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alnwlsnyesterday at 9:01 PM1 replyview on HN

One time, I was driving on a highway, and every now and then I'd see a tomato on the side of the road. At first it was one every couple minutes, but as I passed more vehicles the rate increased. 10 per minute. 30 per minute. Then, hundreds. Every mile, I passed more tomatoes than my household would eat in a year (and it's probably a household that eats an above average amount of tomatoes).

This went on for about an hour, but finally, I made my way up to the truck that was carrying the tomatoes. They were pouring out of the open top. Other vehicles kept their distance in the right lane so as not to be pelted with tomatoes. But the thing was is that the truck was still full. And the road was isolated, so it must have been driving along like this for several hours. All those tomatoes we passed on the road - decades worth for a single family - just an irrelevant minor leak. It wasn't even a leak, someone just filled the truck a tiny, probably imperceptibly small bit too much.

If one truck carries that much food, and then there's however many other tomato trucks each day, then that's a lot.


Replies

mh-today at 1:14 AM

In the first half of this comment I thought you were setting us up for a old-Google-style interview question. I felt oddly disappointed to not find a Fermi problem at the end.