#factory components import

[freightforwardingindonesia]

IMPORT FACTORY MACHINE COMPONENTS FROM SOUTH KOREA

Why Import Machine Parts from South Korea? South Korea is one of the world’s leading suppliers of factory automation components, including servo motors, inverters, sensors, hydraulic actuators, and PLCs. Indonesian manufacturers across plastics, F&B, paper, and electronics sectors rely on Korean brands for high precision and durability. To import these components legally into Indonesia,…

[keenaminternational]

IMPORT FACTORY MACHINE COMPONENTS FROM SOUTH KOREA

Why Import Machine Parts from South Korea? South Korea is one of the world’s leading suppliers of factory automation components, including servo motors, inverters, sensors, hydraulic actuators, and PLCs. Indonesian manufacturers across plastics, F&B, paper, and electronics sectors rely on Korean brands for high precision and durability. To import these components legally into Indonesia,…

[probablyasocialecologist]

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that Neanderthals rendered fat from bones 125,000 years ago. Modern humans have been using the process for at least 28,000 years, but the latest finding of “fat factories” reveals that Neanderthals were doing it much earlier. The study appeared on 2 July in Science Advances. Fat is a vital component of the hunter-gatherer diet, especially during the winter months, when animals are lean and hunted meat alone is not sufficient for sustenance. Eating lean protein without other nutrients can lead to protein poisoning, also known as ‘rabbit starvation’. Fat from bone marrow is a high-calorie source of nutrition, and is an important addition to a protein-heavy diet. During the process of rendering fat, bones were broken down into small segments using stone hammers and were boiled to draw out the fat, which rose to the top and could be extracted after cooling. Containers made from bark and animal tissue have been suggested for this process, although such artefacts would be unlikely to be found in the archaeological record owing to the perishable nature of these materials. The team analysed material from Neumark-Nord near Leipzig, Germany: a former lake landscape that has yielded artefacts left by humans and their ancient relatives dating back 400,000 years. The researchers excavated thousands of bone fragments and other remains and artefacts from a layer of the site that has been dated to about 125,000 years ago — long before modern humans arrived in Europe.

3 July 2025

[najia-cooks]

[ID: A decorative orange ceramic plate with a pyramid of green herbs and sesame seeds, topped with deep red sumac and more sesame seeds. End ID]

زعتر فلسطيني / Za'tar falastinia (Palestinian spice blend)

Za'tar (زَعْتَر; also transliterated "za'atar," "zaatar" and "zatar") is the name of a family of culinary herbs; it is also the name of a group of spice blends made by mixing these herbs with varying amounts of olive oil, sumac, salt, roasted sesame seeds, and other spices. Palestinian versions of za'tar often include caraway, aniseed, and roasted wheat alongside generous portions of sumac and sesame seeds. The resulting blend is bold, zesty, and aromatic, with a hint of floral sourness from the sumac, and notes of licorice and anise.

Za'tar is considered by Palestinians to have particular national, political, and personal importance, and exists as a symbol of both Israeli oppression and Palestinian home-making and resistance. Its major components, olive oil and wild thyme, are targeted by the settler state in large part due to their importance to ecology, identity, and trade in Palestine—settlers burn and raze Palestinian farmers' olive trees by the thousands each year. A 1977 Israeli law forbade the harvesting of wild herbs within its claimed borders, with violators of the law risking fines and confiscation, injury, and even death from shootings or land mines; in 2006, za'tar was further restricted, such that even its possession in the West Bank was met with confiscation and fines.

Despite the blanket ban on harvesting wild herbs (none of which are endangered), Arabs are the only ones to be charged and fined for the crime. Samir Naamnih calls the ban an attempt to "starve us out," given that foraging is a major source of food for many Palestinians, and that picking and selling herbs is often the sole form of income for impoverished families. Meanwhile, Israeli farmers have domesticated and farmed za'tar on expropriated Palestinian land, selling it (both the herb and the spice mixture) back to Palestinians, and later marketing it abroad as an "Israeli" blend; they thus profit from the ban on wild harvesting of the herb. This farming model, as well as the double standard regarding harvesting, refer back to an idea that Arabs are a primitive people unfit to own the land, because they did not cultivate or develop it as the settlers did (i.e., did not attempt to recreate a European landscape or European models of agriculture); colonizing and settling the land are cast as justified, and even righteous.

The importance of the ban on foraging goes beyond the economic. Raya Ziada, founder of an acroecology nonprofit based in Ramallah, noted in 2019 that "taking away access to [wild herbs] doesn't just debilitate our economy and compromise what we eat. It's symbolic." Za'tar serves variously as a symbol of Palestinians' connection to the land and to nature; of Israeli colonial dispossession and theft; of the Palestinian home ("It’s a sign of a Palestinian home that has za’tar in it"); and of resistance to the colonial regime, as many Palestinians have continued to forage herbs such as za'tar and akkoub in the decades since the 1977 ban. Resistance to oppression will continue as long as there is oppression.

Palestine Action has called for bail fund donations to aid in their storming, occupying, shutting down, and dismantling of factories and offices owned by Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. Also contact your representatives in the USA, UK, and Canada.

Ingredients:

Za'tar (Origanum syriacum), 250g once dried (about 4 cups packed)

250g (1 2/3 cup) sesame seeds

170g (3/4 cup) Levantine sumac berries, or ground sumac (Rhus coriaria)

100g (1/2 cup) wheat berries (optional)

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp aniseed (optional)

1/2 Tbsp caraway seeds (optional)

Levantine wild thyme (also known as Bible hyssop, Syrian oregano, and Lebanese oregano) may be purchased dried online. You may also be able to find some dried at a halal grocery store, where it will be labelled "زعتر" (za'tar) and "thym," "thyme," or "oregano." Check to make sure that what you're buying is just the herb and not the prepared mixture, which is also called "زعتر." Also ensure that what you're buying is not a product of Israel.

If you don't have access to Levantine thyme, Greek or Turkish oregano are good substitutes.

Wheat berries are the wheat kernel that is ground to produce flour. They may be available sold as "wheat berries" at a speciality health foods store. They may be omitted, or replaced with pre-ground whole wheat flour.

Instructions:

1. Harvest wild thyme and remove the stems from the leaves. Wash the leaves in a large bowl of water and pat dry; leave in a single layer in the sun for four days or so, until brittle. Skip this step if using pre-dried herbs.

2. Crumble leaves by rubbing them between the palms of your hands until they are very fine. Pass through a sieve or flour sifter into a large bowl, re-crumbling any leaves that are too coarse to get through.

Crumbling between the hands is an older method. You may also use a blender or food processor to grind the leaves.

3. Mix the sifted thyme with a drizzle of olive oil and work it between your hands until incorporated.

4. Briefly toast sumac berries, caraway seeds, and aniseed in a dry skillet over medium heat, then grind them to a fine powder in a mortar and pestle or a spice mill.

5. Toast sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat, stirring constantly, until deeply golden brown.

6. (Optional) In a dry skillet on medium-low, toast wheat berries, stirring constantly, until they are deeply golden brown. Grind to a fine powder in a spice mill. If using ground flour, toast on low, stirring constantly, until browned.

Some people in the Levant bring their wheat to a local mill to be ground after toasting, as it produces a finer and more consistent texture.

7. Mix all ingredients together and work between your hands to incorporate.

Store za'tar in an airtight jar at room temperature. Mix with olive oil and use as a dipping sauce with bread.

[adafruit]

High tariffs become 'real' with our first $36K bill

We're no stranger to tariff bills, although they have definitely ramped up over the last two months. However, this is our first 'big bill', where a large portion was subjected to a 125%+20%+25% import markup. Unlike other taxes like sales tax where we collect on behalf of the state and then submit it back at the end of the month, or income taxes, where we only pay if we are profitable, tariff taxes are paid before we sell any of the products and are due within a week of receipt which has a big impact on cash flow.

In this particular case, we're buying from a vendor, not a factory, so we can't second-source the items (and these particular products we couldn't manufacture ourselves even if we wanted to, since the vendor has well-deserved IP protections). And the products were booked & manufactured many months ago, before the tariffs were in place. Since they are electronics products/components, there's a chance we may be able to request reclassification on some items to avoid the 125% 'reciprocal' tariff, but there's no assurance that it will succeed, and even if it does, it is many, many months until we could see a refund.

We'll have to increase the prices on some of these products, but we're not sure if people will be willing to pay the higher cost, so we may well be 'stuck' with unsellable inventory that we have already paid a large fee on.

[vi-gilante-1010]

"Oh, you think having a wealth gap makes a couple inherently toxic? Sounds like YOU'RE the classist!"

That's a sentiment I see Caitvi superfans use a lot. It dulls down the discussion surrounding what makes Caitvi so unhealthy by the time the show's reached its end. But that's not where the criticism inherently comes from, so I kinda wanted to make a post about it to untangle the webs of what I believe makes Caitvi's "happy" ending ring hollow from a narrative standpoint, as well as why so many in the critical tags see it to be upholding an unhealthy power dynamic rooted in classism.

Arc 1: The Buildup

(I'm not gonna harp on the whole Grey thing, because while we could argue all day about the political and ethical implications of Caitlyn weaponizing the Grey, it's ultimately not directly important to talking about the relationship between Caitlyn and Vi.)

Vi helped Caitlyn gas the factories and streets without arguing. While she was uncomfortable doing so, as we can see from the visuals we get off her throughout their hunting for Jinx in arc 1, she can't bring herself to argue. This opens by speaking on a level of discomfort Vi has with voicing issues she has with Caitlyn's behavior, and honest communication of boundaries is a core component of a healthy relationship. But, at this point in time, she believes that the ends justify the means, and believes Caitlyn's goal to kill Jinx is necessary.

Later, when they actually find Jinx, Vi realizes that she was wrong. Jinx is still Powder, just very, very broken, and that she's someone who matters. And not just to her. So she blocks Caitlyn's shot. She blocks her because Isha is far too close for it to be a safe shot. And while Caitlyn is a skilled marksman, there is a child blocking the shot now, a child that invokes memories of Powder. Though Caitlyn doesn't want to hurt Isha, there's much too high of a chance of her getting caught in the crossfire, and Isha is the agent for Jinx's potential redemption, something that Vi is able to see in that moment.

Caitlyn's response to her girlfriend not letting her take the shot is to call her blood tainted and hit her in a healing wound. When she looks back, there's not regret on her face, but resolution. Vi has failed her. So she doesn't say anything, because like Caitlyn knows, actions speak louder than words, and she walks away and leaves her crying. The way her eyebrows furrow and her eyes slightly squint, the position of her standing above Vi and looking down at her, and the gritting of her jaw all convey determination. Resolve. As far as she's concerned, she's entirely justified in what she said and did, or at the most generous, is lying to herself.

This is, quite frankly, not a healthy response to failure in any way, shape, or form. And while being angry is understandable, calling your partner's blood inherently dirty for her family ties and attacking her is absolutely unacceptable. Calling it a "one-time" thing implies that if abuse happens once, then it wasn't real abuse. But that is abusive behavior, and worse than that, it's a response that Vi believes is her fault.

Arc 2: The Damage

Arc 2 shows us how both Caitlyn and Vi have changed over the span of several months, and that both of them are unhappy in their respective positions. However, the positions in question are wildly different, and speak on how they respond to grief, pain, and perceived betrayal.

Whenever we see Caitlyn, we see her attempting to control every aspect of her position to the best of her ability. She's accepted her role to lead Zaun into an enforced martial law, and is given imagery that intentionally invokes the idea of a dictator. Those that protest her, the Jinxers, her enemies that revere her most hated foe, are given shots and an MV that calls as many parallels and references to the real-world BLM movement and the riot gear the police use. All of this calls attention to the audience that Caitlyn has become the worst kind of enforcer. And while Ambessa was whispering into her ear, she still made the conscious choice to order these things.

She listened to Ambessa because Ambessa catered to what an angry and vengeful Caitlyn wanted, which was to be justified in the situation. Caitlyn has gone from a naive fresh-faced enforcer that believed she was doing good, to a would-be dictator that can go above even the Council that takes a young cadet to bed in an effort to fill the void. And while this might not be the direction a lot of people wanted to see from her character, it makes sense. Caitlyn's greatest struggle growing up was being babied due to her status. She felt as though no one would ever take her seriously and was pushed by the need to prove herself and enact a change. It's a tale as old as time, characteristic of a young, wealthy, fresh-faced adult who initially goes in with dreams to make positive change, only for any tragedy to befall them. She leans heavy and hard on the ideals, the status, and the resources she gets from said background and uses them in her attempt to feel in control of her life. It's complex, human, but devastating to anyone who stands in her path to control.

Vi has done the opposite. Due to her extensive trauma from growing up in a dangerous neighborhood and 7 years falsely imprisoned and abused by her jailers, Vi processes her negative feelings through action, and in an effort to stay afloat in Zaun, becomes an underground pit fighter. While we only get an MV of this time, we can see just how much worse her mental health has become, with her pushing herself to her physical limits constantly, living in a dingy apartment, and diving headfirst into an alcoholic lifestyle. When Jinx does show up, despite having saved her at the end of arc 1, she's decidedly unhappy seeing her, because Caitlyn's outburst has made her feel like she was the one in the wrong that day. But she wasn't.

The TLDR here is that when Caitlyn feels betrayed, she lashes out physically and tries to take total control. When she's wronged, she hurts others. But when Vi feels betrayed and hurt, she takes it out on herself, destroying herself from guilt and pushing people away. When she's wronged, she hurts herself. The ways they both lash out are a recipe for what can quickly become a very, very toxic relationship, because regardless of who's right or wrong when the couple argues, or if a tragedy strikes the both of them, it is the same character who'll consistently receive the consequences.

That doesn't make them inherently unable to have a healthy relationship. But in order for it to be healthy and stable, both characters have to be willing to put active work into the relationship and themselves to get there. We've already seen once that they aren't able to do that when push comes to shove, but that was in the immediate aftermath of a great tragedy.

When they meet again at the end of arc 2, they form a shaky re-alliance to try and stop Ambessa. But the underlying context of why this happens isn't fantastic, at least not for Caitlyn. Vi is still angry, but she's also someone who's willing to forgive. She's dealt with loss since childhood- her parents, her brothers, her adoptive father and sister, and then Caitlyn. She's just gotten her father and sister back, and did so because she accepted that their being changed didn't mean they were different people. She's extending that same possibility to Caitlyn.

Caitlyn, on the other hand, has become increasingly more frustrated because she's realized that she was manipulated by Ambessa- IE, she wasn't in control. Even after her pain, and her abandonment of Vi, she was still manipulated. Now Vi was next to her again, and Caitlyn does still want her. She likes Vi's fire, her sexiness, her toughness, and her loyalty. Even when burned, Vi is always open to giving another chance. She did so with Jinx. She will do so with her. And that means Caitlyn can't lose her.

Arc 3: Happy Couple =/= Healthy Couple

When Vi and Caitlyn are together again in Piltover, Vi argues to free Jinx. Caitlyn won't do it, and when Vi won't listen to why she believes that's a bad idea, she lashes out both verbally and physically. Again. She throws the boat in her hand out towards Vi. It's a kneejerk reaction, yes, and it doesn't do any physical damage. But the fact of the matter is that when she was angry, Caitlyn's instinct was to lash out at Vi, because Vi was calling her out for half a year of being complicit in systemic violence. This immediately makes it clear that what Caitlyn did to Vi with her rifle in Act 1 cannot be referred to as a "one-time thing", that she was too full of grief for her mother to think clearly, that she was never violent again. She was. This, too, is violence.

This may not be common knowledge, but abusing the environment around you is a known warning sign of abusers. Slamming doors when angry, breaking things, throwing things, so on and so forth, are all signs of a lack of ability to regulate your emotions, and emerge by taking it out on the environment around you. Caitlyn has now exhibited this behavior as a pattern, and has directed said behavior at the person she loves twice. This is wrong, this is a pattern, and perhaps most importantly, this is not called out as such.

Caitlyn and Vi both feel as though they're drifting. We know that Vi just wants stability from the people she loves, and wants those people to stay what she believes them to be. She's extended forgiveness to Jinx out of faith. She's now done so for Caitlyn, but Caitlyn is pushing her away again. Caitlyn, meanwhile, wants control. She needs to have people in her life that trust her to do what she believes is right, regardless of whether or not she actually is. So she confronts Jinx, the person most important to Vi, the person that's consistently at the crux of their arguments. And she tries to convince herself that they are equals. She committed crimes for power, but so did Jinx, so that gives her some justification. But she's wrong, as she learns, because Jinx doesn't try to justify herself. She owns her wrongs, and doesn't want forgiveness for them. At every step of her and Vi's reconciliation, Jinx was acting for Vi's sake. Caitlyn is not. And now Jinx believes that acting in Vi's sake is to go away.

The sex scene is the culmination of Caitvi's relationship, and is extremely effective at demonstrating exactly how Caitlyn is the one in control and how Vi has been broken. And astoundingly, it seems to do so by complete accident. When Vi is trying to let out her feelings and be vulnerable, expressing how her worst fears for Jinx running and leaving her again have come to pass, Caitlyn flirts.

"Did you really think I needed all the guards at the hexgates? Sorry to say; you've grown a bit predictable."

Caitlyn doesn't try to empathize, or listen, or actually be any kind of emotional support for Vi. Her voice drops lower, she leans in a bit, and she almost brags about being the reason why Vi was able to free Jinx in the first place. 'Wow, look at me, I used my position at the top of the enforcers to move the guards for you. Isn't that sexy? Your freeing Jinx was because I let you.' But for Vi, someone desperate and abandoned and alone, it just reads as- 'I helped you. That means you're not alone.'

Then they fuck in the cell Caitlyn has command over, in the building Vi was forcefully held in for seven years. And worse, it's Vi who's pleasuring Caitlyn throughout. Vi, a former prisoner, pleasures the jailer inside the cell she commands. Supposedly, this is meant to be framed as Vi 'reclaiming her trauma', and I don't doubt that that was the intention, judging by the choice of music and Caitvi's final scene, but that isn't how it appears, even if Caitlyn herself wasn't the one jailing Vi specifically.

Now, there is nuance to be had here. While decidedly not a good partner, Caitlyn does still have genuine love for Vi. She makes a point to interrupt and tell her about Maddie first, and even shows visible regret at having attacked Vi with the gun in the past. These were both things she did to push Vi away and try to force her out of her life, and while they were both choices she made, they're choices that, months later, she's come to regret.

And that's realistic, because abusing someone doesn't mean you don't love them. Abusers are entirely capable of feeling love for their victims, and can sometimes even delude themselves into believing that their abuse is what's best for said victims, so that they'll stay together. That's something that's easy to forget, but it's true. Abusers aren't one dimensional, but that doesn't absolve them of their actions.

After all is said and done, we see Caitlyn examining the ventilation system once more, and finding the route by which Jinx could have lived. She smiles to herself, and then she keeps it to herself. Vi, who was absolutely devastated at the supposed sacrifice of her sister and father again in one fell swoop, who's already lost so many people, who never stops fighting for the people she loves if there's a chance they're out there, is kept in the dark. Caitlyn knows her girlfriend. If Vi catches wind of Jinx even just potentially being alive, she will go after her. Because her sister will always come first. Caitlyn knows that. And she doesn't say anything.

You can argue that this is Caitlyn respecting Jinx's wish to disappear. You can argue that this is Caitlyn giving up on revenge, and, well, it is. But it's more than just that. This is her allowing Jinx to kill herself. This is her allowing Vi's only other connection to fade into obscurity. And this is Caitlyn keeping Vi to herself. When she asks Vi what song she's humming, Vi shrugs it off as unimportant, even though that song is the one Powder sang when they searched for their parents all that time ago. She's singing her sister away to their family, and doesn't give this context to Caitlyn because it'll mean nothing to her. Even now, Vi's accepted that Jinx and Caitlyn would never be able to both be in her life. But she doesn't have to choose if Jinx is dead. If Caitlyn was solely letting it go to let go of revenge, she could have left the map for Vi to see on her own, let her go to find her sister the way she let her free Jinx.

This is the power dynamic. This is where the classism seeps in. Caitlyn has resources and power and control. Caitlyn can control the flow of information. Caitlyn has the power. Vi, meanwhile, has nothing but Caitlyn. She has no connections(her relationship with Ekko is straight up ignored in season 2), no family, no resources of her own. Even when she was on her own, trying to start fresh with literally nothing due to her prison time, she had to resort to underground fighting rings to scrape by. She's in a position of financial need, but Vi is happy anyways, because all that control relinquished to Caitlyn means Vi is stable. She has someone that'll come back to her the same way she comes back to them, and that's what she wanted, for someone to fight as much as she did. Never mind how ugly it gets when the going gets tough. Never mind that part of her torso is still wrapped. She's not alone, and so she's happy. They both are. But they are not healthy, and this conclusion being treated as the light at the end of the tunnel is horrific to anyone who's been in VI's position before.

Conclusion

So, no, your average Caitvi anti saying there's a power dynamic aren't wrong, nor are they making shit up just because they don't like Caitlyn. Not everyone may have the time or energy or words to articulate exactly why, but that doesn't mean it isn't there outright. That said, I can't really blame your average Caitvi enjoyer for being upset at this kind of accusation, and that's mainly because though the show portrays abuse, it takes the stance that if the love is there, it doesn't really matter in the long-term. The divide lies between those who take the show for what it's trying to say, and the people who see the show's biases and call them out.

The choice of music and focus on Caitlyn's perspective across the season as opposed to Vi being shoehorned into montages over and over makes it exceedingly clear that despite all of her crimes and actions, they want Caitlyn to appear sympathetic to the audience, and they want the audience to root for her to get Vi back while not caring about Vi's own stagnation. The show has the two of them happy at the end as part of their grand conclusion intentionally; you're supposed to like that they're together. The show wants you to think that it's a good thing, and a large chunk of the Arcane fandom prefers to take Arcane for what it was trying to be, instead of what it ended up being. And until people can stop harassing each other over what is at the end of the day a sloppily written work of fiction, there'll never really be a constructive conversation about it.

I actually quite like Caitlyn in that I think her fall from grace and corruption arc is really interesting, and I'm never opposed to toxic yuri in an intentional "bad ending." But Arcane and the creators have made it so clear over and over again that that's not what Caitvi was meant to be, so I can't not criticize it, especially not when there are some Caitvi diehards making a point to harass and attack anyone that says otherwise, making fucked up art mocking the George Floyd protests, bullying Ekko's VA out of the fandom, sending anonymous death threats to critical tag users, etc. Obviously I'm aware it's a vocal minority, but it's still happening.

[rainbow-beanie]

Just thought of a crossover between poppy playtime and undertale, where poppy playtime takes place in the same universe as the events of undertale. So I’m thinking the playtime factory would be stationed near Mount ebbot. And by this time frisk had long since broken the barrier and them and the others are already in the process of settling down on the surface.

Till one day, while frisk is wandering through the woods, they see something that makes them still. They find doey standing right in front of them, stuck frozen just like they are. The creature doesn’t look like any monster they’ve ever seen in the underground, but they could tell it looked scared, from the way it seemed to nervously fidget the more time passes. Eventually frisk breaks the silence by introducing themselves, and the creature eventually does the same, introducing himself as doey, which frisk thinks is a cute name.

They invite doey to meet their friends, which makes doey hesitate, since all he could imagine was a bunch of humans, who would no doubt be afraid of him. Noticing his hesitation, frisk reaches up and grabs his hand and explains how their friends are really nice. And looking down at the small child looking up at him with such kindness and sincerity something he doesn’t deserve he reluctantly agrees, letting frisk led him to the village where their friends lived, being surprised that all of them were creatures just like him, or at least similar.

They were of course surprised upon seeing him, but upon frisk explaining how they found him wandering through the forest, they reluctantly agree to let him stay, cause a friend of frisk is a friend of them, doey feels touched by the sentiment.

Since doey is the component of three consciences, in the undertale verse, that would translate to souls, the souls colors are as follows.

Michael: patience 

Kevin: justice

Jack: kindness

Dory’s relationship with the other monsters:

Toriel: doey thinks she is really nice, she has a soft motherly presence that all three need, and reminds Jack of the mother that he lost, which causes doey to cry one day while helping her in the kitchen (with safety gloves, cause toriel quite isn’t sure how her food will turn out if it has bits of doe stuck it in, doey understands) and toriel is quick to comfort him, he doesn’t explain why he got so sad all of a sudden, but toriel comforts him all the same, knowing that something is wrong, and promises him tjat she would do everything in her power to protect him, which just makes him cry harder

Asgore: doey thinks he’s really nice to be around, and enjoys the time he gets to hang out while trying his tea. Asgore doesn’t quite understand how sentient dough can be able to ingest tea and food, but he remembers that the slime monsters are perfectly able to digest food, and pushes it out of mind) that is till he inevitably finds out that he had killed children in the past, which causes doey to understandably be afraid of him, till frisk explains that he only did that so he could find a way to break the barrier to save his people, which doey understands. And while not liking the fact that asgore had to go to such lengths, understands the importance of taking care of the people you care about. At least asgore succeed where he failed…

Alphys: upon being told that one of frisk’s friends is a Scientist, he doesn’t react well to it, his only interaction with any scientists being the doctor, so he doesn’t want anything to do with her till frisk, after managing to calm him down, explains that she’s really nice, and is one of their closest friends, and says how alphys has no intention of hurting him. It takes awhile, but with frisk by his side, he goes to meet alphys, and is presently surprised at how nice she is, and while she has questions of her about him, backs off the moment he gets uncomfortable, which he deeply appreciates. She eventually introduces him to anime, something that doey is very surprised about, since he’s only known cartoons from the grainy small tv’s from playcare. So seeing a cartoon so vibrant makes him very happy.

Sans and papyrus: he likes both of them equally, he enjoys sans for his laid back nature, and his puns that he readily enjoys, exchanging some of his own, much to papyrus’s chagrin. Doey enjoys his time with papyrus, learning about the different types of puzzles, and papyrus make spaghetti, even if the kitchen burst into flames from time to time. The first time it happened, doey was so frightened that he wrapped his arms twice around Papyrus and bolted out of there screaming, all while sans calmly walks in the flaming kitchen with a fire extinguisher, acting like things like this happen all the time.

Undying: safe to say doey was very surprised at how over the top she was, especially since she asked to spar with him in their first meeting, which he politely declines, content in watching her and papyrus spar from the sidelines, quickly awed at how cool they both are while fighting, it kinda reminds him often fights in alphas’s anime’s he’s watched, especially when undying suddenly strikes an iconic post from one of the characters in an anime, causing frisk next to him to cheer. One day he eventually he ends up sparring with undying, while making sure to hold back, not wanting to hurt her, finding out that he didn’t really need to, since the fish monster seemed perfectly in her element. in the process doey finds out that sparring is more fun then he expected, and he quickly looks forward to sparring with her more often.

That’s all I have rn, I just really want doey to be surrounded by people who grow to love and care about him, while not having to constantly be on guard. He deserves the world

[ranchstoryblog]

Update regarding the Guardians of Azuma Earth Dancer Edition goodies

The letter posted below was shared by official Marvelous USA social media accounts:

For those with any issue with reading the text in the image, the text has been transcribed below:

I'd like to share an update with our fans in the Americas. Like othre companies that deal with an international supply chain, the uncertainy of the tariffs situation is creating havoc on our production schedules and there is a chance that the premium "Earth Dancer Edition" of our upcoming Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma release may not be ready in time for the game's worldwide June 5th release.

Specifically, the 'sensu' folding fan is done but has been stuck at our supplier's factory in China for a couple weeks. Trying to bring it over now with the effective tariff rate will cost unanticipated fees totaling over 20% of the suggested selling price, largely due to this item being the most expensive component we have ever produced (with the exception of a figure going into a collector's edition). We cannot pay those fees, and trying to pass the cost on to fans who already pre-ordered at a set price is also unacceptable to us.

In case anyone is wondering why a fan steeped in Japanese tradition is made in China: This is because that was the only option available to us when we started this process almost a year ago, when we were told there was not a sensu manufacturer in Japan that could create our custom fan at the quantities that we needed. Instead, we imported authentic Japanese 'washi' paper to a facility in China where they would be assembled using a labor-intensive process.

There is still a chance that the goods could make it in time for a launch and this message worries everyone for no reason, but I prefer to be open and transparent with our community. Even if the tariffs are reduced or elminated tomorrow, there could be a huge backlog of product in similar situation as ours. What that means is that what would usually haven taken only a day to clear US customs could take weeks - that is how uncertain things are right now with our already delayed schedule.

We will continue to closely monitor the situation and be prepared to provide the product as quickly as possible (such as bringing the sensu fans by air rather than the much more economical ocean freight). We thank you for your support and understanding if even our best efforts still result in a delay.

Ken Berry President, Marvelous USA.

[averycutesalamander]

that ask made me realize that i haven't really put all of my headcanons in a cohesive place lol, which is probably kinda confusing. the bulk of this is explored in ddbb. these are all pure speculation, and im pretty sure at least one of them is now unambiguously not canon, buuuuut whatever. canon is my oyster and damn am i allergic to shellfish. obligatory reminder that my takes on things are not the be-all and end-all, you're welcome to disagree with me, etc etc

All of his visible body is artificial. Yes, even his hair and skin. I think the only organic parts of him are the majority of his brain and parts of his nervous system. (Probably my most controversial headcanon. I don't know why, but this just feels right to me. At an absolute minimum, I think he has a reinforced skull; it feels a little weird for him to turn his entire body into an indestructible war machine only to leave his head, perhaps the most important part of his nervous system, vulnerable.)

He can feel things on his body. He has an extremely complicated "nerve net" beneath both his body and his skin that lets him sense pressure. His skin is more sensitive and can better differentiate between textures. (Also controversial, but I struggle to believe that he can't feel anything. It would be difficult to navigate the world in general if you can't feel where you're walking, and I can't imagine him having so much dexterity with his gun if he couldn't feel his hands. This is just personal preference, though.)

He can drink, but he can't eat. When he drinks things, they're basically just stored as-is inside of him until it can later be emptied. The only solid he can eat is his rounds, and anything else just gunks up his systems. (My logic here is that it seems like it would be way harder to handle the variety of textures and materials in foods than just liquids, and that would be a lot of space taken up that could've otherwise been dedicated to weapons or utilities. Also, thematically speaking, there's something extra tragic about sacrificing something as culturally significant and comforting as food.)

He doesn't really digest things. They just go into that aforementioned storage. This makes him immune to all kinds of poisons and drugs and whatnot. This also means he can't get drunk, unless he finds some kind of wacky program to simulate the feeling. (I think it's safe to say that this is officially non-canon. There's the line he has on the Express about the vomit-inducing agent, and in 2.6 he mentions drinking to numb emotional pain, which unambiguously implies that he has a stomach capable of digesting. I formed this headcanon before he even came out, and I'm quite attached to it and all of its implications, so uhhhhh... Whatever.)

He has a little bullet factory inside of him, specifically for his explosive rounds. When he eats his regular bullets, his body recycles the materials to create the exploding rounds that we see in his ultimate. There is, in fact, a step in the production specifically to print the shark faces on the cartridge. He does sometimes have to refresh resources (usually gunpowder, because sometimes the bullets pop in his mouth when he chews them), but it's self-sufficient for the most part. The only thing he has to add is phosphorus, which makes the bullets explosive.

He's waterproof in the sense that he can go dunk himself in a lake if he wants, but there are a few issues. First is that, in order to prevent water from getting into his internals, he has to seal all of his external vents; this is risky for temperature management reasons, but if the water isn't cool enough, he has emergency heat sinks internally. Secondly is that water degrades his body rather quickly, especially his joints and other small components. All this means is that he just has to make an extra visit to the mechanic. (There's some ambiguity on canon compliance here. He endures rain in Penacony like it's no problem, but that's also within the dream, so we can't be sure.)

Other miscellaneous stuff: he can hold his breath way longer than a human can (his system doesn't use very much air); he's quite tenderheaded; he can go quite a while without sleep, but he still needs it in addition to charging; he's tasted a truly insane amount of inedible things, including gasoline, gunpowder, crude oil, dirt (honestly not that strange, because if you work outside for long enough, you will eventually get dirt in your mouth no matter how hard you try to avoid it lol), the liquid inside of a battery, lighter fluid, charcoal, mercury, gallium, hand soap, and antifreeze, just to name a few; he has a spectacular singing voice; he keeps his gun immaculately clean; he has two gay dads (let's pretend Graey is a man, it's gender neutral enough); and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.

Edit: also I hc him to be like 300 lbs total but it's super flexible depending on what I feel like doing lol.

Edit 2: actually now that I've thought about it longer I'd wager he's closer to 250 lbs. Still hefty but y'know.

[freightforwardingindonesia]

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[dailyanarchistposts]

The collapse of workerism

Of course, some would have it that we never lost a revolutionary perspective at all, quite confident they had the solution all along. This comes in the form of workerism, a broad set of strategies – mainly Marxist or anarcho-syndicalist – that affirm the centrality of the working class for overthrowing capitalism. In the history of revolutionary struggle, few ideas have consistently held more sway; but surely that’s only the reason why this sorely outdated approach has proven so hard to get over. Things have changed more dramatically than ever in the last decades, shattering the material conditions that once granted workplace organisation such grandiose pretensions. It’s important to clarify why, or else the attempt to exceed activism risks being subsumed by yet another reformist method, this one all the more stagnant.

Only a few decades ago, the prospects of organised labour in the Global North were much more hopeful, with trade unions retaining a great deal of strength into the 1970s. Mainly during the ‘80s, however, capitalist production underwent some major alterations. Profound technological developments in the field of electronics – especially digitisation – caused the productive process to become much more automated, requiring significantly less human input. This combined with an increased ability on the part of employers to outsource employment to less economically developed countries, where labour was much cheaper. Fairly suddenly, therefore, the two biggest sectors of the economy – split mainly between industry and agriculture – were greatly reduced in size, resulting in massive layoffs. Yet those who lost their jobs were generally absorbed by steady growth in the services sector, thereby avoiding immediate social destabilisation. Whilst it was once the smallest economic sector by a long way, the services sector is now by far the largest in the Global North, even approaching 80% employment rates in the US, UK, and France.

The result has been a striking redefinition of the common notion of work. It’s lost its centre of gravity in the factory, having fragmented instead in the direction of various post-industrial workplaces – restaurants, shops, offices. Once a largely centralised mass, the working class has been dispersed across the social terrain, the new focus being on small, highly diverse productive units. Between these units, workers possess few common interests and interact little, leading to a significantly diminished potential for collective action. Of course, resistance in the workplace continues, but the internal avenues necessary for revolt to generalise have been majorly severed, the situation continuing to decline in light of ever greater technological advance.

Nobody can deny the profound identity crisis faced by the working class. Only a few decades ago, the factory was seen as the centre of everything, with workers offering the vital component in the functioning of society as a whole. Work was once a way of life, not so much in terms of the amount of time it took up, but instead because of the clear sense of existential grounding it offered. For generations, there had been a strong link between work and professionalism, with most workers committing to a single craft for the entirety of their lives. Career paths were passed down from father to son, who often remained in the same company; the families of different workers also maintained close ties with one another. Nowadays, however, everything has changed: employment is immensely uncertain, the relentless fluidity of the post-industrial economy forcing most to get by on a roster of precarious, low-skilled jobs. Far fewer people take pride in their work, especially given that employment only rarely has a convincing subtext of doing something socially important. Trade unions have also vanished as a historical force, having been defeated in the key battles of the ‘80s, their membership levels imploding in lock-step with the advance of neoliberalism. A residue of the old world still exists, but it continues to dissipate further every day, never to return. In the Global South, too, things are inevitably moving in the same direction.

These developments cast serious doubt on the validity of Marxist and anarcho-syndicalist strategies for revolution. It’s becoming increasingly meaningless to speak of “the workers” in reference to a cohesive entity. It isn’t as if the disintegration of the working class implies the absence of poverty, nor of the excluded – in no sense whatsoever. What it does mean is the end of the working class as a subject. One that was, as Marx put it, “disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself” (Capital, 1867). Over the last decades, the working class has been dismembered and demoralised by the very same mechanism: just as the mass application of steam and machinery into the productive process created the industrial proletariat two centuries ago, the invention of new, automated technologies has led to its dissolution. There’s no single project around which to unite the working class any more; it follows, as with identity politics, that gains in the workplace will almost always be limited to improving capitalism rather than destroying it. The Industrial Revolution has been superseded by the Digital Revolution, yet the revolutionary optimism of workerism remains ideologically trapped in a bygone era, fumbling for relevance in a century that won’t have it. Although, to be honest, this is hardly news: already for some time now, the nostalgic language of workerism has come across as stale and outdated to most, even if academics often struggle to keep up.

In any case, the collapse of workerism might be nothing to mourn. Another implication of the end of traditional employment is the predominance of a range of workplaces few would want to appropriate anyway. The factory has been replaced by the likes of call centres, supermarkets, service stations, fast food joints, and coffee shop chains. Yet surely no one can imagine themselves maintaining these workplaces after the revolution, as if anything resembling a collectively run Starbucks or factory farm is what we’re going for? When workerism first became popular, there was an obvious applicability of most work to the prospect of a free society. In the 21st century, however, the alienation of labour runs all the deeper: no longer is it the mere fact of lacking control over work, but instead its inherent function that’s usually the problem. To put it another way, it should come as no surprise that Marxists haven’t yet replaced their hammer and sickle with an office desk and espresso machine, as would be necessary to keep up with the times. The modern symbols of work are worthy only of scorn, not the kind of valorisation involved in putting them on a flag.

This is another big problem for the workerist theory of revolution, given its conception of revolution primarily or even exclusively in terms of the seizure of the means of production. Achieving reforms in the workplace is one thing, but only rarely can such exercises in confidence-building be taken as steps towards appropriating the workplace altogether. Surely the point isn’t to democratise the economy, but instead to pick it apart: those aspects of the economy genuinely worth collectivising, as opposed to converting or simply burning, are few and far between. Of course, they still exist, but they’re marginal. And that confirms the absurdity of expecting workplace organisation to offer the centrepiece of any future revolution.

This hardly implies doing away with the material aspects of revolutionary struggle, given that communising the conditions of existence remains necessary for living our lives – not just this or that activist campaign – in genuine conflict with the system. All the more, the moment in which these subterranean influences suddenly erupt, and mass communisation overturns the ordinary functioning of the capitalist machine, surely remains a defining feature of revolution itself. Yet such endeavours must be sharply distinguished from seizing the means of production – that is, appropriating the capitalist infrastructure more or less as it stands before us. Far from offering a vision of the world we want to see, the syndicalist proposal to reclaim the conditions of work – to assume control of very the system that’s destroying us – merely implies self-managing not only our own exploitation, but also that of the planet.

As an aside, it should be added that these issues undermine the contemporary relevance of Marxism altogether. It was previously suggested that Marxian class analysis no longer offers a credible account of oppression; the current discussion, meanwhile, suggests it cannot be used to frame the topic of revolution either. As a method for interpreting the world, as well as for changing it, Marxism has had its day. If we wanted to be a little diplomatic, we could say this isn’t so much a criticism of the theory itself, more a recognition of the fact that the world it was designed to engage with no longer exists. If we wanted to be a little less diplomatic, moreover, it should be added that what’s left of Marxism is utterly boring, reformist, and kept “alive” almost exclusively by academics. As the big guy declared back in 1852, “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” Yet in no case has this claim, offered in response to the lack of imagination amongst revolutionaries in the 19th century, been more relevant than with Marxism today. We should pay our respects, if indeed any respect is due, whilst refusing to be crippled by an outdated approach. The same goes for anarcho-syndicalism, its once unbridled potential decisively shut down by the combined victories of fascism and Bolshevism.

To offer a last word of clarification, none of this implies doing away with workplace organisation altogether. There’s still much to be said for confronting power on every front: the collectivisation of any remaining useful workplaces, as well as the fierce application of the general strike, surely remains vital for any effective revolutionary mosaic. Just as workplace organisation continues to prove effective for breaking down social barriers, as well as potentially improving our lives in the here and now. The core claim offered here is only that it cannot be considered the centrepiece of revolutionary struggle altogether – quite the minimal conclusion. Merely in terms of asking what the abolition of class might look like today, workerism has lost its way. And that doesn’t begin to consider the abolition of hierarchy as such. When taken in isolation, organised labour offers nothing more than a subtle variety of reformism, thinly cloaked in its stuffy revolutionary pretensions. Total liberation, by contrast, refuses to single out any focal points of the clash, be they workerist, activist, or otherwise.

[youzicha]

Normal Accidents

📖Charles Perrow, Normal accidents: living with high-risk technologies, 1984. Second edition 1999.

The Title

This is another example of a book that lives on its title, a great racket which works like this:

Find a proposition which many people would like to be true. E.g., Nations are fake and don't exist except in people's imagination. Victorian doctors used vibrators as a treatment for hysteria. Computer programming used to be gender-balanced and then male programmers took over. There's no way to run a nuclear power plant without accidents.

Find a catchy phrase that strongly hints at the proposition without outright stating it.

Write a few hundred pages of text: long enough that plausibly somewhere in there could be convincing evidence of proposition X, and someone would have to spend a whole day reading to find out whether there is or not.

Congratulations, you are set for life.

The Theory

The book theorizes that there is a particularly intractable type of accident which it calls “system accidents”. They are different from simple component failure accidents and happen in systems that are “complex” and “tightly coupled”. It classifies systems on two axes: a system is “linear” if each subsystem mostly interacts with one subsystem in front and one after (like an assembly-line factory) or “complex” if the subsystems all interact with each other, and it is “tightly” coupled if each subsystem immediately affects the other one without room for recovery.

Perrow then reads a bunch of accident investigation reports from different industries (nuclear, chemical, airlines, maritime, etc) and highlights interactions and coupling. The whole book produces this diagram:

From this we conclude… what exactly? Maybe that system accidents are important, and we should pay attention to them? Or slightly stronger, that there are more accidents in the upper-right quadrant than in the other ones? A big problem is that Perrow never says precisely what he is trying to prove and doesn't apply any objective measures.  I would want to count the number of accidents in different industries, and compare the ratio of system/non-system ones, or compare the absolute numbers, but Perrow just relates a sampling of accidents and says that they are illustrative.

Whether these accidents really are good illustrations of "system accidents" seems to depend a lot on the spin he puts on them. The classification into complex versus linear seems very hand-wavy. In one example of aviation, which is supposedly complex, "even after bailing out … there was room for the unexpected interaction" because the pilot was hit on the head by the falling ejection seat. By contrast the mining industry is assigned the center of the linear-complex axis, and one example concerns a worker who walked under a conveyor belt—and got hit on the head. Basically the same accident can be glossed as interactive or not.

Or how about this airplane accident:

The next accident, an account of problems with a four-engine corporate jet, the Lockheed Jet Star Model 1329, is more prosaic, but it gives some idea of the world of corporate jets and involves a system accident, unusual risks, and a safety change that was responsible for killing eight people. The safety improvement involved new, solid state units in the generator control units and new wiring. The airplane was flight-tested after installation and one generator failed. Repairs were made. In the next test flight, all four generators failed at one time or another, and were manually reset during flight. [Two weeks later] The plane crashed a mile short of the runway […] The NTSB is not certain of the proximate cause of the crash […] The example strongly suggests a system accident

It is typical of the book: there are no statistics showing that system accidents are common, only isolated examples, and in this example he doesn't even know what caused the accident!

(Later in the book the level of rigor goes down even further. For accidents in space, instead of reading accident investigation reports Perrow says "I am drawing here on the immensely entertaining, and exceptionally perceptive book by Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff." Then for accidental war the discussion is based on Dr. Strangelove. And then he turns to DNA technology, which "appears to be complex in its interactions and tightly coupled, but I caution the reader that I know even less about it than I do about nuclear weapon systems." Thanks.)

But the actual central claim that Perrow wants to conclude is something even stronger than that systems accidents are common: he says that there is no way to prevent them. Thus the final chapter says that we should only accept complex-coupled systems if accidents have acceptably small consequences, and otherwise we must replace them with safer alternatives. In particular Perrow wants to get rid of nuclear power; the book started as an anti-nuclear pamphlet written after the Three Mile Island accident. But it seems quite hopeless to prove this impossibility by just reading accident reports.

So the book has much talk about catastrophic risk, but very few testable predictions. In fact, I could only find two. First, there is this paragraph about airline accidents:

With millions of operating years of experience, repeated trials, tests without catastrophic consequences, and considerable government support, the industry has been able to maximize the potential for technological fixes, including buffers and redundancies. Two engines are better than one; four better than two; the jet engine less complex than the piston engine; and of course the industry makes use of exotic new materials and instrumentation. System accidents in flying will remain, but they have been reduced substantially. […] The safety of both automobile travel and airline travel (and military and general aviation as well) has increased dramatically in this century, but since the 1960s and 1970s the safety curve has flattened out; we appear to be in the area where further increases are very hard to achieve.

It seems to say that airline accidents first fell quickly because we solved the issue of component failures, and now will fall no more because the rest is intractable systems accidents.

Second, there's this nicely unambiguous paragraph:

I would expect a worse accident than TMI in ten years—one that will kill and contaminate. […] There will be more system accidents; according to my analysis, there have to be. One or more will include a release of radioactive substances to the environment in quantities sufficient to kill many people, irradiate others, and poison some acres of land. There is no organizational structure that we would or should tolerate that could prevent it. None of our existing reactors has a design capable of preventing system accidents. Perhaps a safe one will be discovered—loosely coupled and linear—but I am doubtful.

Forty years later, there has not been any accidents in American nuclear power plants, so the analysis seems nicely refuted. The airplane accidents also did not come through. The trend in the 20th century was that the accident rate halved every 10 years:

And based on this data the same trend remained. From 1983-1989 to 1990-1999 the deaths per departure halved, from 1990-1999 to 2000-2009 they halved again, and from 2000-2009 to 2010-2017 it decreased even faster.

As it happens, there's a second edition from 1999 with a retrospective afterword, and it talks about how warmly the book was received while skipping over the fact that its predictions were wrong. It says “Commercial jet disasters are at approximately the same (low) level as in 1984, per departure” (no), and “of course we had Chernobyl”. But Chernobyl was not one of the American power plants whose incident reports the prediction was based on, and also it was not a systems accident. There was only one relevant subsystem, the core, and only one relevant parameter, the power output.

The second edition also adds a chapter about the Y2K problem, which could be "a test of the robustness and applicatory scope" of the Normal Accident Theory. While officials are optimistic, those Y2K plans are "fantasy documents" and there could be disaster whose "potential scale and scope dwarfs all other 'normal accidents' discussed in the book". (Notably one of the scenarios discussed in the book is a global nuclear war.) Having seen the actual outcome of Y2K, I think the robustness and applicatory scope comes across as well here as in the other cases.

Annoyances

So the theory seems dubious and the conclusions wrong, but that on its own would not make me write this long screed. What really gets to me is two annoying tics in the writing. First, constant smugness. The style matters because most of the book consists of summaries of accident investigations, and although they are supposed to illustrate his "normal accident theory", in practice he is mostly just writing descriptions without any particular theoretical angle. Of course I love reading accident reports too, but these days you can get all the pdfs you can read at the click of a mouse button, which raises the question what Perrow adds over the source material. And the main difference is that he thinks he is smarter than everybody else, and lets us know so through constant asides.

First, he is smarter than the reader. The first chapter, about the TMI accident, reassures us that it "will be the most demanding technological account in the book, but even a general sense of the complexity will suffice if one wishes to merely follow the drama rather than the technical evolution of the accident." Don't worry your pretty little head, Perrow is here to explain things. This tendency is even more annoying when he doesn't understand what he is explaining. He does not know what the word envelope means, and then projects his own confusion by saying that this aspect of flying has "poorly understood dynamics".

Second, he is smarter than the accident investigation board, and takes random snipes at them. A random board member in a press conference mentions a “remote possibility”, which Perrow jumps on. He comments that in marine accidents "the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) do what they can. But they can do little in this error-inducing system. […] It can happen. It is bound to. The recommendations are futile." I guess his methodology forces him to take this polemical tone, because all he is doing is reading accident investigation reports, so if he didn't complain, there would be nothing added by his descriptions.

In fact, he is smarter than just about anyone, and happy to share his observations even if they are not related to the accidents at all, e.g. “the approach to the Westchester Airport goes right over an interstate highway with one of those curious signs with the fruitless warning: ‘watch out for low flying aircraft’”.

I think this is a general hazard with writing about nuclear policy: both the pro- and anti-sides seem to have a lot of very smug people. I think for me the biggest takeaway from this book was that I should try to tone it down in my own writing.

The other annoyance is that Perrow never mentions any numbers, even in situations that really cry out for them. For example, there are many mentions of plutonium, in criticality accidents or when it was accidentally released from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. An article says “‘in all plutonium incidents to date, only a small fraction of the plutonium involved was released.’ That is like saying that in a war, only a small fraction of the bullets kill anyone.” A Titan ICBM can “literally go off with the drop of a workman’s wrench and possibly release plutonium”.

And beyond these local accidents, in 1964 there was a “cosmic” one: “Most of the failures of the space program have not been death-dealing, and if they were, they were limited to first-party victims—the astronauts or technicians. However, in three cases of failures with plutonium power packs, the risks are potentially catastrophic, since plutonium is perhaps the most deadly substance known to humans. … a navigational satellite sent up in 1964 that failed to achieve orbit when its rocket engine failed. It reentered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean and distributed 1 kilogram of plutonium-238 about the earth.”

Like, at this point surely you’d want to know how many people were actually killed? From looking around on google a bit, it seems the 1964 satellite may have caused two hundred cancer deaths if you assume the cancer risk scales linearly to extremely small radiation doses. (And it prompted a change in policy to no longer let plutonium burn up in the atmosphere.) To me this kind of number seems essential to judge how catastrophic the accident is.

Another example where the numbers are lacking:

The price of electricity from nuclear power plants does not reflect the very large government subsidies, nor the costs of the unsolved problem of long-term waste storage, nor even the unknown costs of dismantling reactors after their forty allotted years, if they run that long. Had all these been properly considered in the 1950s and included in the cost, this book would have not been written because no utility would have ordered a plant.

This claim is not cited to anything. I believe that people were in fact considering this, but in any case the costs are now known: the long-term waste storage came to 0.41 cent/kWh and the dismantling to 0.24 cents/kWh. Meanwhile electricity prices have varied between 19 cents/kWh and 13 cents/kWh (in 2020 dollars), so the waste + decommissioning costs are a rounding error in comparison to other factors.

At some point he says that “you are good at counting while I (as I tell my quantitative colleagues) don’t count”, but really, you live like this?

Coal versus nuclear

Perry spends most of the book talking about the risk from nuclear power plants. But what is the alternative? In the introduction he says

There is no technological imperative that says we must have power or weapons from nuclear fission or fusion, or that we must create and loose upon the earth organisms that will devour our oil spills. We could reach for, and grasp, solar power or safe coal-fired plants

And then he doesn’t mention those coal plants again until the final chapter. But as he was writing, American coal plants were killing 30,000 people/year. Compared to the deaths from cancer, that corresponds to multiple Chernobyl accidents every year. Does he not know this?

Actually he includes a final chapter about “current risk assessment theory”, where he notes that fossil fuel plants kill a lot more people than nuclear power, but nuclear power provokes more “dread” and “the public’s fears must be treated with respect”. I feel this would be more convincing if Perrow had not spent an entire book trying to stoke that fear.

He gives a more operational description of “dread risk”: “lack of control, high fatalities and catastrophic potential, inequitable distribution of risks and benefits, and the sense that these risks are increasing and cannot be easily reduced by technological fixes”. I think this still doesn’t distinguish the coal pollution and nuclear accidents very well. Neither is controllable, the particulate emissions and the radioactivity both drift with the wind, the parties that take the risk and benefits are the same for both, and the “sense” that technological fixes don’t work is illusory.

Of course, nowadays we know that coal has has another drawback besides the particulate pollution, and this is mentioned in a single paragraph, literally in parentheses!

(One enormous risk which the industrialized nations may be facing is not considered in this book on normal accidents; eliminating this ill would require much more drastic measures than any of the above: This is the problem of carbon dioxide produced from deforestation primarily, but also from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and wood. This threatens to create a greenhouse effect, warming the temperature of the planet, melting the ice caps, and probably causing an incredible number of other changes, most of them disastrous. If it is significant—the experts do not agree—we may have a few decades to handle this; but it may be too late. It is one of the strongest cards the nuclear addicts can play, though the enormity of the problem, by some accounts, would dwarf the capacities of nuclear industry. We would have to divert our energy and natural resources from much of industry and use it to build nuclear plants for the next generation to meet some estimates. Battalions of scientists, engineers, and operators would have to be recruited and trained, and so on.)

Conclusion

This book is frequently cited (I have even seen tumblr users refer to it), and I think it’s considered a classic, so I was very disappointed. Let’s mark it as another mistake of the 20th century and forget all about it.

[mariacallous]

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Trump administration’s ever-changing policies on tariffs and trade have injected chaos into the global energy economy.

On Wednesday, a federal court blocked President Donald Trump from being able to adopt tariffs under an emergency-powers law. The administration is appealing the ruling. This sets up additional legal wrangling in addition to the conflicts over trade that were already happening.

Analysts at the research firm Wood Mackenzie gave themselves the task of predicting where US tariff policy may be heading. The result is a report issued this week, “Trading Cases: Tariff Scenarios for Taxing Times,” that shows the huge gap in outcomes between a trade war and a trade truce.

My main takeaway from it is that everyone loses in a prolonged conflict. Even the oil and gas industry, which has close ties to the Trump administration, would face falling prices for its products at the same time that the costs of much of its equipment are rising because of tariffs.

The US renewable energy and battery industries stand out for the potential severity of their downturns because development here relies heavily on components made in other countries. The Biden administration sought to encourage manufacturers to build in the United States, but those efforts are still in their early stages, and many of the government incentives are now on the chopping block.

Under a “trade truce” scenario, in which tariffs return to 2024 levels, the global economy would grow by an average of 2.7 percent between now and 2030, the report says. The “trade tensions” scenario would mean that tariff barriers increase compared to last year, but the economy would still grow, albeit at a lower rate. The most damaging is the “trade war” scenario, with the United States maintaining an effective tariff rate of 30 percent or more, leading to a global recession.

The report says the middle forecast, “trade tensions,” is the most likely to occur.

Why is this conflict happening? The short version is that Trump and his advisers believe that tariffs will help the US economy by encouraging construction of factories here, reducing trade deficits and punishing barriers to entry of US products in other countries.

“We will supercharge our domestic industrial base,” Trump said in an April 2 speech announcing tariffs on nearly every US trading partner. “We will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers and ultimately, more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers.”

A tariff is a tax charged by a government on imports. As the US government has increased its tariffs, other countries have retaliated with their own increases.

Adding to the chaos is that the policies frequently change, with the president often announcing shifts on social media, as happened in recent days on tariffs on the European Union.

I spoke with Chris Seiple, Wood Mackenzie’s vice chairman for power and renewables, to drill down on the parts of the report that deal with renewables. Here is that conversation, edited for length and clarity:

Dan Gearino: For renewable energy industries, is the big problem that tariffs make everything more expensive, or is there more to it than that?

Chris Seiple: Sure, things getting more expensive is a big part of it. I think the second challenge, and this is kind of unique to the power business, is that there’s a heavy hand of regulation. And so there’s a lot of US utilities that have to go through pretty extensive regulatory processes to get approval for what they want to build. Being in a world where there’s so much tariff uncertainty, they don’t know what it’s going to cost to build what they want to build. It’s particularly challenging for this industry to be able to navigate that, and it impacts renewables more than it impacts, say, other sectors like gas or coal, because we rely upon imports of equipment to such a bigger degree, especially for battery storage, where we’re essentially entirely dependent at this point on imports from China.

With battery storage, there has been an attempt to increase manufacturing capacity in the US. How would you characterize where that stands?

Very early days. A lot of battery manufacturing that’s going on within the US is meant to supply batteries to EV vehicles, not stationary utility-scale storage projects. And so the amount of manufacturing capacity in comparison to what the demand is for that equipment results in us importing well more than 90 percent of what we need.

Chris Seiple is Wood Mackenzie’s vice chairman for power and renewables. Photograph: Wood Mackenzie

I also think the tariff on it is just as important as the uncertainty about not knowing where the end game is and what the tariffs are going to be. So, if you’re on the manufacturing side of the renewables business, you’re making investment decisions that have very long lives when you’re building a manufacturing facility. Having that uncertainty around the investment climate and what the level of tariffs is going to be over the long-term just makes it more challenging to make all of those decisions.

During the early part of this year, as this tariff war was starting, I had, like, biweekly calls from this manufacturer in Korea, just exasperated, saying, “Doesn’t the US government know that we’re making long lead time decisions, and we need to have some sort of clarity around what the policy environment is going to be, not just for the next four years, but for the next 10 years?” The US is making it very challenging right now to make these types of investment decisions.

Is there any US energy industry that benefits from trade tensions?

I don’t think anybody benefits, per se, from the trade tensions. Everybody, no matter what part of the energy sector you’re in, is having to navigate the uncertainty around what the tariff levels are going to be. That said, the overall policy environment has changed to one that is more favorable for natural gas. The fact that we are an exporter of natural gas and have all of the domestic resources that we need makes it less impacted by tariffs than what other sectors are, like renewables. But even for E&P [exploration and production of oil and gas], they utilize steel in that process. There are tariffs on steel. Steel prices have gone up. It has a negative impact on all energy sectors.

One part of this report that jumped out to me is you said that the US may be stuck with older technologies, especially when it comes to solar, while the rest of the world advances at a quicker pace. What’s the long-term effect of that?

Before I answer that question directly, let me just give you some context.

We estimate that the cost of building a utility-scale solar project is about $1.15 a watt in the US. The comparable number in China is about 42 cents a watt. It’s not surprising that the cost of building a solar facility in China is a lot less than the cost of building a solar facility in the US.

What is very surprising when we put this data together is how much less expensive it is to build a solar project in Europe than it is in the US. It’s about 70 cents a watt to build a solar facility in Europe compared to the US. So the US is almost 50 percent more expensive to build a solar facility than the cost of building it in Europe. And the biggest reason that it’s more expensive here is because of all the tariffs that we have on solar. It’s not the only reason, but it’s the biggest reason. So we’ve already kind of penalized solar with the tariffs that we have in place.

And then, on the technology evolution issue, it’s the Chinese manufacturers that have the most sophisticated capability in solar manufacturing, and who are putting a lot more R&D into it than any US company is doing. And so, we essentially have policies in place that prohibit and make it uneconomic for US companies to be able to purchase Chinese technology, then that is what leaves us in a position where we’re not using the most advanced technology that’s available to the rest of the world. The long-term implication of that is it deprives the US of a low-cost source of energy that’s available everywhere else, and creates kind of an unlevel playing field in our efforts to have to power our industries with the lowest-cost energy solutions that are available.

These tariff policies seem to change almost daily. Is there an expectation that eventually things will settle down?

I think that’s the central challenge for the industry, that they don’t know where the ultimate outcome is going to fall. Nobody can really fully answer that question, and what makes it particularly challenging is that there’ve been so many different rationales given as to why we’re pursuing one tariff or another that it makes it hard to divine what the ultimate endgame is going to be. Is it about reducing a trade balance? Is it about supporting domestic manufacturing? Are there other policy goals that are trying to be achieved as a result of the tariffs? Not knowing that is what makes it very difficult for people to operate day to day.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Politico:

One of President Joe Biden’s signature climate initiatives is on the clock.

The Department of Energy is racing to close $25 billion in pending loans to businesses building major clean energy projects across the country. The push is one of Biden’s last chances to cement his climate legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year under the promise of shredding Democratic spending programs.

The department’s Loan Programs Office emerged as one of Biden’s most potentially powerful tools for greening the economy, making billion-dollar deals to restart a nuclear power plant in Michigan, fund lithium mining in Nevada, and build factories for churning out electric vehicle components in Ohio and Tennessee.

But it faces an uncertain future under Trump, who as president backed only one project under the program and proposed slashing the office’s budget. And Trump’s recent pick to lead DOE, Chris Wright, is a fracking executive who has criticized the use of “large government subsidies and mandates.”

That sets up a high-wire act in the closing weeks of Biden’s presidency — both for DOE and for energy companies seeking a financial lifeline from Washington.

Of the 29 loans and loan guarantees the administration has announced, 16 have yet to be completed. They include $9.2 billion for an EV battery project in Kentucky and Tennessee, a $1.5 billion guarantee for sustainable aviation fuel production in South Dakota, and $1 billion for electric vehicle charging infrastructure nationwide.

“There’s nothing like seeing your own coffin to get you moving faster,” said Andy Marsh, president and CEO of the hydrogen company Plug Power, which hopes to close a $1.7 billion loan from DOE.

Plug Power produces electrolyzers and other components needed to make hydrogen from electricity, a zero-emissions source of energy that could take a hit under Trump. The DOE loan would provide funding to help the company build up to six “green hydrogen��� plants.

Marsh said he’s aiming to lock in the loan guarantee “before Jan. 20th” — when Trump will be inaugurated.

“We know that it’s in our best interest to have that resolved by then,” he said.

The pending loans, some of which were announced almost two years ago, preview a potential fight under Trump: pitting efforts to reduce U.S. dependence on Chinese imports against Republicans’ desire to cut spending. The loans stem from Biden’s wider effort to spur a green building boom to erode China’s clean energy dominance and slash planet-warming pollution.

[beardedmrbean]

BANGKOK (AP) — Thai officials on Wednesday said they seized 238 tons of illegally imported electronic waste from the United States at the port of Bangkok, one of the biggest lots they've found this year.

The waste, which came in 10 large containers, was declared as mixed metal scrap but turned out to be circuit boards mixed in a huge pile of metal scrap, said Theeraj Athanavanich, director-general of the Customs Department.

The waste was found on Tuesday after the containers became the subject of a routine random inspection, officials said.

A U.N. report last year said electronic waste is piling up worldwide. Some 62 million tons of electronic waste was generated in 2022 and that figure is on track to reach 82 million tons by 2030, the report said. It said only 22% of the waste was properly collected and recycled in 2022 and that quantity is expected to fall to 20% by the end of the decade due to higher consumption, limited repair options, shorter product life cycles, and inadequate management infrastructure.

Theeraj said Thai authorities are looking to press charges including falsely declaring imported goods, illegally importing electronic waste and planning to re-export the waste back to its country of origin.

“It’s important that we take action on this kind of goods,” he said. “There are environmental impacts that are dangerous to the people, especially communities around factories that might import these things for processing, then recycling.”

Electronic waste creates huge health hazards. Many components are laden with lead and mercury, cadmium and other toxins. Recyclers are after gold, silver, palladium and copper, mainly from printed circuit boards, but lax controls mean that facilities often burn plastics to release encased copper and use unsafe methods to extract precious metals.

Thailand passed a ban on the import of a range of electronic waste products in 2020. The Cabinet in February approved an expanded list of the banned waste.

Sunthron Kewsawang, deputy director-general of the Department of Industrial Works, said officials suspected at least two factories in Samut Sakhon province, which borders Bangkok, are involved in importing the waste.

In January, the Customs Department said it seized 256 tons of illegally imported electronic waste from Japan and Hong Kong at a port in eastern Thailand.