Safe candy distribution ideas this Halloween

Drive the candy to the children using a remote controlled car.

Reroute your downspout toward the front and drop candy down the eavestrough from the roof.

Build a Hot Wheels track to the sidewalk and tape candy onto Hot Wheels cars and release down the track.

Save up those paper towel cardboard tubes, then tape them together into a candy slide.

Rent some carrier pigeons.

Buy an extra long grabber, like the kind seniors use.

Two words. Sling shot.

Erect a clothesline and shimmy the candy out to the kids in little baggies hooked on by clothes pins.

Train the dog to do it.

T-shirt gun like they use at sporting events?

This is "before"

 

(Telsa) Full self driving is now in beta

Tesla's full self driving software is now in beta and a select few 'good drivers' are getting their first look at it.

Keep in mind that this is a beta, their software is constantly being retrained based on telemetry gathered from the actual driving fleet. So this is only going to get better, fast.

In this footage, the driver was doing nothing more than re-enabling the self driving mode, as for some reason, the car did drop out of that mode for safety. Elon Musk did say that the first few versions would be extremely cautious.

Here's another look from a different driver, in the daytime. The middle part is just boring highway driving. At 27:00 it goes back to local FSD mode.

Small things 29 Oct

• Doctor: Your body has run out of magnesium. Me: 0Mg
  
  
  
• This is the perfect time to get braces (assuming you wear a face mask when you go out).
• "No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars." ~AOC
• You can't expect everyone to recycle when what goes into the recycle bin still ends up in the landfill.
• Don't be a good ol' boy. Or a proud boy. Or one of the boys. Forget boys will be boys. Be a man.
• Annoying: When you see an online ad for something you want, so you go to their site to order it and it's not available.
• I don't get the 'regular coffee add n shots of espresso'. Why not just have an espresso?
• It's amusing when people who are shopping say things like, "omg i can't believe you have to work on this holiday!" Um, like you're the reason they have to work! Go home already.
• Imagine if the price of your retail / restaurant order kept increasing every time you acted like an a-hole to the staff?
• If your company says they care about mental health in the workplace, but they don't do anything to improve worker conditions, they're lying.
• It must suck when you can't use the church anymore to be homophobic. (Pope Francis endorses gay civil unions)
• Calling Trump a clown is an insult to clowns.
• I have an idea for a product. It's called the slow clapper. It's basically two hands that slowly clap together on a post you can stake into the ground or place on a stand on the floor. It would be very useful to place in front of the houses of people who get Covid after they refuse the vaccine.
• Don't tell anti-mask protestors that masks protect against Covid. Tell them it stops facial recognition software used by 5G Federal Government Skynet from tracking you.
• Remember when people thought transparent gadgets and electronics were cool?
• Am I the only person noticing that CEOs are suddenly choosing to retire right now, just when times are tough and most employees are at risk of either losing their jobs or hours or seeing reduced wages?
• We isolate now so that when we gather again, nobody is missing.
• For those who wanted a world without vaccines, here's the world without ONE vaccine....

Julian Lennon & Nuno Bettencourt - Karma Police [Radiohead Cover]

Julian Lennon covers Karma Police. 

Man, it's good to hear him sing again.....

Covid comparison

Consider that the US has 10x our population. They should have 10x the number of cases. 

We have 230k. They have 8943k. 

We're adding 2-3k per day. They're adding 60-80k per day.

Things I learned lately 29 Oct

• So far, there is only 9 miles of new wall built on the US-Mexico border.
• Vietnam has McPho.
• When large brand businesses ask you to round up to donate to a cause, it's for the tax write off they receive. They are allowed to donate money and pay less taxes. Instead of paying from their own revenue they get customers to pay extra.
• Astronauts from ISS baked the first (chocolate chip) cookies in a special zero-gravity oven in a first-of-its-kind experiment to study cooking options for long-haul trips. The first cookie was undercooked, while the second took 75 minutes to bake and another 25 to cool, releasing a fresh scent in the ISS.
• Scientists on the International Space Station have observed the fifth state of matter in space for the first time, offering unprecedented insight that could help solve some of the quantum universe's most intractable enigmas. Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs)—the existence of which was predicted by Albert Einstein and Indian mathematician Satyendra Nath Bose almost a century ago—are formed when atoms of certain elements are cooled to near absolute zero (0 Kelvin, -273.15 Celsius). At this point, the atoms become a single entity with quantum properties, wherein each particle also functions as a wave of matter. BECs straddle the line between the macroscopic world governed by forces such as gravity and the microscopic plane, ruled by quantum mechanics.
• Thanks to a new set of state laws, the LA county district attorney decided to drop charges on 62,000 felony convictions for cases involving marijuana sales and cultivation dating back to 1961 and about 4,000 misdemeanor possession cases. The decision means conviction relief for over 53,000 people. About 45% are Latino, 32% are black, and 20% are white.
• A lab study conducted at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada found that a group of 60 waxworms could devour more than 30 square centimeters of a plastic bag in less than a week. It shows that waxworms, which normally live in beehives and eat wax, also feast on polyethylene.
• Brazil's football governing body has announced that it's adopting an equal pay policy for both women's and men's football, becoming one of the first countries in the world to do so.
• A helicopter pilot was hovering about 200 feet above the ground, getting ready to unleash a bucket of water on the Creek wildfire in California, when an owl entered the aircraft and casually landed on the seat next to him. The owl stayed there for two water refills and drops and then flew out the window not far from the spot where he entered.
• Pope Francis endorsed civil unions for same-sex couples. He said they have a right to be in a family. "They are children of God."

Did you mean 'losers'?

 

Small things 23 Oct

• Trump said that if he loses the election, he might leave the country. Umm, Canada is closed.
• You never want to live too close to grandma, because she can hear your stomach rumbling from at least 500 metres away. And you will eat.
• Aliens invade earth and when someone asks them why they're here and what they want the aliens are like, "We came here to get wood." and they have to wait a minute for the humans to stop giggling. (you know, because wood is rarer than diamonds)(companion note in Things I learned lately)
  
  
  
• You know, in the olden days they had no cell phones but they chopped peoples' heads off with a guillotine. Coincidence? I think not. We have cell phones now, AND we have our heads.
• Alberta: When people with a lot of money get private healthcare, they stop caring if public healthcare is any good. Then they start wondering why they have to help pay for public healthcare at all. Then they tell their politician friends to stop funding it. Which they do, because they know where their next big donation's coming from.........
• Some day there's gong to be a class action lawsuit filed against kijiji (online classifieds). Because people who buy or sell something on kijiji, as soon as you're ready to meet up with them, always seem to experience untimely and unexpected car trouble, heart attacks, deaths, relatives needing to be rushed to hospital, floods.....
• Trump smoke detectors. They stay silent so you don't panic.
• The spread of Covid is based on 2 factors. 1. How dense the population is. 2. How dense the population is.
• I have an idea for Halloween this year. The candy-pult.
• WalMart must be going broke. They just announced they're discontinuing their price match policy.

What have YOU done?

 

Kickstarter fan

I'm a huge Kickstarter fan boy. What is Kickstarter, you ask? It's a crowdfunding site where people can post their projects to be funded and it's up to us to decide whether what they're making is something worth funding. Projects put together their pitch, make a promotional video, and offer up the fruits of their project for a set funding amount. The prices they ask for are typically less than what the item is going to retail for once the project has been funded and is operating at a level that they can sell directly to retail. It's as if you were own of the dragons on Dragon's Den and got to choose whether you want a piece of the action. Although you don't get a share of the profits, you do get to help a project get the funding it needs and get an insider deal as a reward.

The idea is that if the project founders are looking for a set figure to kickstart their manufacturing (assuming they're making a thing), if enough people fund the project, you get charged for your pledge and the project goes ahead. If the project doesn't meet its funding goal, nothing happens and it's dead in the water.

What I like about Kickstarter is that people get to try their hand at making something unique, maybe something better than what else is out there, and the money goes to entrepreneurs who aren't in it to make investors a profit. It's about pride in an idea, in design and in bringing a project to fruition, with our help. Also, it's not just things that these entrepreneurs are trying to make. In some cases it's art, music, etc.

I have helped fund a few projects. The Pebble watch, which was the first wearable electronic ink watch ever made, long before Apple finally got their act together and made wearable tech.

 

I funded the DJIN wallet, a very small, very clever card wallet that I can wear in my front pocket for a change. No more curved credit cards! 

I funded Simon Stalenhag's "Tales from the Loop" alternate tech history art book (and other follow up books), which did so well, it went on to become a series on Amazon Prime. 

Also, another book "Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls", a bedtime storybook about the women who changed history (for my granddaughter). 

Recently, I funded a new kind of magnetic phone holder, the 2nd generation Ohsnap grip, which I'm hoping does a good job of replacing my bulky case. The grip is magnetic and the pull out part doubles as a multi angle stand.

Is it a risk? Always. There have been projects that have good intentions and even seem well planned and potentially well executed that fall flat and disappoint those who helped with their pledges. Case in point, I invested in a new kind of folding plastic multi-measuring spoon, but the folks running the project ran into a lot of quality and sourcing issues and to this day, I still haven't gotten mine, 3 years later. But, I'm only out USD$12, and supposedly shipping of product has finally started.

The point is, if you support entrepreneurship, you really should check Kickstarter out and help some projects get their first (or 2nd, or 3rd) success.

Check out my new iPhone

 

Things I learned lately 23 Oct

• Since 1980, solar photovoltaic module production costs have dropped an astonishing 99%, making solar the cheapest source of electricity in history.
• To help illustrate how much the efficiency of wind power generation has improved, an 18 megawatt wind farm commissioned in Alberta in 1993 had 57 wind turbines when it was decommissioned in 2016. There are plans to erect 5 new turbines in their place, representing the same 18 MW capacity with a significantly smaller footprint.
• Throughout the entire galaxy, wood is probably rarer than diamonds. (companion note in Small Things)
• The range of a Tesla Model 3 (long range AWD) is now 568 km.
• If you slow blink at a cat, it's practically the equivalent of smiling at them. They will often do the same thing back at you.
• The thing that sucks the most about wearing a face mask is that people can't always tell when you're smiling at them.
• Honey is a known dietary reservoir of C. botulinum spores and has been linked to infant botulism. For this reason honey is not recommended for infants less than one year of age.

Full size snickers!?

 

Mask guidelines

 

Lego 2020 special edition

 

Do as I say, not as I do

 

BTW, he tested positive after attending the White House event (the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation)

Mask fail

 

Insert your own joke here

 

Only in Canada - baked goods

Here are a couple things you won't find outside Canada

Vachon, a bakery established in Quebec, makes a variety of tasty snacks. Americans have their Tasty Kakes and Twinkies, sure.

I give you Passion Flaky and Billot/Log (billot is French for chopping block, but whatever).

Small things 16 Oct

• The reverse surprise party: When you invite everyone over for dinner and right in the middle you say, "This is not a regular dinner. Surprise, it's my birthday!" And when everyone looks panicked because they don't have presents, you tell them that you bought and wrapped enough presents for everyone to give you.
• There are people who probably think their special talent is attracting campfire smoke no matter where they sit.
• His name is Ptoughneigh. It's pronounced Tony. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the English language.
  
  
  
• Sneezing with a face mask on is akin to peeing a little in your pants. But with your face.
• Autumn dog poop. You know it's out there. But with all the leaves on the ground, you just don't know where.
• Back in the day, before cellular phones, homes only had one phone line. You couldn't call anyone, nor could they call you if someone else in the house was already using the line.
• Organize and store electronics cables by folding them into an empty toilet paper roll tube with the ends facing you
• You can now buy a ‘Half Christmas Tree’ if you hate decorating the back and want to save space.
• It really doesn't matter what others think of you. It only matters what you think of yourself. Live your life such that you can look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of what you've done. Also, "likes" from social media don't mean a thing.
• When someone says you can't do something in life, it means they can't do it, not that you can't.
• Don't call it traditional marriage if it doesn't secure alliances between rival fiefdoms.

Close to water

I posted this particularly for my friend Bernie. 

I'm hoping to inspire a coffee spittake.

Give me my sliced potatoes please

When Empire Company Limited announced it was buying Safeway Canada in 2013, my first thought was, "Yay! Now Safeway is going to get a decent deli like Sobey's and they'll all sell the same stuff." Of course we had no idea how the store branding itself was going to work, but I was secretly hoping Safeway would be absorbed into the Sobey's brand, since Empire owned them first.

That did not happen. Safeway stayed Safeway and Sobey's stayed Sobey's. They more or less started carrying the same stuff, but not completely. Which is what leads to this particular rant.

Guys! If you're going to carry a product, not only should you all carry it, at least every X or Y branded store should carry it all the time. Case in point - Simply Potatoes slices. I swear by these for making pan fried potatoes in short order. They're already par-boiled, so they cook fast. The problem is finding them. One visit, they're there. Next visit, they're gone or they've expired. Next visit, they're gone. Now you're thinking maybe they won't carry them anymore. 3 weeks later, there they are again. Sometimes a particular location will carry them for months, then nothing for months.

Yeah, I know - first world problems. But one of the reasons I shop where I shop is because of the products they carry. But man, if you carry something once, could you please carry it all the time?

Rant over.

Sustainable safety on our roads

What's remarkable about the Netherlands is that traffic calming is everywhere. In North America, traffic calming is only applied if there's enough demand for it. People have to die or a lot of people have to complain and maybe, just maybe, calming will be considered. It's reactive.

In the Netherlands, it doesn't matter if you're a major city or a suburb or small town, all non-arterial streets follow the same national guidelines. At pedestrian and cycling crossings, car lanes are narrowed, medians are placed, highly visual cues painted on the road identify the crossing and the crossings themselves are typically elevated to the level of the sidewalk and made of a material that sounds and feels different when driven over it, especially by a car. It's the sidewalks and bike paths that continue uninterrupted, not the roads, which also helps the elderly and others with mobility issues.

In the 1990s, a proactive approach called sustainable safety was introduced in the Netherlands. One of the assumptions of this approach is that humans make mistakes, so the road should be designed to protect people by making the mistakes less costly, with consistent, expected design cues to make it easier and more natural to do the right thing. A local access road is designed so that most people are naturally motivated to drive the speed limit, automatically slow down at crossings and be aware of other road users without having to be told to do so.

The calming measures are so effective, stop signs aren't necessary at low and medium volume intersections. Studies proved that stop signs actually make for more dangerous intersections for a number of reasons. For one, any time someone doesn't stop at a sign, the oncoming traffic, whether it's vehicle or not, makes an assumption that they would have stopped and often cannot react in time when they don't. Second, making a pedestrian or especially bike stop at an intersection more than triples the time it takes them to safely clear said intersection. With sustainable safety, pedestrians and cyclists feel safe walking and biking around. It's not an anxious experience. 

In my city, road engineers rely on what now seem like obsolete techniques like road narrowing and central islands to accomplish traffic calming. But studies in the UK found that speed only dropped from the normal 45-65 km/h to 40-55 km/h as the result of those approaches. Vertical shifts in the roadway like elevated plateaus (such as what you'd find with continuous sidewalks) had the biggest effect, dropping the speed to 18-25 km/h, with lateral shifts (chicanes) and roundabouts being the next best options.

We really need to hold our infrastructure designers to a higher standard to incorporate safer methodologies that take human nature into account and give us the safest roads possible. It's not an impossible dream, it's real, it works and in North America, we're really missing out.

Here's a YouTube video that does a great job explaining it.

"Mom! The toilet is smoking!"

 

Things I learned lately 16 Oct

• Remember how the US closed its border with China? Yeah, that never actually happened. Flights have been arriving in the US without pause.
  
  
  
• Broadway is shut down now until at least May 2021.
• Burger King tried a bacon ice cream sundae in 2012.
• McDonald's tried onion nuggets in the 1970s.
• McDonald's sells McSpaghetti in the Philippines.
• I may be wrong, but I think there are only spelling bees in English.
• Only when you wear a face mask for a while do you begin to realize just how much your breath smells. Also, when you eat something with a strong smell, like garlic, then put the mask back on. Hoo boy!
• The Rolling Stones had to censor their song, "Let's Spend the Night Together", when they went on Ed Sullivan's show in 1967. They had to change the lyric to "let's spend some time together", but Mick Jagger rolled his eyes each time this line was sung in protest. Other artists were told they had to change lyrics to perform on the popular show as well. Ed Sullivan asked the Doors to take out the offensive word 'higher' while performing "Light My Fire." Jim Morrison did no lyric altering. The Doors were promptly banned from the program. 

A Costco beach towel

 

Small things 9 Oct

• What if a werewolf goes to the moon? Do they werewolf full-time or only when they walk to a specific side or at a certain time of month? Asking for a friend.
• I got to talking about NHL hockey. Plans are to start a fresh season by December 2020. If it wasn't for the border restrictions between Canada and the US, I said let them start next week. The winner of the playoffs and the participants who lasted the longest should suffer a handicap of a short break. It could give the other teams a fighting chance. Also, that's why they pay you all the big bucks.
• Having another presidential debate would make as much sense as a sequel to the movie Cats.
• Hey kids! When I was young, we had these things called 'radios'. Some were kind of big, like bigger than a breadbox big. What's a breadbox? Oh boy........
  
  
  
• So, some radios were tiny because they finally made them out of transistors instead of tubes. Tubes. No, not like the internet..... 
• Yeah, we listened to music on the radio. No, you listened to whatever the DJ played. No, they picked the music. No, it did not suck.......
• Hey kids! When I was young we bought music on records. Oh you know about those eh? Since you couldn't put a record player in a car, we also had 8-track tapes. Yeah, you put a cartridge into an in-dash 8-track player. You prayed the tape didn't break and parts wore out fast. Yeah, it sucked.
• Oh! But then came cassette tapes. They were much more reliable. You could even fast-forward the songs. You know - fast-forward. Skip a bit faster through the song to the next song. No, you couldn't instantly go to any song. No, it did not suck! [sigh]
• Hey grandpa! There's this thing called Spotify. It's like every song ever made, almost, all in an app on the internet. You play whatever you want right now. If you don't wanna hear that song, you skip to a different one. No tapes, no DJ, no radio. [shut up kid]

We're out of Cheetos

 

What a waste

The first image is of geothermal temperatures at 3500m below the surface. That spot of orange, the hottest at that depth (110-120C), is just SE of Edson Alberta. At 4500m, the hot spot (130-140C) is between Edson and Hinton, not much further west.

The second image is a map of where 20% recoverability is possible, with the colour scale indicating how much energy generating potential is at various locations around Alberta. As you can see, the highest generating potential area that isn't blocked by granite deposits is.... yep, near Edson.

Too bad there wasn't a glut of drillers and so forth in Alberta that could exploit that to get that heat out of the ground to generate power.

So your kids want an iPad for Christmas eh?

 

Movies described as boring as possible

Creative challenge: Describe your fave movie as boring as possible. 

For example:

Guy finds a ring and his nephew returns it to the factory. (Lord of the Rings)

Professor skips office hours to find a misplaced box. (Indiana Jones)

Old lady tells a story about a boat on a different boat. (Titanic)

A political confrontation ensues after a design flaw is discovered in a government building. (Star Wars)

Knights without horses look for a cup. (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Man turns off alarm clock 3176 times. (Groundhog Day)

Cat lady takes long nap after cleaning her transport rig of vermin. (Alien)

5 kids make a ruckus while locked in a school library. (Breakfast Club)

Four college professors get fired and become exterminators. (Ghostbusters)

Man obsessed with business cards is a killer Huey Lewis fan. (American Psycho)

Obedient robot kills those who aren't. (Blade Runner)

Man uses mashed potatoes because Google Maps hasn't been invented yet. (Close Encounters)

The trailer is funnier than the actual movie. (Comedian)

Dumb criminals who sound Canadian. (Fargo)

Loser brings goddess on space cruise to find rocks. (5th Element)

Long distance space travel really sucks. (Interstellar)

Abandoned traveller discovers many ways to cook potatoes. (The Martian)

Guy takes drugs one time and has worst trip ever. (The Matrix)

Two guys bond on an unintended road trip. (Planes Trains & Automobiles)

Washed up actor becomes an icon again. (Pulp Fiction)

Kid messes with the mind of a ghost. (The Sixth Sense)

A family continually creates trouble for an entire galaxy. A nine part series. (The Star Wars saga)

If I had a hammer, the movie. (Thor)

Man wanders a frozen wasteland in search of an Oscar (The Revenant)

Puppet convinces man to kill his dad. (The Empire Strikes Back)

An failed business tycoon who currently plays a president, acts like a decent human for 3 seconds. (Home Alone)

Guy loves a girl even without her Instagram filters. (Shrek)

A protocol droid is bullied by humans for 3 generations. (The Star Wars saga)

Man child grows up. (Every Adam Sandler movie)

Fantasy about a bus running ahead of schedule for a change. (Speed)

Cancer survivor never loses his sense of humour. (Deadpool)

Divorced man discovers he is trans, loses custody of kids. (Mrs. Doubtfire)

After the death of her parents, young socialite causes millions in property damage. (Frozen)

Priests convince child to join cult. (Star Wars Ep I)

Young man forcibly binds men and photographs them for money. (Spiderman)

Even learned people can believe things you wouldn't think they should

 

Things I learned lately 9 Oct

• The Burj Khalifa tower is so tall, if you watched the sun set at its base, then took one of their super fast elevators to get to the top, you could watch the sun set about 3 minutes later than when you saw it set at the base.
• The ISS sees 16 sunrises every 24 hours.
• The first structures to surpass the height of the Egyptian pyramids were cathedrals. Starting with the Lincoln Cathedral in England (1311), St Olaf's church in Tallinn (1590), St Mary's in Stralsund(1600s), Strasbourg cathedral (1647), St Nikolai church in Hamburg (1874), Rouen cathedral in France (1876), Cologne Cathedral (1880), and then finally, the first non-church, the Washington Monument (1884).
• Cats can be taught to imitate humans very precisely. This includes turning around, touching objects, opening drawers, rubbing their face on an object, sitting up on their hind legs, in the exact manner that they watched a human do it.
  
  
  
• Ireland's courts ruled that bread used by Subway in their sandwiches contains so much sugar (10% of the weight of the flour) that it can't legally be defined as bread. The courts were involved because Subway was trying to get their sandwiches classified as a 'staple food' which is tax-exempt.
• Taking a cue from the character’s name, Tim Curry began the stage production of The Rocky Horror Show by playing Frank N. Furter as German. Then he heard a woman on a bus speaking with a particularly posh accent and decided that Frank should sound like the Queen.
• You can buy American hot dogs in a can or a glass jar in the EU.

Small things 2 Oct

• The CDC says over 76,000 Americans will die from obesity in a year. Yet, there's probably still gonna be a new flavour of Doritos coming out any time.
• Oreos are the KFC of cookies. They're out of control. KFC lost it when they made a sandwich using fried chicken pieces instead of bread. Oreo's tumble into the abyss was more gradual and took decades. They started as a single cracker. Then a sandwich with creme filling. They even tried lemon filling in the 1920s. Why? Double-stuf came next (1974). That was necessary. At one point, size was the issue and a Big Stuf giant 250 calorie Oreo was made. They even tried different flavours for the filling, including peanut butter, mint, and birthday cake. Then they covered the cookie in fudge coating. I guess the chocolate cookies weren't chocolate enough. Then they gave up on chocolate and tried white cookies, Golden Oreos (2004). Sorry, that's not an Oreo. Then they went the other way on size and made Oreo Minis. The see-saw tilted again and we got Mega Stuf Oreos, because Double Stuf wasn't stuffed enough. See saw goes the other way and we get Oreo Thins. Are we done yet? Nope. How about chocolate cookie AND chocolate filling? Don't they already have a cookie like that called a FudgeeO? I digress. Last but not least (definitely not least) is the 2019 gem, The Most Stuf, with 4x the creme of a standard Oreo, because diabetes I guess. By the way, none of this includes the 27 limited edition varieties that came out at one time or another. Madness.
  
  
  
• Do you ever get the feeling that 2020 started when Pandora posted an unboxing video on YouTube?
• Someone told me that potato chips are meant to be bitten into, not placed whole into your mouth. I believe they are sadly mistaken.
• I wonder if anyone has ever been served a DQ Blizzard and the server NOT turned it upside down like they normally do.
• Any government that prevents its prisoners from voting has a great incentive to arrest its dissenters.

Q. "What are you going to be for Halloween?"

A. "As fast as I can."

Captain Native America - I'm still processing this

 

"They're not all buying Teslas"

I love how the premier of Alberta, in justifying why the oil industry needs continued support from Canada, said that the developing world still needs oil.

He said that the people of India can't all "afford to buy Teslas". This statement itself is true. But what he left out was that Tesla are not the only company making electric cars. In fact, Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors is set to introduce its popular electric car, the Ora R1 (pictured), to India. Touted as the world's cheapest electric vehicle, the Ora R1 has a starting price tag of $8,600.

But alright, I get his point. Developing countries aren't yet in the position to electrify their transportation infrastructures, although it would be easier and cheaper to do there than here. The point I think he is trying to make, is that the world still needs oil. This is also true.

But again, what he's neglecting to mention is this - the oil that the rest of the world needs is already being supplied by other countries, at a cost far less than what Canada could sell it for. China produces its own oil and gas. What they don't produce is supplied by OPEC countries. They also sell to other eastern Asian markets. India can get its oil from either the middle east, Africa or Russia, all of which would sell below our sell price. Africa is mostly self-sufficient, or will be soon. Germany gets its oil from Russia, Norway and OPEC. France's sources are OPEC, Africa and Russia. The UK's sources are Norway, OPEC and Russia.

So if we're being serious, the only real market for Canada's oil is the US. And he probably knows that it's a matter of time before the US greens their economy, as it has already started in California, Oregon, Washington and many states in the NE.

So as much as I would hope for our industry to see better days (heck, I still work in it), the question we need to be asking ourselves is, if we did manage to get product to the coasts, who exactly would we be selling to?

Russian vaccine

 

2.7 billion Truman shows

I highly recommend the Netflix program "The social dilemma" to everyone. I thought I had a good understanding of how social media worked, but I had no idea how manipulative it really is.

It's no wonder that people think and behave in the way that they do. Some of the best quotes from the program:

"It's 2.7 billion Truman shows."

"If you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product."

"Social media is a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures."

It is a docu-drama, so be ready for some acted out scenes mixed with the discourse from the professionals.

"Come with me if you want to vote"

 

Things I learned lately 2 Oct

• If the news you read on social media has a profound effect on your negative emotions, there is a very high likelihood that it's fake, falsified, or highly edited news. Always check sources.
• Astrophysicists haven't only discovered exo-planets in our Milky Way, they've also found an exo-planet in the M51 Whirlpool Galaxy, some 23 million light years from Earth near the constellation of Ursa Major.
  
  
  
• Let's say your matrilineal line is fairly consistent and everyone has their daughter at 25. So four women in your matrilineal line are born every hundred years. In a thousand years, that's only 40 mothers. So in 2000 years, 80 mothers. So basically, 0 AD started roughly about 80 mothers or generations ago. That's it. Also, the advent of agriculture around 9500 BC was about 450 mothers ago.
• Tesla is working on a new battery cell with cheaper materials, higher energy density, faster charge time and longer range. They know they have to do this to make their vehicles cheaper and more practical, but also to make their batteries useful in grid storage to store wind and solar power. They are also making the battery pack part of the car's stiff structure. They're targeting a 55% reduction in battery cost too.
• The new buzzword regarding Trump hinting that he might not accept the results of the election if it doesn't suit him is.... squattergate.
• Apparently, Helsinki airport uses dogs to sniff out coronavirus.
• The governor of California plans to ban the sale of new gasoline (ICE) vehicles by 2035.
• Snakes are not 'poisonous'. They are 'venomous'.
• Farm workers in Oregon and California still have to pick crops in the fields. Smoke or no. Imagine it's so thick with smoke that you need a flashlight to see well. Now imagine having to do manual labour in that so that we have cucumbers in the produce section.