Still think TITNC3: Return of the Iceberg was peak

The media “professionals” are just trying to beat the Twitterverse to the stories. Facts be damned.

 

I assure you, the dick drawing was absolutely intentional. It was one of the first things brought up in some of the maritime groups I'm part of on FB. There were three typical responses there: Laughter, head shaking and "Meh, I've drawn bigger on the AIS". Hell, we had six hours to kill during one of the voyages during my last work hitch and I thought for sure I'd see a cock&balls on our past track. Talked with the mate that was on the bridge and he passed on that the captain very specifically told him no. It's one of those things that in all likelihood only one or two people in the office would have noticed if they even look at the track line, they usually just look at the current position, course and speed.

As to why it doesn't happen more often... it does. Ships eff up in the canal all the time, at least weekly and probably daily. It rarely makes the news outside of the maritime circles. Remember when the Emma Maersk (largest container ship in the world at the time) suffered uncontrollable flooding of the engine room and a loss of propulsion upon entering the canal? No? Yeah... I didn't see that get reported anywhere outside of the professional discussions. There was a tremendous amount of luck in that one. If it had happened 30 minutes later or sooner she would have blocked the canal. This story blew up big because there are already significant issues in the maritime transportation. Remember the container shortage that was in the news a few months back? That's still going on. Covid took out a big chunk of the work force in many ports. LA/Long Beach, for example, only had a fraction of the people available for unloading ships. Box boats are still stacked up on the hook off of California. Additional ripples have happened across the North Pacific this winter with several major container losses due to weather. We're talking thousands of containers into the ocean. Some of those ships were able to continue on to their destination, most of them turned around and returned to the closest safe harbor.

Right now consumers are buy buy buy in many parts around the world. It's estimated that 80% of the world's trade by volume travels by ship, 70% of the world's trade by value. The system is strung tight as a wire right now and any little hiccup causes major repercussions. Consumers have gotten used to relatively instant gratification. They want things on the shelves. They want things stocked and ready for them to walk away with. Add in "just in time" manufacturing to the mix and you'll see that we've built a system that isn't very tolerable to shock, nor can it easily adapt to disruption. Take this incident in the Suez, for example. It's blocked now. Put yourself in the position of a ship owner who has goods that they need to get from Asia to the US East Coast. What do you do? You don't know when the canal is going to reopen, nor do you know how long it will take if your ship shows up at the canal. Will it be freed today? Will it be freed in a week? If it takes a week or longer, then it starts making sense to go the long way around, but that'll add at least a week and probably cost a million or more in extra fuel, consumables and crew wages. The other option is to wait at the canal. You can bribe your way to the front of the line and get through quicker (more $$ out of pocket), but the canal still has to be opened back up. Meanwhile, this decision has to be made for 50 ships a day. So, lets say that it takes a week to free the ship. You've sent some ships around, some ships to wait. Reopening the canal doesn't immediately solve the problem. Now you've got your ships that waited arriving very nearly at the same time as the ships that took the long way around. We don't have that kind of cargo handling capacity. So there are going to be more delays, more ripples. This will all be gone from the news about 12 hours after the canal reopens, but the impact on port infrastructure, trucking, etc is going to be felt well into the summer. That's why it's a big deal.

Yeah. I usually look at the headlines and then start poking around the local news, FB discussions or professional journals to get a better idea as to what happened. It's a race to get clicks and have the scoop, truth be damned.

As for the dick... I believe it was absolutely intentional. You go through the canal in convoys of ships heading the same direction. Getting into the convoy is usually a mess. You're trying to get a bunch of ships of different types, with different propulsion systems operated by people from many different cultures all together in a line at the same speed heading the same way. Many of the ships have been sitting at anchor waiting their turn. It doesn't take much to throw the whole thing out of whack. Ship engines sometimes don't start. Sometimes there are problems getting the anchor up. Sometimes someone shows up at the last minute waving a giant stack of cash to get to the front of the line (seriously, I've been on a ship that did it). Sometimes you get kicked out of line because your canvas bridge wing cover doesn't provide enough shade for the pilots (nevermind that the pilots will spend their entire time in the wheelhouse mooching cartons of Marlboros off the captain). I could easily see the Ever Given doing their part to get ready and start heading for the convoy. They're on time, everything's going smooth and then they get a call that there's going to be a delay. So what do they? They can go back to anchor, but that takes time and there's always a chance that *something* won't work after they put the hook down and stop the engine. Easiest thing is to just putt around to kill time. What do you do when killing time? well... why not have a little fun, right? Not like anyone is really looking at your track line, right?

 

This has been a problem that goes well out past just the media. Everyone wants to be the first, so they release things that are half done, wrong, or just broken... then they fix them later.

Look at the gaming industry, they regularly release half done games, then patch them day one, and every week after that. Just so their game can come out first. The news is doing the same thing, they are releasing half asses reports, then going back to edit them.

I miss the days where you had to buy a game, and it couldnt be updated, it had to be done when it was released. Same with news, when it was printed newspaper, you better hope its right the first time because you dont get to edit a paper.

The internet in whole has made people lazy because they know they can just go back and fix it when someone complains.

 

Have you ever noticed that the “news” only errors if favor of one side of the “spectrum” and NEVER in favor of the other side?

That is by design.

 

Is that a Big Texan, eating a Big Texan?

 

Hey its chet hanks chest tat hmmm ?

 

Time for some of these...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzSqLCBP0Qk

 

So doing taxes today...I've only BOUGHT crypto...But holy crap...keep track of those buys and sells....
But oddly it appears that until you tell them presently the lRS has no idea?'
https://cryptotrader.tax/blog/gemini-taxes

 

Like most government things, they don't know until you present it to them.

 

whats everyone planning to put their next stimulus in?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...parate-4-trillion-infrastructure-package.html

 

That's another reason why I'm buying and holding Link. The plan goes like this. Buy lots of Link. Hold lots of Link. Retire and sell lots of Link. From Mexico. lol

 

If $GME is still on sale you already know the answer

 

might swing nike

 

https://twitter.com/PinkslipPanther/status/1376304244001697799

https://twitter.com/cdntradegrljenn/status/1376307370138202112

sounds like they found oil.

i ended up getting in for 1000 shares at .025.
the only thing that sucks is that fidelity charged an international fee of $50.

hoping it hits at least .50 in the future so i don't feel bad about the trade.

if you have TD the charge is only $22

 

Sounds like a good hedge ... but could it go down too if $$ dollar crashed ?

 

Link has partnerships worldwide. In 10 years it will be exponentially more valuable then it is today. The coin is just a means of payment for executing the smart contract. There's a limited number so as partnerships and contract use goes up so does the price of the coin. The potential of it is truly untapped so far. The US dollar could go the way of the Denarius and it won't affect the value of Link.

 

Curious what your thought are on Coinbase as purchase method. Have some friends who use it but they are not to the point where they'll eventually put cypto in their own secure wallet.