We really sold cigarettes

Here’s a neat glimpse into 1970 culture. It’s a TV recording of various channels, most of the capture is commercials. 

It’s so weird to see how many of them are cigarette ads and how they marketed them to adults.

You can't eat just one

 

Weird thing to say at a wedding

 

Things I learned lately 22 Dec

• The Calgary ring road is finally completed, 10 months ahead of schedule. It circles the city at a total length of 101 km.
• Most taxis in Germany are Mercedes Benz sedans.
• The first regular TV broadcast, albeit only a couple hours per day, was the BBC in 1936. You could only get reception within 40 km of the tower.
• Windsor Ontario has more north/south oriented streets than east/west because of its early history of building the elongated French style farm plots oriented toward the river.
• Windsor has North America’s only city bus that crosses an international border, the tunnel bus to Detroit.
• Murderbot, a character in a series of sci-fi books I’ve read, is being made into an Apple TV series. Yay!!
• At its peak in 2007, there were over 5,000 Quiznos worldwide. Now there are 359.
• The very first steam powered locomotive railway was the Stockton-Darlington line in the UK in 1825.
• The Tesla Model Y is breaking sales records all over the world, especially Denmark.
• US Tesla sales (as of Oct 2023) for 2023 were over 325,000 vehicles. The next 19 brands totalled 215,000 in the same period.
• The top 5 selling electric cars in the US in 2023 are the Model Y; Model 3; Bolt: ID.4 and Mustang Mach-e.
• The BYD Dolphin, a Chinese made EV about the size of a Chevy Bolt, sells in Australia starting at AUS$39,000. It features up to 490 km of range and features a new blade battery design. 

Too much Tom?

 

Small things 15 Dec

• Nothing made me laugh as much so far this season as watching Jack Black sing Silent Night in the style of death metal.
• Me: May I have the medium-rare bread with the butter glaze? Server: You mean buttered toast?
• Is it just me, or are the same positions in which a woman gets pregnant also suitable for child delivery?
• When you line up your mouse pointer to click on a link you want to follow and another ad loads on the web page and pushes the link down the page, replacing it with an ad link just as you click.
• "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."  ~Alvin Toffler
• It's a five minute walk from my house to the pub. It's a 35 minute walk from the pub to my house. The difference is staggering.
• "We have a deficit of wonder. When I ask people questions now, they get out their phone. I say, noooo! I don't want to know the answer. I just wanna wonder about it awhile.”  ~ Tom Waits
• SNOWFLAKE? "Yes, I've heard this term. I think sociopaths use it to discredit the notion of empathy."  ~ John Cleese
• My dream job? The spokesperson at a bicycle shop.
• The microwave has a window. The oven too. Same with the clothes washer. What’s up with the dishwasher? What’s going on in there that we’re not allowed to see?
• It should be illegal to make hot chocolate with water. Milk. Always.

2023 in passing

 

Is an electric car practical for you?

Boy, there’s a loaded question if I ever saw one. It depends on a few factors, including where you live and the charging infrastructure that’s around you, what you’ll be using the vehicle for and how far you’ll typically travel.

Do you live in California or some other place where charging infrastructure is ubiquitous? Then you’ll have far fewer challenges. The proof is in the sheer number of electric vehicles in that state (903,620 at last count). Right now, the electric car industry expects that the majority of charging is going to be done at home, preferably overnight. If you live in a place where charging at home isn’t possible, you’ll have to rely on public charging facilities. Depending on where you live, that might not be practical. For example, Tesla only has one supercharger station near Calgary, and it’s at a mall in Balzac, north and outside of the city limits. For non-Tesla owners, there’s one Electrify Canada station in the city and one of a different brand at a Chevron. That’s it. Two charging stations in a city of over a million people. Compare that to Portland Oregon, which within its city limits alone has 5 Tesla supercharging stations rated for the maximum 250kW and 10 Electrify America or EVGo stations rated for at least 150kW. That’s a city of less than 700,000 people. We are quickly falling behind and this doesn’t help adoption, nor does the abysmal lack of financial incentives.

The next thing you’ll need to consider is how you use your vehicle. Is 95% of your driving a simple commute to work and back and maybe a few shopping trips in town? You won’t have much of a problem, especially if you can charge at home. But even if you can’t, if you have the option of charging at work or while you’re shopping, that’s not bad considering that many newer electric cars can get from 20% to 70% state of charge in under 30 minutes at a fast charging station. According to the very accurate web site “A better route planner”, a new Tesla Model Y standard range car can get from 10% state of charge to 86% at a fast charger in 13 minutes. That’s bloody amazing! Not all cars are going to charge that quickly though. If you owned a Volkswagen ID.4, charging from 10% to 70% is going to take 30 minutes. A Chevy Bolt is even worse, being limited to a 55kW charge rate. So your experience is going to depend on the charge curve of the vehicle and the potential charging rate of the stations suited to your make and model. This is one of the main reasons Tesla has an edge over other brands, as they make their chargers work really well with their own vehicle brand. Kind of like how Apple apps work so great on Apple devices. They’re made for each other. You might have read that statement I just made about Tesla chargers working well with their own brand and think, “Wait a sec. Tesla chargers ONLY work with their brand of vehicle.” That’s true today, but Tesla has promised that they will be opening up their charging network to other brands fairly soon.

When someone says that they primarily commute, but also want to do a lot of long road trips in their car, I’m going to tell them they’re dreaming if they live in northern Alberta. But even if they live in Calgary, a non-Tesla road trip in an ID.4 from Calgary to Vegas is going to take the usual driving time of 19 hours, plus 5 additional hours is going to be spent sitting at a charging station. The same trip in a Mercedes EQE would reduce your charging time to 3.5 hours. The same trip in a new Tesla long range Model Y would involve a total of just over 2.5 hours of charging en route.

But getting back to the person whose needs are simple, just using their vehicle as a daily driver around town, pretty much any car will do. It’s just a question of your charging needs and available stations and the ability to charge at home. The thing that is different about owning an electric car in 2023, is that unlike driving an ICE (internal combustion engine) car where there is little planning for refueling required, actual planning and forethought is necessary when you own an electric car. That may change in the future as charging infrastructure becomes more commonplace. The real issue electric car owners have to deal with, especially on the non-Tesla side, is charging station reliability and compatibility. When you drive a Tesla up to a public Tesla charger, there’s a very good chance it’s going to work on the first try. When it doesn’t, either a re-attempt or moving to another charger port usually solves the problem. Charging speed might be affected by whether each port is sharing the same power feed, but in terms of reliability of the system, Tesla is hard to beat. For the rest of the charging providers, there’s a lot less consistency. I’ve watched dozens if not hundreds of YouTube videos where the owner of a brand of electric car other than Tesla pulls up to a charger, regardless of the brand, and either isn’t able to charge at all (because it’s offline), or can establish a connection, but the charge rate is severely handicapped. Worse, many new electric car owners don’t even realize that all it might take is to try another port on another charger. This is somewhat to be expected though, as while it’s fairly easy to use a charger designed for a specific brand of car (Tesla), getting an Electrify America / Canada, EVGo or ChargePoint charger working with a Ford, a Volvo, a VW, a Hyundai, or a Chevrolet is another story. Never mind the exotic brands like Rivian, Lucid, Polestar, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, etc. The charger and the vehicle have to speak the same language and it’s unlikely that all the brands agreed on the same exact protocols with every charge service brand. This is a failing that will have to be sorted out soon. We don’t worry whether a brand of gasoline will work with our car, it just works.

Something that I find amusing is when naysayers will declare “electric cars aren’t sustainable or good for the environment.” You don’t say. And how is this different from how material is sourced for your computer? Or your phone? Your big screen TV? Your home appliances? You’re picking battery powered electric cars as the hill you choose to die on?

While we’re on the subject, There are a number of people who would rather that we stop manufacturing battery powered electric cars, and switch to hydrogen powered cars, whether the hydrogen is being used to generate electricity for the motors, or being burned as a fuel in an engine. I have always wondered about the feasibility of hydrogen as an alternative to batteries, and I was quite surprised to hear people like Elon Musk state that hydrogen will never be the answer. After spending many years reading articles by scientists, and studying the thoughts of experts in the field, I have noticed a few things that could work against hydrogen adoption. Firstly, hydrogen is a very reactive element and requires a very special kind of storage tank. Hydrogen is also extremely flammable, so you definitely don't want a situation where it could be allowed to explode. Then there's the challenge of how to make a lot of hydrogen, and the two most common ways to do it are the dirty way, which is converting natural gas to hydrogen, or the cleaner way, which is using electricity to turn water into hydrogen. The problem with both of those methods is that natural gas is something we are trying to use less of, and how is the electricity being used to turn water into hydrogen being produced? If it's being produced by a renewable source, fine. but if the electricity is being generated by natural gas, again, it is dirty hydrogen.

But let's pretend that we figure all of that out. You still have to get the hydrogen to the consumer and build filling stations. This is not an impossible task, but if you take British Columbia as an example, which is one of the greener provinces in this country, try and find a hydrogen filling station right now. If you're lucky, you might find five in the entire province, and a few of those five probably aren't even public stations. So the infrastructure for hydrogen is not just lagging, it's non-existent. A battery powered electric car can usually be charged at home. Then we have to look at the subject of hydrogen powered cars. Who is making them? Nobody except Toyota, who say they plan to put all of their eggs in the hydrogen basket for now. Honda is still teasing the possibility of hydrogen with one model on the road (Clarity) in miniscule quantity (2116 leases in California only). But there are no coherent mass production plans to build hydrogen cars in the near future. And yet, practically every brand of vehicle you can think of, is not only making more than one model of electric car, many of them are planning to ONLY make electric cars within the next 10 years. I'm not a betting man, but if I was, my money would not be on hydrogen as a future vehicle solution, unless something very dramatic happens industry-wide. 

It has to sound professional

 

What would PET think about free post-secondary education?

I was bored and chose to ask ChatGPT to answer some questions as if it were former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Then I asked:

"How do you feel about the idea of making post-secondary education free or almost free in Canada?"

ChatGPT

“[As Pierre Trudeau] I believe in the importance of accessible education as a means to empower individuals and contribute to the overall well-being of society. Making post-secondary education more affordable or even free is an idea that aligns with my commitment to equal opportunities and social progress. Here are some key points on the matter:

Equal Access: Making post-secondary education more affordable ensures that all Canadians, regardless of their socio-economic background, have equal access to educational opportunities. This promotes social mobility and helps build a more inclusive and equitable society.

Investment in Human Capital: Education is an investment in the future of a nation. By reducing financial barriers to higher education, we are investing in the development of our human capital, fostering innovation, and preparing a skilled workforce for the challenges of the modern world.

Global Competitiveness: A well-educated population enhances Canada's competitiveness on the global stage. It attracts talent, promotes research and development, and positions the country as a leader in various fields.

Reducing Income Inequality: Accessible education can contribute to reducing income inequality by providing individuals with the tools they need to secure better-paying jobs and improve their economic prospects.

Social Cohesion: Education is a powerful force for social cohesion. When citizens have access to quality education, it fosters a sense of shared purpose and understanding, contributing to a more harmonious and united society.

In summary, I would support measures to make post-secondary education more affordable as a strategic investment in the future of Canada and its citizens.”

That sure sounds like something he would have said.

Beacon of joy

 

Things I learned lately 15 Dec

• Amazon employs over 750,000 robots.
• McDonalds just soft opened a new concept store in the US called CosMc’s. It’s more focused on drinks.
• The average new vehicle in Alberta sold for $70,771 in September 2023.
• Karen’s Diner. It’s a pop-up dining experience that roves around from city to city. It made a stop at an existing diner on 9 December. The deal? Great food, but the servers serve up a generous helping of abuse on the side. $60 to get in. I have no idea if that includes the food. I’m guessing they have performers on staff to do the abusing.
• One of the things that is quite revolutionary about the new Tesla Cybertruck is that unlike every vehicle made since the beginning, which use a 12V accessory system and associated wiring (lots of copper), the Cybertruck uses a 48 volt system, which reduces weight by reducing copper. Will other manufacturers follow suit?
• “The Michelin Guide started in central France in 1889, when brothers Andre and Edouard Michelin founded their tire company, fueled by a grand vision for the French automobile industry at a time when there were fewer than 3,000 cars in the country. In order to help motorists develop their trips - thereby boosting car sales and in turn, tire purchases - the Michelin brothers produced a small guide filled with handy information for travelers, such as maps, information on how to change a tire, where to fill up on petrol, and wonderfully - for the traveler in search of respite from the adventures of the day - a listing of places to eat or take shelter for the night.”
• France gets up to around 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy. Slovakia gets about 52.3% of its electricity from nuclear energy. Belgium gets about 50.8% of its electricity from nuclear energy. Hungary gets about 46.8% of its electricity from nuclear energy.

More cowbell

 

Small things 9 Dec

• Santa. Satan. Santana. Don’t get them confused.
• My new year resolution for 2024: I will try not to judge people for the dumb-assed decisions they make. I’ll still make fun of them, I just won’t judge them.
• Why is everyone down on procrastination? You’ll always have something to do tomorrow and the rest of the day now belongs to you.
• It’s so weird how restaurants and grocery stores market ‘bowls’ like they’re something new. Dude, we’ve had bowls for millennia.
• Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening.
• Liberosis: The desire to care less about things.
• Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
• Every ethnicity thinks they invented the plastic bag full of plastic bags.
• 2000 years from now, people will not understand the difference between "butt dial" and "booty call", or how “sick” can mean unwell or really cool. This is why nobody truly understands the Bible.
• Sorry I can't make it to work today. I’ve contracted mood poisoning. Must've been something I hate.
• When you ask your BBQ guests how they like their burger cooked before cooking them all the same.

6 word story

 

Apple car?

Apple is supposedly working on a driverless electric car. Things we can probably look forward to:

• Not long after you buy it, Apple Car 2 comes out.
• It starts up once it recognizes your face.
• You ask it to take you home and it takes you to an old folks’ home.
• You ask it to play some classic rock, and it insists on only playing songs from 'The Beatles.'
• Massaging seats is an in-app purchase.
• You can buy ‘skins’ to style the body differently, like you would a phone case.
• The battery runs out sooner than you expect it.
• If you go over a big pothole, the display screen cracks.

His name Stew

 

He the stewpervisor.

Chosen frozen

Somebody finally took the time to record a modern video of what it’s like in Alert, Nunavut, at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island. I spent 6 months there in full daylight (at first), partial daylight for a few weeks, and then full darkness. There’s a point in the video (1:41) where they show what it was like on the first day the sun came above the horizon in the spring. I remember that sky so well, because that’s the day I left to come back home. In fact, if you imagine that part of the clip as a stitched together time lapse of what the noon hour looks like in Alert, the transition from black to the sun peeking over the horizon is what the lapse would have been like from late December to early March. At noon.

Great video. There have been a few changes since I was there. They have the internet now. And gaming computers - what!!??

4 images you'll recognize if you're Canadian

 

Things I learned about buying a new PC in 2023

In order to activate a new retail copy of Windows 11 you have to scratch to reveal the entire license key code. If you scratch too aggressively, you scratch the characters off and nullify the license, worth $155. Also, the print size of the code is very small. I'm glad that the salesperson warned me.

Sometimes you see a pre-built system you want online only to find out that they don’t sell it anymore.

Sometimes the store has custom built systems that you would be interested in but you would only discover them in the store, not online.

Sometimes those same custom built systems seem pricey, but on Black Friday weekend, many of the parts onside are on sale.

When you go through your list of previously installed software, you often come across programs you’re just not that interested in anymore.

When you haven’t bought a new PC in 7 years, you don’t realize how much faster the newest systems are.

The more stuff you have in the cloud, the easier it is to transition to a new PC.

Ignore the neighsayers, this beach is dope

 

Things I learned lately 9 Dec

•  58 years ago, on December 9th, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas with the legendary music of The Vince Guaraldi Trio, was aired.
• Apparently, New Zealand has the least obstacles to starting a business.
• In California, the US leader in electric car adoption with more than 1 million plug-in vehicles, EV charging currently accounts for less than 1% of the electricity grid's total load during peak hours. In 2030, when the number of EVs in California is expected to surpass 5 million, charging is projected to account for less than 5% of that load.
• The US has over 13,000 airports.
• Stoney Trail, the ring road around Calgary, once completed will be 101 km long. 
• The original St-Hubert BBQ Rotisserie Chicken store opened in 1951 in Montreal. There is a St-Hubert Express outlet at that location today. St-Hubert operated a store in Fort Lauderdale from 1979 for many years to cater to Quebec snowbirds.
• A man in Spain, dressed to look like a rich tourist, faked a heart attack on 20 separate occasions to avoid paying for his meal at high end restaurants. He’s been arrested each time.
• Swedes cut their pizza with kitchen scissors.
• The top 5 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index (scoring gender equality) are Iceland; Finland; Norway; Sweden; and Denmark.

In Canada the moose always has the right-of-way

 

Small things 2 Dec

• Attention all breakfast joints in YYC: Montgomery needs a solid breakfast place. I’m looking at you Red’s Diner, Belmont Diner, Blue Star Diner, Diner Deluxe. Note to Smitty’s, OEB and Cora’s: Nothing to see here. Move along.
• The Lego set was labelled 6-12 years, but I had it finished in a week.
• You’ve heard of ‘alphabet soup’. Get ready for ‘times new ramen’.
• Gonorrhea would have been a great name for diarrhea medicine.
• The news is always like “Bike lanes have been outlawed in America because they weren’t in the bible. Also, Finland just made all ice cream free.”
• Dear biologists: Please change the name of a group of squids to a squad. That is all.
• Burger King will make you a Big Mac if you ask them really nicely. First they are required to say ‘no’ four times though, then ask you to leave. Be persistent. [snicker]
• Heating a frozen entree includes work I shouldn’t have to do. You gotta stir that stuff up halfway through the microwaving bit. I want convenience, not forced labour. /s
• Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.
• The last thing I want is to mess with you, but it’s still on my list.
• I can’t agree with you, because then we’d both be wrong.
• It’s not your fault. I’m just blaming you.

Hey ummm, Volkswagen.... maybe not a good tag line?

 

Just don’t

My streaming music library certainly doesn’t enable a lot of stuff. 

Here are titles from my library starting with “Don’t”:

Don’t ask me why

Don’t be late

Don’t bring me down

Don’t do me like that

Don’t eat the yellow snow

Don’t get me wrong

Don’t give up

Don’t it make ya feel

Don’t know why

Don’t leave me this way

Don’t let it show

Don’t let me down

Don’t let the sun go down on me

Don’t look back

Don’t need a gun

Don’t stand so close to me

Don’t stop

Don’t stop ‘til you get enough

Don’t stop believin’

Don’t stop me now

Don’t stop the dance

Don’t try suicide

Don’t you (forget about me)

Don’t you want me

Things you can do with $7.5 million

 

AB’s reaction to ‘draft’ Clean Electricity Regulations is unnecessary tantrum

Danielle Smith: "We just know that [the] 2035 target is not achievable."

The federal government released the draft version of the CER, a set of rules for transitioning Canada's electricity grid to net-zero starting in 2035. Facilities that generate electricity from natural gas (or other carbon-emitting sources) would have to find ways to reduce emissions, whether that's carbon capture and storage or whatever.

Alberta has said it supports the implementation of a carbon-neutral power grid, but only by 2050. The province says it does not have enough non-emitting electricity sources such as hydro and nuclear available, and won't have time to build them by 2035. But, when you look at the details of CER, the 2035 date is just the starting point. Exceptions in the draft allow some carbon-emitting facilities to continue running until 2045. There is a 20-year grace period for recently built and new facilities. A plant built in 2015 or prior would be subject to the standard in 2035. But one built in 2024 could operate until 2044 unconstrained. There will be no universal switch in 2035.

There are other exemptions in the draft. "Peaker" power plants can run up to 450 hours per year to support peak power when renewables can’t meet demand. Units with a capacity of less than 25 megawatts. Small and remote communities without affordable options to use non-emitting electricity generation. And emergency circumstances. This means that a majority of the gas-fired generation would not be subject to the regulations as of 2035. By 2040, roughly half of the natural gas generation would be subject to the rules. The draft signals generators that they need to reduce, and give them time to scale down their emissions well into the 2040s. That's with the draft regulations in their current form. There could be changes. Ottawa would consider making the 20-year grace period even longer in order to address Alberta's concerns.

The CER’s goal is to transition Canada's electricity grid to net-zero by 2050, and through electrifying parts of the economy that currently rely on fossil fuels, such as vehicles and heating. Switching from fossil fuels to electricity won't have much effect on emissions, however, if that electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. That's why CER tries to decarbonize the electrical grid. Alberta gets the majority of its electricity from natural gas. Alberta argues current technology will not allow for the targets, it would lead to affordability and reliability issues. But it depends on what Capital Power, Enmax, TransAlta and other generators decide to build in the next few decades. So it is possible that Alberta should be spending less time fighting Ottawa on the target and more time getting the producers to get greener. 

Just sayin'...

 

Things I learned lately 2 Dec

• El Nino is so far having an effect on Alberta weather this late fall. Although we’ve had snow, it’s not staying. Edmonton has had no snow in all of November, which hasn’t happened in 100 years. If this continues, we may have a brown Christmas. It’s still up in the air how this will manifest beyond December, but the overall winter forecast is dry and mild. Not a happy forecast for farming or water summer supply.
• Google is now powering one of its data centres in Nevada with geothermal energy. Their goal is to use only carbon free energy by 2030. The advantage of geothermal is availability 24/7.
• There’s no proof that ‘nifty’ is short for magnificent, but I’m gonna keep claiming it anyway.
• The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered lone planets that don’t seem to belong to any star in the Orion nebula. “That’s no planet…….”
• The boys from “This is Spinal Tap” are making a sequel. They should call it Part II. Because it looks like ‘11’.
• Brazil’s northernmost point is closer to every country in the Americas, including Canada, than to its southernmost point.
• The country flag with the most colours is Belize.
• There are more than 60 million motorcycles in Vietnam.
• Bhutan is the only carbon-negative country in the world.
• Finland has the highest consumption of milk per capita.
• In Costa Rica, between 10pm and 5am, it is perfectly legal to run a red light.
• In Bolivia, if you’re single, you can’t vote until you’re 21. If you’re married, you can vote at 18.
• Many of the 5,000 varieties of potatoes in the world can be found in Peru.
• At 7,821 km, the Trans Canada highway is the longest national highway in the world.
• There are about 5 million vending machines in Japan. There are almost 7 million in the US, but the US is 25 times larger than Japan by land mass.
• Fanta started as a German soda brand, as a Coca-Cola alternative in 1940 due to the American trade embargo of Nazi Germany, which affected the availability of Coca-Cola ingredients. Fanta orange was developed in Italy in 1955.
• Denmark spends 8% of its GDP on education.