…in so many senses it’s a senseless horror
…& yet it seems as though there was some degree of method to the madness which would seem to preclude the possibility
…either way, what motivates a person to go to such lengths to achieve such ends at such a time as this I struggle to comprehend…which I guess is either a relief or a concern depending on where you sit with the whole “know thy enemy” thing
…which I guess is at least part of why before I ran into that story I’d stumbled across some others
…well, there’s a cheery thought
…which I guess is on the encouraging side of 50%…but a little low to provide the hoped for result if translated to 4 in 10 people flouting those restrictions…at some level viruses in vector terms are a numbers game & there’s a whole world of statistical significance in a couple of dozen percentage points of a population the size of the US
…& that isn’t the only false start on the field
…so a wise person might be wary of making any more of those
…in fact, you might be assuming that a certain amount of “slow & steady wins the race” might be the order of the day
…some might even go further
…although I’m pretty sure the only thing I’m sure about when it comes to how things are likely to turn out over the next few months is that I’m not at all sure…but it seems sure to be a good time for some
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/18/amazon-quarterly-results-10000-dollars-a-second
…& hard on others
…so when stuff like this comes up
…let’s not be forgetting this stuff
…when bringing up this kind of stuff
…& let’s just generally not be forgetting any of this kind of stuff any time soon
…particularly in light of this kind of stuff
Following the drawdown, the company expects to have cash in hand of $1.5 billion, while $250 million will be available under the remaining revolving credit facility. The principal balance of borrowings under the revolving credit facility is due on Feb 14, 2025, and Grainger does not have any debt maturities prior to that date. The company expects to have adequate liquidity to navigate through this tough period.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/grainger-reduces-credit-facility-to-boost-liquidity-position-2020-04-01
…sure must be nice to “have adequate liquidity to navigate through this tough period”…wonder what it is about that state of affairs that means you think the thing to do is to re-sell vital and potentially life-saving equipment to the taxpayer at approaching a 100% markup?
…I don’t want to say this goes beyond the usual levels of effective embezzlement of public funds but some of these incompetent morons who claim to be in charge while maintaining everything is someone or something else’s fault & anyway will all be fine if only everyone would just believe the horseshit they’re peddling about having it all under control…but
…if you’re in bed with that kind of business practice while you’re busy telling the world & his dog all about how you’re a wartime fucking president…maybe remember that Truman considered profiteering to be treason…which some consider to be a capital crime…even in the Capitol
…just sayin’
Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog Dot Com is back 4/20 to 4/24, so there’s that.
First real post is up about baseball in Taiwan. If I smoked I’d light up to celebrate.
My company does business with these commercial distributors like Grainger.
Their sole reason to exist is to insert themselves (plus a mark-up) between a producer and a buyer.
A lot of 3M products and industrial supplies cannot be purchased directly because these companies will squat on an exclusive deal or make a “discount” where they buy something for 10, sticker it at 20, discount it to 15, then pretend they’re doing us all a favor. I have gone on a race with these people in the past where we need a niche product and they try to gobble up all the stock so we would be forced to deal with these fucks.
They’re Amazon, Alibaba, etc. and they are burning the economy’s fuel and money in far greater rates that what their utility to society is worth.
One of the reasons military spending is so high is that DoD has lost control of the supply chain, starting with the design process. Some key part gets designed to an incredibly narrow spec, one company corners the market, and then DoD, due to lack of options, ends up paying through the nose.
The government ought to have incredible leverage because it is often either the sole buyer, or far and away the largest buyer, but by short shrifting the design and contracting process, they end up at the mercy of the supplier.
…military procurement (& to some extent all government contracting) has been a cliche of inefficiency for a long time but when you put it like that it seems even harder to understand why the problem isn’t mitigated more often
…cost inflation over budget seems to be considered inevitable in public spending & there are probably at least some essentially benign reasons why that might be so but it’s hard to understand why an organisation that’s big on strategic & tactical analysis would consistently allow itself to get played where the bill is concerned
…it’s hard not to read that relationship as almost exclusively parasitic…& with the amount of money involved that kind of thing is surely at odds with all the free market rhetoric we hear
…it’s not easy to see how it’s justified at the best of times but at a time like this & with respect to this kind of equipment I’m finding it harder to swallow than the airlines spending their bailout cash on stock buy backs
…apparently “unconscionable” isn’t a thing these days
Taking the dog to the vet today which should be interesting. Seems I will need to wait in the car for them to come get her and then they’ll bring her back when they’re done. She’s 50 pounds of I LOVE YOU and all muscle to boot. While she keeps her shit together with us, she’s smart enough to know that when other people are involved all bets are off. They’ll need at least two people to hold her down so she doesn’t lick the vet to death.
Good luck! Mostly to the vet, but to you as well.
She must have had quite a workout with them because she was panting like crazy when they brought her back to me, happy as could be.
What a way to go. 🙂
When I took her for some shots last fall, she sat there happy as could be, wagging her tail the whole time she was getting stuck with needles. The vet said to me, “I’ve never seen this before.” I told him, “join the club–we’re having t-shirts made.”
Wow. That would be fun with our dogs, who have no use for anyone who doesn’t live with them and have to be muzzled at the vet.
My dog is terrified of going to the vet. She won’t even go with the techs to get her nails trimmed without me. I hope she stays healthy until this is over, assuming it’s ever over.
Took Bruce, Bill, and Violet to the vet last Monday. Same deal. But small dogs, 10 to 15 pounds. (Emma got a pass.) Anyway, the puppy boys are big sissies. Our vet and the staff are lovely, we schlep 30 to 45 minutes to go there, had them through 10 dogs. So ….Bruce came back to us very wet wrapped in towel. He was scared so he peed and pooped on them. Poor vet techs and poor Bruce. Pro tip, turn the dog away from the vet tech when having over or passing the leash, it keeps the calmer. And good luck!
Aww, poor Bruce. Fanny pees on herself every time they trim her nails.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/advisers-warn-trump-his-push-reopen-economy-carries-political-risks-n1186491
Heh. I misread the description of Trump. I thought it said “massive bystander” when it actually said “passive bystander.”
Still works.
Biggest under-reported stories for me this week are:
https://nypost.com/2020/04/16/43k-us-millionaires-will-get-stimulus-averaging-1-6m-each/
I posted something last week about blue states separating from red states. Trump has basically declared war on blue states with his “LIBERATE” bullshit. If we can’t get Trump out of office & Darwinism doesn’t kill off all his followers (with the viruses help), then I don’t see any other way out of this hell.
[sorry for the wall of text & all]
…I try not give in to hyperbole (hard as that may be to believe) because there’s too much of it going about & too much of it seems to do more harm than good…but I’m with you about all of those deserving more attention than I’ve seen them given
…I’m not at all sure that describing trump succeeding in being re-elected as an existential threat even qualifies as hyperbole any more…& with much of the intervening time likely to be spent self-isolated in the very definition of bespoke echo-chambers & the means by which hostile interests attempted to influence the last one not only unmitigated but in some instances compounded & entrenched it’s a prospect that literally costs me sleep
…the fact that the supply-poaching seems to be occuring between state & federal levels in much the same way it has between nations at one end of the scale & individual institutions at the other is one of the things I find most unnerving about the coverage…it seems to contradict so much of the rhetoric we’re hearing about who has what under control…by its nature much of that kind of equipment is (as I understand it) disposable & thus best practice expects to burn through large quantities but literally everywhere could use more of it than it can lay hands on so again these institutions are being asked to front wildly inflated costs to procure supplies through a system that almost seems to be optimised for syphoning cash out of them while failing to adequately provision them
…& between the rigging of the relief to pay out so handsomely to those best equipped to ride it out without the assistance & the fucking outrageous rhetoric in those “liberate” tweets the hypocrisy on display is so thick I’m almost surprised it hasn’t achieved critical mass & obliterated something as it implodes…it’s beyond fucking nuts that this shit is being done by the so-called president of an ostensibly developed nation much less the fucking United States of freaking America
[sorry for the wall of text & all]
Narrator Voice: He was not, in actuality, sorry.
…ok…fair & all…but “it just kinda happened” doesn’t have the same vestiges of courtesy?
I’ve heard reports that after taking the PPE’s they are putting them back into wholesalers hands to be resold though I haven’t found a written story with actual facts of this. Totally believable that Fuckhead would try to help his donor friends profit from this. On top of the fucking Russia stuff too!
Here’s a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine detailing the difficulty in obtaining supplies and the government’s attempt to seize necessary medical supplies to states. This is crazy stuff. NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE ANYMORE. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2010025
Not sure why my comments are taking the scenic route to get posted, guessing something to do with bears?
Yep!
They will go through eventually. I’m waiting for a transition to finalise before I can work on anything…so BEARS!