🚫🧻 Déjà Vu All Over Again

Image: Giphy

• But this rationing go-round, there’s one key difference: It’s not caused by a shortage of merchandise, but delivery issues like shipping delays and truck driver shortages.

🩹 Band-aid… The membership-only warehouse chain has chartered three ocean vessels for the next year to mitigate these broader issues, according to Galanti. Each will be able to transport 800-1,000 containers at a time between the U.S., Asia, and Canada.

🌎 Zoom out: COVID, labor shortages, rising transportation costs, and material constraints are squeezing supply chains and increasing product costs worldwide.

• Semiconductor shortages are having an effect on everything from cars to computers to major appliances to video games.
• Nike said on its earnings call last week that 80% of its shoe factories in Vietnam are closed and so are nearly half of its apparel factories.
• The most recent Consumer Price Index showed prices rose 5.3% over the past year.

📝 The takeaway: You may want to look into buying your Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah presents, like, now.

• Nike last week warned of further delays during the holiday season, citing examples of products taking 80 days to ship across the world when they used to take 40 days.

🎁 America’s top golfers defeated their European counterparts over the weekend, winning back the Ryder Cup for the first time since 2016 and the second time since 2008.

The Understatement of the Century…

Being a teacher is hard. Especially in these unprecedented times.

A global pandemic, extreme partisanship, and bouncing from hybrid to fully remote to in-person instruction are extraordinary challenges to face – and they shouldn’t be met alone.

Meet Marie and Amanda. ☝️

They’re classroom teachers, just like you, who were inspired by an idea: This brave new world needs brave new teachers.

So they did the 2020 thing and started a podcast: Brave New Teaching.

• Episodes are released each Thursday and tackle topics designed to take your teaching to the next level. Each one is conversational, practical, and designed to provide teachers with the cozy feeling of a personal PLC right inside their headphones.
• We’re talking high-quality professional development, resources to use in the classroom (no need to reinvent the wheel), and access to a community of like-minded educators dealing with the same problems as you.

And, unlike your friend’s cooking + movie reviews + ancient Greek history podcast (weird combo, bro), Brave New Teaching is more than just a bunch of audio files: it’s a soup-to-nuts professional development ecosystem for teachers at every end of the budget and level of experience.

Join 100,000+ educators experiencing the Brave New Teaching revolution.

Image: Gabby Jones/NYT

📜 Background… In late August, Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered all 148,000 teachers and staff in the nation’s largest school district to submit proof of their first dose by today (September 27).

• NYC’s mandate doesn’t allow for a weekly testing alternative. This is similar to some school districts, including LA, but different from others, like Chicago.
• As of Saturday night, 85% of department employees were partially vaccinated, including 89% of teachers, per NBC New York.

🇺🇸 On the national level… President Biden’s recently announced plan against COVID-19 calls on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to create an emergency rule mandating workplaces with more than 100 employees require vaccination or weekly testing.

• Roughly 95% of public school teachers and staff will be included under the 100 employee cap, as teachers and staff are employees of school districts, not individual schools.

✋ Yes, but… According to experts, OSHA’s vaccine mandate, counterintuitively, would not apply to public schools in the 24 states where the agency has direct enforcement authority, since state and local governments are explicitly excluded from the category of “employers.”

• The other 26 states outside of OSHA’s jurisdiction have agency-approved state safety and health plans, which must be “at least as effective” as OSHA standards and must include all state and local government employees.

Translation: OSHA’s forthcoming vaccine mandate would apply to roughly half of the country’s school districts, with the other half subject to state-issued mandates only. (Currently, nine states plus D.C. require vaccines for teachers.)

⚖️ Looking ahead… Any such mandate from OSHA is expected to be challenged in court and could potentially be overturned.

• On Wednesday, a three-judge panel will hear NYC’s school vaccine mandate challenge and issue a decision soon afterward.

🎁 Last Wednesday, the FDA granted emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 booster shot for people aged 65+, people who are at risk of severe disease, and those who are at risk of COVID-19 due to their occupation or living situation.

🐮🌿 ‘Seafeed’ To The Rescue

An example of the seaweed feed given to cows; Image: Volta Greentech

Livestock are responsible for around 14.5% of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions each year, and cows are thought to account for ~65% of those emissions.

🌊 Under the sea… Recent studies have shown that introducing a certain species of red seaweed to cow feed can significantly reduce their methane emissions without affecting the animal’s ability to put on weight.

• The scientists at Swedish startup Volta Greentech have created their own special supplement, called ‘Volta Seafeed,’ that can reduce cows’ methane emissions by up to 80% with a daily dose of just 100 grams.

👁️ Looking ahead... The company is now working with Lantmännen, Sweden’s biggest feed producer, to study how Volta’s sustainably-produced ‘Seafeed’ affects cows' appetite and milk production: “So far, the results look promising.”

Images: Facebook

Small but quaint houses have been all the rage the last few years, with TLC and Netflix specials popping up left and right.

• But what about tiny homes… made of pebbles ?

What started as a fun hobby with his grandchildren has transformed into something spectacular, as retiree DeWitt Boyd crafts intricate castles from pebbles, clay, glass, and cement.

🏡 R.O.C.K. in the USA… Dewitt has transformed the garden of his church in Georgia into an entire pebble village, creating stunning replicas of monuments such as Notre Dame and the Colosseum for anyone to enjoy.

• Check it out.

What is the world's largest tidal range ? (I.e., the difference between high and low tide)

A) 21.5 feet
B) 34 feet
C) 45 feet
D) 53.5 feet

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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D) 53.5 feet

Image: NOAA

Canada's Bay of Fundy, located just east of Maine, has the highest tidal range in the world. High tide can be as much as 53.5 feet above low tide.

High tide (left) vs. low tide (right)

There are two high tides and two low tides in the bay every day; over 100 billion tons of water flow in and out with each tide shift.