Well, it feels like only yesterday that I was complaining to you about shovelling snow and miserable winter weather. And what do you know, I’m now here to complain to you about sticky shirts and lower back sweat - don’t even pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about!

According to The Weather Network’s prediction for summer 2023 - the people who spin a wheel to determine the weather - we’re in for a variable summer which basically means it will be hot and dry sometimes and then it’ll rain and be cooler other times. So basically they predicted that this summer we’re going to have summer and it’ll mainly feel like summer while we have summer.

…and to think I wanted to work for The Weather Network when I was younger.

This week's issue is a 5 minute read:

🛍️ Is anyone using Temu?

📞 The mid 2000’s cell phone era

👽️ Your neighbour is probably a real alien

Sooo, what have you bought on Temu lately?

Remember Temu? You know, the app I talked about months ago that basically tried to lure you in with a bunch of free “gifts” to get you to buy cheap China products? Well SURPRISE SURPRISE, Temu is losing money - lot’s of it.

A couple weeks back my wife sent me an invite for their app where the more she shared the invite, the closer she got to a free gift. It made us wonder, how are they able to get away with sending free stuff to seemingly thousands of people - surely $2.38 LED charging cables eventually add up!

Wired recently did an analysis on Temu’s supply chain uncovering that they are losing about $30 per order. China Merchants Securities also calculated that Temu is losing between $588 million to $954 million a year currently as it desperately spends to try to break into the North American market. Meanwhile suppliers in China are feeling the burn seeing very little profit or none at all as free shipping and continued discounts on the platform eat away at seller’s margins.

Foreign trade orders in China have dropped 40% so far this spring creating stock surpluses across the country. Factories that typically would have a labour shortage are now telling people to go home and take less hours. It may finally be time to start that dropshipping business YouTube ads keep telling me to do.

Remembering the Crackberry era

I recently watched “Blackberry”. Firstly, it’s such a good film. If you liked “The Founder”, the film about the guy who started McDonalds, then you will love “Blackberry”. I think it’s safe to say we all loosely know the story of how Blackberry started and what eventually killed the company cough iPhone cough. But what was really so fun about the film was all the little details, exaggerated or not, that made up the story of what once was Canada’s most valuable company. IE: how SACRED movie night was in the RIM headquarters.

In watching the film, I had a lot of OH yeah moments like when they talked about the Blackberry Bold. I never owned a Blackberry Bold but that was the phone I was eyeing for a really really long time - and then the iPhone came out HA. This all got me thinking though - there’s been a lot of good phones that came out before the iPhone! So I decided to put together a little cellphone nostalgia list. I know you owned the third one for sure!

Nokia N95

Nokia phones in general were so good. I remember going to Pacific Mall to get my own Nokia slider phone. I loved that phone. It had a qwerty keyboard so you could text and drive and not even look at the keypad. It also had a mini flash card slot so you could load more music for ringtones onto your phone (does anyone use music as their ringtone anymore?) I just loved that the thing slid open and closed - ah the innovation of 2007.

Sony Ericsson K800i

Remember this phone? Everyone wanted this phone because it had a 3 megapixel camera - THREE MEGAPIXELS! Basically everyone wanted a Sony Ericsson back in the day because it was the phone James Bond used. Later on Daniel Craig would be promoting the K900C which was an updated phone from this one with a 5 megapixel camera and limited edition James Bond titanium grey cover. Ah, back when you had to upload MP3’s to your phone, what a time.

Motorola RAZR

Did you know Motorola sold 130 million of these things over its lifetime. I never had a RAZR, frankly it didn’t interest me but you have to admit, when it first came out, it looked cooler than those Nokia brick phones that everyone had. The keyboard looked like something out of Tron. The colours were bright and vibrant. And the phone flipped open like a boss. Motorola has since re-released the RAZR with a more modern look and feel - I think I’d rather have the old school flip phone instead.

Your neighbour’s probably an alien, just saying!

According to Dr. Garry Nolan of Stanford, aliens have not only visited Earth but they’re actually living amongst us. Perhaps finally a logical explanation for your crazy neighbours? According to Dr. Nolan, an advanced form of intelligence is among us but we might just not be smart enough to recognize that they’ve been here all along. However they are apparently “affecting our culture” including influencing religion. Funny enough, when I first heard of Scientology I thought it was a religion for aliens anyway.

Not only are aliens are among us - I’m looking at you Elon Musk - but there are reverse engineer programs taking place in the U.S. to figure out how downed UFO’s are constructed and how they work. Whether these programs will influence how we experience air travel in the future or are just myths created through the UFO rumour mills online, you be the judge. But for now go watch Fire in the Sky and tell me that’s not the best alien movie you’ve ever seen.