Caution: self-driving Teslas in downtown Toronto

Speaking of Elon Musk, or at least Tesla, Toronto Tesla drivers have noticed recently that full self driving (FSD) mode is finally available after the company quietly removed a "geofence" disallowing its use in downtown Toronto and updated the car's software. The reason for the digital block apparently was that, as Musk himself puts it, "streetcars are not yet handled well by FSD". And, of course, there are streetcars all over downtown Toronto (and further afield, for that matter).

So now, suddenly, Tesla's FSD handles streetcars well? In my experience, many human drivers don't handle streetcars well, and streetcar users often take their lives in their hands when stepping onto the street, especially during rush hour. Would you trust a slightly smart camera to deal with this complex situation? Would you even trust it to navigate the jungle of construction work, cyclists, panhandlers, boy racers and potholes that is driving in downtown Toronto these days?

Personally, I'm not sure what the big attraction of autonomous cars is. Apparently, it's not really full self driving anyway. Drivers are required to keep a hand on the wheel in order to take control instantaneously if needed. The car beeps at you every 45 seconds if it doesn't detect a hand on the wheel, and will disengage FSD completely after multiple failures to do so. Drivers need to have a "driving score" (whatever that might be) of at least 80 in order to be allowed to use it.

The Ontario Safety League is certainly not convinced that the cars are safe in autonomous mode. I, for one, will be extra wary of Teslas in downtown Toronto henceforth.

Should we cut Elon Musk some slack because he is autistic?

I regularly write about Elon Musk in these pages, usually (well, always) in a disparaging manner. He is still the richest man in the world despite the slide in Tesla stock prices and an ill-advised foray into social media companies. But he is a lousy manager ("a case study in what not to do") and an all-round odd-ball. 

How do I feel, then, to find out - belatedly, to be sure - that Mr. Musk is in fact autistic, or at least somewhere on the autism scale (which can mean more or less anything these days)?

Well, not much different, to be honest. One could try to  use autism excuse his strange sense of humour and his almost complete lack of empathy for other humans (e.g. employees). But I'm pretty sure that Musk would be the last person to claim accommodations for his "neurodivergencies". 

He is clearly what used to be called "high-functioning autistic" (it is almost certainly not called that any more - I am not up on my politically-correct autism terminology). Musk himself claims to have Aspergers Syndrome, (claimed it very publicly on Saturday Night Live, no less), although that apparently is no longer an official label and has been superseded by a diagnosis of Autism spectrum Disorder (ASD) Level 1 (meaning "requires some support", but not "more support" or '"substantial support").

Now, some on the autism spectrum may see Musk's announcement as validation and proof that autistic people can indeed succeed. Others, such as those who require much more support to live a reasonable life, may find him unbearably smug and doing the rest of the autism community a grave disservice.

I don't really see any reason to treat him differently than any one else, though. What worries me is that, now this is out in the open, Musk may use it to excuse some of his less excusable behaviours. In that Saturday Night Live segment, for example, he quipped, "Look, I know I sometimes say or post strange things, but that's just how my brain works". Hmm. Further: "To anyone who's been offended, I just want to say I reinvented electric cars, and I'm sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you also think I was going to be a chill, normal dude?". Hmmmmmmm.

Anyone with that kind of a chip on their shoulder, and that kind of self-confidence, surely deserves anything that's coming to them.

"Well, this is awkward"

I'm not really a big fan of Budweiser, but after Qatar's very last minute decision to ban the sale of alcohol at the World Cup, despite Budweiser's multi-million dollar exclusive contract to sell beer before and after games at all eight of the World Cup stadiums, I AM a fan of Budweiser's terse and pithy Twitter response: "Well, this is awkward".

Anything more would have been absolutely de trop. 

Where do those credit card fees actually go?

An interesting article in todays's paper explains how credit card fees and rewards points work, and it's more complicated than you might have thought.

The credit card fees that a business has to pay for the privilege of being able to offer credit card transactions - and, particularly since the pandemic, more and more people want to do that, and fewer and fewer people are using cash - varies depending on the business. Small businesses tend to pay a little less, but, with slim margins, it can still make the difference between a viable and a non-viable business. Rates vary between different industries according to some less-than-transparent secret formula, and online credit card transactions attract higher rates than in-person ones, due to the higher incidence of fraudulent transactions.

Typically, though, a merchant might get to keep about 98% of the sale price of an item paid for on a credit card. About 1.4% (1.74% before changes made in 2014) goes to the bank issuing the credit card (RBC, BMO, CIBC or whatever). This is known as the "interchange fee", and is supposedly to recompense the banks for the hassle of having to extract monthly payments from credit card subscribers (and of course they make a bunch more money from interest on unpaid credit card balances, card fees, etc). Next, 0.51% goes to the processing company or "acquirer" (e.g. Moneris, Chase, etc). And finally, only about 0.09% goes to the credit card company itself (e.g. VISA or Mastercard), which might not sound like much but think about how many transactions there are each day (don't feel too sorry for VISA!)

Rewards points are a whole separate system, and represent another cut from the merchant's take because the banks tend to claw it back in interchange fees. Rewards points may be 1% (more normal) or 3% or even 5% for some types of products, and merchants like them as they do definitely attract some customers. But someone has to pay for them, and this is ultimately the merchant, although bear in mind that some merchants may well increase their prices to compensate for what they offer in points, and the customer would never know.

Twitter 2.0 is looking extremely rocky

I wonder how Elon Musk is feeling about his $44 billion investment in Twitter right now. He may still be the richest man in the world, but $44 billion is $44 billion, as they say.

Because it's by no means certain that Twitter will even survive Musk's first few weeks in control. Having fired almost half of its staffers, Musk gave a lesson in corporate governance when he offered remaining staff a grim ultimatum: accept "Twitter 2.0", which "will mean working long hours at high intensity", where "only exceptional performance will contribute a passing grade", or take a 3-month severance package.

Well, attractive though that offer sounds (not!), it seems like hundreds of Twitter staffers have choose to take the package. The company is deemed to be "in disarray", and has announced that office buildings will be shut down and employee access badges disabled at least until Monday.  Employees have been asked to "refrain from" talking about what is happening at the company (this from a "free speech absolutist"!), although it seems clear that very few of them actually know. Many advertisers have understandably put their accounts with Twitter on hold until they can see where the company is going under Musk.

The hashtag #RIPTwitter has been trending. Even Musk himself posted a doctored photo of Twitter's funeral, with his usual bizarre and highly suspect sense of humour. Not the most suspicious of starts. Permit me a little smug schadenfreude.

Tory government donors stand to win big-time from Ford's backrracking on the Greenbelt

Not content with attempting to circumvent the democratic process by establishing (and now extending) "strong mayor" rules for some of Ontario's largest cities, and attempting to break the province's unions with legislation and the controversial use of the Constitution's "notwithstanding clause", Ontario Premier Doug Ford is now looking to use his inexplicable electoral majority to do away with some of the environmental protections of the Greenbelt that surrounds Toronto, Hamilton and much of the rest of the Golden Horseshoe.

Ever since he was elected in 2018, Ford has insisted that he understands that the Greenbelt is sacrosanct and not to be sacrificed on the altar of commerce and development. Ford in 2018: "The people have spoken - we won't touch rhe Greenbelt". Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark, also in 2018: "We remain steadfast in our commitment to protect the Greenbelt for future generations". Ford again in 2021: "We weren't going to touch the Greenbelt for developers", and "we've kept that promise". Then, finally, after re-election this year: "We are going to make sure we keep every single promise". I guess he's just a politician after all, if anyone was in denial about that.

The Greenbelt was established in 2005 by Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government, and comprises about 800,000 acres of environmentally-sensitive and agricultural to land in southern Ontario near the province's most densely populated centres. It was designed to protect these areas from further development and urban sprawl by prohibiting new developments.

Some wealthy developers, nevertheless, bought up large parcels of land in this prime but supposedly undevelopable area, presumably in the expectation of the Greenbelt rules being relaxed at some point. In particular, some prominent Conservative donors have been spending many millions of dollars on technically undevelopable Greenbelt land, largely through numbered companies, and particularly so since Doug Ford's election four years ago. Which is pretty suspicious, wouldn't you say? These is no direct evidence of backroom deals being struck, but it certainly smells that way.

Now, after years of insisting that he would never touch the Greenbelt, the Ford government has published a list of 15 parcels that they intend to remove from the Greenbelt, enough to build over 50,000 houses on land that was previously protected for its environmental value. The Tories' "justification" is two-fold: there is a housing crisis and more house need to be built fast any way possible, and some additional (less valuable, and in some cases already protected) land will be added to the Greenbelt elsewhere to compensate.

Can they even do that? Well, apparently, at least from a legal standpoint. But it creates a horrible precedent, and could lead to a flood of other requests to open up the Greenbelt for development. It's also far from clear that the move is even necessary to "solve" the housing crisis: a shortage of land is not the problem, and there is plenty of land available for development, both within already built-up areas and in undeveloped areas outside the Greenbelt. 

So, it doesn't have to be this way. Which brings us right back to the fact that most of the land to be removed from the Greenbelt as part of this change was land purchased by Conservative donors since the start of Doug Ford's premiership.

Lithium mining - environmental disaster, or just a bit iffy?

I have already had to tackle the rumour that electric vehicles (EVs) are not actually environmentally superior to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. What is now doing the rounds of Facebook (or so an earnest, but slightly gullible, neighbour tells me) is the rumour that rare earth metal mining, especially lithium for EV batteries, is totally unsustainable and more environmentally destructive than oil drilling.

Snopes (among others) has thoroughly debunked one particular misleading image that has been doing the rounds of Facebook: 

Supposed to show that maybe oil sands developing is not as environmentally destructive as lithium mining, the images unfortunaty are not quite what they purport to be, actually not even close. Oops.

Most developed countries, and some less developed ones, have latched onto the idea that EVs are the way to go as regards transportation in a warming climate crisis world. Many countries have pledged to go 100% electric by 2035, or 50% by 2030, or whatever. EV take-up in North America has already reached the 5% threshold that many experts say is the point after which mass adoption will automatically take over, a point that many European countries and China reached some time ago, and EV demand is expected to at least triple in the next few years. So, demand for lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and some other more obscure elements is also expected to spike. How can we fulfill this demand responsibly and sustainably?

This detailed account on GRID News gives a good objective primer on the lithium and other EV mineral situation. 98% of the lithium mined in the world today comes from Australia, Chile and China (the Big Three), as well as Argentina and a few other smaller Latin American nations (Chile and Australia have by far the largest known reserves). Lithium, however, is not actually particularly rare; it is a matter of finding sources that are practical and economical to extract. As I have outlined in a previous post, new more environmentally-resposible extraction techniques are being developed all the time, and many new mines are trying to build in environmental safeguards, renewable power sources, etc. But it can take 7-10 years to develop a new lithium extraction facility and we really need it now, which creates a lot of pressure to take short-cuts.

Most of the world's cobalt comes from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Chinese developments are being bravely resisted as unfair (althouh DRC itself has a bad problem with child labour). Many other minerals used in EV batteries are located in countries like Brazil, Cuba, Philippines, Indonesia, etc, all of which have their human rights challenges. Developments in these countries will be under the microscope as they are announced. Mining the seabed of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico has huge potential for the production of nickel, copper, manganese, cobalt, etc, but it too will need to be handled in a sensitive and suatainable way, if indeed it proves to be possible.

And then there is China. China only produces about 10% of the world's lithium locally, but it has a disproportionate hand in lithium mining elsewhere, including huge concerns in Australia and Chile, as it does with nickel production in Indonesia, and cobalt in Democratic Republic of the Congo. And concern is definitely the right word, given that much of the west is looking to distance itself from totalitarian regimes like China and Russia, and "friend-shoring" becomes the watchword. 

Perhaps even more worrying is the refining of these essential minerals: more than 60% of lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite refining takes place in China, giving the Chinese an effective stranglehold over strategic EV minerals and EV battery production. In an era where China is establishing itself as a maverick state, global EV battery manufacture is looking very precarious, and the US and other counties are deperately playing catch-up (the US's recent Inflation Reduction Act took some concrete steps in that direction, and Europe has been pursuing battery independence policies for some time).

None of this, however, addresses the issue of whether lithium mining is environmentally disastrous or just a bit iffy. Web pages like this one from the Institute of Energy Research have documented the environmental challenges of the iniquitous lithium industry. No-one is denying that, but it is still hard to put it into some perspective.

For example, to look at just one aspect, part of the problem of such a Chinese dominance in the EV battery industry is that about 60% of China's electricity still comes from dirty coal, so the CO2 profile of EV batteries produced in China is higher than it should be, another good reason to develop home-grown industries. Some European countries with cleaner electricity production are starting to try and develop their own processing industries, but it is a long, slow process.

This web page from ChangeIt concludes that, despite all of the foregoing, there is no reason to suspect that expanded intensive lithium mining will have a worse environmental impact than the drilling, refining and transporting (and, potentially, spilling!) of petroleum products. Plus, novel mining techniques and increased recycling and re-use of lithium and other rare earth minerals will tip the balance even further in the direction of battery-powered EVs. 

Even academic studies like this one from NHSJS conclude that it is very difficult to compare the environmental impact of mineral extraction and battery manufacture with oil drilling and fracking operations, partly because it is almost impossible to compare like with like. Any comparisons it tries to make are inconclusive, although it does note once again that improving the recycling of battery components and ingredients would significantly change the analysis.

A Green Matters analysis concludes that fracking is a much more destructive and dangerous process than lithium mining, although obviously not all petroleum is produced by fracking. There are also a whole host of entries on StackExchange looking at the problem, but few of them are conclusive or comprehensive. Ditto the many opinions voiced on Quora.

Clearly, EVs and batteries have some significant environmental costs and some high hurdles still to overcome. But it is nevertheless hard to see the solution as worse than the problem they are designed to solve. There will always be naysayers to any new technology, and the reach and influence of the fossil fuel industry is long and strong after its decades of ascendancy. But let's try amd maintain some sense of perspective and not dismiss potentially ground-breaking and life-saving ideas out of hand.

What is RSV, and why is it everywhere right now?

RSV is probably the commonest childhood illness you bave never heard of. 

Respiratory Syncytial Virus - pronounce it "sin-SISH-ul" - is a recurring seasonal virus like influenza. It is highly contagious, and spreads through sneezing, coughing, kissing, and touching contaminated surfaces and transferring to the face (sound familiar?). It usually remains contagious for three to eight days, although this can be longer in the immunocompromised. Just for information, "syncytia" is a medical term for the large cells that form when infected cells fuse together.

The main symptoms of RSV are similar to those of the common cold or a mild flu: a runny nose, nasal congestion, cough, sore throat, low-grade fever and headache. A barking or wheezing cough may signal that the infection is getting worse and spreading to the lower respiratory tract, where it can cause more serious infections like bronchiolitis (an infection of the small airways of the lungs) or pneumonia (infection of the lungs). Usually, it is merely an inconvenience, but it can be dangerous, even  life-threatening, for babies under twelve months and the immunocompromised, for whom an infection in the lungs and breathing passages can result in seriosu illness, hospitalization, even death.

Like COVID and influenza, both of which are also rife among children right now (the so-called "/tripledemic"), RSV is a viral infection, so the current shortage of antibiotics like amoxicillin is not a major problem (or at leaat not for RSV). Unlike COVID and the flu, though, there is no readily-available vaccine for RSV, so the shortage of children's formulations of ibuprofen (Advil/Motrin) and acetaminophen (Tylenol/Tempra) IS a problem, because they are the main first-line treatments available. Pharmacologically, pretty much all you can do, much like with other viruses, is try aad keep down the fever. Take plenty of fluids, rest, you know the drill. Sy.ptoms should go away on their own within a week or two.

And, yes, adults can get RSV too, although this is less common just because most adults have already had RSV as kids, usually by age two and often more than once, whether they knew it or not, so they tend to have a level of protective antibodies against the virus.

During the height of COVID-19, in 2020 and 2021, health authorities saw a sharp drop in RSV cases compared to previous years, due to COVID measures like masking, social distancing, hand-washing and staying home when sick, which remain the best protections against it. This year, though there has been a knee-jerk reaction against commonsense measures like masking (not me!), which has led to a wave of respiratory infections and an unusually early flu season (get your vaccination!) 

Babies and children who have been sheltered from many common bugs by COVID precautions and lockdowns are only now catching RSV and other infections, so we are seeing two or three years' worth of respiratory infections almost at once, making it seem like a tsunami of illnesses. This does not mean that the masking and social distancing was wrong, just that it has had some unintended and unforeseen consequences.

Oh, and by the way, RSV is not being caused by COVID or the COVID vaccine, whatever Facebook might want you to believe.