Band of the Month: The Cautioneers

Hello Friday! We made it!

As the NXNE music festival has been invoking joyous, creative revelry inside AND outside of venues throughout downtown Toronto over the last three days, we’re now in the thick of it and I’m excited for the second featured Band in the last week.

Today’s band is The Cautioneers.

Combining harmonious, reverb-doused vocal melodies over softly percussive keys, and smooth synthesizer behind ethereal and driven guitar hooks, this Toronto six piece takes melodic pop to a dark and dreamy level.

The Cautioneers are being featured in three NXNE showcases this week. Be sure to catch at least one of them, including tonight, June 14, at The Boat at 1am. They are also closing off Saturday night at 3am @ Rancho Relaxo and playing a stripped down set @ Of A Kind on Sunday afternoon.

Now get out there and give your ears a treat!

Band of the Month by Greg O’Toole

Bees are Great for Honey and Sleep

Bees are wonderful little beings that spread pollen to places that need it and, as a bonus they create delicious honey. It turns out that a spoonful of honey can help you sleep!

Suffering from yet another poor night’s sleep? Then how about trying some local beekeeper’s honey for a rejuvenating sleep!

Here’s why: Researchers found that a teaspoon or two of honey before bed ensures a restorative sleep. A human liver stores about eight hours of glycogen – an important brain food. If you eat supper at 7 p.m., by about 3 a.m. your brain releases a stress hormone called cortisol. Cortisol scavenges the body, melts muscle tissue and converts it into glycogen to feed the brain. When released, cortisol causes the heart to beat faster and raises glucose insulin levels in the blood.

Read more here.

USA Raises ‘Carbon Price’

Climate change is happening and it’s costing a lot of money to deal with. More floods, tornados, hurricanes, and other natural events are happening with greater frequency thanks to planetary temperature increase. The reason the planet’s temperature is increasing is thanks to the way previous generations have dealt with waste.

One such waste product comes in the form of exhaust from cars and other air pollution from various sources. This much is obvious, but very few countries have acted on this issue (in fact, Canada has gone out it’s way to stop action). In the USA, the Obama administration has quietly passed a new law that raises the cost of releasing pollutants into the air in the hopes it will help slow more climate change.

Buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens is a change in the U.S. government’s accounting for carbon emissions that could have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline.

The increase of the so-called social cost of carbon, to $38 a metric ton in 2015 from $23.80, adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations. The figure is meant to approximate losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops.

Read more at Bloomberg.

Dogs and Cats are Great for Your Health

Having a pet cat or dog is beneficial for your health, with dog owners seeing huge decreases of heart problems. A pet can lower blood pressure and cholesterol by their very being. There’s no word yet on if pets are magical 😉

If you’re thinking of getting a pet make sure to check your local rescue shelter for a match.

“There was enough data to make us believe that there probably was some relationship between pet ownership and decreased cardiovascular risk,” Dr. Glenn Levine, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said in an interview this week.

In particular, dog ownership may help reduce cardiovascular risk, the group said.

People with dogs often get more physical activity by walking them, agreed Dr. Chi-Ming Chow, a cardiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and a former dog owner.

Read more at the CBC.

Get Help Choosing an Ethical Career

80,000 Hours is a student run organization at Oxford University that helps people find a job or career in something that makes the world better. This is great for so many obvious reasons – but the one I love the most is that it shows how philosophy can be applied in your life everyday.

Do you want to spend 8 (or more) hours a day just earning a couple dollars when you can get paid to make the planet, people, and the world better?

According to the organization’s view of ethics-as-impact, a do-gooder job only “does good” insofar as you are better at it than the person who would have filled the job otherwise. “This is the replaceability factor,” says MacAskill. “The difference between you and the person who would have been in your shoes.” If you’re fully replaceable, you are, quite literally, not making a difference.

Read more at Co.Exist.