Things I learned lately 18 Dec

• Sandy Munro said that the leaders in the emerging EV market are and will be the ones who master vertical integration. In other words, the companies that make most of their own components. Sandy feels that the top 3 are Tesla, VW and Toyota. Everyone else is at huge risk of having too weak of a supply chain.
• Sandy Munro truly believes that the crossover point from ICE to EV is coming much sooner than 2030. He's convinced it'll be closer to 2028 or even 2025. He also states that any car company that isn't putting all their R&D into EV right now is doomed to obscurity in an alarmingly short period of time.
• Johnny Costa, the pianist who played live on Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood, never played the theme music the same way in each show. It was always a different iteration. It was played live. Every. Time.
  
  
  
• Four Covid-19 sniffer dogs have begun work at Helsinki airport in a state-funded pilot that Finnish researchers hope will provide a cheap, fast and effective alternative method of testing people for the virus. A dog is capable of detecting the presence of the coronavirus within 10 seconds with an accuracy close to 100%.
• Once upon a time, Christmas trees were illuminated by burning candles. On the tree!
• The next Star Wars movie is titled Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. Rogue Squadron is a known entity in Star Wars lore, referred to in comic books and video games. The story will supposedly take place after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is scheduled to premiere in 2023.
• Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BC got most of its taxes from the wealthiest people. In fact, the wealthy boasted about how much tax they paid. In the US, tax evasion is an underappreciated problem. About 1 out of every 6 dollars owed in federal taxes is not paid. The amount of unpaid taxes every year is plausibly about 3/4 the size of the entire annual federal budget deficit.
• When McDonald's introduced the Chicken McNugget, it became so popular that it created a temporary chicken shortage.
• 1 in 3 GoFundMe campaigns are trying to solicit funds to pay off American medical bills.
• McDonald's McFlurry dessert was created by a Bathurst, New Brunswick franchise owner, Ron McLellan.