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Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

reuters.com

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Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#272

Lots of articles quote a $XXX billion dollars per day figure, but those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me. Are there any estimates as to the actual cost of this "mishap", due to e.g. spoilage, financial/contractual repercussions of late deliveries, personnel/fuel costs?

those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me Is it just me, but hasn't the mainstream financial news over the years taken on the feel of reality television? The talking heads are usually pushing some sort of narrative . Occasionally, reality overwhelms their ability to spin things, and they have to readjust and do damage control, as sometimes happens t…

That's just news to be. Random loose correlation of events plotted into a narrative.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slaves, lots and lots of slaves, many of whom died. Exactly as you'd imagine something of epic proportions being made in the 19th century.

It was built with corvee labor, which is not quite the same thing: unpaid, yes, but done by farmers etc as a form of taxation in kind.

Slavery doesn't have to do with whether it was paid or not (many slaves have historically been paid as well) but rather the voluntariness of their work.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#274
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me Is it just me, but hasn't the mainstream financial news over the years taken on the feel of reality television? The talking heads are usually pushing some sort of narrative . Occasionally, reality overwhelms their ability to spin things, and they have to readjust and do damage control, as sometimes happens t…

Drama sells better than facts.

Boring, facts and research based industry/financial news exists. But it can cost upwards of a couple hundred thousand dollars per year. If you want real news, you'll have to pay for it.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#275

I honestly love that it was freed using the "boring" solution. No need for any of the crazy solutions people proposed on the internet. Just careful and measured execution of proven techniques.

Yes, this was what one would call the default approach of digging and tugging. I am very glad it worked. However, there was a distinct possibility, that this approach would not have worked, and I think all the discussions were about possible alternative approaches. If the high tide at full moon had not provided enough lift, then they would have had to figure out a way to unload the ship.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#276
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We see this all the time with political polling. "Oh, Nate Silver said Trump only had a 30% chance of winning the election, but he did, so Nate Silver is an idiot!"

Nate Silver wasn’t just a little off - he was massively off outside of accepted norms for polling. Multiple times no less.

No, he really wasn't. In 2016 he was one of the most optimistic of the major poll aggregators on Trump's chances; he had Trump at 30% when others had him at much lower odds.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gav...

> Our final forecast, issued early Tuesday evening, had Trump with a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.1 By comparison, other models tracked by The New York Times put Trump’s odds at: 15 percent, 8 percent, 2 percent and less than 1 percent.

As for 2020:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-werent-great-...

> This year was definitely a little weird, given that the vote share margins were often fairly far off from the polls (including in some high-profile examples such as Wisconsin and Florida). But at the same time, a high percentage of states (likely 48 out of 50) were “called” correctly, as was the overall Electoral College and popular vote winner (Biden). And that’s usually how polls are judged: Did they identify the right winner?

(He also doesn't do the polling. He's an analyst, not a pollster.)

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree it's incalculable, I don't mean that in the "it's too big of a number" sort of way but in the "we can't possibly know" kind of way: 1) The scale and depth of the disruption makes it impractical to figure in any kind of accurate way and 2) The disruption will have introduced hypotheticals that nay spiral out themselves (butterfly effect style) e.g. some retailer may have lost a customer who went elsewhere, some…

> some retailer may have lost a customer who went elsewhere, some supplier may have lost a retailer who went elsewhere, etc But then that also created profits for another supplier!

And the increase in profits of that second supplier might surpass the losses of the first supplier if the customer made their original decision based on cost. You can frame this as increasing economic output. Let's break all the canals[1].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#279
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some retailer may have lost a customer who went elsewhere, some supplier may have lost a retailer who went elsewhere, etc But then that also created profits for another supplier!

And the increase in profits of that second supplier might surpass the losses of the first supplier if the customer made their original decision based on cost. You can frame this as increasing economic output. Let's break all the canals[1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

But the customer will end up paying more! It's a never-ending problem!

(Increasing economic outputs by breaking all canals is the perfect example of why I'm always worried about gradient descent)

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#280
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would image the opposite tbh, that $9b of delayed goods per day is not lost, it's just delayed. Most of that goods, unless they are perishable goods, will sell like normal, just a bit later. There is obviously a loss here on increased costs and loss of sell opportunities due to the delay, but that figures are mega inflated IMO.

Also... ships are slow. The voyage from the Suez canal to Rotterdam or Hamburg is at least six days, so there was quite some time to prepare for a gap in supply.

Well, this is a supply delay in hundreds of equally sized or larger ships. This is a delay in a majority of the global shipping industry of at LEAST a week, and shipping scheduling will be thrown off for months by this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/mf705...

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/meopv9/s...

That is a LOT of cargo that's suddenly going to arrive 2 or 3 times later than expected. Huge economic impact. I really don't understand why people on HN are pushing so hard against the idea that this is just an economic blip.

Is there anyone involved in the industry that can chime in?

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