Thanks a million times over to those of you who actually enjoy reading my two-cents: Your interest is my motivation in keeping this little project up and running!
I want to start using this space to showcase some of my digital artwork too – hope you enjoy these pieces as much as I enjoy creating them!
The 71-year-old has been using the much hyped, weight-loss medication for about a year now, and has lost 42 pounds. She now weighs under 100 pounds and admits she has overdone it, saying that she didn’t want to be this thin.
Osborne warns that young people should think twice before they start on this drug: She says it is very easy to shred much weight in a short period of time, and that’s why the med may become very addictive to teenagers.
There is also a general media narrative that links obesity to poor lifestyle choices and that the condition is preventable. I think that is an unfair point of view; the underlying causes of obesity are too complexed and one must not be so hasty in concluding that lifestyle choice is the main contributor for the condition. For example, studies have showed that children of obese parent(s) were much more likely to become obese than those with parents of normal weight.
I am not to the point of being obese, but I am overweight. I find that I am able to maintain my current weight (not getting much fatter) with 20 minutes of daily exercise, and with an adequate fibre-intake ie, consuming a good portion of nuts and vegetables. Research has showed that fibre stays longer in the digestive system than other nutrients and can help people feel less hungry.
Canadians may be in for a sugarless Xmas. People have looked everywhere: Costco? There’s a shortage. Others have waited outside their local supermarket before the store opens – No luck.
The reason? An ongoing workers’ strike at Rogers Sugar, the largest manufacturer of refined sugar in Canada. Of the three refineries in Canada, two of which are owned by Rogers.
Bakeries and small businesses are also affected, with supply running low and prices going the opposite direction. A shop owner says a bag of sugar that used to cost $24-$28 is now priced between $50-$62.
Sugar is not a necessity, and collective bargaining is a fair strategy used by employees in the process of negotiating employment terms with their boss. But it’s still a bit of a disappointment if there would be no sweet treats for the holiday season!
While many top-tier superstars have gradually fallen out of favour with fans, people from around the world still find her works relevant: After all, Swift is the Artist of the Year for 2023.
Fans were ecstatic when they learned that Swift’s Second Era Concert Tour included a stopover to our city, and as soon as tickets went on sale they were all snapped up at the speed of light.
Some were paying around $600 a ticket, and second-hand tickets were seen listed on-line for resale at $6,500. Apparently all decent hotels in our city are already fully booked during the time period for the artist’s tour, so it’s going to be like Christmas for the tourism industry – restaurants and tourist attractions will foreseeably be jammed-packed.
As I can’t afford to dish out $600 to attend the concert, I will have to do with listening to her hits on Apple Music.
That is the horrific message from a public statement signed by 350 prominent tech executives and AI scientists. Signatories include senior executives from Microsoft, Google, as well as OpenAI (The company that developed ChatGPT).
Needless to say there is great excitement over the technology, yet at the same time there has also been mounting fear that AI could go out of control.
It’s not the first time that prominent tech figures have publicly voiced their concern. Earlier in March, AI experts including Elon Musk have issued a letter urging for a 6-month moratorium for AI companies to halt their R&D, to give the industry sufficient time to set safety standards.
I am beginning to notice that harmful effects of AI are surfacing; there was a news report just this week about a lawyer who presented bogus law cases as precedents in court while representing a client. It turned out that he had relied on the research of his colleague, who used ChatGPT to generate law cases that didn’t really exist.
As I took time to think about this news, I also started to worry. As platforms like ChatGPT grow in popularity, false information of this nature may be generated trillions of times. In this paperless world, could it be possible in this instance, that AI eventually steps in to incorporate bogus cases into legitimate legal sources, thereby mixing factual records with false information? That’s a scary thought.
What a scary finding: Illegal vapes confiscated from students in England contained twice the levels of the daily safety limit for the heavy metal, lead.
As it’s illegal to sell vapes to students under the age of 18, it follows that vapes are therefore widely used by minors who tried to obtain them by illegal means. A survey has found that 11.6% of children between 11 to 17 years of age have experimented with vaping.
Lab results have indicated that 12 micrograms/ of lead, or 2.4 times above the safety limit, were found in the confiscated vapes. Lead is a neurotoxin that impairs brain and neural development. Yet students continue to vape despite these health hazards because vaping, similar to smoking, is highly addictive.
A teacher is so horrified by the findings that he has implemented sensors in school washrooms in an effort to reduce acts of vaping. He says police and regulators should also step in to deter illegal vapes from circulating in the black market.
Putting an end to emergency declarations means that the US will be treating COVID like any ‘normal’ disease ie, such as the seasonal flu.
In essence, a national COVID response from the federal government will no longer be required and instead, the regular authorities will resume the responsibility of directly managing the disease.
This is a widely expected move, because COVID is pretty much a disease that’s here to stay. Epidemiologists theorizes that COVID is similar to the flu in that both are highly contagious diseases that are manageable by vaccination.
This is very different from the SARS pandemic in 2002, which lasted eight months because that virus was very deadly and thereby sadly, killing the majority of the human hosts that it had infected. Subject to strict quarantine measures, the human hosts of SARS did not survive to pass on the virus and thus, the pathogen was eradicated.
Sam Bankman-Fried. Elizabeth Holmes. Aiden Pleterski.
They are young, ambitious and terribly convincing.
So convincing that investors who believed in them suffered significant losses by entrusting their funds to these individuals’ now collapsed businesses:
$8 billion missing from Bankman-Fried’s FTX.
$121 million in investor losses from Holmes’ Theranos.
Allegedly $25 million owed to 119 creditors who had a 70-30 split ‘deal’ with the self-proclaimed crypto-king, Pleterski.
FTX was the second largest crypto exchange platform evaluated at $32bn just last year, and founder Bankman-Fried is currently facing fraud charges. The 30-year-old denies that he had committed fraud and says he is merely not as competent as he thought himself to be.
Holmes’ Theranos dissolved in 2018, when it was discovered that the Edison machine, falsely claimed to be capable of diagnosing hundreds of diseases ( ie, cancer & diabetes etc) with a few drops of blood, simply did not work. Holmes was 19 when she dropped out of Stanford and started the company.
Pleterski, a 23-year-old who drove luxury vehicles, flew on private jets and rented a lakefront mansion for $45,000 monthly, told the media that he was ‘just a kid’ when his business went bankrupt. The insinuation here? Pleterski doesn’t think he himself should take the blame but rather, those who gave millions to a ‘kid’ to help them ‘invest’ are the ones who made a bad decision.
Ultimately, the bottom line is clearly stated by the judge who handed Holmes a 11-year sentence: ‘It is okay to fail, but it is NOT okay to commit fraud.’
NZ’s gutsy anti-tobacco law aims to gradually ban smoking forever – anyone born after Jan 1, 2009 are prohibited from buying cigarettes in the country.
Ie, In 2033, those under 24 years of age will be prohibited from buying cigarettes. And by 2043, it will be illegal for those under 34 to get cigarettes in NZ…so on and so forth until the country’s entire population is to be banned from smoking.
Of course, for this policy to be effective it’s crucial for NZ’s law enforcement to provide adequate support, because it’s foreseeable that there will be an increasingly lucrative market for contraband tobacco.
Take Canada for example: An estimated C$2 Billion (according to Imperial Tobacco Canada) in taxes are lost due to the illicit tobacco market.
Contraband cigarettes are popular because they are way cheaper ie, at approximately 1/3 the market price of their legal counterpart.
Contraband tobacco also poses tremendous health risks to users, as there’s no way of knowing which harmful substances are inhaled when smokers puff on something that’s illegal.
In fact, Priyanka Chopra Jonas says her latest role in an upcoming US series would be the first time in her 22-year career that she’d get equal pay in comparison to the male co-actor. She also notes that the disparity in pay based on gender differences still exists in Bollywood.
Jonas also says she was nicknamed ‘black cat’, or ‘dusky’ because of her darker complexion, in comparison to actors with lighter skin colour.
Currently 90% of all marriages in India are still family-arranged, with the bride having little say on who’d become her future husband.
But the tide seems to be slowly changing, as an increasing number of Indian ladies are opting to stay single by choice. Ie, There is a FB community consisting mainly of urban single women who preferred to be called ‘proudly single’, instead of being described as ‘widows, divorcees or unmarried’.
According to the 2011 Census, 71.4 million women are single in India – that’s whooping 39% increase from 51.2 million in 2001.
News-plus.ca 