There is a new "Forget Veganuary" campaign, apparently part-funded by the EA Animal Welfare Fund:  https://www.forgetveganuary.com/ https://www.farmkind.giving/about-us/who#transparency (the "Transparency" link on the campaign page) Reddit link to news article that calls this a "meat-eating campaign" and discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1px018m/veganuary_champion_quits_to_run_meateating/  The idea seems to be to promote a message to not give up animal products, but rather donate to organisations that effectively campaign to improve farm animal welfare (including EA favourites like The Humane League, Fish Welfare Initiative and the Shrimp Welfare Project). Promoting donating to such organisations seems all well and good, but it puts out very negative messages about being a vegan (which apparently means you will have "annoyed friends and family" and "got bloating from plant protein" etc.). This has got a lot of negative attention from vegan groups that I've seen. The website seems a bit ridiculous in places e.g. its "expert" views are just those of some eating champions. [Edit - OK that last bit was the authors being tongue-in-cheek.] Interestingly the person who seems to be doing the PR, Toni Vernelli, used to do the PR for Veganuary, and wrote on the forum defending it less than a year ago: link. It's unclear if they actually changed their mind or have some other motivation to change their stance. Anyway, it seems like quite a controversial initiative, unnecessarily negative about veganism and quite poorly put together [edit - OK that last part was unfair, more effort had gone into it than I'd initially realised]. As a donor to the EA Animal Welfare Fund, it's not something I'd expect to be paying towards myself [edit - following discussion, I'll withhold judgement from here until we see how it all plays out].

If you're in the US and dropping checks in the mail today, I would not rely on the assumption that they would be postmarked today. Effective December 24, the postmark date is no longer the date on which mail is deposited with USPS (although it sounds like postmark date may not have been fully reliable even before this policy change). Under Treasury Regulation 1.170A-1, "[t]he unconditional delivery or mailing of a check which subsequently clears in due course will constitute an effective contribution on the date of delivery or mailing." I have usually filmed myself dropping checks into the USPS mailbox for this reason, and will do so with my wife's charitable contributions this year (mine are already done). The safer alternative, especially if large sums are involved, would be to take the mailpiece to a post office and have a manual postmark applied by the person behind the counter (or send via certified mail).

Feels like a resurgence is going on with giving in EA

Gavi's investment opportunity for 2026-2030 says they expect to save 8 to 9 million lives, for which they would require a budget of at least $11.9 billion[1]. Unfortunately, Gavi only raised $9 billion, so they have to make some cuts to their plans[2]. And you really can't reduce spending by $3 billion without making some life-or-death decisions. Gavi's CEO has said that "for every $1.5 billion less, your ability to save 1.1 million lives is compromised"[3]. This would equal a marginal cost of $1,607 per life saved, which seems a bit low to me. But I think there is a good chance Gavi's marginal cost per life saved is still cheap enough to clear GiveWell's cost-effectiveness bar. GiveWell hasn't made grants to Gavi, though. Why? ---------------------------------------- 1. https://www.gavi.org/sites/default/files/investing/funding/resource-mobilisation/Gavi-Investment-Opportunity-2026-2030.pdf, pp. 20 & 43 ↩︎ 2. https://www.devex.com/news/gavi-s-board-tasked-with-strategy-shift-in-light-of-3b-funding-gap-110595 ↩︎ 3. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02270-x ↩︎

Indoor tanning is really bad for people's health; it significantly increases one's risk of getting skin cancer.[1] Many countries already outlaw minors from visiting indoor tanning salons. However, surprisingly, there are only two countries, Australia and Brazil, that have banned indoor tanning for adults, too. I think that doing policy advocacy for a complete ban on indoor tanning in countries around the world has the potential to be a highly cost-effective global health intervention. Indoor tanning ban policy advocacy seems to check all three boxes of the ITN framework: it is highly neglected; it affects many people (indoor tanning is surprisingly popular: over 10 percent of adults around the world have tanned indoors[2]), and thus has the potential to have a big impact; and also, I think it could be quite tractable (passing laws is never easy, but is should be doable, because the indoor tanning lobby appears to be much less powerful than, say, the tobacco or alcohol lobbies). ---------------------------------------- 1. https://www.aad.org/public/diseases/skin-cancer/surprising-facts-about-indoor-tanning ↩︎ 2. https://www.aad.org/media/stats-indoor-tanning ↩︎