Global Supply Chain Crisis 2021: Megathread - A cozy thread for watching the supply chain fall apart just in time for the holidays

[Hippopatumus]

I've had two motorcycles and a 50cc scooter. The motorcycles were indeed expensive to run--probably 2-3x what a cheap car costs to run. The scooter on the other hand was dirt cheap. As long as you feed them CVT belts and rebuild the engines occasionally you can probably keep one running for under $200 a year indefinitely. The key is to essentially buy a scoot and then completely disassemble it and re-build it. They come from the factories with all sorts of safety and reliability checks just totally skipped--like no grease in the steering stem and loose bolts.

The Jap large-displacement scooters are just shittier motorcycles, and they have similar maintenance costs.

 

[Blobby's Murder Knife]

I just heard about this:

Century Aluminum will layoff 628, curtail operations up to a year

In order to continue to operate its smelter located at 1627 State Route 3543, Hawesville, Kentucky (the “Hawesville Smelter”’), Century Aluminum of Kentucky GP (“Century” or the “Company”) must be able to purchase reliable, affordable electric power. Unfortunately, an unprecedented rise in global energy prices arising from the Russian war in Ukraine has dramatically increased the price of energy in the U.S., and around the globe. The cost required to run our Hawesville, KY, facility has more than tripled the historical average in a very short period, Given these circumstances it is necessary to fully curtail operations for a period of approximately nine to twelve months at Hawesville until energy prices return to more normalized levels. This is expected to result in the layoff of 628 Hawesville Smelter employees, including 504 employees represented by the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial Service Workers Union, AFL-CIO (USW).

The Company intends to begin the curtailment process immediately, and at the same time, prepare the facility for a restart when energy prices stabilize. We expect that employees will begin to be laid off the week of August 5, 2022, and it is currently anticipated that all of the layoffs will be completed by August 20, 2022. The specific schedule of the layoffs will be determined based on the progress of the curtailment process described above. To the extent that employees are laid off less than 60 days from the date of this notice, they will be paid the difference in accordance with the WARN Act. All layoffs of employees represented by the USW will be conducted in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement currently in effect between Century and the USW. As such, some USW-represented employees may have bidding or bumping rights as set forth in the collective bargaining agreement. At this time, it is expected that these layoffs will be temporary, but the Company expects that the layoffs will be for nine to twelve months. When the Company’s anticipated energy costs return to a level that makes the Smelter economically viable, the Company plans to restore manufacturing operations at the Hawesville Smelter up to previous levels.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I just heard about this:

Century Aluminum will layoff 628, curtail operations up to a year

But I need my Aluminum foil hats.

 

[Dog-O-Tron 5000v5.0]

But I need my Aluminum foil hats.

Alex Jones on suicide watch.

 

[TheSkoomer]

I've had two motorcycles and a 50cc scooter. The motorcycles were indeed expensive to run--probably 2-3x what a cheap car costs to run.

How?

If you do all your own mechanical work, a 600cc Japanese bike is cheap and easy as fuck.

 

[Puff]

How?

If you do all your own mechanical work, a 600cc Japanese bike is cheap and easy as fuck.

Cause he takes it to a shop.
For everyone else Motorcycles are technically performance vehicles in most cases and take a bit more maintenance and fiddling than, say, a standard street car. Nothing too hard and much less equipment needed than a car, mostly because they're lighter and smaller.

 

[Hippopatumus]

Cause he takes it to a shop.

Hahaha no. Except tires. Which only last a few thousand miles on a bike. If you ride as much as most people drive cars, you're looking at several hundred a year just in tires.

Case in point; Pilot Road 4, which are tires I owned, and are good long-life touring tires which last 10k miles.

Front + rear on a Ninja 650, a basic middle-of-the-road bike: $418 from Revzilla, plus let's say $100 in mounting and balancing charges assuming you do all your own work to remove and reinstall them yourself. Let's assume you are driving the average of 20k miles per year.

That's $1036 a year just in tires alone, ignoring chain and sprocket replacement costs, oil changes, any road hazard damage like a rock hitting your fairings or dropping the bike (likely on a daily-driven bike), gear costs, etc.

And the fuel economy isn't much better. My car gets 45mpg and a Ninja 650 gets 49mpg on a good day.

As comparison, on my BMW so far this year I have spent: $0 in maintenance costs, and around $200 last year, and about the same the year before that. This is on a car I traded for $0 with a car worth $10k (slightly more than the cost of a 600cc bike).

Yes there are ways to cut costs, but that applies to cheap cars too. And you can drive on bald tires on a car, you can't do that with a bike.

 

[FatalTater]

Can we talk about Coca-Cola for a minute? I've noticed that lately Diet Coke (in cans) has tasted watered down. Today I had a glass of regular Coke out of a 2L and it also tasted weak. I don't care because I just wanted fizz, but is this a thing they're doing or is the universe conspiring to ensure I don't get as much flavor syrup as everyone else?

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Can we talk about Coca-Cola for a minute? I've noticed that lately Diet Coke (in cans) has tasted watered down. Today I had a glass of regular Coke out of a 2L and it also tasted weak. I don't care because I just wanted fizz, but is this a thing they're doing or is the universe conspiring to ensure I don't get as much flavor syrup as everyone else?

Might just be confirmation bias. You're thinking about supply shortages, so when the sugary concoction fries out yer taste buds, you blame it on dilution and supply woes instead of just getting used to it, or tasting something else off. Maybe they ran outta the usual filters they use in your local bottling facility, so the water they used tastes different and carries down.

 

[FatalTater]

Might just be confirmation bias. You're thinking about supply shortages, so when the sugary concoction fries out yer taste buds, you blame it on dilution and supply woes instead of just getting used to it, or tasting something else off. Maybe they ran outta the usual filters they use in your local bottling facility, so the water they used tastes different and carries down.

One other person I asked about it said they noticed the same thing, though Pepsi seems normal.

I really like the idea that someone at Coke is monitoring me and working hard to make sure I personally get an inferior product. It makes me feel special.

 

[Ron Jeremy Stan Account]

Can we talk about Coca-Cola for a minute? I've noticed that lately Diet Coke (in cans) has tasted watered down. Today I had a glass of regular Coke out of a 2L and it also tasted weak. I don't care because I just wanted fizz, but is this a thing they're doing or is the universe conspiring to ensure I don't get as much flavor syrup as everyone else?

Quite frankly, I've noticed this for quite some time myself regarding Diet Coke, even prior to the pandemic. I did look into it on Reddit and Quora, and allegedly it has to do with a new formula for their artificial sweetener.

Diet Coke is garbage, and essentially just bubbly brown water now – however, if you want a more true Coke experience, I'd recommend Coca-Cola Zero, which to me tastes closest like actual Coca-Cola.

 

[Bakarina]

Can we talk about Coca-Cola for a minute? I've noticed that lately Diet Coke (in cans) has tasted watered down. Today I had a glass of regular Coke out of a 2L and it also tasted weak. I don't care because I just wanted fizz, but is this a thing they're doing or is the universe conspiring to ensure I don't get as much flavor syrup as everyone else?

Sometimes when your glucose is too high or too low shit like soda can taste off/wrong.

 

[moocow]

Went to Apple to have my phone battery replaced. They have to order it. No lLas Vegas stores have a battery for an 18 month old model.

I'm genuinely shocked those batteries are even replaceable in the first place. I thought they essentially sealed those fucking iPhones up with death glue and deliberately included anti-consumer-repair components in the designs to make them harder to service. Even at an Authorized† Apple® Dealer™ with the blessed knowledge and official tools I was under the impression the majority of Apple's products weren't really that serviceable.

†Authorization subject to regular inspection and audit by Apple® Compliance and Discipline Units☠ and may be revoked at any time without notice.

I just got The Email. Raspberry Pis, back in stock, baby!

Well, more like, Raspberry Pi. One. The 1GB one. The shit one.

Use different SBCs. I swear by the ODROID lines by Hardkernel. They've made rock-solid products for years, produce designs intended to use as many off-the-shelf and easy-sourced components as possible to ensure they can be produced reliably for 5-10 years at a minimum (they've only ever discontinued one board because of this retarded chip shortage and they immediately rolled out a new design with near-identical specs using a different chip). Plus they're cheap. Not as cheap as RPi's of course, but the specs are better (along with the connectivity).

Think $90 for this beast: a 2 GHz 4-core Cortex-A55 (64-bit) SBC with 8GB of RAM, M.2 and EMMC sockets, SATA port (native, not a USB bridge), gigabit ethernet, HDMI, 2x USB 2 ports, 2x USB 3 ports, MicroSD slot (with bootloader support for all types -- SATA, M.2, EMMC, MicroSD, USB, netboot), 40 GPIO pins, 16MB SPI flash, IR receiver, RTC battery support and a UART port. The bootloader they use for most of their boards now is even smart enough to perform no-media installs over the network, right out of the box. Thing's a fucking beast. They make cheaper boards too.

They're active on their forums, encourage hacking every bit as much as the RPi folks do (my mention of Hardkernel/ODROID is not meant as a knock on RPi at all -- they're damned good too), provide detailed high- and low-level documentation and source code wherever possible, help people on-forum and even one-on-one to troubleshoot and brew up unique use cases for all their products, and thankfully have a fairly sizeable community. Linux support is very strong, binary blobs are minimal-to-nonexistent depending on chipset, and some models have e.g. Armbian flavors that are directly built and optimized for them.

They're also one of the few hardware vendors I've ever come across who are often cheaper to order from (even with int'l shipping added) than the regional resellers who try to middle-man them. Lookin' at you, fuckin' AmeriDroid.

Can we talk about Coca-Cola for a minute? I've noticed that lately Diet Coke (in cans) has tasted watered down. Today I had a glass of regular Coke out of a 2L and it also tasted weak. I don't care because I just wanted fizz, but is this a thing they're doing or is the universe conspiring to ensure I don't get as much flavor syrup as everyone else?

I've noticed recently that every other bottle of Dr. Pepper I open (the larger ones that come in six packs) have little to no fizz in them at all. Cheap fuckers. It's honestly cheaper to get a SodaStream, an adapter to make the damned thing accept regular-thread bottles and lines, and just have a cylinder of CO2 delivered to your house. Buy a box of your preferred syrup for $60 for 7 gallons and you'll be set for months at a stretch. You'll get much more consistent flavor and quality too since you're mixing it yourself.

Or quit soda, which I'm doing my damnedest to accomplish. Shit's hard to give up though.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

I've noticed recently that every other bottle of Dr. Pepper I open (the larger ones that come in six packs) have little to no fizz in them at all. Cheap fuckers. It's honestly cheaper to get a SodaStream, an adapter to make the damned thing accept regular-thread bottles and lines, and just have a cylinder of CO2 delivered to your house. Buy a box of your preferred syrup for $60 for 7 gallons and you'll be set for months at a stretch. You'll get much more consistent flavor and quality too since you're mixing it yourself.

Or quit soda, which I'm doing my damnedest to accomplish. Shit's hard to give up though.

$60 for 7 gallons of syrup? CO2 delivered to your house? The former is probably what, a restaraunt service for fountain drinks? The latter... a local place do that, or is there a place I can get Co2 delivered?

I used to enjoy the Sodastream but once they changed the drink mix (this was YEARS ago) it went from being "cheaper than soda" to "as cheap as soda" and it just wasn't worth it anymore.

 

[Behavioral Sink]

My local wine and beer supply store refills sodastream cartridges for ten bucks. I make my own lemonade and ginger beer syrup. You can adjust the sweetness, so you can wean down your sugar consumption.

Grate a bunch of ginger root and simmer it with sugar and water on low for a good hour or so. If you like a sharper flavour, grate in a bit more fresh ginger at the end. Strain it out, keep it in a jar in the fridge.

When lemons go on sale, buy a dozen. Slice a few and put them in a big jar. Then juice the rest of them into the jar. Add sugar and shake, put in fridge. When you want a fizzy lemonade, grab a sweetened lemon slice and a dash of sugar juice.

 

[DavidS877]

The latter... a local place do that, or is there a place I can get Co2 delivered?

Welding supply/industrial gas supply will generally happily deliver the big cylinders or you can take cylinders to them for refill.

Most towns have either a big name like Airgas or Praxair or a smaller local place.

 

[comfysocks]

Is there a reason that I haven't been able to find matchstick carrots anywhere for like a month?

 

[Bakarina]

$60 for 7 gallons of syrup? CO2 delivered to your house? The former is probably what, a restaraunt service for fountain drinks? The latter... a local place do that, or is there a place I can get Co2 delivered?

I used to enjoy the Sodastream but once they changed the drink mix (this was YEARS ago) it went from being "cheaper than soda" to "as cheap as soda" and it just wasn't worth it anymore.

You can get BIB syrups (stuff gas stations use for their fountain drinks) on Amazon. Ditto on the Co2 (many bands sell small cartridges). Setting up your own personal soda fountain at home is under a grand as well.

 

[Nate Higgers]

Has anyone ITT ever looked into/messed around with a “wood gas/gassifier” as an “alternative” means of powering a generator? I watched some YT videos on it and it looks like it would need some fucking around with to get it to the point where you can leave it alone after you get it running and producing gas (e.g: automating balancing the fuel+air ratio with an arduino + stepper motors + sensors or something like that).

I’m expecting to be able to find wood/other flammable fuel more easily than gasoline or diesel if The Habbening ever habbens.

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

Has anyone ITT ever looked into/messed around with a “wood gas/gassifier” as an “alternative” means of powering a generator? I watched some YT videos on it and it looks like it would need some fucking around with to get it to the point where you can leave it alone after you get it running and producing gas (e.g: automating balancing the fuel+air ratio with an arduino + stepper motors + sensors or something like that).

I’m expecting to be able to find wood/other flammable fuel more easily than gasoline or diesel if The Habbening ever habbens.

I haven't messed around with a wood gasifier myself, but I have looked into them. From what I can tell, they can be a bit finicky to get running properly and you definitely need to do some research before trying to build one. That being said, it seems like it could be a good way to generate power if you had access to lots of wood or other flammable materials.