Moen 7400 Series Kitchen faucet, Bought around year 2000, I don’t even recall, but with free parts, it continues to work very well. Photo by Don Tai
Some objects in life you just use every day and take them for granted. They just work, day in and day out, until something goes wrong and then you really notice them. Our Moen 7400 series kitchen faucet is one of our house appliances that just seems to last and last. When I think that, yes, it is time to replace it, I call Moen for free parts, they ship them to me, I install them and the faucet goes right back to working just as the day I bought and installed it. Smooth, problem free, drip free, to again fade into the background. Often times I use the kitchen faucet while thinking of something else and really don’t pay attention.
Viruses have been with mankind before there was mankind. I don’t even know if we can determine when they were created. As with all things that persist for a very long time, they have grown and adapted in surprising ways in order to stay alive and flourish. Our newest, and certainly not the last, virus is CoVid-19, which has thrown the world into a pandemic. This virus, and other corona viruses, may not have a brain, but are extremely smart in knowing how to use our human behaviours in order to proliferate. We do need to give credit where credit is due: These viruses are remarkably efficient.
Galanz bread maker MB15001 in yellow, max 750g loaf, Made in China
Kicked to the curb, this little Galanz bread maker MB15001A was. I could tell it was clean and little used. This little ditty did not need much work to get working, apart from brushing off some snow. I just plugged it in and it started beeping at me, telling me to feed it. Is this “Made in China” product any good?
As the world grapples with unexpected “100 year” weather events that seem to be more and more common, we need to acknowledge that climate change is real and needs urgent attention. Scientists are tracking unprecedented glacial melt that cannot be explained any other way. The damage to habitat and human existence is obvious to those experiencing it. But how do we repair and stabilize our planet?
I watched Bill Gates on the “60 minutes” TV series talk about investing in tech solutions, necessary to reverse climate change. I kept wondering how a tech solution can reverse our deep human mistakes, ones that we continue to make. I do not think it can.
The 2019 CoVid-19 pandemic has not ended, and may not end for many a month, even years. While it is difficult look to the past for guidance and then to look forward with any certainty, we still need to try. There are two country strategies that I see in the world: 1) All-out zero tolerance containment, and 2) balance between public health and country economy. It is with certainty that the pandemic has decimated world economies. The question is what strategy is best suited to get out of this pandemic.
Dark rye flour, 10kg bag, from Grain Process Enterprises, Toronto, $12.50. Underwhelming store, but adequate.
I have been baking bread for a good 9 months now, using white wheat flour and whole grain wheat. While it is nice, I’ve gotten tired of it. Many European people seem to really like rye in their breads. I do like rye bread as well, which has a very different taste. I searched for a source of rye here in Toronto, and found Grain Process Enterprises in Scarborough.
Wu Tang Clan logo hijacked with Wuhan, used by the Canadian Embassy, who called themselves the Wuhan Clan. Clever, and witty.
The Wu Tang Clan is a 1990s New York rap group. I’m not too familiar with them because I don’t listen to rap much. What does this have to do with China then? It seems that the Canadian Embassy in China called themselves the Wuhan Clan, a funny pun on the rap group, and used the Wu-Tang group’s logo, replacing Wu-Tang with Wuhan. This, by the way, was almost a year ago, when the Canadian Embassy was repatriating Canadians back to Canada.
Any exercise is better than no exercise. That said, for cardio exercise there are nuances that can affect you. HIIT is quick and stressing, and moderate cardio is slow and time consuming but gentle. Are the results the same for both?
High intensity interval training HIIT requires you to go all out in your cardio workout, but for extremely short periods of time, such as one minute. You then rest for a couple of minutes and repeat. A couple of cycles of this, and three times a week, and you’re done. You may not even do cardio for an hour per week, cumulatively. Maybe you do this for only 15 minutes a week.
It seems almost quaint: Live so you are comfortable but still not deplete the world’s resources. This is called doughnut economics. The third world should strive to bring up their standard of living, but the first world should not live beyond their means and deplete the world’s resources. Huh?
Amsterdam Doughnut Economics
It seems pretty reasonable, really. China, India and other poorer countries strive to economically improve and pull people out of poverty. That can only be a good thing. But then you have the first world countries consuming way beyond their means, because they are rich and because they can. As China and India improve, why should they not also consume beyond the earth’s means as well? The reason is that the world will then be depleted and we, as a species, will all suffer.
Chocolate emoji: I could not find an appropriate chocolate emoji for QQ, so I shrunk a larger image down to 32×32 saved in png format, transparent background, and imported it into QQ. Original large image.
I’m on QQ, Chinese social media and messenger, and wanted a different emoji that I could not find. Here’s how I added one.
You’ll need to edit your original graphic. The file format size is 32×32. Save your file in .png so you can have a transparent background. You can reduce the size of the image of your choice, but the simpler the better, as at 32 x 32 px almost all details will be lost. I have sized existing QQ emojis and they are 28x28px or smaller. This is a more appropriate size.
