As I said the other day, there are two kinds of people: those who've seen a 130 year old piece of equipment in some machine shop that is the only thing that can make a widget that upholds a global manufacturing network, and those who think manufacturing supply chains are easy/just happen
Reposted from
Kathryn Brightbill
Part of how we ended up here is that it's not just conservatives who don't understand how manufacturing and supply chains work. Almost nobody in this country does. They didn't understand that Trump would crash the economy because they didn't understand that we can't move manufacturing back quickly.
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a) keeping the mac running we needed to run the RIP was getting out of hand
b) keeping the RIP running (needed sub 1gig HDs) was getting out of hand
c) new ones are $$$
d) we can send it out for nothing
And that's just shooting film for print/silkscreen
And my guess is that retaliatory tariffs negate any benefits they'd get from moving everything stateside anyway.
Pay just US tariffs, or pay tariffs in every country.
They'd need more machines+building addition, but they have the expertise, the capital, the mentoring & training pipeline, and the land to do it. And they're offshored to EU, not a cheaper Asian country.
Nope.
All those things that make the things you have are just as heavy and complicated as they were when you were a kid.
Those people are increasingly driving me mad, and it's not engineering-specific ignorance. They have no clue about anything! Totally infantalised.
Also engineering has been a victim of its own success, with greater reliability making it more invisible. Who could fix their car nowadays? When did you last need to?
"Moore's Goal" would have been a much more appropriate name.
"Why haven't we been back to the moon if computers are a billion times better than the '60s?"
Well, we don't get there on a computer, we get there on a rocket, which have got about 40% better.
But I wouldn't want to denigrate the skill of software engineers. It's a whole other set of challenges!
It was quite humbling to be involved in such a project even though it was a product that seemed quite mundane.
Old Monarch metal lathes are so freaking amazing.
‘What’s the easiest item to make in this classroom? Imagine a nearly apocalyptic event happened & individuals had to build things at a scale to sell. We wouldn’t be able to make a #2 pencils.’
Queer, Fur, Neurodiverse, Female, Black.
(all terms complimentary)
my own estimate is a select ~300 people, not having a job for between 3 to 6 months -- that should put enough of a damper in online connectivity
and donnie trumpet seems keen on making that happen, too
may they always be freshly overhauled
may their gaskets never crumble
That was 40 years ago! Nobody remembers.
Its all warehouses in the mind of the uninitiated.
And apparently NO ONE WAS PAYING ATTENTION!? Including the guy who was President at the time???
Almost nobody knows how to grow food either.
Has your father trained in someone to carry on?
Cf Navy Admirals yelling at industry to stop using "supply chain issues" as an "excuse" for their inability to meet schedule
Good thing the EPA is only good for “making cars more affordable” so I can just dump the HF and other super toxic waste wherever
Refer TSMC who have been unable to get their latest generations of process to work in the US plant in spite of everything being "the same" as in Taiwan.
They have the machines and the people but because at the scales their latest processes work at are more black magic and voodoo than science they haven't managed to get them to work in the US.
Some of their older processes are up and running though.
people just don't understand even the basics of the infrastructure that keeps society afloat
(in contrast, i greatly enjoy watching docs on topics like "how does mcmurdo station operate" and learning about sewage treatment in antarctica)