ONE MEMBERSHIP THING THAT MADE US 
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Melting ice across the Arctic will trigger a rush to control the resources, land, and shipping routes of the circumpolar north, which bodes ill for the planet’s climate. Let’s take a look by the digits:
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8°C (46°F): Amount above average at which air temperatures on the coast of Russia’s Laptev Sea were measured in September 2020
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25%: Volume of sea ice in the Arctic today compared to 40 years ago
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90 billion: Barrels of oil thought to lie untapped in the Arctic, mostly offshore
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4,000 km (2,500 miles): Length by which a Europe-Asia shipping trip using the Northwest Passage route is shorter than the southern route through the Panama Canal
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$200,000: Approximate amount saved by taking the shorter distance
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62: Full ship transits of the Northern Sea Route in 2020, up from 37 the year before
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✦ The melting Arctic will open up new business opportunities, and new environmental risks. Our field guide on opening the Arctic explains what’s at stake. You’ll need a Quartz membership, but those stakes are low risk, high reward, especially when you try it free for a week, then take 50% off with code SUMMERSALE21.
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WE’RE OBSESSED WITH CICADAS
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Reuters/Cheney Orr
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They didn’t ask to be this way. Periodical cicadas don’t damage plants, they don’t bite, they don’t spread disease, they feed a lot of other wildlife, and their exoskeletons decompose into nice tree fertilizer. Sure, their numbers are overwhelming, but they’re one of nature’s more spectacular reminders that the planet is still operational. If Brood X hadn’t made its entrance in the US this year, it would have been a truly terrifying sign. The Quartz Obsession will convince you to give cicadas a fair shake.
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FIVE THINGS FROM ELSEWHERE THAT MADE US SMARTER
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Remembering Tulsa. Before a 1921 pogrom destroyed over a thousand African-American homes and businesses, Tulsa’s Greenwood district was a flourishing business center, and a place of promise for Black people in Oklahoma. In an interactive, the New York Times reconstructs one block of what was nicknamed “Black Wall Street,” helping readers grasp the enormous impact the massacre had on the lives, and livelihoods, of the community it all but erased. —Annalisa Merelli, reporter
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“If you’re not paying, you’re the product.” Like many hopeful vaccine hunters, I signed up for (and was disappointed by) Dr. B, a company that promised to match registrants with extra doses that otherwise would have been thrown away. Now that the usefulness of the free service has passed, what happens to all the data that it collected? While Dr. B claims it voluntarily follows HIPAA rules around privacy, its overly defensive response to MIT Technology Review’s Mia Sato’s questions is not exactly reassuring. — Liz Webber, deputy email editor
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Dibs on vaccines. In India, however, health facilities offering free jabs are running out of supplies. Some Covid-19 vaccine shots are available for sale at private hospitals where they are being gobbled up by affluent citizens. As someone who has reported on India’s public health system, I found Amy Kazmin’s piece in the Financial Times sobering. For India’s poor, the public health system has always been a beacon in the fog. That’s no longer true. — Priyanka Vora, audience editor
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The implications of dismantling Roe. In 1992, a US Supreme Court decision prohibited abortion bans prior to 24 weeks of pregnancy—thereby allowing the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to stand—but granted room for some state restrictions. Now, nearly 30 years later, the Court will again deliberate the standing of Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. For New York magazine, Ed Kilgore lays out in painstaking detail the current landscape of abortion rights, and the inequality in healthcare access this case has the potential to create. —Sudie Simmons, user insights manager
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Uncivil society. The Citizen app is an experiment in using the smartphone panopticon to fight crime, but a recent episode where the company ginned up a city-wide manhunt for an innocent person shows the dangers of this intersection of social media and law enforcement. Vice reporters Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler gained access to Citizen’s internal communications and revealed a business model predicated on using fear and hysteria to drive users to pay more. —Tim Fernholz, senior reporter
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Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, cicada pics, and responsible apps to hi@qz.com. Get the most out of Quartz by downloading our app and becoming a member. Today’s Weekend Brief was brought to you by Susan Howson.
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