Good one Google...

 

All you need is love

 

Ba-dumm-tsss

 

When assembling IKEA Dögg, follow instructions carefully

 

The AI writer that can pass for human

"How do we become more creative?" This question was posed to an AI. Here was it's immediate answer:

"I think creative expression is a natural by-product of growing up in a diverse world. The more diverse the world is, the more you get exposed to different people, to different opportunities, to different places and to different challenges. And the more diverse that is, the more likely you’ll be to be able to put the dots together to form something new. And in many ways, I think if you want to be creative, you have to go for it. If you want to be a writer, you have to write, if you want to be a musician, you have to create music, if you want to be a comedian, you have to create comedy, and the more you create, the more likely it is that you’ll stumble onto some interesting stuff."

The AI that wrote that is named GPT-3, which learned what it knows of the English language by being fed the entirety of Wikipedia, analyzing thousands of digital books, and nearly 1 trillion words posted to blogs, social media and the internet.

The AI is capable of generating tweets, penning poetry, summarizing emails, and answering trivia questions.

Some professors are nutty

 

Small things 26 Feb

• If you pounded a cheese sandwich to almost paper thin, could you make a grilled cheese sandwich using one of those plastic heat laminating machines?
  
  
  
• There's an identical twin who has their other twin in their contacts as 'spare parts'.
• Cheesecake is a pie. Don't believe me? It has a crust. Cakes don't have a crust. Pies have a crust. Cheesecake is a pie. "Cheesepie".
• I don't know, call me weird, but if you need a 'dry day' or a 'dry month', maybe there are some issues that need identifying. I could be wrong....
• Be brave enough to suck at something new.

"The McRib is back", Adam said. To Eve.

 

Parallel Dimensions

If you like digital video art, you'll love this competition. 

The rules were simple. Take a template of a figure walking toward a specific mountain in the background and complete the imagery. 

125 artists contributed their imagined worlds. Incredible, beautiful stuff.

These guys....

 

Things I learned lately 26 Feb

• Jell-O Lemon Pudding and Pie Filling. Yet another superior product that has been discontinued. Thanks a lot Kraft.
• Fossil remains suggest that dogs accompanied the people who migrated to the Americas from Asia, specifically via a coastal route that followed the Cordilleran Ice Sheet.
  
  
  
• The 1968 Ford Capri, sold in Europe, was marketed as an American coupe, basically a baby Mustang. In North America, the Mercury Capri was marketed as an exotic European coupe. It wore the Mercury badge so as not to upstage the Ford Pinto.
• Here's how kids play online schooling hooky nowadays. They know that if you enter the wrong password many times in a row in Zoom, it locks you out for a set period of time. The more you try with the wrong password, the longer the lockout period. They just keep logging in with the wrong password for a while and even if you try logging in with the right one, it says 'incorrect password' even though it should be saying 'account locked'. Kids today.
• Most organizations don't find out how useless their backup plans are until they get hit with ransomware.
• Our immune system is a lot like AI. It is exposed to a situation, given prompts on what to do, and then can address a similar situation in the future.
• Germany is turning 62 disused military bases into wildlife sanctuaries, a move that will increase Germany's total protected wildlife area by 25%.
• Nearly half of all teachers leave the profession in the first 5 years.
• Most retouching of images in magazines are requested and approved by the subjects themselves.

What, no thank you wave?

 

Hey kid!

 

Doesn't it make you want to?

 

The moon if it were the same distance away as the ISS

Would you like some coffee with that?

 

What's good for the goose.....

In case you think that what those reddit investors did to the hedge funds that had shorted GameStop stocks was terrible, you should watch this.

Small things 19 Feb

• You know things are bad when your online classes are cancelled due to snow. Am I right Texas?
• Best line heard anywhere on the internet so far in 2021: "I just want to let you all know... I am NOT a cat." (Lawyer who was the unwitting victim of a meeting cat filter)
• When you finally get your Covid vaccine, you become a wi-fi hot spot! (Now there's a good rumour to start.....)

Government: Shut down!

Texas: No

Mother Nature: [throws a blizzard at Texas]

Texas: [sigh] FINE!

I think I may have figured out how to hijack a Zoom meeting

Play the whole album - Yes - 90125

If you have a Spotify or any other music streaming service that lets you listen to entire albums in one go, I've got some homework for you.

Because I was a late bloomer musically, having never started a music collection until roughly 1981 when I had some disposable income in the military, I was exposed to classic bands' later stuff long before I got to truly explore their earlier gems. When you grew up in the 1970s, all you heard was Yes this and Yes that and I have to admit that it just didn't connect with me, probably because the music was more cerebral, more thematic. Don't get me wrong, songs like Roundabout were incredible, but that and maybe one or two other radio hits was all I knew.

And then came 90125, their 11th studio album. This album was not only my true introduction to Yes from a whole album perspective, but what an album. Yes had broken up, and some Yes members decided to form a new band (Cinema) and try and reinvent themselves and hired Trevor Horn (famous for being one half of The Buggles) to produce. Eventually Jon Anderson came on board to record vocals, the album basically already having been recorded, and the new Yes lineup was born.

The opening track, Owner of a Lonely Heart, starts off with pure rock guitar riff and then, what's this? Here's a rhythm you've never heard from Yes before. And is that - yes it is! Sampled strings. We're definitely not in Kansas anymore Toto. The treatments applied to this and other 90125 songs are the mild version of the amped up 80s pop stylings of Trevor Horn. Remember, this is the guy that gave you the sound of ABC's The Lexicon of Love, a monster of an album, Malcolm McLaren's Buffalo Gals, etc. Remember Art of Noise? Grace Jones' Slave to the Rhythm? Frankie Goes to Hollywood? Trevor. Seal's debut? Trevor again.

With Hold On, the band has taken on a stadium rock like quality. The guitars are now power riff machines, the drums are loud and deliberate. The vocal harmonies are back. Is this new incarnation of the band the rock answer to 1980s new wave? You bet!

It can Happen opens with some luscious sitar and features some gorgeous piano arrangements. Am I the only one noticing just how easy it is to sing along to these choruses? Yes as new pop masters? Oh yeah.

Changes is pure Yes of old, just in case you thought they had gone full 80s and forgot their roots. Nope. Same with Cinema, which earned the band a Grammy. A nod to the name of the band that would have been had Yes not reformed after the split-up?

The 6th track, Leave It, is my favourite from the entire album. Vocal harmonies that are out of this world. I would have been even more impressed had the A Capella version, included as the last bonus track on the Deluxe, remastered version been part of the original release. Yes, I know you want to listen to that right away, but don't. Listen to the original, let it percolate in your brain, then listen to the A Capella version last, as it was intended. It's pure brain massage.

The rest of the album never connected with me, but your mileage may vary. Just don't forget the A Capella before you close this chapter in the history of a band that shouldn't have lasted past 1980, but thanks to Trevor Horn, was reborn as a contender for years to come.

But Mom, you said........

 

4 brothers dominate the charts

This is how you dominate the charts. 

March 1978. 5 of the top 10 in the Billboard Hot 100 are either performed or written by the Bee Gees, including Andy Gibb.

Saturday Night Fever, a soundtrack album from the 1977, is one of the best-selling albums in history, and remains the second-biggest selling soundtrack of all time. 8 songs from the soundtrack album were either performed or written by the Bee Gees. In the US, the album was certified 16× Platinum for shipments of at least 16 million units. The album stayed at the top the album charts for 24 straight weeks from January to July 1978 and stayed on Billboard's album charts for 120 weeks until March 1980.

I have a connection to this album too, albeit a minor one. I was working for Polygram when this album's sales were just starting to wane. I moved a lot of pallets of this album on vinyl and cassette.

Bill is trolling the trolls

 

Things I learned lately 19 Feb

• The reason the Texas power grid failed during the recent snowstorms is because Texas decided to privatize their grid to escape federal regulations and maximize profit. The grid's private owners now had the 'option' to winterize their infrastructure and chose not to. Everyone else connected to the federal grid is working just fine. Also, wind turbines work just fine in arctic weather. When they are winterized.
• The Santa Maria Novella Pharmacy is probably the oldest still-operating pharmacy in the world, and certainly the oldest in Italy. It was established in 1221, when the Dominican monks from the adjacent Basilica of Santa Maria Novella began growing herbs to make balms, salves and medicines for their infirmary.
• If you're being recorded by someone and you don't want it to remain online, just start playing some very well known copyrighted music. The online copyright filters will be triggered and the video will be pulled. Because that's what copyright was designed for. To be used as a weapon against transparency. Well done everyone.
  
  
  
• In the middle of the Japanese countryside, there's a train station. You can exit the train here, but you can't go anywhere. There are no roads or paths away from the station and no one lives in the area. The Seiryū-Miharashi Station exists solely to allow people to enjoy the natural beauty of the Nishiki River flowing through the forest. After you disembark and breathe in the mountain air, the next train will pick you up in about 10-15 minutes.
• Many farmers can no longer survive on what the farm earns for revenue. Case in point, I know a farmer who works in a factory to make ends meet.
• A Norwegian researcher discovered that if you paint one of a wind turbine's three blades black, bird fatalities can be reduced by 70%.
• Apparently, Jelly Belly is holding a contest where the winner could end up owning one of their candy factories.

Monty Python doormat

 

Play the whole album - The Beta Band - The Three E.P.s

If you have a Spotify or any other music streaming service that lets you listen to entire albums in one go, I've got some homework for you.

There was a time when I had never heard of The Beta Band. But you hear about bands in the most unexpected places. In this case, the movie High Fidelity, Rob, played by John Cusack whispers in Dick's ear, "I will now sell five copies of 'The Three E.P.s' by The Beta Band." Oh Rob, much more than five man. Much more than five. Once the movie was over, I checked out this album and I was hooked.

The Three E.P.'s wasn't new material, is was a compilation album of the first three releases by the Scottish musical group, comprising the EPs Champion Versions, The Patty Patty Sound and Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos.

The album leads of with the song that was sampled in the aforementioned movie, Dry the Rain. As soon as it begins, you know you've stumbled onto something new, but it has that certain something you recognize that makes you ask yourself, "Man, where have I heard this before?" Well, if you can imagine Nick Drake crossed with Beck, you'd get a sense for the kind of folk-tronica fusion we're experiencing. But when the trumpet kicks in at 3:42, I'm seriously hooked.

Come on, start track two (I Know) and tell me you're not expected Beck's voice to chime in at any second. Or that guy from Cake, now that I think about it.

I don't actually know why they decided on the name The Beta Band (they were originally going to call themselves The Pigeons), but when I listen to their music, it's so uncomplicated that you almost get the feeling that they go into the studio like going into a research lab to try different combinations out.

Dogs Got a Bone is as folksy as it gets. I don't know why, but it reminds me of summer, the kind of song you'd expect to get played during a late summer night in the north when the sun is still up at 9pm. Maybe it's just me.

Inner Meet Me gets a little spacey. There's a synth effect at the beginning that is exactly like Steve Miller's Jungle Love. It's one of the weirdest openings for a song that, as soon as the guitar kicks in, it settles into that familiar Beta Band groove.

Remember what I said earlier about laboratory? The Monolith is pure experimentation. If that's not your thing, skip ahead to....

My favourite track on this collection. The weird instrument sounds come fast and furious here, but this slowly turns into a tune you can't avoid harmonizing along with. You just get comfortable when the band reverts right back to its experimental roots.

Dr. Baker has a lot of fun with basic vocal melodies, sparse piano and fun percussion effects. By now, you're either enjoying this musical bravery, or, well, getting tired of it. But you know how it goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Needles in My Eyes closes the album and it's another tune I like. Oh, what's this? Organ with a Leslie speaker. Nice touch. Just when I thought they didn't have any more tricks up their sleeve. No musical trickery though, just a nice rollicking melody, but a playing style that reminds you that they don't take themselves too seriously.

Small things 12 Feb

• It's been a while since I looked at my White Noise blog stats. Almost 17 years. 670,000 all-time views. 11,268 individual posts. 5,608 comments. Can I get 100 more followers? 
• Life is pain............................... au chocolat!
• How people try not to wake up too much when they go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
• When one door closes, just open it again. That's how doors work. 
• Watch the movie Grease again, but this time with the knowledge that the characters in the movie are supposed to be teenagers.
• Irony: You drop a block of ice on your foot and then someone suggests putting ice on it.
• Trump quit the actor's union. Insert your own joke here. Here's mine: "I guess after that brilliant 4 year run playing POTUS, there wasn't much else he could do to top it."
• The biggest danger to our society is not believing that fake information is true, it's believing that true information is fake. 
• Who put the alphabet in alphabetical order?
• If there are people who refuse to play along when there's a pandemic with a relatively low infection rate, how will we deal with any new virus with a much higher infection rate.
• It wouldn't hurt to check your usernames and passwords on haveibeenpwned.com. If the password you check shows a compromise, change it on EVERY login that uses it. Those compromised passwords are now public domain in the criminal community.

Modern ship in a bottle

 

Pay injustices

Dan Price (the guy in the previous post) has been posting examples of pay injustices in the US on Twitter:

Airlines spent 96% of free cash flow on stock buybacks for a decade, then cut 90,000 jobs as soon as trouble hits. Then they got a $50 billion bailout.

GE promised its CEO a huge bonus if stock hit $19. It didn't. So GE re-did contract so the bonus kicks in at $10/share. The CEO cut 20% of aviation staff to increase profits and raise the stock to $10. His bonus: $47M. If it goes up again he gets $270M

JCPenney:

April: furloughed 85,000 employees
May 10: Gave CEO $4.5 million bonus on top of $17 million/year in pay
May 15: went bankrupt
Oct: laid off 15,000 people
Dec: closed 150 stores
Now: CEO left with $4.5M bonus after stock fell 88% in her 2 years

Boeing. Spent almost all of its cash on stock buybacks over the prior decade. In the past year, it cut 27,000 employees. It also fired its CEO over 2 deadly plane crashes and ensuing coverup, and gave him a $81 million exit package

On Jan. 6, when the mob stormed the Capitol, the stock market went up 250 points to a new record, handing the richest 1% an extra $300 billion. Also that day, a new report showed employment dropped for the first time since April and a then-record 3,900 people died of Covid.

Albertsons, America's 2nd-largest grocery chain:

*Profit is up 256% in pandemic
*Stock at record high
*Owned by private equity
*CEO made $29M last year
*Fired all California non-union drivers to replace them with gig workers with no benefits/min wage

The stock market for the 500 biggest companies ended the year up 15%, among the biggest gains ever. Also in that span, those companies lad off a record number of people, and wait times for food banks hit a record high.

As part of the first stimulus, the Fed pumped about $3 trillion into the stock market, which helped it soar to record highs. At the same time, a record 30% of small businesses failed and unemployment tripled.

Since 2009, the stock market is up 233%. Since 2009, the federal minimum wage is up 0%.

Coca-Cola

This decade: spent $48 billion on dividends and over $20 billion on stock buybacks
2018: CEO got 58% pay increase
2019: CEO got 12% pay increase, to $18.7 million
2020: Company makes $8.3 billion profit
And it just laid off 12% of workers

Among the biggest 50 companies, they spent 79% of profits on stock buybacks and dividends in recent years to enrich executives and mostly-wealthy shareholders. Last year, those companies combined to lay off over 100,000 workers.

Disney stock is up 21% in the past year to a new record high. In recent months they laid off 32,000 people. One of our employees lives near Disney World. Recently there was a line of cars outside his house for a drive-thru food bank 7.5 miles away.

In the pandemic, total stock value has grown by $16.6 trillion. $8.3 trillion of that went to the richest 1%, and they pay a lower tax rate than those who are unemployed and need help.

Salesforce. In the last five years, Salesforce has bought 27 companies for tens of billions of dollars. It just bought Slack for $27.7 billion. Its stock is at record high, up 23% in the past year after revenue surged 29%. And it just laid off 1,000 people.

In November alone, the average member of the top 10% gained an average of $200,000 from the stock market while 7 million people plunged into poverty.

On one day in November: *The stock market hit 30,000 for the first time. *Elon Musk became first person to gain $100 billion in a year. *A Census report revealed 6 million people face imminent eviction

Uber + Lyft spent $200 million on November election ads to convince Californians they shouldn't pay drivers minimum wage or benefits. In the two weeks after it passed, Uber stock went up 39% and Lyft stock soared 52%. In return, all drivers were denied basic benefits.

Average stock gains over 10 years. CEOs with above-average pay: stock up 160%. CEOs with below-average pay: stock up 280%. And yet CEOs are rewarded whether the stock goes up or down.

AT&T. 2018-2019: bought Time Warner for $100 billion, cut 29,000 jobs. May: gave departing CEO $64 million pension ($274k/month for life), laid off 4,700 more workers. August: laid off 600 more workers. Now: laid off thousands more - news sent stock up 2%

Marriott

2018-2019: made $3.1 billion in profits, spent $5B on stock buybacks
April: furloughed most employees, paid $160M in dividends to shareholders, gave CEO a 8% raise and 200% bonus
Sept: laid off 17% of HQ staff
Now: made $100M profit

$3 billion: what Jeff Bezos cashed out in stock in one day, as Amazon profits tripled in the pandemic. $2.1 billion: cost to give all Amazon warehouse workers 2 weeks paid sick leave and a year of hero pay (they got none of either now)

84% of stock market value is owned by richest 10%. "but what about 401(k)s". Half of Americans don't have one. The average 401(k) balance has *declined* $5,000 in 6 years after inflation, because employers put in less & people can't afford contributions

MGM. Laid off 18,000 people while giving its CEO $700,000 in stock. The value of the stock doubled to $1.4 million after the stock went up, partly because of increased profitability due to the layoffs.

Wells Fargo made $10 billion in staff cuts, meaning tens of thousands of employees lost their jobs. Wells Fargo also made a $2 billion profit. Wells Fargo also did $24 billion in stock buybacks last year and paid its CEO $36 million.

There's tons more.

Capitalism is awesome! For a few...

 

Coal power

On Thursday, 11 Feb 2021, while it was -25C outside, I decided to see where all our electricity was coming from. There is a site that lists the electrical load of the province and where the power is coming from. Here was the breakdown on that day:

Coal 27%

Gas 63%

Hydro 1.6%

Other 2.8%

Wind 4.8%

Imported 6.7%

All of the power plants are listed on the site, and I had always wondered where all the coal powered plants were. So I went looking on Google Maps.

All of the coal plants are co-located next to coal mines. Quite a few are near Lake Wabamun, the rest are in the eastern part of Alberta, relatively due east of Red Deer. You can see the mines above in biege.

Calvin's making snowmen again

 

Things I learned lately 12 Feb

• Between 1964 and 1968, touch tone phones didn't have # or * keys yet.
• The discoverer of the neutron (James Chadwick) was a student of the discoverer of the proton (E. Rutherford) who in turn was a student of the discoverer of the electron (J.J. Thomson).
  
  
  
• 700,000 years ago, the entire central valley of California was submerged in the giant Lake Corcoran.
• You can orbit a black hole just as you can orbit the sun. You just wouldn't want your orbit to unrecoverably decay is all.
• The English word cowboy was derived from vaquero, a Spanish word for an individual who managed cattle while mounted on horseback.
• Washington and Delaware are the only two US states that don't have a county with a declining population.
• Hawaii and Alaska both share a highest recorded temperature of 100 degrees F (37.8C). The highest recorded temperature in the US is in California, 134F (56.7C).
• It's hard to imagine how small a nanometer is (nanotech falls in the range of 1-100 nanometers). A human hair is about 75,000 nm wide. Or, put a different way, if a marble was 1 nm wide, the earth would be 1 meter in diameter.
• What do the albums Abba - Voulez Vous; Genesis - Duke; and Led Zeppelin - In through the out door have in common? They were all recorded at Polar Studios, formed by Abba musicians Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. 
• It's almost 4,000 km or a 41 hour drive from Sydney to Perth Australia. That's like driving from Los Angeles to New York (driving time).

My dad ate my homework

 

Curious creature

 

Conference call bingo

 

OK Boomers

 

Small things 5 Feb

• If the GameStop story has taught us one thing, it's that hard core capitalists only think a free market is a good idea when it's working in their favour.
• Imagine if like email addresses, you couldn't have the same given name as someone else. So you couldn't name your child Olivia, it would have to be Olivia2842, or sw33tchild'o'mine.
• I have never felt that an email was so important that it couldn't wait to be read until I was sitting in front of my computer.
• I have also managed to resist the temptation to read texts while I'm driving and have lived to tell about it.
• Funniest twitter handle seen this year (so far): boogerwookiesugarcookie
  
  
  
• Thermometers are basically speedometers for air molecules. Which is one reason why I find those radar gun looking body thermometers with the trigger amusing.
• Am I the only person who gets annoyed when the car service staff readjust my driver seat?

All art is valid

Here's a blog post that was very hard to write because I want to be sure that I get my point across well. Forgive me if I end up rambling.

Until 2007, I was a complete stranger to the arts community. Then I took my first acting class, joined an improv company as a volunteer, took more classes, and assisted in some classes. Suddenly, I am surrounded by artists.

The thing about classes and workshops is that everything is being critiqued. It's nothing personal of course, the teacher is just trying to explain why what you're doing may not give you a satisfactory result and is trying to show you alternatives. But it's easy to think that the critiquing is part of the process, and it is, witness that performers often stay behind after a performance for 'notes', where the director or someone in charge tells everyone what could have been better, or options to consider. When I was attending improvisation classes and performances, I'd stay and listen to the notes given after class or show and try to learn from what was offered. It didn't escape my notice by the way, that improv could be done 'better' and I did find that amusing if not intriguing. 

But I began to wonder what the performers thought of the critique. How did it affect them? Did they just take notes for what they were, one person's interpretation of how art could be done differently to make it better in some way. Are performers left with the impression that their work is never good enough? If you've never attended a notes session, you might not truly appreciate what I'm saying, but the way that the critique is levied on the performers can, depending on the person giving the notes, be brutal. It's not touchy-feely in many cases, and I've heard of situations where the person giving the notes can be utterly rude and insensitive. That has to do something against the psyche of the performer.

The more I thought about, the more I realized that it's not just live performance art either. Artists who create paintings, sculpture, photographs, mixed media, etc. are mercilessly critiqued on their content. The more I listened to or read about the way art is judged, quite often by people who seem to have a lot of experience with the thing they were critiquing, the more I came to a personal realization.

Art is the product of the creator or performer. It is a product affected by personality, talent, emotional state, physiological state, the artist's experiences, surroundings, beliefs and so much more. And every single result is valid to the artist. It may not mean anything to you, or it may not measure up to your expectations or standards, but it may be just right to the only person that matters. The creator of the art. That's the epiphany I had. Art is always true to the artist. The only question is whether you connect with it or not. And if not, it doesn't diminish the value or importance of the art.

This is the nature of artistic expression that I think is lost on much of modern society. Just because you don't like a piece of art, or a performance, doesn't mean it doesn't have value. I mean, we intrinsically know this about certain types of art, I would hope. Just because I'm not a fan of opera doesn't mean that opera isn't good. I just don't connect with it.

I would hope that most artists already know this. Because if they didn't, they might have given up a long time ago. No, the reason I feel the need to say this at all is for the up and coming artist. In a culture where you're going to be bombarded with what's wrong with your art, you should always remember that it's yours, it has value and sooner or later, people are going to connect with it. And that's all that matters.

He doesn't count

 

Increasing levels of 'twinkleness'

The 7 levels of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on piano.

When he got to level 3, I thought, "How is he gonna beat that?" 

He's got some chops.

Fine. You teach...

 

Things I learned lately 5 Feb

• Australians always vote on a Saturday and voting is compulsory, so there is always high voter turnout. Many polling places are located at schools, community halls and churches, and these groups often take advantage of the large number of voters by setting up fundraising stalls. The 'democracy sausage' is well recognised in Australian culture.
• Longyearbyen, on the island of Svalbard is the most northerly large town (2,000) in the world. It has more registered snowmobiles than residents.
• District steam heating was invented in Lockport, NY in 1877. In 1881 this technology was brought to the streets of Manhattan. 1700 buildings are currently part of the steam heat system.
• In Singapore, if you're elderly or disabled, you get a card that if used to tap on the crosswalk button device, gives you an extended countdown to cross the street.
• In Prague you can bring your laundry detergent bottle to the store to get refilled.
  
  
  
• In some places in Russia and Finland, they project the crosswalk lines onto the road from above because the snow obscures the lines.
• The Netherlands has a few places with swings installed that generate power to recharge your phone while you play on the swings.
• A lot of trash cans in Norway have external can and bottle empties holders so homeless people don't have to rifle through garbage to collect them.
• Midway Atoll, also known as Midway Island, has been a US National Wildlife Refuge since 1996 and has had no permanent residents in decades.
• Royal Dutch Shell PLC feels that the UK can move their planned ban on fossil fuel cars to as early as 2030. Shell is one of only a few fossil fuel companies that are aggressively transitioning their business to electricity generation and sales.
• Everyone in Singapore above the age of 21 is automatically registered as an organ donor. Opting out from organ donation results in you being put at the very bottom of the organ priority list, should you need an organ transplantation.
• In some cities you rake your leaves to the curb and a truck comes and vacuums them up.