Official Government has put some strict mandates since Spring or thereabouts in place for Chinese idols.
Some I understand (strict tax laws), some I can guess (no unofficial fan clubs and manager companies answer for fan misconduct), but they also banned lip syncing. 
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I wonder if this will need approval… (Edit: apparently not!)
Locations visited on the Moronic Moped Marathon included:
Mr Taylor’s trip has already taken in Sandy Balls in the New Forest and Slack Bottom Road in Bradford
Ass Hill, Wimborne, Dorset
Sandyballs holiday village, New Forest
Pishill, Oxfordshire
Titty Ho, Raunds, Northamptonshire
Willey, Warwickshire
Penistone, South Yorkshire
Upperthong, West Yorkshire
Cockfield, County Durham
Ogle, Northumberland
Cockermouth, Cumbria
Clitheroe, Lancashire
Bell End, Worcestershire
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Quite late, Imho…
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Yeah, I was surprised to read that it was still being used somewhere, and that so many countries were still using it into the 2000s.
The alarm was raised as early as 1924, when five workers were declared dead and dozens more hospitalised after suffering convulsions at a refinery run by the US oil giant Standard Oil.
But despite this, lead continued to be added to all petrol globally until the 1970s.
Wealthier countries then started phasing out its use - but three decades later, in the early 2000s, there were still 86 nations using leaded petrol.
North Korea, Myanmar and Afghanistan stopped selling leaded petrol by 2016, leaving only a handful of countries, including Iraq, Yemen and Algeria, still providing the toxic fuel in the latter half of the last decade.
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It’s unclear whether the elimination of “lead” is entirely a good thing. It was originally introduced as a safer alternative when the toxicity of benzene was discovered. When lead started being phased out, producers went back to using more benzene to maintain the octane level. In recent decades, laws limiting benzene content have been passed, but the benzene is still there. Benzene is extremely toxic, an aromatic, and a carcinogen. Many people think we are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea on this issue. Consequently, we are not supposed to talk about it. Too bad. I will be the skunk in the perfume factory.
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It is not so surprising. In Greece, there was a serious investment in promoting unleaded + alternative carburants up until 2012 or so, when we caught a financial crisis and had to allow all sorts of backwards politics.
Unleaded fuel is less expensive at the fuel stations (lots of promo offers) but more expensive to bring it here and distribute all over the country, so…
As for its toxicity, if it is safer than older versions of fuel but considerably less safe than newer versions or alternatives, then it is not safe.
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Is it unclear? I can understand the point about replacing one toxic substance with another. Didn’t tests show that lead was more or less being found everywhere and people were falling very ill because of it in the 60s? This person being involved in it Clair Cameron Patterson - Wikipedia
There’s a few YouTube videos and I think an episode of Cosmos with Neil degrasse Tyson (which might’ve been when I heard about it properly) about how oil/gas companies fought fairly hard to say leaded petrol was safe/harmless which is of course fairly despicable. Profits before health.
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Eliminating lead is a good thing. Some alternatives are also bad, but it’s a false dichotomy to suggest that it’s a binary choice between lead vs benzene. We should eliminate both, and ultimately society must transition away from fossil fuels altogether to address climate change.
In the meantime, while we are still dependent on gasoline, ethanol seems to be a better alternative than both for increasing octane. See Fact Sheet | A Brief History of Octane in Gasoline: From Lead to Ethanol | White Papers | EESI
An interesting excerpt from that article:
Early automakers expressed interest in plant-based alcohol fuels, such as ethanol. Henry Ford designed the first Model T to run on ethanol. But, at the time, gasoline was a much cheaper fuel. Additionally, Standard Oil was “reluctant … to encourage the manufacture and sale of a competitive fuel produced by an industry in no way related to petroleum.” The petroleum industry has controlled the fuels market ever since.
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For all the Wayne Kerrs of this world.
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I agree with you except for the ethanol part.
(the vid title is clickbaity but the content good)
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Now we have flood in South Sudan… Should i expect some big fire in Antarctica ?
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Perhaps, if someone lit the substantial coal beds there.
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I expected some news, but I didn’t expect Bangkok.
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“The organisers dispute the events are raves and claim it is a community of people exercising to house music.”
I feel this maybe belong here rather than the Corona thread since it’s about 2021 interpretation of (then) soon to be abandoned rules. I missed it at the time but I loved this quote so much even now.
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I just love “it’s not what you think” excuses.
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One step closer to a literal milkshake duck incident
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Archaeologists in the German city of Lübeck found a nut cake that had been preserved in a basement since a bombing in 1942.
I especially love the last paragraph:
The cake is the only archaeologically uncovered pastry of its kind in northern Germany and an extremely significant find.
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