131–140 of 153 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is actually partly the point, interdependent economies have stronger incentives to get along and not go to war with each other. It's one of the reasons the EU exists, for example: https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/iceland/evropust...
That's great for equal powers. When one power is weaker than the other, it's a recipe for exploitation.
I think the color purple is considered regal because whatever the dye used to be made from (crushed marine life or something like that) was very expensive. So if you had purple, it meant you were rich. It would be kinda funny if blue things became a sign of wealth because of this.
It wasn't just any purple, but the particular purple that came from a species of sea snail. For example, purple dyes were common in China many centuries before the Roman Tyrian Purple we're talking about, but never gained this luxury status. So it's worth pointing out that Tyrian Purple was an exceptionally long lasting dye; it did not fade when left in the sun, or after washing. Compared to other purple fabrics, Tyr…
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/gujarats-... seems like it fills in several missing details that other commenters have asked about (what is it about blue? is this more than just a single paintmaker in the Netherlands?). (I have my own gripes about that website, like how it tries to prevent copy-pasting via JS, or that it links to arbitrary phrases that aren't common topics or other news articles li…
Discussion from 9 months ago on HN about the new blue (top comment was interesting on pigment pricing): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25807199
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/gujarats-... seems like it fills in several missing details that other commenters have asked about (what is it about blue? is this more than just a single paintmaker in the Netherlands?). (I have my own gripes about that website, like how it tries to prevent copy-pasting via JS, or that it links to arbitrary phrases that aren't common topics or other news articles li…
Wonder if the new blue pigment, YInMn blue will start to replace some of the older pigments sorta like the NAND industry shift from planar NAND V-NAND, or if it's remaining stupidly expensive still. Discussion from 9 months ago on HN about the new blue (top comment was interesting on pigment pricing): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25807199
Chemical formula for phthalo blue is C32 H16 Cu N8 Of these, everything is super cheap and only Cu (Copper) really has any substantial cost. 1 kg of Copper (15.7 moles) is $10. 1 kg of hydrocarbons (~9 moles, Octane) is...about $0.48 at a US gas pump.
Chemical formula for YInMn blue is (loosely) Y In0.8 Mn0.2 O3 Of these, everything is super expensive and only the "O" (oxygen) is relatively cheap. 1 kg of Indium (8.7 moles) is over $600.
Doing some dimensional analysis with additional hidden molecular weights, you can make 1 kg (1.75 moles) of phthalo blue with less than $1-2 of raw materials. Currently the price of raw phthalo blue pigment is about $6 in bulk, so we can assume that processing costs about $4-5 per kg (65-80%), and the $1-2 of raw materials makes up 20-35%.
However, just the indium in 1kg (4.17 moles) of YInMn blue will cost you $275.
Now, this is twice as many moles vs phthalo blue so assuming (bad assumption) that you need roughly the same number of pigment molecules for visual perception you could get the equivalent "deepness" as 1kg of phthalo blue with half the weight of pigment ($140). But even if your Yttrium and Manganese were completely free, and processing cost you $0.00 per kilogram....you'd still be 10 times what the price of phthalo blue is in the current shortage!
Yttrium is $34/kg btw, so you'll need about $12 of this to make 1kg of YInMn. Manganese is $2/kg and you'll only need about $0.10 of manganese to make 1kg of YInMn.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/gujarats-... seems like it fills in several missing details that other commenters have asked about (what is it about blue? is this more than just a single paintmaker in the Netherlands?). (I have my own gripes about that website, like how it tries to prevent copy-pasting via JS, or that it links to arbitrary phrases that aren't common topics or other news articles li…
Wonder if the new blue pigment, YInMn blue will start to replace some of the older pigments sorta like the NAND industry shift from planar NAND V-NAND, or if it's remaining stupidly expensive still. Discussion from 9 months ago on HN about the new blue (top comment was interesting on pigment pricing): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25807199
My hope is that supply chain issues will make clear the downsides to execs (not just the workers) and governments of externalizing all manufacturing abroad and out of reach. Look at the chaos caused by a pandemic, now imagine war or purposefully using supply chain as leverage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s quite natural, normal humans also don’t hoard everything they can possibly think of needing... For most of human history we did exactly that. The deeply interconnected "JIT Consumption" world is really quite new. And if consumption patterns suddenly change then you can't buy toilet paper anymore.
I'd actually disagree pretty strongly with this. For most of human history the spoilage rate of pretty much everything we produced was so high that stockpiling goods for the sudden economic shocks was solely reserved to governing bodies. Remember how you built ten bazillion granaries in Civ? Sure, the game has taken quite a few liberties with history but we have evidence of communal food storage going all the way bac…
In the beginning of the pandemic the agency was heavily in local news when they started deliveries of protective gear from their stockpiles - but to be honest, some rubber bands of the stored masks did need replacing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wasn't just any purple, but the particular purple that came from a species of sea snail. For example, purple dyes were common in China many centuries before the Roman Tyrian Purple we're talking about, but never gained this luxury status. So it's worth pointing out that Tyrian Purple was an exceptionally long lasting dye; it did not fade when left in the sun, or after washing. Compared to other purple fabrics, Tyr…
So it was expensive to make and worth the expense involved because of it's unusual durability. It wasn't some artificial scarcity, like modern day diamonds, nor "valuable" merely because it was scarce. Thank you for that. That's a wonderful bit of trivia.
I like that it wasn't enough for it to be rare (which it was) and laborious to produce (which it was), but also that it had unusual and very practical properties.
It seems as if today, mainly due to marketing, luxury goods get away with just being rare (even if artificially), or just being laborious to produce (e.g. the old (false) notion that "a Rolls Royce is completely hand-made").
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's recent supply-chain thread calling-out a current bottle neck: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1451543776992845834.html https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543776992845834
That is amazing. Why is the Flexport CEO apparently the only one trying to diagnose and solve this critical problem? It's not even that hard. He lays out a relatively simple solution: 1) Executive order effective immediately over riding the zoning rules in Long Beach and Los Angeles to allow truck yards to store empty containers up to six high instead of the current limit of 2. Make it temporary for ~120 days. This w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is actually partly the point, interdependent economies have stronger incentives to get along and not go to war with each other. It's one of the reasons the EU exists, for example: https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/iceland/evropust...
Yeah, I get the theory -- it's not a particularly deep theory -- but does it really work? Consider that when nations go to war, they will bomb the hell out of each other's industries. So if they are willing to risk that when they go to war, why would the loss of mutual trade be enough of a threat to avert war? I don't see how the cost is increased between a bombed out factory that used to trade with you, and a bombed…
It would seem absurd for me as a French person (now living in Portugal) to want to bomb Germany for some economics reason, given that I have worked and befriended with dozens of very nice Germans. I could say the same of any European country. I’m not even special and I have friends and ex colleagues in virtually every EU country, from Greece, Poland, Sweden to Ireland Italy, Portugal and others.