed Cuts, Forecasters say the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, which begins Thursday, could bring “above-normal” storm activity. Residents along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are making sure they have supplies and plans in place if a storm hits.
• Two Different Studies Find Thousands of Bugs In Pacemakers, Insulin Pumps and Other Medical Devices, “One study solely on pacemakers found more than 8,000 known vulnerabilities in code inside the cardiac devices,” reports BBC. “The other study of the broader device market found only 17% of manufacturers had taken steps to secure gadgets.”
• Lyme Isn’t the Only Disease Ticks Are Spreading This Summer, A model

  

  that can incorporate all the parameters for tick population sizes could actually tell you something useful about disease risk. And that’s exactly what Goudarz Molaei is building right now.

• A third of the nation’s honeybee colonies died last year. Why you should care, One in every three bites of food, van Engelsdorp said, is directly or indirectly pollinated by honeybees, who pollinate about $15 billion worth of U.S. crops each year.
• The Rise of Liberal Preppers – Welcome to the Party!, We have lots of the same types of worries on the other side here, but we just call ourselves preppers.
• Robots Wielding Water Knives Are the Future of Farming, Garcia and the other workers here didn’t lose their jobs to a robot—they work in tandem with one. And just as well, because California farms are facing a serious labor shortage of perhaps 20 percent.
• Handshake-Free Zones Target Spread Of Germs In The Hospital, Hospital-acquired infections are a serious and potentially life-threatening problem. On any given day, 1 in 25 hospital patients suffers from at least one infection acquired while they are in the hospital.
• The Future of Your City Is Absolutely Terrifying, According to Science Fiction, Redfin, a real estate company, had some fun crunching numbers and catastrophes from 44 genre movies to answer the question: if film plots came true, what are we in for in America’s biggest cities?

Sustainability

• 61 US cities and three states vow to uphold Paris climate agreement, Naturally, the biggest news this week was President Trump’s decision on the Paris Climate agreement. But mayors and governors in the US plan to support the accords on their own.
• Elon Musk leaves Trump’s council after US exits Paris climate pact, “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world”
• By Pulling Out Of The Paris Agreement, Trump Just Threw Away America’s Biggest Business Opportunity, This is the opposite of winning.
• The U.S. Is The Loser as Trump Dumps the Climate Accord, Last one stating the obvious: the exit will undermine America’s economic competitiveness, technological innovation, and global leadership. Not to mention the, um, planet.
• This Machine Just Started Sucking CO2 Out Of The Air To Save Us From

  

  Climate Change, Climeworks carbon capture device will take the gas from the air and sell it or store it in the ground. Now we just need a few hundred thousand more–as quickly as possible.

• Utility offers $450 rebate for electric cars—even used ones, Customers of utility Southern California Edison (SCE) can benefit from a $450 rebate if they buy or lease an eligible electric or plug-in hybrid car—even if they purchase it secondhand.
• Shareholders Push Exxon To Disclose Business Impact Of Fighting Climate Change, Exxon Mobil Corp. shareholders have asked the energy giant to publicly disclose how the fight against climate change could affect the company’s bottom line.
• Rooftop Solar Panels Are Great for the Planet—But Terrible for Firefighters, In the last two decades, solar power has exploded. In 2009, only 30,000 American homes had solar panels; by 2013, that number had jumped to 400,000. With that growth, firefighters have had to contend with new threats to their safety—and that of the buildings and people they’re charged with protecting.
• It Could Be 10 Times Cheaper To Take Electric Robo-Taxis Than To Own A Car By 2030, A new report predicts that we’re on the edge of an incredibly rapid transition to an entirely new transportation system–where it will be so much cheaper and easier to not own a car, you’ll get rid of it as soon as you can.
• Ranking the Top 5 Energy Storage Project Owners in the US, Today, the top five storage owners in the U.S. are a mix of investor-owned utilities and diversified energy companies: NextEra, AES, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Duke Energy.

Self-Improvement

• Supreme Court decision lifts ownership rights over patent law, Huge news in the right to repair arena. In a win for anyone who has ever been frustrated by overpriced ink, the Supreme Court ruled that printer maker Lexmark can’t sue companies that refill old cartridges and sell them at a discount. More specifically, the court ruled that Lexmark gave away its patent rights to the cartridges (and their single-use microchips) as soon as it started selling them. While the case may seem narrowly focused, digital rights groups are hailing it as a win for consumers in general and a decision that could affect everyone’s right to repair their own devices.

  

• As Food Delivery Companies Struggle, Blue Apron Tries A Different Recipe: An IPO, On Thursday afternoon, Blue Apron filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission its form S-1, indicating that it intends to go public. A share price was not listed; the meal kit company said only that it has applied to have its common stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “APRN.”
• The Role Of Yoga In Healing Trauma, A new report from the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University’s law school, says that for young women like Hart, who have been through trauma, there is mounting evidence that yoga can have specific benefits.
• Study links Facebook use to reduced gray matter volume in the nucleus accumbens, People who frequently check Facebook on their smartphone tend to have less gray matter in a reward-related area of the brain, according to new research.