Don’t lie to me, you were up earlier than when I send this newsletter out.

Was it a TV? A new jacket? Or was it a SwitchBot Smart Switch Button Pusher, a mouthful of a device to say that looks like a little MacBook power adapter thing with a little poker that sticks out to push buttons. On sale at 30% off on Amazon!

I myself am probably going to be looking to see if any of the Telcos have any deals on internet packages as I play the yearly pricing game with them given…

As much as I’d love to rant about the Telcos in Canada and how horrible they are, let’s stay on topic…Black Friday.

Let’s start with the origin story. One of the more commonly used theories of where the name originated was from the idea that retailers in the 60’s would finally turn a profit in November going from being in the “red” to being in the “black” - I supposed they had this realization on a Friday? Leading into the 1980’s, Black Friday started to become what we now know of it today.

Black Friday was originally this American shopping bonanza that gave Canadians an excuse to drive over the border to look for deals. Now it’s just an excuse for the entire world, not just Americans, to hunt for shopping deals during the last week of November.

However, over the past few years I find you have to be looking for something very specific to appreciate the deal. With the rise of cheap China shopping apps like Shein and Temu and the abundance of sales that seem to be never ending throughout the year, Black Friday doesn’t seem as much like a day for exclusive deals as it once was. And not to mention that some retailers start advertising their Black Friday sales in OCTOBER…and you thought Christmas decorations in October was overbearing.

A great website to look at is www.camelcamelcamel.com to see what is actually a deal and to compare price changes of products over time. One year I bought a TV on sale in August and the price I paid was cheaper than the Black Friday or Boxing Day sales later that year. Makes ya wonder if it’s really worth crashing these stores in November after all, doesn’t it?

This week's issue is a 5 minute read:

🎹 AI making music moves

🥯 The world’s most dangerous foods

🐷 Canada has a pig problem

AI music is all the rage

In a world where there’s so much chatter about AI taking over everything we do, I come to you with proof that this is true. OK OK OK, maybe half true, half not true? Like, kinda, it might happen? I sound like a 7 year old babbling while they try to make you believe they didn’t just draw on the walls with blue crayon while holding a blue crayon.

So firstly, in my typical weekly browsing of Reddit I came across r/AI_Music. Here you’ll find a lot of music by essentially developers (with a bit of music taste) who know how to build custom AI models to get certain voices to sound like they’re really singing. Some of it sounds actually pretty decent, like this Linkin Park cover:

Or Frank Sinatra with a modern EP - I’ve saved it at “Gangster’s Paradise” for you below as I’m sure you’re wondering what Sinatra would sound like singing a 90’s rap hit:

The more I listen to this Sinatra mix the more I realize that any artist, dead or alive, will become this idea of an “infinite” artist with the ability to make new music forever. That’s pretty wild if you think about it.

After scrolling forever through Reddit I was inspired to go try my hand at making my own music…well having AI make my own music, but you get the point. There’s a bunch of tools out there that will do things like make beats for you instantly just by typing out a mood, feeling, or sound. There’s other tools out there that have a series of dropdowns where you just select sounds and poof, a 2 minute track is done. I landed on Riffusion because it allows you to not only create the beat but you can also add lyrics and it will then add someone singing the lyrics in tune with the beat created, all based on the prompts you give it.

Exhibit A:

You’ll see what prompts I used to make that. The lyrics are something I wrote but AI took care of the rest. It just knew to match both the imagery and the beats with the lyrics in a way that actually sounds so legit that it’s scary.

In a matter of seconds you can create basically anything you want and a lot of the time it sounds very legit. If your dream was to create the next Lofi Girl YouTube channel, that dream is now very possible my friend.

No fugu for you

The first time I travelled to Japan I found myself in a small town by the water called Shiminoseki. We stopped to explore the town for the day and ate sushi at a restaurant right on the water. The chef wanted to practice his English with us foreigners so he told us to order in English and order anything we wanted. I jokingly said I wanted poison fish remembering the Simpsons episode. His eyes lit up telling us how he trained for 10 years to get a license to cut the puffer fish just perfect and that’s when I tried fugu for the first and only time. (Yes, I survived…)

Puffer fish, or fugu in Japanese, is one of the most dangerous foods in the world. But did you know cherry pits are also dangerous? Or what about bagels? YES, that’s right, BAGELS ARE DANGEROUS. Check out this list below of some of the most dangerous foods in the world.

Hot Dogs

What kind of kid eats Armor Hot Dogs? Hopefully none! This is because hog dogs are the leading cause of choking related injuries in kids under 3. That phrase “train ‘em while they’re young”? Yeah, don’t do that if you think your 2 year old is going to be a professional competitive eater.

San-nakji

Ever eat octopus? Probably grilled right? And probably delicious! What about raw octopus? What about raw octopus that’s still squirming? San-nakji is a Korean dish comprised of cold raw baby octopus that although are not alive anymore, are still squirming. As a result, their suction cups can still attach themselves to your throat as you try to swallow it - six people die on average every year from choking on them!

Elderberries

You know those berries you see in trees and bushes as a kid that your parents profusely told you not to touch, let alone eat? I feel like elderberries were those berries. Although they can be eaten when they’re ripe and properly cooked, their leaves, twigs, and seeds contain potentially fatal levels of sambunigrin, a toxic thing that you just don’t want in your body.

Bagels

Finally we made it to bagels. OK how bogus is this? Well they’re not the healthiest thing in the world but no, you’re not going to die from eating a bagel. However, in 2011 an estimated 2000 Americans were sent to the ER with knife injuries related to bagels. Where’s the Black Friday deal on the bagel slicer when you need it??

The PIGS aren’t coming, they’re already here

In the 1980’s Canada encouraged farmers to raise swine but when the pig market crashed in 2001 farmers were left with more than their fair share of bacon. So they literally cut the fences to their pig pens and said EFF THIS. And that’s the brief history of how feral swine began to roam the prairie provinces in Canada.

More recently the population has now been deemed out of control as these pigs cross breed with each other to create “super pigs”, which survive the harsh winter, eat everything in site, and grow to immense sizes. Not to mention the fact that a sow can have two litters a year of six piglets each. What this really means is that 65% of the pig population can be killed off yearly and it’s population will still end up increasing.

In the U.S., the federal government has given funds to state level projects and agencies to deal with wild pigs roaming around eating everything in site. In Texas they’ve turned pig hunting by helicopter into a fun tourist thing to do. Meanwhile in Alberta the province offers $75 for each wild pig killed from hunting. In 2022 there were zero bounties award for zero pigs killed.

As much as my wife might be cringing at this as she loves little baby pigs, I think in reading this, she has now come to accept the fact that Canada has a pig problem. Frankly I wasn’t aware of this until earlier this week 🤷‍♂️ 

I recommend this innovative approach to dealing with wild pigs: