This week I come to you from the hard padded chairs of the Volkswagen dealership as I sit and wait for an oil change for my car. Right out of the gate I have to state that this scheduled maintenance visit is covered by VW otherwise you would never catch me in the service section of a dealership.

When I was younger I used to take my Honda Civic to the dealership thinking I was doing the right thing because my parents only ever went to the dealership for service. Aside from the fact that dealerships are overpriced when it comes to car service, they’re also this awkward place of mainly men walking around in golf shirts and dress pants in the summer and too loose or too tight suits in the winter.

You ever walk into a car dealership and get the feeling that EVERYONE is looking at you? That’s because they probably are. I equate it to showing up to a nursing home while the old people are all watching TV. They all shift their head immediately at the sign of any foreign movement and eye you as you walk by.

And then there’s the whole song and dance of talking to someone at a dealership. If it’s the salesperson then they see you as a brand new walking dollar sign. And if it’s a service/parts person, they see you as a recurring walking dollar sign. Either way you have to show up almost on defence expecting to be sold in some shape or form.

Lastly, they’re just boring places to be. If you like cars then sure, you’ve got some stuff to look at but my guess is the vast majority of people who own a car are not car enthusiasts. Give us something to do or look at besides the news on the TV, damnit. Deals happen at the dealership - “deal” is in the frikken name! So why not do something to this bland, glass wall filled building that makes it more inviting to go in?

This week's issue is a 5 minute read:

🇸🇬 Singapore doing the most to stay cool

🖼️ Clean air sells

🎶 Drake releases the hounds

There’s cool and then there’s Singapore

We just had our hottest October 2nd on record the other day and although I’m very happy that I can still walk outside in shorts and slides and feel comfortable, shi*t’s getting hot out there yo. One can only imagine what it’s like to live in a city where it’s just hot all year round…like Singapore, for instance. Oh wait, here’s a nice lil exposé on how they’re trying to keep the city cool.

So firstly, none of what I’m about to share with you is groundbreaking but I think all of it together creates a nice little urban planner’s dream scenario of a city utilizing itself to create comfortable living conditions for its residents, even as the environment and climate changes.

So what is Singapore doing to manage hotter temperatures you ask? Well let me tell you! One of the obvious things if you’ve ever been to Singapore is the greenery around the city - lining the streets, the buildings, and the rooftops. Trees absorb moisture and release it in the air cooling temperatures down. They also cover the ground which tends to absorb heat, therefore limiting the heat absorption which allows for temperatures to cool at night.

Ever walk down city streets only to be blown all over the place caught in a wind tunnel? Yeah, those things also make cities more hot. And so the way buildings were designed in the Marina Bay development allows for the cooling sea breezes to be deflected off of the buildings and into the pedestrian levels of the city. They also do new developments smart, where buildings are different heights and they don’t block critical airflow for the city. If you ever walked down Adelaide in Toronto then you know how much the developers DON’T CARE about what I just wrote.

Beyond all of that, the city uses building angles to further deflect and trap cooler air in pockets where one may want more cool air. As an example they have this hospital by a body of water that has a V-shape to it which deflects air through open areas around the hospital, keeping its surroundings a couple degrees cooler. Now I’m sure we’re all well aware that Singapore is a very wealthy city/state but I mean, if planting trees is able to get parts of their city down a couple degrees then I’d say let’s stop planting trees in forests and plant them in cities! (just kidding, plant them in forests too 😅 )

^{Are these efforts going to stop any kind of rising temperatures that take place year over year. Probably not BUT they definitely limit the effects the crazy Asia heat has on the city!}

The world’s cleanest air for sale

If you know me then you know I’m all for a good business idea. I’m even more for a business idea that is easy to make money from. And so I was punching the air when I found out back in 2019 that a couple guys from Alberta had sold a ziplock bag of air on eBay for $168. And then later started a company selling air canisters to China. And so how do you top this?

You go to the island that has the cleanest air on earth and sell that air!

Tasmania’s Cape Grim definitely doesn’t sound like an inviting island simply from the name. But given this island is also known as “the edge of the world”, which boasts 180km/hr winds at times coming all the way from Antartica, the name kinda fits.

The sea to the west of Tasmania is the longest stretch of uninterrupted ocean in the world and so as a result of all of that wind travelling across the ocean to the island, the air arrives as pure as nature-ly possible. So what do you do when you’ve got the cleanest air in the world? You sell it of course!

A family owned business called Air Bubble “harvests” the air at Cape Grim and sells it in canisters where you can ingest the cleanest air in the world directly in your face. Air Bubble has figured out how to go from a Ziplock bag to modern innovative ways of capturing and containing air so you have your air on the go! Imagine they just “grabbed” the air and “threw” it into canisters and sold them? There’s no pricing on their website, of course - how much would you pay for air?

Working out at home is free too but you still pay to go to the gym sooo..?

Where my dogs at?

The Drake Stans are getting another injection of lyrical dopamine today as he released his 8th album, For All The Dogs, at 6AM this morning. I haven’t listened to it myself yet other than the snippets he’s released over social media but the internet seems to think it’s going to be the Drake album we’ve all been waiting for since the days of Nothing Was The Same where you were blown away by lyrics and bars track after track.

I don’t know if I’ll do a full review of the album but if I do then here’s a preview of what my hip hop reviews used to look like: