Chit chattin' away

Long before you knew what water cooler talk was, you knew the best spot for a chit chat was the water fountain. You could catch up with your crew, plan your next recess, and of course, get in trouble for spraying your friends 💦🤣

You’d be sure to drench somebody if you angled the water just right, which is a skill Chinese artist Zheng Lu seems to have mastered. His stunning stainless steel sculptures resemble bursts of water that look frozen in time.

Talk about makin’ a splash ;)

(Love nostalgia? Play today’s trivia below for a chance to win a $25 Tim Hortons eGift Card!)

IN THE NEWS

Land border crossings near pandemic-era lows

While over 2 million Canadians still crossed the Canada-U.S. border in February, the number dropped by nearly 500,000 year-over-year, falling to levels not seen since just after the heaviest pandemic restrictions lifted.

2,223,408 people entered the United States by car during February, compared to 2,696,512 in February of last year, reaching the lowest monthly total since April of 2022.

"This is like COVID all over again," said Len Saunders, an immigration lawyer in Blaine, Wash., population 6,000. "With the rhetoric coming from Trump—people just don't want to come down here.”

"If you're not buying American liquor in B.C., you're definitely not coming here to save 20 bucks on gas. There's just a huge reduction in Canadians—you can see it in the Costco parking lot, at Trader Joe's. Canadians are voting with their wallets right now. That's what's happening."

The chilling relations are being felt by the Frontier Duty Free Association as well, which owns the 32 duty-free stores on the Canadian side of the country’s land border crossings.

"Without hyperbole, it's a dire situation. It's very worrying," said executive director Barbara Barrett. "It's pandemic-level stuff for sure. It's dramatic—the borders are just not seeing the traffic."

ECONOMY

Inflation jumps to 2.6% in February

The consumer price index rose to 2.6% in February, according to data provided by Statistics Canada yesterday. It’s the first time the CPI has risen above 2% since October, and the highest reading in eight months.

The jump was partly due to the ending of the GST tax break the federal government had in place between Dec. 15 and Feb. 15, but not all of it. StatsCan says prices would have been up 3% had the tax holiday not been in place.

It noted, however, that inertia in consumer habits played a role. For example, Canadians continued to dine out with higher frequency even after the tax holiday ended, meaning such activity was one of the bigger contributors to February inflation.

Despite American tariffs on Canadian goods, the inflation associated with those tariffs was not reflected in the February data, since the duties weren’t broadly imposed until March. Economists expect inflation to continue ticking upward in the months ahead unless the two countries can come to an agreement and scale back their trade barriers on each other.

Markets are betting that the “cautious approach” Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem signalled after the central bank’s March meeting will result in its first rate pause after seven straight cuts when the governing council meets again on April 16.

SCAM

Another day, another scam

A Trenton, Ontario woman is down $5,710 after making an e-transfer to a recipient that claimed to be her son by impersonating him through a text messaging scam.

Going by the alias Sue, she said she got a text from a number that said “Hi Mom. I can’t call with this number, it’s for text and data only.”

Claiming to be having car trouble, the scammer asked, “Could you make an e-transfer for me? I will pay you back in two days.”

She sent one payment of $2,910 and another of $2,800, and then contacted her family to ultimately discover the person she’d been communicating with was not, in fact, her son.

Needless to say, receiving a text from an unknown number of someone claiming to be a family member in need of money is about as big as a red flag can get.

“Smishing is simply text-based fraud impersonating someone that they think they know,” says cybersecurity expert Claudio Popa.

“Anytime you receive an urgent message, you should take a step back and take a moment and think about it. Don’t do anything right away. There is nothing that is that urgent. As soon as you have a suspicion that whoever you are receiving an email [or text] from is not the right person, contact them ‘out of band,’ as we say. So, pick up the phone and call them or if you need to, email them.”

WHAT UP WEDNESDAYS

Measuring biological aging with AI

A new study published in Science Advances by researchers at Osaka University in Japan details a new method of quantifying a person’s biological age, which indicates how well (or not well) a person’s body is aging rather than simply how chronologically old they are.

Previous methods of detecting biological age have relied on “broad biomarkers” and aren’t necessarily effective at tailoring the description in a detailed way of how biologically old a person may be.

The Osaka researchers looked at a series of steroid hormones, which are good indicators of a person’s immune function, metabolism, and stress response. They selected several of these hormones and trained a deep neural network AI model to map their metabolism pathways and measure their ratio levels against one another, rather than historical models that simply measured steroid hormone levels individually.

For example, when looking at the steroid hormone cortisol—associated with stress response—the researchers determined that when it doubles in ratio compared to other hormones, it can accelerate biological aging by 1.5 times.

Other hormones provided similar insight, and Dr. Zi Wang, co-first and corresponding author of the study, says this method is just the beginning in terms of effectively measuring how biologically old someone is.

PSYCHOLOGY

People with purpose live longer

A 2022 study by UBC associate psychology professor Eric S. Kim and colleagues found older adults who live with a sense of purpose have a 46% lower risk of mortality, which is about 1.8% more effective than simply not smoking or exercising regularly.

Researchers say purpose is as effective as it is because it mitigates most of the things that threaten health as we age. A sense of purpose will drive someone to make smart dietary choices, will allow them to absorb and deal with stress better than others, and helps fight off health problems that get through anyway, because there is a will to get fight them off.

People with a purpose tend to be more mentally present, making intentional decisions and keeping their mind sharp as they strategize and decide their next move to advance that purpose.

The study found people with purpose are 24% less likely to become physically inactive, 33% less likely to develop sleep problems, and 22% less likely to develop an unhealthy BMI.

Nietzsche famously said, “he who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

What’s your why?

AUTO

Tesla probably can’t catch Road Runner

YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober put a self-driving Tesla to the test, erecting a giant wall with the landscape behind it painted on its surface to see if the car’s vision-only Autopilot would be able to distinguish between the actual road and a picture of it. He pitted the Tesla system against an unnamed self-driving feature on a separate car that used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors.

Long story short, the trial led to a comical result worthy of Wile E. Coyote, with a giant Tesla-shaped hole in the wall after it barrelled through it at 40 miles per hour.

Tesla’s Autopilot is able to stop when a dummy the size of an adult human jumps out in front of the car at the last second, but its failures in other experiments have outweighed its successes, most notably when a dummy the size of a child was thrown in front of it under foggy and rainy conditions, with the car plowing right through it.

On the other hand, Rober’s LiDAR system has succeeded in each scenario that Tesla’s Autopilot failed. The Texas-based EV manufacturer could potentially benefit from borrowing the LiDAR technology instead of opting for computer vision; LiDAR has reportedly been passed up on thus far because of how much the sensors cost.

MUSIC

James Taylor musical gets the nod

Six-time Grammy winner and Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Famer James Taylor is officially getting the Broadway rub, with a musical called Fire and Rain officially in early development.

Breaking through to the main stream with his hit of the same name in the early 1970s, the Boston icon has plenty in his catalogue for musical developers to work with.

Among those developers is Tracy Letts, Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of August: Osage County and The Minutes. Letts reportedly crafted the original storyline that will underpin the James Taylor musical, and Tony winner David Cromer is set to direct it.

Taylor becomes the latest musician to have his life act as the basis of a musical stage play, joining Tina Turner, the Temptations, and Michael Jackson, whose MJ: The Musical is still selling boatloads of tickets three years after opening.

Few other details are available about the forthcoming script, but it’s certainly in good hands. Letts and Cromer previously joined forces for Bug and Man From Nebraska, and Cromer has several projects hitting the stage this year, including Good Night and Good Luck. It will feature George Clooney’s Broadway debut, in which he’ll play Edward Murrow in the stage adaptation of the 2005 movie of the same name that he co-wrote and directed.

STAKE TRIVIA

Gettin’ the giggles

It’s National Let’s Laugh Day, so what better way to celebrate than by thinking about some iconic ‘70s and ‘80s comedies? 😏 

Get ready to relive some laughs with today’s classic comedies trivia! Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 Tim Hortons eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified tomorrow afternoon—keep an eye on your inbox!*

Have a great day ahead Staker!

Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.


*SEE FULL STAKE TRIVIA CONTEST RULES HERE.