(FREE) PAINE IN THE MORNING: 8 things you need to know this Monday – March 21, 2022

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Robot truckers could replace 500,000 U.S. jobs, U of M study finds – The robots will take the most tedious, most dangerous jobs first, in most things. Trucking is no exception.

Autonomous driving engineers are squarely focused on long-haul freight, the interstate runs with almost no complexity save for a slow curve or an E-ZPass lane. As such, those routes are some of the simpler challenges on the self-driving spectrum. – READ MORE

‘Chippy’ to Serve You: Chipotle Tests AI-Driven Robot to Make Tortilla Chips – Chipotle has reportedly begun testing the use of an AI-driven robot named Chippy which is tasked with creating the company’s tortilla chips in place of human employees.

Forbes reports that Chipotle has announced a test with Miso Robotics to utilize an AI-driven robot named Chippy to produce its tortilla chips. Chippy will be tested at the Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine, California, for the duration of the trial. – READ MORE

Politicians Propose Giving People Cash To Compensate for High Gas Prices, Inflation – High gas prices and large state budget surpluses are giving lawmakers from both parties an idea: send people cash to compensate for rising prices at the pump.

On Thursday, California lawmakers floated a proposal to spend some of the state’s $45 billion budget surplus on sending all California taxpayers a $400 check. That, according to proponent Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D–Irvine), is the amount your average Californian pays in state gas taxes every year. – READ MORE

Got Roadkill? Now There’s an App for That – Thanks to record meat prices, a growing number of reports suggest Americans may have to eat less animal protein. Imagine, though, if an app existed that could help you locate free, fresh, tasty, and sustainable meat near you.

That’s now the case in Wyoming, where a new mobile phone app feature “is helping get the meat from animals killed in fender benders from road to table and in the process making roads safer for critters,” the Associated Press reported last week. “State wildlife and highway officials rolled out the app—possibly the first of its kind in the U.S.—this winter when Wyoming joined the 30 or so states that allow people to collect roadkill for food.” – READ MORE

CDC Removes 24 Percent of Child COVID-19 Deaths, Thousands of Others – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has removed tens of thousands of deaths linked to COVID-19, including nearly a quarter of deaths it had listed in those under 18 years old.

The health agency quietly made the change on its data tracker website on March 15. – READ MORE

New York City officials say private sector vax mandates are ‘indefinite’ – New York City plans to indefinitely continue the city’s vaccine mandate for private-sector employees who work on-site and will continue to enforce an in-school mask mandate for children aged 5 and under.

On Friday, the city’s new health commissioner, Ashwin Vasan, said he did not have any specific benchmark or timeline in mind for when the city would lift the private-sector vaccine requirement, the Epoch Times reported. – READ MORE

‘Overwhelming’ Need To Investigate COVID-19 Vaccine Tinnitus: Researchers – A group of researchers who evaluated the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) found there is a need to carry out more studies on COVID-19 vaccine-related tinnitus.

In an article published for the March edition in the “Annals of Medicine and Surgery,” about 12,247 cases of COVID-19 post-vaccination tinnitus were reported until Sept. 14, 2021. Tinnitus is when one experiences ringing or other noises—that are not external sounds—in one or both ears, affecting between 15 and 20 percent of all people, says the Mayo Clinic.- READ MORE