I love sharing ideas and exchanging fun and interesting experiences with people. Here are a few things that have caught my interest lately.
A little sip of heaven.
I’m not typically a foo-foo coffee drinker with pumps of syrup and whipped cream filling up your lid dome. However, I have been introduced to a drink that puts a little foo in your brew…and it’s awesome. Have you tried a drink at Starbucks called the Salted Cream Cold Foam Cold Brew? It’s a little taste of heaven—both sweet and salty. Only 230 calories, it sounds like a mouthful when you order it, but the complexity excites with each sip. A hint of caramel and savory whipped cream top Starbuck’s smooth cold brew (helping make it not too sweet.) It’s really delicious! Salted. Cream. Cold. Foam. Cold. Brew. Say it really fast 10 times and then try it!
Brené Brown’s The Call to Courage is Now on Netflix
Facing your fears and overcoming shame in your life can be terrifying. But fortunately, we have Dr. Brené Brown to get us through! Her books—The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and Dare to Lead—have made an impact on my life after seeing her now-viral 2010 TEDx Houston talk, The Power of Vulnerability. When I say viral, I think the numbers are up to 42 million views? Dr. Brown’s combination of wit, humor, empathy, and intelligence is impressive, as she takes you on a journey of self-reflection and challenges you to step boldly into the uncertain and unknown. Watch it! You won’t be disappointed.
Disney+. Predicting early success.
Disney has announced the launch of its new streaming service, Disney+, on November 12, 2019. Disney+ is offering both legacy and new content from a list of brands that reads like a who’s who in the entertainment biz: Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, 20th Century Fox, and National Geographic. The service will compete with the streaming services of Netflix and Amazon Prime video, but there is likely plenty of content to go around. Also hailing from Disney, Frozen 2 is scheduled to be released on November 22, 2019, in 2D, 3D and IMAX 3D.
Beam me up, Scotty, in an Uber air taxi.
Aerial ridesharing is not as far off as you think. Uber Air is developing shared air transportation—with a planned launch in 2023— for affordable travel between suburbs and cities (starting with Los Angeles and Dallas). The Uber Elevate team is also pretty excited about developing its Elevate Cloud Services software for managing unmanned vehicles in dense areas of low altitude air traffic. I must say that I am skeptical on this one. Not too interested in seeing someone’s Pad Thai delivery getting sucked down an airliner’s intake as part of an UberEats experiment. Lots of air traffic to deconflict. Someone will figure it out!
Man accidentally swallowed his Air Pod
Good to know that if you lose your Air Pods, you can always use the Apple tracking feature to find them. Apparently, a guy in Taiwan fell asleep with his Air Pods on, swallowed one, and then found it in his stomach through his tracking devices. He said that he didn’t understand where the noise was coming from at first. However, a hospital verified the discovery in his stomach, and the man passed the earbud through his digestive system. Once dried out, the earbud had a 41% battery life and still worked!
Echo Dot Kid’s Edition
Did you know that Amazon recently released an Echo Dot Kid’s Edition, an Echo (better known as Alexa) designed for kids? Now Alexa can play music, read stories, answer questions, fart, and tell jokes to your kids—all with younger ears in mind. The kiddie Echo comes with 1 year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited (including over 1000 Audible books and songs, games, and skills from Disney, National Geographic, etc.), plus a 2-year guarantee on the product (if your kids break their Echo, Amazon will replace it for free.) Parental controls in the online Amazon Parent Dashboard let you set daily time limits and review activity (e.g., number of “Baby Shark” requests), and you can filter out explicit songs from Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Spotify.
I’m Doing Literally Nothing in my Active Wear
So this video is a few years old, but I have to add it to my inaugural list of fun things because it’s guaranteed to make you smile. It’s a spoof by the Australian comedy sketch group, Skit Box, assuring us that it’s totally appropriate to wear active wear anywhere you want. Never mind the gym.
Be Kind and Eat Ice Cream
Finally, this story is a memorable one. Dr. Alastair McAlpine asked the terminally ill children under his care what they enjoy about life and what gives life meaning as an assignment for his palliative care diploma program at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The results are posted in this heartwarming Twitter thread. “NONE said they wished they’d watched more TV. NONE said they should’ve spent more time on Facebook. NONE said they enjoyed fighting with others. NONE enjoyed hospital,” he wrote — especially poignant since these are children who likely spend a lot of their limited time there.”
The young children, ages 4 to 9, had already figured out what was important, mentioning loving their family, hearing stories, building sandcastles at the beach, laughing, playing with pets, and oh…eating ice cream.
The takeaway for all of us, McAlpine said, is simple: “Be kind. Read more books. Spend time with your family. Crack jokes. Go to the beach. Hug your dog. Tell that special person you love them,” he wrote. “These are the things these kids wish they could’ve done more of. The rest is details.
“Oh… and eat more ice cream.”