Friday, October 29, 2021

Things I learned lately 29 October


  • Hertz is buying 100,000 Tesla cars for their fleet and will also build 3,000 charging stations in the areas where the vehicles will rent out.
  • General Motors plans to install 4,000 charging stations in Canada as part of a push by the carmaker to invest more heavily into electric vehicles. These chargers would not be limited to GM vehicles. The Detroit-based company says it plans to install 40,000 stations across the U.S. and Canada over the next year, part of a pledge to spend $750 million US to beef up its electric vehicle infrastructure by 2025. For comparison purposes, there are roughly 11,000 gas stations dotted across Canada, so 4,000 new electric charging stations would be a significant increase in the number of places where a driver could get a boost.
  • Mat Night, what English Montrealers called the night before Halloween, was the Quebec equivalent of Mischief Night or Devil's Night in some parts of the US.
  • Christopher Lloyd is 83 years old. He's been acting since 1975.
  • In 1968, Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to expand by opening Kentucky Roast Beef & Kentucky Ham. It barely lasted 2 years. It was good, it was popular, but the margins and efficiency just weren't there.
  • All figs are pollinated by fig wasps. Figs and fig wasps help each other with reproduction. To start the cycle, a female fig wasp enters a fig through the tiny hole in the bottom, which is so small that it tears her wings off on the way in. The female lays her eggs in the fig, and will die shortly after. When the larvae hatch, they feed on some delicious fig and wil eventually pupate into matured wasps. The male wasps (who are wingless) will mate with the females, and then start creating tunnels for the now fertile females to exit the fig. The winged females will collect some pollen from her home fig and carry it to a new fig to lay its own eggs. She will exit her home fig to find a new one for her larvae, and will pollinate this new fig when she enters. The males will remain in their home fig until they die. And the cycle goes on and on, pollinating fig after fig, and providing a safe and nutrient rich environment for generations of future fig wasps. So are we eating dead wasps? Yes, most edible figs have at least one dead female wasp inside. But you probably won't see any wasp bodies, as the fig releases an enzyme called ficin that break down the wasp bodies into protein.
  • You can mail order edibles from Alberta Cannabis (the provincial government storefront online) and they'll deliver right to your door. No more wondering if a physical store has stock. 


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