#Logistics

[discopaws]

Letters to mail? Our Bunnies won't fail!

[probablyasocialecologist]

The supply chain capitalism of AI. This image partially captures the supply chain of AI as a global and complex phenomenon. Natural resources, components and materials to build AI infrastructure are extracted, shipped, manufactured and produced across the globe. For instance, NVIDIA obtains tungsten from Brazil; gold from Colombia and tantalum from Kazakhstan. Minerals are assembled to manufacture GPUs by TSMC. NVIDIA sells GPUs across data centres in the world. Given the refresh rates of these materials, data centres sent their components to recycle plants or dumps. The human labour wrapped-up in this chain includes, data labellers, logistics drivers, data scientists, miners, data centre operators and electronic waste dismantlers, who are also scattered across different geographies. Source: NVIDIA (2022) and fieldwork.

The supply chain capitalism of AI: a call to (re)think algorithmic harms and resistance through environmental lens

[supplyside]

Japanese port operations

[pratchettquotes]

"He's started catching fish," said the Senior Wrangler. "That means he'll come over all smug and start asking what plans we've got for making a boat at any minute, you know what he's like."

The Dean looked at some sketches he'd made on a rock.

"How hard can it be to build a boat?" he said. "People with bones in their noses build boats. And we are the end product of thousands of years of enlightenment. Building a boat is not beyond men like us, Senior Wrangler."

"Quite, Dean."

"All we have to do is search this island until we find a book with a title like Practical Boat-Building for Beginners."

"Exactly. It'll be plain sailing after that, Dean. Ahaha."

Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

[vintageeurope]

Liverpool, England 1860/80

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The union representing foremen at British Columbia ports has issued a 72-hour strike notice, according to the association representing its employers.   The B.C. Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) said Thursday that if the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 514 takes strike action, it would begin on Monday at 8 a.m. PT. The BCMEA says the escalation came after it presented the union a final offer on Wednesday, which it says will provide ILWU Local 514 members with significant gains in wages and benefits, as well as a signing bonus. 

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[methewizard]

Spotting transport company trucks while travelling is so fun for my gay + chronically online brain because I'll spot a truck that says "GEORGE TRANS" in big bold letters and I'll be like. Congrats on coming out king.

[greatwyrmgold]

Dungeon Logistics

Between the currently-airing Dungeon Meshi anime and my recent binge of the manga (I finally got past the 40% mark), I've been thinking about the logistics of long-term dungeoneering.

The Problem

Military theorists and historians have some rules of thumb about what soldiers can be expected to do and need. [citation] For instance, they usually need around three pounds of food per day and can carry around 90-120 pounds of stuff. (The total varies less by strength and more by how much of that strength you can convince soldiers to use carrying stuff the general cares about.)

Theoretically, this means soldiers can carry a month or two of food; however, hardtack makes a pretty terrible weapon. Most of their carrying capacity is taken up by inedible (and also important) gear; the standard rule of thumb seems to be that soldiers can carry about ten days' worth of food.

The same is presumably more or less true for dungeoneers. A wizard's robe, staff, and spellbook probably weigh less than a sword and a suit of armor, but that space is going to get taken up by the miscellaneous tools you need to survive in a dungeon that aren't necessary for armies walking through inhabited lands.

In short, in the absence of Senshi, dungeoneers can only spend about a week and a half in the dungeon. Obviously, you need to set aside time to return to the surface, so you can't go deeper than five days. Well, you can—starvation doesn't kill you instantly—but you really shouldn't.

Extra Cargo

What if we added some people who only carried food? That would help some. Including two porters per three dungeoneers would roughly double the group's operational endurance, from ten days to twenty.

But the number of porters grows rapidly as the desired trip into the dungeon grows longer; operational endurance to 30 days requires four porters per dungeoneer. Even if the dungeon is spacious for a party of dozens to be possible, having that party be 80% or more noncombatants is a recipe for disaster.

What about pack animals? Mules require about five times as much food as humans (assuming they can't graze in the dungeon), but they can carry close to 300 pounds of supplies. One mule per three dungeoneers extends operational endurance from 10 to 15 days, a second to 17.

That's not bad, but pack animals work better when they can graze. If the dungeon has grass or equivalent foliage, one mule per three dungeoneers increases operational endurance to about 26 days, a second to 35, and one mule per dungeoneer increases it to 39. But most dungeons don't have much to graze on.

For the spendthrift dungeoneer, pack animals have one advantage over porters: You can eat them.

Butchery

I can't find any actual data about how much meat you get from butchering a mule, but combining other data lets me estimate 300 pounds (with large error bars).

So you could theoretically buy a (relatively) cheap mule at the surface, bring it with you through the dungeon, butcher it when you'd eaten through the supplies on its back, and live off its meat for a while. In this case, you probably don't even need to feed it on the way down! I have been informed that you do, in fact, need to feed it.

Five dungeoneers could live off the supplies carried by an increasingly malnourished mule for about 19 9.5 days. The mule would probably lose weight during that time, but the butcher could probably get at least a hundred pounds of decent meat off the poor critter. That would give them at least a week of extra rations, plus whatever they carried on their own backs, for a total operational endurance of at least five three and a half weeks.

This strategy probably works best if the adventurers are planning to go establish a camp after a few days and linger there for a few weeks. That would let them slaughter the mule as soon as they reach their base camp and free them from somehow carrying a whole mule carcass worth of food around afterwards.

This kind of strategy could enable supply depots relatively close to the surface. If we increase the party from five dungeoneers and a mule to five merchants and twenty mules, they could supply adventurers going a bit deeper. They'd need to charge a pretty hefty surcharge—at the very least, they'd need to cover the cost of killing so many mules!

It's also possible to create supply depots without slaughtering pack animals, but they would need to be smaller, closer to the surface, or both.

It would, strictly speaking, be possible to make a deeper supply depot, supplied by a larger depot. It would probably be impractical, though.

Conclusion

Dungeoneers weighed down by their own equipment can only spend brief periods of time exploring a dungeon. If they include some porters or pack animals in the party, they can increase that to maybe a month (two weeks down, two weeks up).

A sufficiently profitable dungeon economy might enable a set of outposts where adventurers can rest and resupply between treks deeper into the dungeon. If enough pack animals were slaughtered, they might be able to bring supplies a week or two deeper than the surface market.

In the right circumstances, dungeoneers might be able to delve a full month below the sunlit world without eating anything except wheat bread and mule meat. But this requires a small army of merchants and herdsmen and porters and butchers and so on, feeding not just the dungeoneers themselves but all the people supporting them, and all the people supporting those people, reaching through countless miles of cavern and across acres of farmland.

And of course, all of that assumes that no step in this process gets disrupted by the dangers of a dungeon; no wargs killing your mule, no warg packs overrunning the outpost, no getting lost in the twisty little maze of passages all alike. The higher you build that house of cards, the farther you'll far if it fails.

Senshi had the right idea.

[silly-lazytown-polls]

[vintagepromotions]

'South Wales Docks For Quick Despatch' poster (1947). Artwork by Albert J. Martin.

[jeffffffffest]

JeFFFFFFFFest 2024 Gift Exchange

This exchange is for fanworks based on Jeff Satur’s music videos and related media.

‘Related media’ includes characters such as the rain god from Jeff’s Halloween fan art Instagram post, or the fallen angel from Call Me by Fire. A resource list with links to media will be available in the Discord server (link to join).

While all Jeffs may be used as visual/auditory/character inspiration, characters from acting roles (KinnPorsche, He She It, Ingredients) are not the focus of this event. Crossovers such as Kim/Sunshine are in the spirit of the event, but a direct KinnPorsche fanwork is not.

Why JeFFFFFFFFest?

Is it because of all of the Jeffs possibly named Jeff? Is it because that’s how we’re feeling after each new release (F!)? Is it because they represent all of the Fun Fabulous Fanworks we’ll be creating? Yes. (There are eight Fs for Space Shuttle No. 8, if you care.)

This exchange is open to all types of fanworks, including text, visual art, audio, and video. The sign-up form will prompt you to list which types of fanworks you’d like to offer and receive. Everyone will be matched with a recipient who meets their fanwork types and prompts as closely as possible. Assignments will remain private until the collection is revealed, so please keep that information secret from your recipient!

You are only required to create one fanwork, in the medium of your choosing. If your recipient requests visual art or written text, you can choose which type of fanwork to create based on their prompts and what inspires you the most. If you’re inspired to create multiple fanworks, that’s a bonus, but not expected or required.

Once assignments are sent out, a channel will be opened in the Discord server for people to share their prompts if they choose. You’re welcome to create additional fanworks as 'treats' based on those prompts and submit them to the AO3 collection. There’s no limit to how many prompts you can fill or how many works you can create!

After the reveal, there will be a 'remix round' for fanworks inspired by the posted exchange works. This is a free-for-all where anything goes! You can make fanvids inspired by art, record podfics of written works, or anything else that inspires you. You can opt out of or limit your participation in this round with a permission statement.

Both the 'treat' and 'remix' rounds are completely optional, and as such we encourage you to create anything, no matter how small or how unfamiliar you are with that form of fanwork! This is a great place for fanworks like moodboards, fanmixes/playlists, and anything else that doesn't fit in the main gift exchange. Of course, large prompt fills are also welcome!

Rules

Please bring complaints or concerns privately to the exchange mods; we're here to help make this a positive experience for everyone! A complaint form (anonymous by choice) can be found here, or feel free to reach out to a mod on discord or tumblr. Respect all DNWs (including requests for no NSFW content) and include appropriate content warnings in posts and discussions; when in doubt, at a minimum, AO3 warnings should always be tagged/warned, or talk to a mod if you're unsure. To ensure that artist credit is always appropriately given, the use of AI and/or gifting AI-generated content is strictly prohibited.

Bigotry and harassment of any kind will not be tolerated. Respect and be mindful of all fellow community members.

If you have questions for your recipient or about the exchange in general, please contact one of the mod team. If you need to drop out for any reason, please let the mods know as soon as possible. Your moderators for this event are @airgiodslv, @mousydentist, and @shubaka (on discord and tumblr).*

*To the best of our knowledge, none of the mods are secretly Jeff.

Schedule

Sign-ups:  June 1-20

Assignments Out:  June 23

Check-in: July 21

Deadline:  August 4

Pinch-hits:  August 5-11

Reveal:  August 12

Remix round: August 12-25

For the most up to date information, please refer to this blog (posts tagged #logistics) and/or join our discord server. Also, we're aware that things happen! We want to make this event as fun as possible, so if you ever feel overwhelmed, please talk to a mod at any time about an extended timeline or enlisting a pinch-hitter. The pinch-hitters have from August 5-11, so please let us know ASAP if you need support.

Our AO3 collection is here. Links to fics and posts made on other sites (eg, tumblr, twitter, archive.org) will be reblogged/cross-posted to this blog. If you don't want your gift to be on tumblr, please reach out to a mod ASAP so we can make other arrangements.

Sign-up Form

The sign-up form can be found here! Reminder that sign-ups will be open until June 20th.

Happy Jeff-ing everyone! 🪐

[probablyasocialecologist]

Through more than 500 case studies pulling from sociology, anthropology, history, economics, political science, forestry, and ecology, Ostrom and her colleagues identified a set of principles that bottom-up, community-led organizations had used to successfully manage commons. Among them were clearly defined boundaries for a commons; monitoring of the resource and its users; graduated sanctions for anyone who stepped out of line; and a mechanism for conflict resolution. Ostrom’s work showed these principles could be managed by people from any background absent the expertise of executives or bureaucrats. “Humans have great capabilities, and somehow we’ve had some sense that the officials had genetic capabilities that the rest of us didn’t have,” Ostrom said late in life. “I hope we can change that.”

[...]

If counterpoints to “Tragedy” exist in great numbers, across regions and resources, why did Hardin’s essay sink its teeth into our collective understanding of the commons? Thomas Dietz, a frequent Ostrom collaborator, blames society’s tendency toward “catastrophism” and “simple, universal explanations.” As the authors of a retrospective paper put it in 2019, Hardin “contributed a catchphrase that caught the prevailing winds of public discourse,” even though the pasture metaphor was “reductionist and distorting.”

[hope-for-the-planet]

Hi :) sorry to bother you.

If it's not too much trouble, do you mind going into your blog settings and switching on 'enable custom theme'?

At the moment, if I send your blog to my parents, they won't be able to scroll far because tumblr will force them to make an account. But if you enable a custom theme, they'll be able to browse your blog via hope-for-the-planet dot tumblr dot com.

(alternatively, if you have a version of this blog outside of tumblr, or an RSS feed of it, please let me know! :) )

thanks a million and no pressure x

Hi Anon! Thanks for the heads up that my blog wasn't accessible without making an account--it's fixed now.

Making a version of this blog outside of tumblr has been on my mental radar for awhile now, but unfortunately I haven't had a chance to make it a reality yet. Hopefully someday!

[supplyside]

marshalling yard

[warsofasoiaf]

“ As they say, tactics wins battles, and logistics wins wars.” what’s the difference between tactic and logistics?

They are two wholly different fields of military science.

Tactics is the discipline of maneuver during combat. When you look at a battle map and see lines and arrows on the map - how units formed up, where they stood, when they moved and in what direction, etc., these are tactics. During a battle, maneuvers and deployment can be critical means by which one side prevails over the other and secures the field or other short-term objective. Tactics is frequently studied because they tend to be quite dramatic when employed well (or botched horribly). A dramatic flanking attack or a mistimed charge do create effective and compelling stories, which is one reason why people remember them so well.

Logistics is the science of supplying an army, from the overall procurement of weapons systems down to the smallest resupply of food and ammo in the field. An army is a large-scale consumer of materiel and requires constant supply to maintain itself in top fighting condition; there's only so far even the cleverest jury-rig will take you. Armies require food, ammunition, and spare parts to function appropriately and developing and securing supply chains and resupply is a challenge even in our own technologically-advanced day, where computers can help simplify a lot when it comes to timetables and bookkeeping. Arguably, even modern militaries struggle to produce an effective logistics system, it's one of the things that made the US Armed Forces so effective despite being far from their own home shores.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King