What's the reason why English and most other languages of Europe treat blue and green like distinct basic colors, while many languages of Asia have one word encompassing both? What's the reason why Hungarian has two basic words for different kinds of red? It's just a historical artifact of language evolution. Russian happened to the evolve two different distinct basic color words for blue; to an English speaker, both are different shades of blue, but in Russian, neither is a shade of the other; and Russian has no single color word encompassing the English concept of "blue".
Even in English, in certain contexts, blue-green middling shades are treated individually (turquoise, cyan). Of course there are many color names in paint/art, but even in everyday situations there is a pretty clear concept of turquoise being its own distinct color.
Two basic color words for different types of blue. You might think of azure, cobalt, and sapphire as shades of blue. To a Russian speaker, синий and голубой are not shades of each other, they are different basic colors, like blue and green in English. And there is no one color word in Russian encompassing all blues.
I think pink is less clearly a shade of red (it can go a bit into blue), while "голубой" is simply light or pale blue: AFAICT it's used as an alias, and one may call it "light blue" as well.
It's all right. According to Hackernews, we need only change our languages to exclude a word for blue, then blue won't exist and we wonpt need blue paint.
That website is a catastrophe. The banner on the left prevents the intro text from being read. There's also a banner on the right which is similar in behavior. Neither can be dismissed. Text can't be copied without dragging along useless marketing material. There is no Reader view to nuke the bad design decisions.
Strangely, the original story ran on Bloomberg itself, which isn't mentioned in the article. Fortunately, the archive.md trick works. https://archive.md
This is completely tangential but does anyone who has any real experience with painting done anything with the VR painting apps? I have one called PaintingVR, and I think it's cool, but I have no real experience with physical paints (always opting to use a digital drawing tablet since I was a kid).
If anyone has any experience, how do you feel it compares to the real deal?
I really felt like I was in that brick studio with a nicer set of equipment than I'd ever used. I guess I used easels sort of like that in college, but in the real world I didn't use such a formal setup.
The realism and sense of presence made me notice the missing haptic feedback and the lack of smell feedback (linseed oil, turpentine, etc), but the audio feedback and the physics are really great.
My experience was with Vive Pro 2 and Valve knuckles.
Could be Titanium Dioxide that is involved in whitening. Have seen enough from my view that this would be my guess. And what could be more basic than that. :)
> Rising energy costs - coal and crude - have pushed up prices of raw materials such as phthalic anhydride, cuprous chloride and urea. These are used to manufacture CPC Blue (Copper phthalocyanine blue) crude, a key ingredient of pigment blue, which in turn goes into the making of various shades of blue paints. [0]
Thank you Toyota and practitioners of "lean" / "Six Sigma" that told us all about the wonders of just-in-time, to only carry exactly as much inventory was needed for demand. After all, we'd rather have that cash in a bank account than tied up in inventory.
While well intentioned, the problem is that it all relies on assumptions, largely tied to demand. And when demand goes through a wild whipsaw, and everyone takes diverging viewpoints of the shape of that whipsaw curve, the highly interdependent chain snaps.
Labor is an issue for sure. But make no mistake, the "restart from COVID" supply chain conundrum owes a lot of its pain to optimizing everything to the hilt, then reacting slowly as the world around us changed.
Toyota actually isn't as JIT as you make it out to be, but that notwithstanding, what's the alternative? Stockpile 30 years' worth of Christmas ornaments in warehouses in Oklahoma, right next to the oil storage?
All planning really is based on assumptions, like safety stock levels. In organizations you typically have someone who decides "hey, this is the right level of inventory to keep, based on our demand right now." That's not a bad approach, but the problem is a lot of supply chain planning is top-down and dictates "we only want to keep $x tied up in inventory" and as you can imagine that number is driven by management as low as possible. When COVID happened last year, levels were slashed so low and now the supply chains can't recover.
Basically my view is that it's this over reactiveness and obsession with free cash flow has swung so far so as to create a too-painful jam.
I would agree that over consumption is a problem, albeit a separate one to the conversation at hand.
> That's not a bad approach, but the problem is a lot of supply chain planning is top-down and dictates "we only want to keep $x tied up in inventory" and as you can imagine that number is driven by management as low as possible.
This actually isn't true to the extent you seem to think it is, though.
> Basically my view is that it's this over reactiveness and obsession with free cash flow has swung so far so as to create a too-painful jam.
But that's not the only cause of the supply chain situation. Transportation is also a big part of the issue. Even if you had 10 years' worth of widgets in a warehouse in China, if you can't get them on a ship, or the shipping costs are too high, you get supply shortages where the customers need those widgets.
No. Virtually all goods that move by sea (save for commodities like oil) move in containers, which require container ships and associated infrastructure (deep water ports, etc.).
I think you're vastly underestimating the volume of cargo that moves and the world of infrastructure that has been put in place to move it.
Also, to the extent that small vessels are used in the "transportation" business, it's for contraband, not Beanie Babies. Look up the street value of 100 kilos (~220 pounds) of cocaine in major US and European cities and compare it to the value of a 40 foot container full of nuts and bolts.
I think some companies recognized that it's possible for once-in-a-generation and once-in-a-lifetime disruptive events to occur, but they crunched the numbers and decided that they could squeeze more from lean practices over the long term than they stood to lose in the disruptive events.
Like, suppose you could make $X in profit that is highly resilient to infrequent disruption or twice that with the understanding that every 20 years or so, you're going to have a few bad years because of black swan events. You might determine that you're willing to take your lumps during the chaotic times.
Planning for black swan events would be really dumb: they will never go exact as you plan them to. What if they planned for a GFC-like black swan event where nobody bought cars? Or one where gasoline suddenly went to $400 barrel?
There are a million possible black swan events and there's a million ways to plan for them.
I hear this complaint frequently, and I always wonder if the people making it are well-informed about supply chain logistics or are just parroting what they’ve heard elsewhere. Because my understanding of TPS and Lean is that it solved serious issues with supply chains involving waste due to outdated and rusted (figuratively and literally) inventory. It also doesn’t prevent the use of buffers to absorb shocks, as Toyota demonstrated in the first year of the pandemic.
That is amazing. Why is the Flexport CEO apparently the only one trying to diagnose and solve this critical problem? It's not even that hard. He lays out a relatively simple solution:
1) Executive order effective immediately over riding the zoning rules in Long Beach and Los Angeles to allow truck yards to store empty containers up to six high instead of the current limit of 2. Make it temporary for ~120 days.
This will free up tens of thousands of chassis that right now are just storing containers on wheels. Those chassis can immediately be taken to the ports to haul away the containers
2) Bring every container chassis owned by the national guard and the military anywhere in the US to the ports and loan them to the terminals for 180 days.
3) Create a new temporary container yard at a large (need 500+ acres) piece of government land adjacent to an inland rail head within 100 miles of the port complex.
4) Force the railroads to haul all containers to this new site, turn around and come back. No more 1500 mile train journeys to Dallas. We're doing 100 mile shuttles, turning around and doing it again. Truckers will go to this site to get containers instead of the port.
5) Bring in barges and small container ships and start hauling containers out of long beach to other smaller ports that aren't backed up.
This is not a comprehensive list. Please add to it. We don't need to do the best ideas. We need to do ALL the ideas.
We must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK and get these ports working again. I can't stress enough how bad it is for the world economy if the ports don't work. Every company selling physical goods bought or sold internationally will fail.
The circulatory system our globalized economy depends has collapsed. And thanks to the negative feedback loops involved, it's getting worse not better every day that goes by.
I'd be happy to lead this effort for the federal or state government if asked. Leadership is the missing ingredient at this point.
There is a emission’s control law that is effectively banning any truck older than a 10 years from entering California which would also need a temporary stay to help get the bottleneck cleared as fast as possible.
That’s a great thread, thank you. Do note that one of the replies calls his fundamental thesis into question, though: empties are sitting on chassis not due to regulation, but due to lack of equipment for stacking them higher.
Reasonably large mobile cranes exist and the cost of renting one for a day is small compared to the amount of capital bouncing around logistics operations surrounding the Port of LA.
They're not currently in use at truck yards because it's illegal to stack containers high, but if it were no longer illegal then they could be quickly and temporarily set up.
The problem isn't with the methodology itself but with how it's implemented in practice. Lean makes your buffers a lot more visible to management, and if you combine that with a culture of short-sighted cost-cutting, you run into issues. The problem isn't lean; it's a management culture of short-sighted cost-cutting.
And that management culture is an effect of how compensation works. Cut costs, put "reduced overhead by X Million" on resume, either get promoted or switch jobs before negative impact happens.
Which might explain how Toyota has less of these problems. I don't think Toyota executives are the type of people to make these kinds of moves and hop jobs.
> Takeshi Uchiyamada was born on August 17, 1946. He graduated from Nagoya University with a degree in applied physics in March 1969, and joined Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) in April the same year.
> Shigeru Hayakawa was born on September 15, 1953. He graduated from the University of Tokyo with a bachelor's degree in economics in March 1977, and joined Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) in April of the same year.
> He graduated from Shiga University with a bachelor's degree in economics in March 1972, and joined Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) in April of the same year.
I can see how that would discourage short-term decision-making.
The problem isn't Toyota. It's that companies are so damn risk averse that they would rather have money in bank accounts rather than take a risk and keep producing too much even during a half year downturn.
Parts on the shelf also rust. My company saves a lot of money not having to de-rust iron parts now that everything is back out the door 5 days after it arrives in the factory. Not to mention sometimes parts rust enough that they no longer pass quality standards.
Except that when companies do this, and then ask to be rewarded for making that investment, they are lambasted for price gouging or profiteering…just ask any hardware store that has sat on a pile of snow shovels through the summer in order to capture a premium price when a blizzard is approaching…
I agree price gouging laws lead directly to shortages. Take the recent toilet paper shortage. What is a more preferable outcome, not having toilet paper available or having to pay 4x as much for a roll? Because the latter is illegal we have empty shelves instead.
The problem with price gouging is that people are irrational and feel entitled to the price they paid last week. People get super fucking angry at price gougers. Which is how the nation ended up with these laws to begin with.
So even if the government were okay with "market adjustments" on basic goods, there would still be this risk of stores getting looted/destroyed because people are so angry at how quickly prices increased.
Businesses are much less emotional. Most are just going to adapt to the new price.
It is more than just people being angry. As was famously pointed out by Axel Leijonhufvud, inflation makes the process of economic planning extremely difficult. If you are a business, you need to make long term production plans, and when you have no idea what the costs will be, that severly disrupts the production process and leads to shortages regardless of how you feel emotionally about something.
Instead of talking about "inflation", talk about "cost uncertainty". That should make clear how a complex society with long production chains can't really deal with it. That also includes households, who have much less capability for planning than firms and really need to know what their bills will be and how much things will cost when making decisions.
> inflation makes the process of economic planning extremely difficult.
It doesn't, though.
> If you are a business, you need to make long term production plans, and when you have no idea what the costs will be, that severly disrupts the production process
Sure, but that's the effect or unpredictable price changes, not inflation. USD is inflationary, Bitcoin is deflationary, but future (short or long term) prices of other goods and services in USD have a lot less uncertainty than those in Bitcoin. Inflation is not at all the same thing as difficulty projecting future prices.
Price gouging is a legal term for people/retailers taking advantage of shortages or spikes in demand by charging well over market price for basic necessities.
> Thank you Toyota and practitioners of "lean" / "Six Sigma" that told us all about the wonders of just-in-time, to only carry exactly as much inventory was needed for demand.
While Toyota might have popularized the concept, it seems odd to blame them for the common-sense idea of just-in-time.
It’s quite natural, normal humans also don’t hoard everything they can possibly think of needing, nor should companies. It’s eco-friendly to be JIT as it leads to less wastage; while optimizing for rare shortages will result in wastage all the time.
> It’s quite natural, normal humans also don’t hoard everything they can possibly think of needing...
For most of human history we did exactly that. The deeply interconnected "JIT Consumption" world is really quite new. And if consumption patterns suddenly change then you can't buy toilet paper anymore.
I'd actually disagree pretty strongly with this. For most of human history the spoilage rate of pretty much everything we produced was so high that stockpiling goods for the sudden economic shocks was solely reserved to governing bodies. Remember how you built ten bazillion granaries in Civ? Sure, the game has taken quite a few liberties with history but we have evidence of communal food storage going all the way back to Babylon. When's the last time you saw a granary or any sort of food stock that was actually built and maintained by a government in the modern world?
Before the modern epoch it was really rare to personally stockpile goods due to the extreme possibilities of spoilage (everyone loves weevils and moths right?) - that's only been an option in the near history.
For most of the pre-modern era, 'governing body' simply means a group with enough stockpiled resources, especially food, to project power. Anyone who could get in on this action tried to. Spoilage is an issue, but humans came up with many neat tricks to work around this, many of which are still used today (fermentation, for example). Anyone who didn't want to live or die soley by the whims of the local warlord during a harsh winter had to maintain their own food stockpile.
The great lie of Civ is to present this as centrally organized when for most of human history this power was very finely decentralized due to the expense of communication and logistics. But as socities become more centralized food stockpiles haven't disappeared. Many governments still maintain food stockpiles, especially poorer countries.
National Emergency Supply Agency in Finland did have real granaries not a long ago - they still have emergency supplies of grain, nowadays it is just done by owning grain and paying private companies to store it in their normal logistical network.
In the beginning of the pandemic the agency was heavily in local news when they started deliveries of protective gear from their stockpiles - but to be honest, some rubber bands of the stored masks did need replacing.
Do you have some sources to prove that “most of human history”, everyone was hoarding?
Necessity leads to JIT, only in times of surplus can you even try to hoard. Famines were common before, and still occur now - you just don’t notice now thanks to globalization and in part, essential reserves maintained by governments and companies.
Humans very quickly realized that food doesn't always come in at a constant rate and learned to hoard[1] in times of plenty to protect against times of scarcity. As you note, current governments still stockpile food, but before power was so heavily centralized this responsiblity fell to smaller communities and family units. The very first proto-states formed around resource stockpiles[2], but food preservation had been a big deal for much longer, some 12k years ago[3], predating agriculture. In contrast, the expectation that I can go to Walmart and buy fresh ground beef at any time is not even a century old.
Neccesity leads to JIT, but also sustained surplus. If the winters are mild and food can grow year round, why bother stockpiling? If any widget can be obtained quickly and cheaply, why spend the extra effort to maintain inventory? If I can always buy ground beef at Walmart, why should I keep a winter's worth supply in my freezer? These practices are fine as long as the underlying assumptions remain valid. If one suddenly finds that they can't reliably buy toilet paper on demand, there is an incentive to hoard it. And that's exactly what happened.
[1] While it has taken on a somewhat different meaning in recent times, the early meaning of the word was 'to store and preserve for future use.' https://www.etymonline.com/word/hoard
We agree that humans were not able to hoard (ever, despite changing definitions) at the level we actually currently do. But, obviously, we don’t hoard enough to meet incredibly rare supply chain shortages like these.
It seems to me like we are at a well optimized level; do you feel otherwise, and if so, how do you plan to solve it without resource wastage and price increases?
I don't think this is our last pandemic. Really the modern globalized era is a vanishingly small slice of human history. Ancient societies were often wiped out by unexpected events. I would not bet that nothing unexpected will ever happen again. On the contrary, the relatively consistent climate that has sustained literally all of human civilization is changing at an unprecedented rate. I expect frequent major challenges to existing systems. I think COVID is actually a minor challenge in this space; the economic effect is only so large because of how poorly we were prepared.
I reject your constraints. Optimizing for minimum resource wastage and price is also optimizing for minimim reslience to the unexpected. If you want to experience this first hand try living paycheck-to-paycheck. I'd rather pay more and consume less while relying on more resilient systems; I think we need it now more than ever.
So do price increases from supply chain shocks. And if you've ever lived paycheck-to-paycheck, you understand that even minor shocks get balloon out of control very quickly because resources are so tightly allocated.
We are just now living through an era where a relatively minor shock is going to have severe implications last several years (which have and will continue to hit the poorest the hardest). This is what happens when you allocate resources too tightly without sufficient slack.
Would you be making the same statement if covid hadn't happened? I think companies realized that net net, JIT is more profitable and they'll worry about the outliers when/if they happen.
I think the color purple is considered regal because whatever the dye used to be made from (crushed marine life or something like that) was very expensive. So if you had purple, it meant you were rich.
It would be kinda funny if blue things became a sign of wealth because of this.
It wasn't just any purple, but the particular purple that came from a species of sea snail. For example, purple dyes were common in China many centuries before the Roman Tyrian Purple we're talking about, but never gained this luxury status.
So it's worth pointing out that Tyrian Purple was an exceptionally long lasting dye; it did not fade when left in the sun, or after washing. Compared to other purple fabrics, Tyrian Purple fabrics always looked brand new, and I suspect that this is the real origin of their high-status associations.
So it was expensive to make and worth the expense involved because of it's unusual durability. It wasn't some artificial scarcity, like modern day diamonds, nor "valuable" merely because it was scarce.
Thank you for that. That's a wonderful bit of trivia.
People have been doing terrible environmental damage to indulge themselves for eons. We aren't exactly the brightest bulb in the box about some things.
I like that it wasn't enough for it to be rare (which it was) and laborious to produce (which it was), but also that it had unusual and very practical properties.
It seems as if today, mainly due to marketing, luxury goods get away with just being rare (even if artificially), or just being laborious to produce (e.g. the old (false) notion that "a Rolls Royce is completely hand-made").
I don't know when China was doing purple, but do note that we have proof of Phoenicians making purple from these snails as far back as around 1400BCE. It predates the Romans by a very long time.
Yes, hence Tyrian purple, from Tyre in Lebanon. Han purple comes from ~1000 BC[1].
But we were talking about regal purple, which I'm fairly certain was an outcome of Roman sumptuary laws. Eventually only the emperor could wear it. Yes, Tyrian purple predates the Romans, but it was merely a luxury good rather than a symbol of empire.
After the 2011 Japan earthquake automakers ran into a the same problem, they ran out of a pigment called Xirallic made by Merck
>After the earthquake, automakers worldwide were forced to stop making cars of certain colors because they couldn't get the aluminum-flaked Xirallic pigment that makes the paint sparkle. Merck was making the pigment at only one plant worldwide -- its Onahama plant in the quake zone -- and kept significant stocks of the product only at the same factory. It took months to restart the plant and resume deliveries.[1]
The Verge did a really good profile of the perils of just-in-time manufacturing in respect to Apple that highlights how highly efficient JIT in reducing costs but that it ultimately leads to more fragile supply chains.[2]
>Just-in-time manufacturing is highly efficient, but it’s not resilient.This style of manufacturing cuts costs — but it also means that if the supply chain is disrupted, there will be shortages.[2]
I really like this insight
>To make a more resilient system, a lot of companies may have to rethink just-in-time manufacturing. Resilience doesn’t show up as clearly on balance sheets as cost reduction, but it’s crucial for surviving disruptive events. Lowering costs by creating economies of scale and volume looks good most of the time, but once there’s a failure, companies don’t have many options.[2]
Just how much stock would companies need to avoid the problems we have now? This isn't just a supply side problem, demand for some goods has gone through the roof. How can a business compete on resilience when all their competitors are cheaper because they carry less stock.
I'm not even sure I'd want that as a consumer. Mostly I'd rather wait than pay more (although obviously not for food).
Except waiting ripples through the economy. You may not need a particular thing, but something that depends on it for their business 18 chain links away from things you need, does. And without it, certain businesses might not be able to sell anything, and thus go bankrupt, and thus put people out of work. It's all a very complicated interconnected web
My hope is that supply chain issues will make clear the downsides to execs (not just the workers) and governments of externalizing all manufacturing abroad and out of reach. Look at the chaos caused by a pandemic, now imagine war or purposefully using supply chain as leverage.
This is all momentary situation caused by the pandemic. In one year, people will not even remember this. Companies will not spend billions of dollars unless they have no other option.
I wish it gets to that point. A country that doesn’t manufacture is a huge loser in the long run. I hope it comes back to America in a heavily automated, sustainable fashion.
I get the point, but corporations care more about their own profits. They will continue manufacturing in Asia for the foreseeable future, since it is too costly to open manufacturing plants in the US. The government would need to do something momentous to change this, which I don't see happening.
You don't seem to understand that there is a shortage of workers here, and we're not even producing anything! The labor is not available even to transport and sell the products. Imagine if this country tried to manufacture things... Unfortunately, for the foreseeable future the market has no choice other than continue to buy from Asia.
There is absolutely no shortage of workers at the lower end of the skills range, there is however a big monetary issue at play that prevents people from hiring people locally in a number of different situations. On top of this there are regulatory and taxation imbalances that make certain industries unable to compete with foreign firms that don't have those issues. The problems are frequently the price of labor not the raw availability of labor, people certainly will take on jobs if there is enough pay to make those jobs worth taking.
There is plenty of manufacturing to go around. Buying from specialists is a better deal for everyone than trying to do a little of everything.
The only exceptions is war machines (guns, ships...) - you need to have that in your country just in case. Though the more trade you do with others the more nobody wants war with you because they lose both the goods you make and the market for goods you buy from them.
That's the traditional liberal thinking, yes, but warmaking is not binary.
There's open war, cold war, hegemon bullying, and lots of other conflicts. Look at how much China tried to sabotage the Australian economy this last year (and vice versa of course) even though China NEEDED Australian coal and resources for their industry. Political considerations in the short run has priorities, even if it's economically costly.
Besides, with more capital it's going to lead into cheaper manufacturing with automatization in higher labor countries. Sometimes it's better to have redundant factories in many different parts of the world. Even if it's only for innovation.
> The only exceptions is war machines (guns, ships...) - you need to have that in your country just in case.
If you can make guns and ships but not fuel for the ships and food for the people carrying the guns and manning the ships, how far does that get you?
If you can make guns and ships domestically, but rely on a foreign power that might become hostile for the raw material, how far does that get you?
If you take the “war materiel must be domestically producable for security” position, and think it through, you will find that it is by no means a narrow exception.
> Though the more trade you do with others the more nobody wants war with you because they lose both the goods you make and the market for goods you buy from them.
The idea that no one ever wants to go to war with a major trade partner is...hard to align with history.
I disagree. People will remember this and make irrational decisions based on these memories for years.
For comparison, the Great Financial Crisis still looms over us so much that people still anticipate another huge housing burst. And when companies like Ford announce that they aren't using FICO scores to determine if a person qualifies for a loan, people on websites start fearmongering about another sub prime lending crisis.
I’m working from home, dog. Day care is 2 miles away. In spite of a bicycle shortage I bought an ebike and a child seat and take my kid to day care that way!
I don’t even really like working from home(been remote since 2018) so when I want to go into the office I take the train into the city.
Graphics cards don’t really have anything to do with the pandemic. It’s more to do with scalpers and crypto clownery.
Some countries have had absolutely disastrous bouts of covid this past year (like Vietnam) and it screwed up supply chains a lot. Companies canceling orders because of expected drop in demand that didn’t happen are all rushing to put those orders back in, and it turned into a mess. There are plenty of factors at work here because each country that contributes to the chain had some different sort of problem.
Re your 1st paragraph: Ahh, yeah, when things change beyond first estimations, let's use outdated statements made using old data to conclude "They were lying from the beginning, it's been planned all along!".
Meanwhile it's month 18 in USA because the antivax folks started with the premise of non-cooperation ("because I hate the other party") and worked from there to invent all sorts of excuses why their non-cooperation is justified, so the government, who needs to care for all, including the beligerent, have to keep policies to keep everyone somewhat protected, ie masks, distancing, and proof of vaccination checks. Compare that to Portugal with 98% vaccination rate and no more vaccine proof checks required.
Yeah yeah you can still get the virus if you're vaxed, but it'll then be just like a bad flu, actually fulfilling the mistaken belief that many deniers had in the beginning...
I think what your missing is that it's been over for a while in a lot of places. Like there's a lot of places that by last May there was no way to know anything was going on and school started back just fine in August of 2020.
It would probably end the restrictions (to which the "I've got their plan figured out"-contrarian will reply "No, I bet the tyrannical governments have worse plans").
The scientific literature says the vaccinated have lower viral load and are less infectious, if the load on hospitals and careworkers get reduced, what would prevent the relaxation of the restrictions?
Currently careworkers have been under extra pressure for 18 months, imagine a car engine being revved too hard and too long that suddenly blows, and apply this analogy to them, obviously not the entire industry in a day, but maybe over a semester...
> The scientific literature says the vaccinated have lower viral load and are less infectious
It appears that is not necessarily the case[1]:
> In July 2021, following multiple large public events in a Barnstable County, Massachusetts, town, 469 COVID-19 cases were identified among Massachusetts residents who had traveled to the town during July 3–17; 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated persons. Testing identified the Delta variant in 90% of specimens from 133 patients. Cycle threshold values were similar among specimens from patients who were fully vaccinated and those who were not.
Certainly, the experience in Israel and the debate in the UK at the moment over more lockdowns would indicate that even very high levels of immunity (from either vaccination or infection) do not necessarily correspond with an easing of restrictions.
I don't think that study disproves my statement, the study didn't/couldn't see viral load or infectiousness.
I wonder how many more would've been sick without the vaccine. There were 469 cases, but how many showed up to those events?
Reading the study further, 4 vaxed people (and 1 unvaxed) were hospitalized and there were 0 deaths. I'd say a great result for the vaccine, but to be objective we'd have to see how it'd be different with the same set of people (same health status, etc) but without the vaccine.
I think/hope the goal isn't the eradication of the virus or its spread, but rather reducing the number of hospitalizations. The virus will probably stay with us, but if hospitals are no longer overwhelmed (since people aren't getting very sick and dying) then the governments will probably drop restrictions. Although mask mandates for some places like hospitals or old people's homes will probably remain for a long time...
> I don't think that study disproves my statement, the study didn't/couldn't see viral load or infectiousness.
They were using a measure called Ct cutoff, which (if used that way) is a crude measure of viral load, as the CDC points out in its own literature[1]:
> Since Ct values can vary based on many factors, it is not a good indicator of how infectious a person is or how much virus is present in a person (known as viral load).
However, it also points out in the sentence prior:
> It is still unknown how much virus is needed to transmit the virus from person-to-person and cause new infections.
What no longer needs to be ascertained is how this data has been interpreted by the experts, which is that the vaccines do not confer much, if any, advantage against transmission. There was the hope before the vaccines came out that they might but it was pointed out repeatedly that it would be unlikely given the nature of coronaviruses, and that has come to be the case.
> if hospitals are no longer overwhelmed (since people aren't getting very sick and dying) then the governments will probably drop restrictions
I hate to repeat myself, but the examples of Israel and the UK should also remind you that it is mere hope you are expressing, not anything borne out by experience. I hope you are right but my experience of people and how loathe they are to relinquish power - especially people who seek it, like politicians - tempers that somewhat.
That would mean on average an infected person would infect less than one person and thus after a short while we converge on a zero infected population; as an infected person you either get well and unlikely to get infected again or die.
Vaccines work probabilistically and at scale. You need everyone to get the vaccine. If you have pockets of "inoculation" and give enough space to the virus to evolve through retransmission or too long to live, well tough luck.
This is the tool we have. And historically pandemics destroyed us. Not sure what we hope for here.
Are you saying that the "a year from now" estimate from the commenter is correct merely due to "prior estimates were wrong is no reason to distrust new estimates"? FWIW, I am under the impression that, officially, there aren't even estimates anymore... it will end when it ends and, frankly, if the issue are the people who aren't getting vaccinated, do you think that is changing soon? If anything, aren't we learning that the immunity--even and maybe even particularly the "natural immunity" from having contracted the virus directly--is temporary?
> This is all momentary situation caused by the pandemic
Very unlikely. 2020 was beginning of a super crisis caused by several reasons:
1) Depletion of fossil fuels which are used to produce consumer goods, e.g. to heat factories and provide electricity for the factory machines. Also fossil fuels are used to transport produced goods around half of the world. It was all possible due to abundant and cheap energy. But that energy source is no longer there.
2) Inability of capitalist economy to grow more. Capitalist economy must constantly expand to new markets but there're no more new markets as amount of markets on planet Earth is finite. Last huge market was created by destroying USSR and USSR industry: it postponed the super crisis by 30 years by giving capitalist system more space to expand to. But there's no longer any place for further expansion.
All will be going downhill from now on. Also, rising economic problems will prompt governments to start wars to exterminate "superfluous" population that cannot be fed in the new dark ages. There're other reasons for new war also. If you capture the country with still remaining fossil fuel resources and exterminate its population, you'll have more time to prepare for the inevitable.
They were not depleted suddenly. Cost of extracting oil and gas is steadily rising. This will soon lead to a situation where there's still enough oil in the Earth, but it's unviable to extract it because you have to invest more energy to extract it than you can receive from burning the extracted oil.
We're almost there. E.g. in Russia all new oil deposits found in recent years are in polar areas where extracting is difficult and expensive.
2. It is amazing how beginning of the super crisis coincided with the pandemia. I remember that in the beginning of the 2019 I said to several of my friends that huge crisis will hit the world at the end of the year. But I couldn't even imagine what would happen in the beginning of 2020.
Anyway, governments would want to get rid of extra mouths, especially young people with lots of energy but no way to put it into something productive.
It's especially clear when you start noticing that NATO forces are concentrating near Russian borders and amount of NATO military exercises on Russian borders has increased several times.
Russia has a big population and huge amounts of mineral resources. If NATO manages to capture Russian territory and exterminate most of the population in the process, it would give maybe 10-50 more years for Europe to adapt (e.g. build thermonuclear or some viable green energy sources), because currently Russia uses much of oil and gas and other resources for its own consumption.
There're other countries that could be the next potential targets. Two birds with one stone: turn young people who can't find a place in life into war into cannon fodder and potentially capture resources to extend the agony of the over-consuming economy.
> rising economic problems will prompt governments to start wars to exterminate "superfluous" population
The US is already doing this. The wars of extermination on the middle East are motivated by the desire to control the sources of oil, and when people react they're labeled as terror threats and eliminated. It is also not a new phenomenon, as it was already practiced to control the whole of north America and Australia in the past.
Companies will not spend billions of dollars unless they have no other option.
I don't think you're necessarily right this is temporary. But companies always have the option of just not producing. If no one has blue paint, for most uses, the consumer just buys another color and grumbles.
And the things that are most likely to have a shortage would be those things that are cheapest produce a large scale in just one part of the world, so they're things that would be hardest to replace.
War would lead to much worse than supply chain issues. Mass global death is what war between any powerful nation means now. Which is why it should be unthinkable, and why every nation that is serious about a future for humanity should take every action necessary to keep peace and to prevent crimes of aggression.
Yeah, I get the theory -- it's not a particularly deep theory -- but does it really work?
Consider that when nations go to war, they will bomb the hell out of each other's industries. So if they are willing to risk that when they go to war, why would the loss of mutual trade be enough of a threat to avert war? I don't see how the cost is increased between a bombed out factory that used to trade with you, and a bombed out factor that traded with someone else.
Similarly in wars, nations embargo each other and sink each other's shipping, so again not sure why loss of mutual trade makes the cost of war unacceptable, if this higher cost is already acceptable?
This reminds me of the Olympic games that were founded at the end of the 19th C in order to promote peace among nations. The theory was that if nations could compete on the field, they wouldn't compete in war. I think that theory turned out to be as robust as the trade-makes-peace theory, which itself did not fare well in WW1.
At the same time, the EU has created an enormous amount of resentment and animosity between nations, as Italy and Greece are forced to adopt the same currency as Germany, which hurts their economies but subsidizes the German economy. The Germans, in turn, feel resentful for bailing out the South (by buying up so many assets in the South), apparently not realizing that purchasing all these assets is what allows the trade imbalances to continue. If anything we know that these types of asymmetric cross border capital flows are highly destabilizing, and do not promote peace at all.
My guess is what keeps Europe from going to war is that it remains under the US sphere of influence, at least militarily, and so the irritations and rivalries created by the EU do not spill out into war. Basically the domestic populations hate each other much more, but the states themselves are too crippled to act with much autonomy, and so they don't really have the agency to even start a war. They are just left seething, as their capital stock is sold off to their neighbors, but there is nothing they can do about it. This will not end well.
Do you live in the EU ? Because I do and all I can say is that clearly the EU is massively reducing the chances of a war. What I’ve seen is:
At universities, the Erasmus programme means students of all nationalities study together as friends, just as if they were from different states in the US. In companies, thanks to free circulation and the Euro currency, people from various countries work together as well in the same way, I’ve worked in companies of 25people with 12 nationalities with no problem at all.
It would seem absurd for me as a French person (now living in Portugal) to want to bomb Germany for some economics reason, given that I have worked and befriended with dozens of very nice Germans. I could say the same of any European country. I’m not even special and I have friends and ex colleagues in virtually every EU country, from Greece, Poland, Sweden to Ireland Italy, Portugal and others.
To a certain extent. I think machinery, tech and anything that is highly skilled work needs to happen in country. I’m definitely a globalist otherwise.
In addition to outsourcing ... its primarily the "Just In Time" way of Inventory management which is the problem. Now at least all governments need to wake up, bring back critical manufacturing back and also maintain strategic inventory.
Paintmakers (plural)? Or paintmaker (singular)? Was this a proactively written article or a quick rehash of a press release? It mentions a single paint manufacturer. One.
No doubt there are supply chain issues. Apparently there are journalism integrity issues as well. Yeah, it feels innoscent. But lazy and journalism are two words that do not belong together. Ever.
(I have my own gripes about that website, like how it tries to prevent copy-pasting via JS, or that it links to arbitrary phrases that aren't common topics or other news articles like you'd expect. But at least it has more context about this situation.)
> To put things in perspective, an estimated 59% of the annual 1.1 lakh tonne of global supply of blue pigment comes from Gujarat (India's share is 82%).
> However, pigment manufacturers - small and large - in the state have been forced to reduce production by 25-50% due to the surge in prices of raw materials, their unavailability and working capital issues.
> Rising energy costs - coal and crude - have pushed up prices of raw materials such as phthalic anhydride, cuprous chloride and urea. These are used to manufacture CPC Blue (Copper phthalocyanine blue) crude, a key ingredient of pigment blue, which in turn goes into the making of various shades of blue paints.
Wonder if the new blue pigment, YInMn blue will start to replace some of the older pigments sorta like the NAND industry shift from planar NAND V-NAND, or if it's remaining stupidly expensive still.
No. Raw materials of YInMn will never be cheap enough to compete with phthalo blue.
Chemical formula for phthalo blue is C32 H16 Cu N8
Of these, everything is super cheap and only Cu (Copper) really has any substantial cost.
1 kg of Copper (15.7 moles) is $10.
1 kg of hydrocarbons (~9 moles, Octane) is...about $0.48 at a US gas pump.
Chemical formula for YInMn blue is (loosely) Y In0.8 Mn0.2 O3 Of these, everything is super expensive and only the "O" (oxygen) is relatively cheap.
1 kg of Indium (8.7 moles) is over $600.
Doing some dimensional analysis with additional hidden molecular weights, you can make 1 kg (1.75 moles) of phthalo blue with less than $1-2 of raw materials. Currently the price of raw phthalo blue pigment is about $6 in bulk, so we can assume that processing costs about $4-5 per kg (65-80%), and the $1-2 of raw materials makes up 20-35%.
However, just the indium in 1kg (4.17 moles) of YInMn blue will cost you $275.
Now, this is twice as many moles vs phthalo blue so assuming (bad assumption) that you need roughly the same number of pigment molecules for visual perception you could get the equivalent "deepness" as 1kg of phthalo blue with half the weight of pigment ($140). But even if your Yttrium and Manganese were completely free, and processing cost you $0.00 per kilogram....you'd still be 10 times what the price of phthalo blue is in the current shortage!
Yttrium is $34/kg btw, so you'll need about $12 of this to make 1kg of YInMn.
Manganese is $2/kg and you'll only need about $0.10 of manganese to make 1kg of YInMn.
152 comments
[ 95.3 ms ] story [ 2878 ms ] threadMost languages probably have quite a few.
As a native Russian speaker, I always understood "голубой" as a light shade of "синий" (blue), and that's how it's defined in dictionaries [1,2].
[1] https://academic.ru/searchall.php?SWord=%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB%D...
[2] https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%83%D0%B...
(Be sure to read the #2 answer, which I find more compelling than the first.)
Strangely, the original story ran on Bloomberg itself, which isn't mentioned in the article. Fortunately, the archive.md trick works. https://archive.md
Oops, can't do that, it appears.
If anyone has any experience, how do you feel it compares to the real deal?
I really felt like I was in that brick studio with a nicer set of equipment than I'd ever used. I guess I used easels sort of like that in college, but in the real world I didn't use such a formal setup.
The realism and sense of presence made me notice the missing haptic feedback and the lack of smell feedback (linseed oil, turpentine, etc), but the audio feedback and the physics are really great.
My experience was with Vive Pro 2 and Valve knuckles.
[1] https://vermillion-vr.com/
Any idea of the possible tint which is being referred to? Wondering if it's a mineral source requiring mining, heavy-metal processing, or what?
[0] https://m.timesofindia.com/city/ahmedabad/gujarats-bolt-from...
While well intentioned, the problem is that it all relies on assumptions, largely tied to demand. And when demand goes through a wild whipsaw, and everyone takes diverging viewpoints of the shape of that whipsaw curve, the highly interdependent chain snaps.
Labor is an issue for sure. But make no mistake, the "restart from COVID" supply chain conundrum owes a lot of its pain to optimizing everything to the hilt, then reacting slowly as the world around us changed.
The amount of crap that we consume is astounding. And in many cases, each specific type of crap requires a bunch of smaller crap (components).
There is literally no way for a consumption-driven society as broad and deep as ours to stockpile years' worth of everything.
Basically my view is that it's this over reactiveness and obsession with free cash flow has swung so far so as to create a too-painful jam.
I would agree that over consumption is a problem, albeit a separate one to the conversation at hand.
Cheers.
This actually isn't true to the extent you seem to think it is, though.
> Basically my view is that it's this over reactiveness and obsession with free cash flow has swung so far so as to create a too-painful jam.
But that's not the only cause of the supply chain situation. Transportation is also a big part of the issue. Even if you had 10 years' worth of widgets in a warehouse in China, if you can't get them on a ship, or the shipping costs are too high, you get supply shortages where the customers need those widgets.
Also, to the extent that small vessels are used in the "transportation" business, it's for contraband, not Beanie Babies. Look up the street value of 100 kilos (~220 pounds) of cocaine in major US and European cities and compare it to the value of a 40 foot container full of nuts and bolts.
Like, suppose you could make $X in profit that is highly resilient to infrequent disruption or twice that with the understanding that every 20 years or so, you're going to have a few bad years because of black swan events. You might determine that you're willing to take your lumps during the chaotic times.
You'd get the same outcome by hiring someone and telling them they get a bonus proportional to increased profits, and no bonus in bad years.
There are a million possible black swan events and there's a million ways to plan for them.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1451543776992845834.html
https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543776992845834
1) Executive order effective immediately over riding the zoning rules in Long Beach and Los Angeles to allow truck yards to store empty containers up to six high instead of the current limit of 2. Make it temporary for ~120 days.
This will free up tens of thousands of chassis that right now are just storing containers on wheels. Those chassis can immediately be taken to the ports to haul away the containers
2) Bring every container chassis owned by the national guard and the military anywhere in the US to the ports and loan them to the terminals for 180 days.
3) Create a new temporary container yard at a large (need 500+ acres) piece of government land adjacent to an inland rail head within 100 miles of the port complex.
4) Force the railroads to haul all containers to this new site, turn around and come back. No more 1500 mile train journeys to Dallas. We're doing 100 mile shuttles, turning around and doing it again. Truckers will go to this site to get containers instead of the port.
5) Bring in barges and small container ships and start hauling containers out of long beach to other smaller ports that aren't backed up. This is not a comprehensive list. Please add to it. We don't need to do the best ideas. We need to do ALL the ideas.
We must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK and get these ports working again. I can't stress enough how bad it is for the world economy if the ports don't work. Every company selling physical goods bought or sold internationally will fail.
The circulatory system our globalized economy depends has collapsed. And thanks to the negative feedback loops involved, it's getting worse not better every day that goes by.
I'd be happy to lead this effort for the federal or state government if asked. Leadership is the missing ingredient at this point.
They're not currently in use at truck yards because it's illegal to stack containers high, but if it were no longer illegal then they could be quickly and temporarily set up.
Ted Ogawa, President and CEO of Toyota North America (https://pressroom.toyota.com/biographies/tetsuo-ogawa/):
> After joining Toyota in 1984....
Mark Templin, President and CEO of Toyota Financial Services(https://pressroom.toyota.com/biographies/mark-templin/):
> Since joining Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) in 1990, Templin has held a number of positions.
Chris Nielsen, Executive Vice President, Product Support & Chief Quality Officer (https://pressroom.toyota.com/biographies/chris-nielsen/):
> Nielsen joined Toyota in 1987 as a buyer at its Georgetown, Kentucky, plant
Toshio Niimi, Executive Vice President, Production Engineering and Manufacturing (https://pressroom.toyota.com/biographies/toshio-niimi/):
> Niimi joined TMC in 1984 and has held positions in the company’s engineering and manufacturing divisions.
Takeshi Uchiyamada, Chairman of the Board of Directors (https://global.toyota/en/company/profile/executives/board-of...):
> Takeshi Uchiyamada was born on August 17, 1946. He graduated from Nagoya University with a degree in applied physics in March 1969, and joined Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) in April the same year.
Shigeru Hayakawa, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors (https://global.toyota/en/company/profile/executives/board-of...):
> Shigeru Hayakawa was born on September 15, 1953. He graduated from the University of Tokyo with a bachelor's degree in economics in March 1977, and joined Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) in April of the same year.
Akio Toyoda, President (https://global.toyota/en/company/profile/executives/board-of...):
> He joined Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) in April 1984.
(He also happens to be the grandson of the founder of Toyota.)
Koji Kobayashi, Member of the Board of Directors (https://global.toyota/en/company/profile/executives/board-of...):
> He graduated from Shiga University with a bachelor's degree in economics in March 1972, and joined Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) in April of the same year.
I can see how that would discourage short-term decision-making.
So even if the government were okay with "market adjustments" on basic goods, there would still be this risk of stores getting looted/destroyed because people are so angry at how quickly prices increased.
Businesses are much less emotional. Most are just going to adapt to the new price.
Instead of talking about "inflation", talk about "cost uncertainty". That should make clear how a complex society with long production chains can't really deal with it. That also includes households, who have much less capability for planning than firms and really need to know what their bills will be and how much things will cost when making decisions.
https://www.academia.edu/43768978/NOTES_ON_COSTS_AND_CONSEQU...
It doesn't, though.
> If you are a business, you need to make long term production plans, and when you have no idea what the costs will be, that severly disrupts the production process
Sure, but that's the effect or unpredictable price changes, not inflation. USD is inflationary, Bitcoin is deflationary, but future (short or long term) prices of other goods and services in USD have a lot less uncertainty than those in Bitcoin. Inflation is not at all the same thing as difficulty projecting future prices.
Price gouging is a legal term for people/retailers taking advantage of shortages or spikes in demand by charging well over market price for basic necessities.
Allowing price gouging is allowing selling at the current market price.
While Toyota might have popularized the concept, it seems odd to blame them for the common-sense idea of just-in-time.
It’s quite natural, normal humans also don’t hoard everything they can possibly think of needing, nor should companies. It’s eco-friendly to be JIT as it leads to less wastage; while optimizing for rare shortages will result in wastage all the time.
For most of human history we did exactly that. The deeply interconnected "JIT Consumption" world is really quite new. And if consumption patterns suddenly change then you can't buy toilet paper anymore.
Before the modern epoch it was really rare to personally stockpile goods due to the extreme possibilities of spoilage (everyone loves weevils and moths right?) - that's only been an option in the near history.
The great lie of Civ is to present this as centrally organized when for most of human history this power was very finely decentralized due to the expense of communication and logistics. But as socities become more centralized food stockpiles haven't disappeared. Many governments still maintain food stockpiles, especially poorer countries.
In the beginning of the pandemic the agency was heavily in local news when they started deliveries of protective gear from their stockpiles - but to be honest, some rubber bands of the stored masks did need replacing.
Necessity leads to JIT, only in times of surplus can you even try to hoard. Famines were common before, and still occur now - you just don’t notice now thanks to globalization and in part, essential reserves maintained by governments and companies.
Neccesity leads to JIT, but also sustained surplus. If the winters are mild and food can grow year round, why bother stockpiling? If any widget can be obtained quickly and cheaply, why spend the extra effort to maintain inventory? If I can always buy ground beef at Walmart, why should I keep a winter's worth supply in my freezer? These practices are fine as long as the underlying assumptions remain valid. If one suddenly finds that they can't reliably buy toilet paper on demand, there is an incentive to hoard it. And that's exactly what happened.
[1] While it has taken on a somewhat different meaning in recent times, the early meaning of the word was 'to store and preserve for future use.' https://www.etymonline.com/word/hoard
[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/44687105
[3] https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/food_pre...
We agree that humans were not able to hoard (ever, despite changing definitions) at the level we actually currently do. But, obviously, we don’t hoard enough to meet incredibly rare supply chain shortages like these.
It seems to me like we are at a well optimized level; do you feel otherwise, and if so, how do you plan to solve it without resource wastage and price increases?
I reject your constraints. Optimizing for minimum resource wastage and price is also optimizing for minimim reslience to the unexpected. If you want to experience this first hand try living paycheck-to-paycheck. I'd rather pay more and consume less while relying on more resilient systems; I think we need it now more than ever.
I don’t understand how you can have these statements side by side… Price increases by hoarding will affect the poor the most.
We are just now living through an era where a relatively minor shock is going to have severe implications last several years (which have and will continue to hit the poorest the hardest). This is what happens when you allocate resources too tightly without sufficient slack.
The "We" includes you.
And it is inherent in our society what we add layer of layer of complexity.
It would be kinda funny if blue things became a sign of wealth because of this.
So it's worth pointing out that Tyrian Purple was an exceptionally long lasting dye; it did not fade when left in the sun, or after washing. Compared to other purple fabrics, Tyrian Purple fabrics always looked brand new, and I suspect that this is the real origin of their high-status associations.
Thank you for that. That's a wonderful bit of trivia.
People have been doing terrible environmental damage to indulge themselves for eons. We aren't exactly the brightest bulb in the box about some things.
I like that it wasn't enough for it to be rare (which it was) and laborious to produce (which it was), but also that it had unusual and very practical properties.
It seems as if today, mainly due to marketing, luxury goods get away with just being rare (even if artificially), or just being laborious to produce (e.g. the old (false) notion that "a Rolls Royce is completely hand-made").
But we were talking about regal purple, which I'm fairly certain was an outcome of Roman sumptuary laws. Eventually only the emperor could wear it. Yes, Tyrian purple predates the Romans, but it was merely a luxury good rather than a symbol of empire.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_purple_and_Han_blue
>After the earthquake, automakers worldwide were forced to stop making cars of certain colors because they couldn't get the aluminum-flaked Xirallic pigment that makes the paint sparkle. Merck was making the pigment at only one plant worldwide -- its Onahama plant in the quake zone -- and kept significant stocks of the product only at the same factory. It took months to restart the plant and resume deliveries.[1]
The Verge did a really good profile of the perils of just-in-time manufacturing in respect to Apple that highlights how highly efficient JIT in reducing costs but that it ultimately leads to more fragile supply chains.[2]
>Just-in-time manufacturing is highly efficient, but it’s not resilient.This style of manufacturing cuts costs — but it also means that if the supply chain is disrupted, there will be shortages.[2]
I really like this insight
>To make a more resilient system, a lot of companies may have to rethink just-in-time manufacturing. Resilience doesn’t show up as clearly on balance sheets as cost reduction, but it’s crucial for surviving disruptive events. Lowering costs by creating economies of scale and volume looks good most of the time, but once there’s a failure, companies don’t have many options.[2]
[1]https://www.autonews.com/article/20130715/OEM10/307159926/pi... (Paywalled) Archive: https://archive.md/Yoqe2
[2]https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177024/apple-just-in-ti...
I'm not even sure I'd want that as a consumer. Mostly I'd rather wait than pay more (although obviously not for food).
The only exceptions is war machines (guns, ships...) - you need to have that in your country just in case. Though the more trade you do with others the more nobody wants war with you because they lose both the goods you make and the market for goods you buy from them.
There's open war, cold war, hegemon bullying, and lots of other conflicts. Look at how much China tried to sabotage the Australian economy this last year (and vice versa of course) even though China NEEDED Australian coal and resources for their industry. Political considerations in the short run has priorities, even if it's economically costly.
Besides, with more capital it's going to lead into cheaper manufacturing with automatization in higher labor countries. Sometimes it's better to have redundant factories in many different parts of the world. Even if it's only for innovation.
You may not sell as many with more expensive local manufacturing prices but the goods will be of a much higher quality and so more expensive.
If you can make guns and ships but not fuel for the ships and food for the people carrying the guns and manning the ships, how far does that get you?
If you can make guns and ships domestically, but rely on a foreign power that might become hostile for the raw material, how far does that get you?
If you take the “war materiel must be domestically producable for security” position, and think it through, you will find that it is by no means a narrow exception.
> Though the more trade you do with others the more nobody wants war with you because they lose both the goods you make and the market for goods you buy from them.
The idea that no one ever wants to go to war with a major trade partner is...hard to align with history.
For comparison, the Great Financial Crisis still looms over us so much that people still anticipate another huge housing burst. And when companies like Ford announce that they aren't using FICO scores to determine if a person qualifies for a loan, people on websites start fearmongering about another sub prime lending crisis.
The virus, the treatment are transformational. They are the catalysts to technocratic governance.
A coworker gave me a graphics card, too!
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/xls/pswrgvwall.xls
Adjusted for inflation that's about $5.15/gallon.
I don’t even really like working from home(been remote since 2018) so when I want to go into the office I take the train into the city.
Some countries have had absolutely disastrous bouts of covid this past year (like Vietnam) and it screwed up supply chains a lot. Companies canceling orders because of expected drop in demand that didn’t happen are all rushing to put those orders back in, and it turned into a mess. There are plenty of factors at work here because each country that contributes to the chain had some different sort of problem.
Meanwhile it's month 18 in USA because the antivax folks started with the premise of non-cooperation ("because I hate the other party") and worked from there to invent all sorts of excuses why their non-cooperation is justified, so the government, who needs to care for all, including the beligerent, have to keep policies to keep everyone somewhat protected, ie masks, distancing, and proof of vaccination checks. Compare that to Portugal with 98% vaccination rate and no more vaccine proof checks required.
Yeah yeah you can still get the virus if you're vaxed, but it'll then be just like a bad flu, actually fulfilling the mistaken belief that many deniers had in the beginning...
The scientific literature says the vaccinated have lower viral load and are less infectious, if the load on hospitals and careworkers get reduced, what would prevent the relaxation of the restrictions?
Currently careworkers have been under extra pressure for 18 months, imagine a car engine being revved too hard and too long that suddenly blows, and apply this analogy to them, obviously not the entire industry in a day, but maybe over a semester...
It appears that is not necessarily the case[1]:
> In July 2021, following multiple large public events in a Barnstable County, Massachusetts, town, 469 COVID-19 cases were identified among Massachusetts residents who had traveled to the town during July 3–17; 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated persons. Testing identified the Delta variant in 90% of specimens from 133 patients. Cycle threshold values were similar among specimens from patients who were fully vaccinated and those who were not.
Certainly, the experience in Israel and the debate in the UK at the moment over more lockdowns would indicate that even very high levels of immunity (from either vaccination or infection) do not necessarily correspond with an easing of restrictions.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm...
I wonder how many more would've been sick without the vaccine. There were 469 cases, but how many showed up to those events?
Reading the study further, 4 vaxed people (and 1 unvaxed) were hospitalized and there were 0 deaths. I'd say a great result for the vaccine, but to be objective we'd have to see how it'd be different with the same set of people (same health status, etc) but without the vaccine.
I think/hope the goal isn't the eradication of the virus or its spread, but rather reducing the number of hospitalizations. The virus will probably stay with us, but if hospitals are no longer overwhelmed (since people aren't getting very sick and dying) then the governments will probably drop restrictions. Although mask mandates for some places like hospitals or old people's homes will probably remain for a long time...
They were using a measure called Ct cutoff, which (if used that way) is a crude measure of viral load, as the CDC points out in its own literature[1]:
> Since Ct values can vary based on many factors, it is not a good indicator of how infectious a person is or how much virus is present in a person (known as viral load).
However, it also points out in the sentence prior:
> It is still unknown how much virus is needed to transmit the virus from person-to-person and cause new infections.
What no longer needs to be ascertained is how this data has been interpreted by the experts, which is that the vaccines do not confer much, if any, advantage against transmission. There was the hope before the vaccines came out that they might but it was pointed out repeatedly that it would be unlikely given the nature of coronaviruses, and that has come to be the case.
> if hospitals are no longer overwhelmed (since people aren't getting very sick and dying) then the governments will probably drop restrictions
I hate to repeat myself, but the examples of Israel and the UK should also remind you that it is mere hope you are expressing, not anything borne out by experience. I hope you are right but my experience of people and how loathe they are to relinquish power - especially people who seek it, like politicians - tempers that somewhat.
[1] https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/health/documents/cedep/nov...
That would mean on average an infected person would infect less than one person and thus after a short while we converge on a zero infected population; as an infected person you either get well and unlikely to get infected again or die.
Vaccines work probabilistically and at scale. You need everyone to get the vaccine. If you have pockets of "inoculation" and give enough space to the virus to evolve through retransmission or too long to live, well tough luck.
This is the tool we have. And historically pandemics destroyed us. Not sure what we hope for here.
Very unlikely. 2020 was beginning of a super crisis caused by several reasons:
1) Depletion of fossil fuels which are used to produce consumer goods, e.g. to heat factories and provide electricity for the factory machines. Also fossil fuels are used to transport produced goods around half of the world. It was all possible due to abundant and cheap energy. But that energy source is no longer there.
2) Inability of capitalist economy to grow more. Capitalist economy must constantly expand to new markets but there're no more new markets as amount of markets on planet Earth is finite. Last huge market was created by destroying USSR and USSR industry: it postponed the super crisis by 30 years by giving capitalist system more space to expand to. But there's no longer any place for further expansion.
All will be going downhill from now on. Also, rising economic problems will prompt governments to start wars to exterminate "superfluous" population that cannot be fed in the new dark ages. There're other reasons for new war also. If you capture the country with still remaining fossil fuel resources and exterminate its population, you'll have more time to prepare for the inevitable.
Isn’t cause 2 basically agreeing “it was the pandemic”?
We're almost there. E.g. in Russia all new oil deposits found in recent years are in polar areas where extracting is difficult and expensive.
2. It is amazing how beginning of the super crisis coincided with the pandemia. I remember that in the beginning of the 2019 I said to several of my friends that huge crisis will hit the world at the end of the year. But I couldn't even imagine what would happen in the beginning of 2020.
Anyway, governments would want to get rid of extra mouths, especially young people with lots of energy but no way to put it into something productive.
It's especially clear when you start noticing that NATO forces are concentrating near Russian borders and amount of NATO military exercises on Russian borders has increased several times.
Russia has a big population and huge amounts of mineral resources. If NATO manages to capture Russian territory and exterminate most of the population in the process, it would give maybe 10-50 more years for Europe to adapt (e.g. build thermonuclear or some viable green energy sources), because currently Russia uses much of oil and gas and other resources for its own consumption.
There're other countries that could be the next potential targets. Two birds with one stone: turn young people who can't find a place in life into war into cannon fodder and potentially capture resources to extend the agony of the over-consuming economy.
The US is already doing this. The wars of extermination on the middle East are motivated by the desire to control the sources of oil, and when people react they're labeled as terror threats and eliminated. It is also not a new phenomenon, as it was already practiced to control the whole of north America and Australia in the past.
I don't think you're necessarily right this is temporary. But companies always have the option of just not producing. If no one has blue paint, for most uses, the consumer just buys another color and grumbles.
And the things that are most likely to have a shortage would be those things that are cheapest produce a large scale in just one part of the world, so they're things that would be hardest to replace.
Consider that when nations go to war, they will bomb the hell out of each other's industries. So if they are willing to risk that when they go to war, why would the loss of mutual trade be enough of a threat to avert war? I don't see how the cost is increased between a bombed out factory that used to trade with you, and a bombed out factor that traded with someone else.
Similarly in wars, nations embargo each other and sink each other's shipping, so again not sure why loss of mutual trade makes the cost of war unacceptable, if this higher cost is already acceptable?
This reminds me of the Olympic games that were founded at the end of the 19th C in order to promote peace among nations. The theory was that if nations could compete on the field, they wouldn't compete in war. I think that theory turned out to be as robust as the trade-makes-peace theory, which itself did not fare well in WW1.
At the same time, the EU has created an enormous amount of resentment and animosity between nations, as Italy and Greece are forced to adopt the same currency as Germany, which hurts their economies but subsidizes the German economy. The Germans, in turn, feel resentful for bailing out the South (by buying up so many assets in the South), apparently not realizing that purchasing all these assets is what allows the trade imbalances to continue. If anything we know that these types of asymmetric cross border capital flows are highly destabilizing, and do not promote peace at all.
My guess is what keeps Europe from going to war is that it remains under the US sphere of influence, at least militarily, and so the irritations and rivalries created by the EU do not spill out into war. Basically the domestic populations hate each other much more, but the states themselves are too crippled to act with much autonomy, and so they don't really have the agency to even start a war. They are just left seething, as their capital stock is sold off to their neighbors, but there is nothing they can do about it. This will not end well.
It would seem absurd for me as a French person (now living in Portugal) to want to bomb Germany for some economics reason, given that I have worked and befriended with dozens of very nice Germans. I could say the same of any European country. I’m not even special and I have friends and ex colleagues in virtually every EU country, from Greece, Poland, Sweden to Ireland Italy, Portugal and others.
No doubt there are supply chain issues. Apparently there are journalism integrity issues as well. Yeah, it feels innoscent. But lazy and journalism are two words that do not belong together. Ever.
(I have my own gripes about that website, like how it tries to prevent copy-pasting via JS, or that it links to arbitrary phrases that aren't common topics or other news articles like you'd expect. But at least it has more context about this situation.)
> To put things in perspective, an estimated 59% of the annual 1.1 lakh tonne of global supply of blue pigment comes from Gujarat (India's share is 82%).
> However, pigment manufacturers - small and large - in the state have been forced to reduce production by 25-50% due to the surge in prices of raw materials, their unavailability and working capital issues.
> Rising energy costs - coal and crude - have pushed up prices of raw materials such as phthalic anhydride, cuprous chloride and urea. These are used to manufacture CPC Blue (Copper phthalocyanine blue) crude, a key ingredient of pigment blue, which in turn goes into the making of various shades of blue paints.
Discussion from 9 months ago on HN about the new blue (top comment was interesting on pigment pricing): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25807199
Chemical formula for phthalo blue is C32 H16 Cu N8 Of these, everything is super cheap and only Cu (Copper) really has any substantial cost. 1 kg of Copper (15.7 moles) is $10. 1 kg of hydrocarbons (~9 moles, Octane) is...about $0.48 at a US gas pump.
Chemical formula for YInMn blue is (loosely) Y In0.8 Mn0.2 O3 Of these, everything is super expensive and only the "O" (oxygen) is relatively cheap. 1 kg of Indium (8.7 moles) is over $600.
Doing some dimensional analysis with additional hidden molecular weights, you can make 1 kg (1.75 moles) of phthalo blue with less than $1-2 of raw materials. Currently the price of raw phthalo blue pigment is about $6 in bulk, so we can assume that processing costs about $4-5 per kg (65-80%), and the $1-2 of raw materials makes up 20-35%.
However, just the indium in 1kg (4.17 moles) of YInMn blue will cost you $275.
Now, this is twice as many moles vs phthalo blue so assuming (bad assumption) that you need roughly the same number of pigment molecules for visual perception you could get the equivalent "deepness" as 1kg of phthalo blue with half the weight of pigment ($140). But even if your Yttrium and Manganese were completely free, and processing cost you $0.00 per kilogram....you'd still be 10 times what the price of phthalo blue is in the current shortage!
Yttrium is $34/kg btw, so you'll need about $12 of this to make 1kg of YInMn. Manganese is $2/kg and you'll only need about $0.10 of manganese to make 1kg of YInMn.
/irony off