A father and car fan, Craig Blackburn, built a Batmobile for his son’s hope for using the vehicle to brighten the lives of sick children. And now he hopes to use it for more than just his son’s hope after seeing the children’s reaction to the Batmobile.

Based on the number of failures he had seen in car groups, he estimated that only about one in fifty attempted constructions was actually finished and he realized what an incredible opportunity he had.

Mr. Blackburn started the project at the beginning of 2018 after hearing a friend in the US was doing the same thing. It started with importing an outer shell overseas, before picking brains of a friend who had a background as a worker in a car factory to gain knowledge of how to build the car. With the help of his friend, Mr. Blackburn built the Batmobile in 18 months with the cost reaching six figures.

Mr. Blackburn hoped to add a flamethrower onto the back of the vehicle and said he had thought about building the more recent Batman Tumbler from the series film Dark Knight. Though Mr. Blackburn encountered plenty of difficulties to get over during the construction, in September 2019, the car made its first show at the Carnival of Flowers in Toowoomba, before being used by Blackburn’s son for his hope.

“It was great. It was so good to see the kids’ and adults’ excitement at seeing the Batmobile.” Mr. Blackburn said. As a result, the car lover’s hope is to make the car work on the roads as soon as possible, so he can visit sick children and take them out with his son.

Today China is the world’s biggest consumer of wheat. But it wasn’t always that way.

Wheat only came to the area now known as northern China toward the end of the Neolithic (新石器) period, some 4,600 years ago. Initially, wheat didn’t seem to be so delicious and had been treated as a crop of desperation rather than a cooking delight. The first farmers of northern China primarily grew millet (粟), starting as early as 11,500 years ago. By the time of the Tang dynasty, wheat had replaced millet, becoming a major crop. But relatively little was known about exactly why this shift occurred.

In an attempt to track the answer, I accumulated (积累) a collection of nearly 1,200 data points covering more than 50 sites from the mid-Neolithic, about 9,000 years ago, to the collapse of the Eastern Han dynasty in 220 AD. The sites were across 8 modern provinces, ranging from Gansu province in the northwest to Shandong province in the east.

One possible explanation is a major climate shift, called the Holocene Event 3, which happened 4,000 to 4,500 years ago. At that time, the climate became colder and drier across continents, causing damage to crop production.

On top of this, the late Neolithic period was also a time of rapid population growth around the world. With an ever-increasing population and unsteady crop production, it is reasonable to assume that Neolithic farmers in northern China were struggling.

Wheat, it turns out, actually needs more water than millet, making it seem a poor choice for a dry period of history. But importantly, it can be sowed after millet has been harvested. That, we think, is the most likely reason why the people across northern China started to grow wheat.

From more extreme weather to changing coastlines, climate change has always brought unexpected and sometimes dramatic changes to societies. In this instance, the consequence of the Holocene Event 3 in northern China proved, eventually, delicious.

In the old days, when you had to drive to a movie theater to get some entertainment, it was easy to see how your actions could have an impact on the environment. After all, you were jumping into your car, driving across towns, coughing out emissions (排放) and using gas all the way. But now that we’re used to staying at home and streaming (流式传输) movies, we might get a little proud. After all, we’re just picking up our phones and maybe turning on the TV. You’re welcome. Mother Nature.

Not so fast, says a recent report from the French-based Shit Project. According to Climate Crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video, digital technologies are responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, and that energy use is increasing by 9% a year. Watching a half-hour show would lead to 3.5 pounds of CO2 emissions. That’s like driving 6.28 kilometers. And in the European Union, the Eureca project found that data centers (where videos are stored) there used 25% more energy in 2017 compared to just three years earlier, reports the BBC.

Streaming is only expected to increase as we become more enamored of our digital devices (设备) and the possibility of enjoying entertainment where and when we want it to increase. Online video use is expected to increase by four times from 2017 to 2022 and account for 80% of all Internet traffic by 2022. By then, about 60% of the world’s population will be online.

You’re probably not going to give up your streaming services, but there’re things you can do to help lessen the impact of your online use, experts say. For example, according to Lutz Stobbe, a researcher from the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, we have no need to upload 25 pictures of the same thing to the cloud because it consumes energy every time. If instead you delete a few things here and there, you can save energy. Moreover, it’s also a good idea to stream over Wi-Fi, watch on the smallest screen as you can, and turn off your Wi-Fi in your home if you’re not using your devices.