Yesterday was Prime Day for Amazon.com and Amazon.ca and no surprise Amazon.com crashed as soon as Prime Day started. Some customers were unable to access the sales. I adore Amazon.ca by the way, the Prime membership is totally worth it.
Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon.com celebrated Amazon Prime Day yesterday with a new net worth of over $150 billion. Wow could you image? Well he now has $55 billion more than Bill Gates.
Warren Buffett donated $3.4 billion to charity yesterday, I loved that guy! The shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock went to Bill and Melinda Gates’s foundation as well as several charities tied to Warren’s family. He is one billionaire who just keeps giving, I wish they all would do that!
Can you finish off a 40 oz porterhouse steak, anyone? Not many can but Shaquille O’Neal can and he did. He was DJing at an Atlantic City resort and casino when he ate his $120 steak the other day! Well he is a big guy!
My Flashback song today is by Gwen Stefani for her debut solo studio album back in 2004. “Rich Girl” was produced by Dr. Dre, and is a remake of “If I Were A Rich Man” from the musical Fiddler On The Roof.
It made it to #12 here on the Canadian singles chart and #3 on the US Pop 100 Chart. Gwen received a nomination for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the 47th Grammy Awards.
Catch my Flashback song Monday-Friday at 11:53am pulsefm.ca
On July 13, 2018, officers from the Drug Unit, with the assistance of the Gang Enforcement Team (SGET), and the Lower Mainland District Emergency Response Team, executed a search warrant at a residence in the 12500-block of 113B Avenue.
As a result of the investigation, police located and seized:
· 1 sawed off shotgun
· 1 air soft rifle
· various ammunition, including approximately 100 carbine rounds, 25 shotgun shells and 22 caliber rifle rounds
· a small plastic bag of suspected marijuana
Three people were taken into custody and later released. Charges have not been laid as the investigation is on-going. If you have any information about this incident please call the Surrey RCMP at 604-599-0502, or contact Crime Stoppers if you wish to remain anonymous, at 1-800-222-8477 or www.solvecrime.ca
A new study from the University of British Columbia suggests conditions such as sleep problems, irritable bowel syndrome and depression are more common among multiple sclerosis patients _ five years before they developed signs of the disease.
Prof. Helen Tremlett at UBC’s division of neurology is the lead author of the largest-ever study that examined symptoms of people before they were diagnosed with MS.
She says that during the five years before the first symptoms show up, multiple sclerosis patients are up to four times more likely to be treated for sleep problems, and irritable bowel syndrome was twice as common.
The research involved examining the health records of 14,000 multiple sclerosis patients in B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia between 1984 and 2014.
The data was compared with 67,000 patients without the disease in those four provinces.
Tremlett says much more research is needed to expand on the study published in the Multiple Sclerosis Journal and down the road, it could lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment of the auto-immune disease that has no cure.
The summertime heat continues South of the Fraser! Daytime temperatures will reach into the low thirties over inland areas of the south coast again today. Overnight lows in the mid-teens will provide little break from the heat until at least Wednesday.
While these high temperatures aren’t out of the ordinary for this time of the year, it is important to remind yourself of the importance of staying cool as best you can.
Extreme heat affects everyone.
The risks are greater for young children, pregnant women, older adults, people with chronic illnesses and people working or exercising outdoors.
Watch for the effects of heat illness: swelling, rash, cramps, fainting, heat exhaustion, heat stroke and the worsening of some health conditions.
Drink plenty of water even before you feel thirsty and stay in a cool place.
Check on older family, friends and neighbours. Make sure they are cool and drinking water
Never leave people or pets inside a parked vehicle.
Get informed
– Check the local news for health and safety updates.
– For more information on heat-related illness, call HealthLinkBC at 811.
– Contact your local government to find out what services (such as air-conditioned buildings and public splash parks) are available in your area.
I am a lover of wine, I can drink wine throughout the year but during the summer it’s a different story. I do enjoy my favourite sauvignon blanc don’t get me wrong but I also love to have a nice glass of sangria or two or three. I find sangria to be the best summer drink, it’s light and fruity and just perfect to quench your thirst on a hot summer weekend!
I will even make it myself and leave it in the fridge over night so it’s ready for the next day. I find the key to a great sangria is using burgundy, it gives it a very nice deep purple look and it has such a great flavour.
My Flashback song today came out in 1999 by Whitney Houston for her fourth studio album. “It’s Not Right but it’s Okay” won Whitney the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. It peaked at #3 on the Canadian Hot 100 Chart.
Catch my Flashback song Monday-Friday at 11:53am pulsefm.ca
At around 10:45 pm on July 15, Surrey RCMP responded to a report of shots fired in the 13900 block of 108 Avenue. Officers located a 35 year old male with gunshot wounds inside a residence. The male was transported to hospital with serious, but non-life threatening injuries. Police believe this is a targeted, isolated occurrence and there is no risk to public safety. The investigation is ongoing.
If you have any information please contact the Surrey RCMP at 604-599-0502, or Crime Stoppers if you wish to remain anonymous, at 1-800-222-8477 or www.solvecrime.ca.
For me it begins with the tactile feeling of picking organic berries and leads me to the distinct smoky aromas of the BBQ filling the air. Here’s to pink and purple sunrises and burning orange sunsets dropping into the Salish Sea, summer excites the senses.
Filling your ears with the sounds of summer? Is there anything better than hearing an outdoor concert, festival, night market of baseball tournament? Listening to the drone at a crowded beach on the hottest day of the year, there’s nothing quite like it. The simple melody of birds chirping, bees buzzing and the dramatic sound of a train pulling away or a plane landing. It all speaks of summer.
Who doesn’t remember the taste of their first s’more, lemonade at their own stand, Chilliwack corn and lake fresh rainbow trout on an open campfire – pretty tasty! Iced beverages, farm fruit and ice-cream must be added to the list, there are many more. Apparently even rosé is making a comeback. But let’s not forget about watermelon that taste like candy, a healthy summer treat!
A good book, that first summer job and drive-in movies help round out the simple pleasures of the warmest season of the year. Longer days and shorter nights allow summer to make sure we are always young, if only at heart. Take an early morning or evening walk, enjoy sleeping in the minimum, and the romance of kissing under the moon and stars.
Summer is full of sweet sensational firsts, some of love, some of hurt and loss and some others in between. See you in September. Regardless, summer is for people who seek to fulfill such a rich bounty of acute seasonal senses, including touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell. All five told and the best of the season to you!
For the most part I try to stay away from jumping onto the bash Trump bandwagon. However, when I read this piece written by Finton O’Toole for the Irish Times. It is well written, concise and definitely eye-opening. – Ian
Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow
To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.
It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.
Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.
One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.
Moral boundaries
But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination.
People have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group
It is this next step that is being test-marketed now. It is being done in Italy by the far-right leader and minister for the interior Matteo Salvini. How would it go down if we turn away boatloads of refugees? Let’s do a screening of the rough-cut of registering all the Roma and see what buttons the audience will press. And it has been trialled by Trump: let’s see how my fans feel about crying babies in cages. I wonder how it will go down with Rupert Murdoch.
Children and workers at a tent encampment recently built in Tornillo, Texas: the blooding process has begun within the democratic world. Photograph: Joe Raedle
To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”. And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.
‘Devious’ infants
And the results are quite satisfactory. There is good news on two fronts. First, Rupert Murdoch is happy with it – his Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors. They went the whole swinish hog: even the brown babies are liars. Those sobs of anguish are typical of the manipulative behaviour of the strangers coming to infest us – should we not fear a race whose very infants can be so devious? Second, the hardcore fans loved it: 58 per cent of Republicans are in favour of this brutality. Trump’s overall approval ratings are up to 42.5 per cent.
Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors
This is greatly encouraging for the pre-fascist agenda. The blooding process has begun within the democratic world. The muscles that the propaganda machines need for defending the indefensible are being toned up. Millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable. So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if those brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their minds, crossed the boundaries of morality. They are, like Macbeth, “yet but young in deed”. But the tests will be refined, the results analysed, the methods perfected, the messages sharpened. And then the deeds can follow.
