Good morning
☕
Sorry I’ve been missing for the last few weeks, it’s good to be back!
I hope everyone had a lovely pride month 🌈
We’ve already had a great summer of sport but there’s loads to look forward to - The EUROs finals and Wimbledon both this week, an exciting F1 season underway, the Lions Tour against South Africa, and of course the much anticipated Tokyo Olympics kicking off in just under 3 weeks! (to name but a few)
Anyway, C’mere to me…
Bits
EU Bans Single-Use Plastics 🥤
The directive passed in 2019 and as of July 3rd 2021 (last Saturday) certain Single-use Plastics are no longer permitted to be sold in the Irish Market.
These include Cotton Buds, Cutlery, Plates, Stirrers, Chopsticks, Straws, Expanded polystyrene single-use food and beverage containers, and all oxo-degradable plastic products. Further stricter rules will continue to come in 2023 & 2024, read more via Gov.ie
The World has a New Ocean 🌏
To join the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic Oceans, Nat Geo cartographers officially recognize the Southern Ocean as the world’s fifth ocean.
The term the Southern Ocean has become increasingly used by scientists and in the media, so this is not just adding the term but also officially recognising it for its ecological distinction.
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is what defines this new ocean, unlike the land and continents used to define the others.
“The ACC flows from west to east around Antarctica, in a broad fluctuating band roughly centered around a latitude of 60 degrees south—the line that is now defined as the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean. Inside the ACC, the waters are colder and slightly less salty than ocean waters to the north.”
On a related note, how many continents are there?
Last week ‘Map Men’ released this great video explaining why it’s quite hard to answer that question…
The US Leaves Afghanistan
After almost 20 years, this weekend US troops very quietly but officially left their last base, Bagram Air Base, to the Afghans. Leaving the country in an uncertain state of Taliban advance.
This Irish 98-year-old woman helped win WWII
From Blacksod Lighthouse in Co. Mayo, at 1 pm on 3rd June 1944, 21-year-old Maureen Sweeney was the first to forecast a severe storm coming from the Atlantic.
This information led to the D-Day landings being postponed by at least 24 hrs.
Details of the enormous military operation were of course covert, so it wasn’t until a decade later that Maureen and her family found out that she may well have helped change the course of history.
A few weeks ago she was awarded a special US House of Representatives honour.
And she beat Covid-19 too!
never gets old
‘ladies and gentlemen, the weekend’
I get a kick out of this Twitter account. Every week.
I’m sure you’ve seen the meme before, it’s a video of Daniel Craig introducing the artist ‘The Weekend’ on Saturday Night Live last summer, except it’s cut so that all he says is ‘ladies and gentlemen, the weekend’.
What’s gas is that every Friday, for the last few months, this account has tweeted this video.
And every single week, without fail, it gets a massive response, with between 100k-200k likes, and tens of thousands of retweets.
While the corporate world scrolls Twitter on a Friday afternoon it just doesn’t seem to get old!
Smile 😊
Saved 📷
Think 🌊
Zero-sugar cans use the away kit, diet cans use the alternative kit
That’s all 🤙🏽
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Guy