Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

So, recent news brings an interesting question to mind, would a total cessation of US-China trade be worse for the US than a single thermonuclear missile strike on the US mainland?

[mitigatedchaos]

Well, we’d have “less money”, but hiring would go through the roof, national sovereignty would increase, and less than one million people would die (probably - difficult to calculate secondary economic effects of what would be an across-the-board price increase), so…

[invertedporcupine]

I’m pretty sure that both the US and China are reliant on the other for things that they can’t actually replace autarchically even at much higher prices (e.g. certain rare earth metals for the US, a lot of IP for China).  The adjustment would be pretty steep.

[collapsedsquid]

Think it’s the expertise that would be killer. I suspect are whole ranges of manufacturing activities that nobody in the US knows how to do anymore, could be decades before we can do them competently again.

You’s also have the problem of what this would to to southeast asia in general.  We may not intend to cut off trade with the rest, but this is the sort of move that could lead to the entire region being cut off to US trade. I guess we didn’t really need computers anyways.

[mitigatedchaos]

The problem when they went to build a smartphone in the US was not “no Americans know how to build a smartphone”, it was “we lack a sufficiently large and redundant supply chain to respond quickly to unexpected issues, because there isn’t a sufficient density of smartphone component manufacturers.”

[collapsedsquid]

This isn’t just “we’re building a new product“ this is “We are taking over all production of all existing products.“  This is an orders-of-magnitude difference..

[mitigatedchaos]

Sure, but aside from the fact that there are still lots of countries that aren’t China (including Taiwan, which is not China China) to import from, I think the issue is less “lack of expertise” and inability to build computers, than it is the necessary volume of capital expenditures to build all the new plants and buy all the new robots necessary to fill those plants.  And we still do a lot of manufacturing here.  Manufacturing revenue in the US is up, it’s manufacturing employment that’s down.

I’m not sure it would even be all that much of an increase in price for consumers after the capital expenditures are complete.  We’re probably already headed towards manufacture-on-demand programmable modular factories closer to the sites of sale, and this might just accelerate the trend.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

So, recent news brings an interesting question to mind, would a total cessation of US-China trade be worse for the US than a single thermonuclear missile strike on the US mainland?

[mitigatedchaos]

Well, we’d have “less money”, but hiring would go through the roof, national sovereignty would increase, and less than one million people would die (probably - difficult to calculate secondary economic effects of what would be an across-the-board price increase), so…

[invertedporcupine]

I’m pretty sure that both the US and China are reliant on the other for things that they can’t actually replace autarchically even at much higher prices (e.g. certain rare earth metals for the US, a lot of IP for China).  The adjustment would be pretty steep.

[collapsedsquid]

Think it’s the expertise that would be killer. I suspect are whole ranges of manufacturing activities that nobody in the US knows how to do anymore, could be decades before we can do them competently again.

You’s also have the problem of what this would to to southeast asia in general.  We may not intend to cut off trade with the rest, but this is the sort of move that could lead to the entire region being cut off to US trade. I guess we didn’t really need computers anyways.

[mitigatedchaos]

The problem when they went to build a smartphone in the US was not “no Americans know how to build a smartphone”, it was “we lack a sufficiently large and redundant supply chain to respond quickly to unexpected issues, because there isn’t a sufficient density of smartphone component manufacturers.”

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

we're actually an art collective out of Alaska, we've blocked all others from submitting anons from your Tumblr so that we can use your blog as an elaborate method to comment on the Discourse. each post is printed and hand-cut on posterboard for the eventual pamphlet airdrop over D. Trizzle

argumate answered:

this gives me humdrum existence a depth and meaning I never anticipated nor indeed ever wanted

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

So, recent news brings an interesting question to mind, would a total cessation of US-China trade be worse for the US than a single thermonuclear missile strike on the US mainland?

[mitigatedchaos]

Well, we’d have “less money”, but hiring would go through the roof, national sovereignty would increase, and less than one million people would die (probably - difficult to calculate secondary economic effects of what would be an across-the-board price increase), so…

[invertedporcupine]

I’m pretty sure that both the US and China are reliant on the other for things that they can’t actually replace autarchically even at much higher prices (e.g. certain rare earth metals for the US, a lot of IP for China).  The adjustment would be pretty steep.

[mitigatedchaos]

We had rare earth mining in America, it just shut down because China was cheaper.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

So, recent news brings an interesting question to mind, would a total cessation of US-China trade be worse for the US than a single thermonuclear missile strike on the US mainland?

[mitigatedchaos]

Well, we’d have “less money”, but hiring would go through the roof, national sovereignty would increase, and less than one million people would die (probably - difficult to calculate secondary economic effects of what would be an across-the-board price increase), so…

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

How about putting Whiteout on Fictionpress, as it's original content?

mitigatedchaos answered:

I’m considering what I want to do with it later, whether I want to publish in other locations or on a website of my own, and so on.  Aside from the fact that I’ll be starting a new part-time job soon, I’ve set it to update once per week so that I have time to mull over this decision.  

[mitigatedchaos]

Though, I do wonder if on AO3 or FictionPress if it would get lost in the sea of fiction writing.

[mitigatedchaos]

Actually, part of it is that I’m not entirely sure what to do with it.

> You have created a Book!  What would you like to do with it?
> uh _

The impression I get is that unless the book is published, it doesn’t really count, socially.  But I don’t read a lot of fiction, so maybe that isn’t accurate.  

And then publishing it might get it more readers by making it cost more and thus perceived as higher status, putting it on the shelves, etc. (And if I put the whole thing on one of those sites, it may not be possible to publish.)

On the other hand, within our community, there are works that become famous with no commercialization, there might be other means of commercialization, or no-commercialization might be better in order to spread my name, the future will not be the past, and so on.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

How about putting Whiteout on Fictionpress, as it's original content?

mitigatedchaos answered:

I’m considering what I want to do with it later, whether I want to publish in other locations or on a website of my own, and so on.  Aside from the fact that I’ll be starting a new part-time job soon, I’ve set it to update once per week so that I have time to mull over this decision.  

[mitigatedchaos]

Though, I do wonder if on AO3 or FictionPress if it would get lost in the sea of fiction writing.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

How about putting Whiteout on Fictionpress, as it's original content?

I’m considering what I want to do with it later, whether I want to publish in other locations or on a website of my own, and so on.  Aside from the fact that I’ll be starting a new part-time job soon, I’ve set it to update once per week so that I have time to mull over this decision.  

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Sometimes we’ll get “look, straight neurotypical women don’t *really* want a man that will perform masculinity, her boyfriend is wearing a pink shirt!” but then the dude is tall, buff, and confident, and he works in construction - the kind of man for whom a pink shirt shows that he is so masculine that wearing a pink shirt doesn’t harm his aura of masculinity, and thus further proves his masculinity.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[celestialmechanic]

Evidence has shown that guys are actually really good at things we happen to find meaningful and prestigious, whereas girls are only good at meaningless, frivolous things. Only people who think testosterone literally doesn’t exist would doubt this very scientific conclusion.

[mitigatedchaos]

Sex routinely judged as mates by earning power, social status, seek jobs with high earning power, prestige, work greater hours. Sex that has tendency to select opposite sex based on earning power and social status baffled.

[obiternihili]

That would make more sense as an “uncharitable interpretation” if A) it didn’t happen basically equally both ways, or equivalently if sons inherited nothing from their mothers and vice versa B) hunter-gatherer societies where we did most of the whole “evolving the parts of us that make us human” weren’t generally egalitarian, with basically every break from that pattern having to do with the introduction of agriculture.

I can’t help but wonder how much of this is eurocentrism anyways. Like ancient Rome was not a good place to be a woman, but intelligence and nobility were very desirable traits in young girls. Men were expected to continue their wife’s education both for their mutual benefit and as a means to bond over, but also for the secondary effects having the person doing one’s own primary caretaking be educated can do.

The Egyptians worshiped Isis - not just because she was a mother, but because she was cunning, a witch in pretty much every sense of the word who managed to trick Atum into giving her his Secret Name - something no other being in existence knows because of its creative potential - but also managed to be the primary agent in avenging her murdered husband and propelling her son to take back the throne after trekking around everywhere from Nubia to Lebanon.

“Women are more desirable stupid” is not a historically common thing, and “Men are more desirable smart” is not mutually exclusive with “Women are more desirable smart”

Like your sarcastic comeback works equally whether or not you substitute (male,female) or (female,male) and that’s got to be telling of something, isn’t it?

[mitigatedchaos]

That isn’t the same thing as stupid women being more desirable than smart women. Even traditionalists like Mailadreapta will acknowledge this. Not putting a trait at maximum priority does not mean putting it at negative priority.

Quite frankly, observing the mismatch in what straight neurotypical women say they want vs who they actually date means it will take a lot to convince me otherwise.