Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 718

This has been a summer of cycling, playing tennis (poorly) on Toronto's public courts, and eating and drinking on sidewalks -- sometimes with, get this, no fencing . But winter will arrive in this part of the world at some point and that will mean having to rethink our patios. I'm certain that we'll be doing everything we can to extend the season this year because we are already seeing that take place in other cities.

Last month, the City of Chicago launched , in partnership with IDEO, BMO Harris Bank, and the Illinois Restaurant Association, a competition called the Winter Dining Challenge. The goal is exactly what I just described. It's to solicit creative ideas for how Chicago can make outdoor dining feasible all throughout the winter. (Chicago and Toronto have similar winters.)

Domes, pods, and heaters are likely to feature in the submissions, which makes me wonder at what point are you basically now considered to be "inside" as opposed to "outside." Presumably fresh air needs to factor. But I should really reserve judgement until the top ideas are selected. If you'd like to submit an "idea, concept, or startup," you have until September 7, 2020 at 11:30 PM PT. Here's the link .

Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash

https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1300833820049014785?s=20

I have been trying (albeit not very hard) to come up with the best way to describe the stinky hand sanitizer that is going around these days. Then today somebody in the office described it as bad tequila and I immediately thought, "yup, that's exactly it. It's bad tequila." See above tweet.

Turns out, there's some science behind this stink. Here is an article by Gregory Han from the New York Times that was shared in response to my tweet. And here is the excerpt that explains where this stink comes from:

“That off-putting smell—sometimes described as rotten garbage or tequila-like—is the natural byproduct of ethanol being made from corn, sugar cane, beets, and other organic sources,” explained Zlotnik. “[Ethyl alcohol] production is highly regulated. It stinks because these new brands—many made by distillers who’ve pivoted from producing drinking alcohol to meet public demand for hand sanitizer—are making and using denatured ethanol. This ethanol costs significantly less than ethanol filtered using activated carbon filtration, which would typically remove almost all contaminants and the malodor with it.”

Those organic contaminants aren’t the only reason unfiltered and denatured ethanol smells downright foul. According to Zlotnik, denatured ethanol is also intentionally tainted with an unpalatable cocktail of chemicals (denaturants) such as methanol, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, and denatonium to make it undrinkable. In other words: The base material is intentionally stinky.

So now you can judge accordingly after you've cleansed your hands with rotten garbage tequila.

On a somewhat related note, Jill Lepore has an interesting piece in this week's New Yorker about the great indoors, and how quarantine has forced us to spend even more of our time indoors. (Though, that hasn't been the case for me this summer.) Here's a snippet:

The Great Confinement varies by place and by wealth, and, historically, it’s new. “Over several millennia, humans have evolved from an outdoor species into an indoor one,” Allen and Macomber write. Citing E. O. Wilson, they explain, “We evolved in the African savannah’s wide-open expanses, intimate with nature and seeking protection under tree canopies,” and so “our genetic hardwiring, built over millennia, still craves that connection to nature.” To satisfy this craving, photographs of redwoods adorn hospital waiting rooms; you can pop into the Grand Canyon via Zoom. I used to think these dodges were better than nothing, but I’ve changed my mind. Zoom is usually not better than nothing.

I have a friend who is a big fan of Tesla. And judging by what's going on with the company's stock these days, he is not alone. This morning he sent me this article talking about how Tesla has introduced an entirely new business model for the automotive industry. The two key takeaways are as follows. One, Tesla is in many ways a software company. The hardware and software onboard each vehicle are continually getting better and oftentimes these improvements are delivered to their customers for free via over-the-air updates. This is not how the incumbent car companies work. And two, fully electric vehicles are going to crush after-sales revenue by virtue of the fact that electric vehicles simply don't require the same amount of service. So now you're in a position where the cars last longer (and apparently depreciate a lot less). This might seem bad for business, but if you can build an ecosystem of energy products and services around said car, then maybe you've got a big ass Tesla moat. Maybe. I have no idea what the company should be valued at today, but all of this is interesting to me and I'm fairly certain that the car I have right now will be the last combustion engine vehicle I ever own. Depending on when autonomy arrives, it may also be the last car I ever own.