#Logistics

[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

[marmota-b]

I have bad news for you. Trains sometimes get stuck in traffic, too. Because of the whole, you know, sharing the tracks thing.

Source: I travel almost exclusively by train (and sometimes bus), in a country with one of the densest railway networks in use in the world, and just last week, travelling to the other side of the country, I unwittingly ran into a Situation where about a quarter of the country - not the one I came from - had been without electricity, and some trains were 130 minutes late, and in that situation, unsurprisingly, the trains that were monumentally late had priority so my train was left standing between stations in Prague for about fifteen minutes while the other trains were sent on to the main train station before us.

So, yeah. Traffic happens even on railway tracks. Because of the whole you can't have two trains on the same track at the same time, they have to maneuver around each other in places where there are more tracks, thing.

they should invent a bus that never gets stuck in traffic because it's on its own path separated from the roads. and then chain multiple of them together and put it on rails. has anyone had this idea before.

[discopaws]

Letters to mail? Our Bunnies won't fail!

[supplyside]

Japanese port operations

[art-deco-shrimp]

it is honestly amazing how much of writing and editing is just. logistics.

Well, that explains An Ding Peak.

it is honestly amazing how much of writing and editing is just. logistics. like... do i use a name here or a pronoun? if i move this dialogue tag to the middle of this line and break it in half, does the end of the line hit harder that way? what if i move the tag to the front? what if i remove it entirely? ...wait, whose point of view am i in; can i reasonably say this character is appalled, or must i say they look or seem or sound appalled? is this a deliberate action or a step-removed one; is her hand closing on his shoulder, or is she closing her hand on his shoulder? environment environment environment, we need to break all this dialogue up with some narration, the scene is coming untethered. what! are! they doing! with! the rest of their bodies that are not hands! fuck fuck fuck FUCK i forgot we covered this two chapters ago and now i either need to cut this whole chunk or find a reason to reprise the conversation from earlier. name or pronoun? name or pronoun? name or pronoun? move this clause around in this sentence? oh i'll add this phrase-- nope, never mind, past!me added the same phrase two lines down. okay, if i add too much environmental narration it's going to take away from this bit, but not enough and it won't feel grounded. what if i move this to its own line? where the FUCK are their hands?

[hope-for-the-planet]

Hope for the Planet is now on Bluesky!

Not to worry if you are like me and use tumblr as your primary social media--nothing about the tumblr blog is going to change. But I want to extend the reach of Hope for the Planet when I know it helps a lot of people, as well as have a backup home if tumblr ever unexpectedly goes belly up.

In all honesty, I never used Twitter and don't feel like I have a great grasp on how do Bluesky "correctly", so please be patient with any potential awkward fumbling over there. All good news stories posted here will also be posted on Bluesky on roughly the same schedule--longer form posts (like answers to asks, etc.) will be linked separately.

[janeuary-month]

Hi everyone! Janeuary 2025 is over, but it was a great success! Below, you'll find more information about the 2025 event:

End-of-event round-up post

Prompts

Rules

FAQs

Posting instructions

Save the date for Janeuary 2026 throughout the entire month of January next year! 2026 prompts will be shared in September.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!

This event is organized by @firawren

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

How do you think the Yeerks kept their Hork-Bajir fed between the invasion of their homeworld and the Earth invasion? The one world we're sure that they invaded was the Taxxon homeworld, which was supposed to be mostly desert, likely with minimal trees and tree bark. If the Yeerks really would end up destroying the natural beauty of planets that they conquered like Ax says in Book 4, I can't imagine feeding all the Hork-Bajir would be easy. Unlike Taxxons, who eat anything.

All right, so. You can get up to 12 square yards of mulch from Home Depot for $560 in today's dollars, which is $285 in 1997 dollars. We don't know exactly how many hork-bajir-controllers are left after Alloran's ethnic cleansing, but from Visser I'm guessing it's a few hundred to a couple thousand. Of those, not every one is posted on Earth, so I'm willing to bet there are only ~1000 hork-bajir on Earth.

How much does a hork-bajir eat? Well, an Earth animal that's about 7' long and herbivorous — I'm going with okapi — eats about 35lbs of plant matter a day. A cubic yard of mulch weighs about 600lbs, according to Home Depot. So 1 cubic yard of mulch is about 17 days' food for one hork-bajir, or 1 day's food for 17. Which means you could get 204 days' food (12*17) out of $285 in 1997.

If there are 1000 hork-bajir, then you'll need 5 of those 12-yd shipments a day, which comes out to $1425 in then-dollars, $2802 in now-dollars. UNESCO says that cheap bulk meals for humans can be calculated at $3 a meal or $9 a day with U.S. ingredients, meaning it'd cost a nonprofit ~$9000 a day to feed 1000 humans. So if feeding a human costs about $9 a day and feeding a hork-bajir costs about $2.75 a day in today's money, then I'd say they're probably feeding the hork-bajir just fine. I'd even venture that they're spending more on the "grilled chicken, roast potatoes, steamed broccoli" (Visser) the humans get than on their hork-bajir.

[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

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Iveco Stralis 570XP 4×2 Abarth Emotional Truck, 2017. A truck that celebrated Iveco becoming supplier of heavy-duty logistics vehicles for the Abarth racing division

[probablyasocialecologist]

“Sargon developed this new form of governance by conquering all the Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia, creating what most historians call the first empire in the world.” He added that, until these latest excavations, information on that empire was limited to fragmentary and bombastic royal inscriptions or much later copies of Akkadian inscriptions “which are not completely reliable”. Of the new discovery, he said: “It is extremely important because, for the first time, we have concrete evidence – with artefacts in situ.” He has been astonished by the detail in those records: “They note absolutely everything down. If a sheep dies at the very edge of the empire, it will be noted. They are obsessed with bureaucracy.” The tablets, containing cuneiform symbols, an early writing system, record affairs of state, deliveries and expenditures, on everything from fish to domesticated animals, flour to barley, textiles to precious stones. Dana Goodburn-Brown, a British-American conservator, is cleaning the tablets so that they can be transcribed. The work is both painstaking and exciting, she said: “People just think things come out of the ground and look like you see them in the museum, but they don’t.” One tablet lists different commodities: “250 grams of gold / 500 grams of silver/ … fattened cows… / 30 litres of beer.” Even the names and professions of the citizens are recorded, Rey said: “Women, men, children – we have names for everyone. “Women held important offices within the state. So we have high priestesses, for example, although it was a society very much led by men. But the role of the woman was at least higher than many other societies, and it’s undeniable based on the evidence that we have.” The jobs listed range from stone-cutters to the sweeper of the temple floor. Rey said: “Being able to sweep the floor where the gods and the high priest were located was very important. The cities of ancient Mesopotamia in theory all belonged to the gods. The society worked for the temple state.” The tablets were found at the site of a large state archive building, made of mud-brick walls and divided into rooms or offices. Some of the tablets contain architectural plans of buildings, field plans and maps of canals.

15 March 2025

[scapegoated-if]

just received word that tumblr may be being put down… from what i can see some are more sceptical than others but with this level of uproar in general, it’s better to be safe than sorry!

i made a backup via bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/scapegoated-if.bsky.social

i’ll still be posting here primarily, but i wanted some form of damage control

Stay groovy!

[vintageeurope]

Helsinki, Finland 1890s

[supplyside]

LNG tanker at the breaker yard