Business

Miscellaneous Business/Economics/Energy Items

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Apple is going to make Watches and MacBooks in Vietnam.   (More precisely, Apple suppliers will make the products there.   “Make” in this context meaning mostly “assemble”, I think.)   Apple is also planning to produce the iPhone 14 in India, with only about a 2-month lag from its initial production in China.

Intel will be partnering with Brookfield Infrastructure Partners to help pay for factory expansion projects, with Brookfield contributing up to $30 billion.   Most immediately, the money will pay for the expansion of Intel’s Ocotillo manufacturing campus in Chandler, Arizona, with Intel funding 51% and Brookfield funding 49% of the total project cost.   (This is pretty different from BIP’s typical investments, which tend to involve such things as railroads, toll roads, pipelines, and electricity transmission)

A useful overview of planned and in-development fabs, worldwide.

Electricity prices, marginal costs, and the last kilowatt.

Texas has banned BlackRock and several other firms from doing business with the state.

Finland may be facing power outages this winter.   On the other hand, if their Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant goes into production at the end of the year, as planned, this should help a lot.   Another plant is planned, taking total nuclear contribution in Finland to 60%.

Also,perhaps a way could be found to harness the power from their PM’s very high-energy dancing.   (If other Western leaders could dance like that, would it somehow influence their minds to adopt more rational energy policies?)

Elsewhere in Europe, skyrocketing energy prices are causing a lot of hardship–and will surely create serious economic pressures as much manufacturing in the affected countries becomes cost-prohibitive)

The Euro is not doing very well versus the dollar.   More here.

Paul Graham:

f you think people have scar tissue, you should see organizations. Each time there’s a disaster, they create a process to prevent future disasters of that type. Eventually they accrete a thick layer of these processes that prevents them from moving. Then they die.

Rapò Sitiyasyon Ayiti

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Most problems were not problems long enough to be interesting.

— Larry Niven, PROTECTOR

Haiti has remained a problem long enough to be interesting.

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Humor and Seriousness

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Katherine Boyle is a partner at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and she is a thoughtful writer on many topics.   See her post The Case for American Seriousness at Bari Weiss’s substack; also, her posts at her own substack, The Rambler, especially those concerning family, parenting, and technology.

In an interview, she said “The biggest criticism I got from the (American Seriousness) piece, and other times I’ve written about seriousness, is that it doesn’t leave room for frivolity, play or the unseriousness that makes us deeply human. And I empathize with that sentiment, but I don’t think the opposite of seriousness is humor: the opposite of seriousness is irony.”

I agree absolutely that there is no inconsistency between seriousness and humor…quite the contrary, I would say.   Concerning Irony, I’m reminded of something C S Lewis wrote.   The following is from The Screwtape Letters, a book of advice from a senior devil to his protege about how to do the maximum harm to humans:

But Flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers that inherent it the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.

Irony, I think, is closely related to the Flippancy about which Lewis’s devil wrote.   Also related to irony is Sarcasm, concerning which Field Marshal Lord Wavell offered some thoughts:

Explosions of temper do not necessarily ruin a general’s reputation or influence with his troops; it is almost expected of them (“the privileged irascibility of senior officers,” someone has written), and it is not always resented, sometimes even admired, except by those immediately concerned.  But sarcasm is always resented and seldom forgiven. (emphasis added)   In the Peninsula the bitter sarcastic tongue of Craufurd, the brilliant but erratic leader of the Light Division, was much more wounding and feared than the more violent outbursts of Picton, a rough, hot-tempered man.

Wavell defined Sarcasm as “being clever at someone else’s expense.”    In his view, sarcasm always offends, and a general (or, presumably, any other officer or individual in a position of authority) should never indulge in it.

I think that in many organizations in America today–perhaps, even, most organizations of any size–fear of Cancellation has reached the point at which easy interaction among people–which includes a certain amount of humor–has been replaced with a kind of fragile pseudo-formality.   This is not good for either innovation or productivity, not to mention its toxic impact on individual lives.

What are your thoughts on humor, seriousness, irony, and sarcasm?

 

Things Missing – Supply Chain and Groceries

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I have had some first world problems for a while now.

Last night at the grocery store (Kroger chain) there was no iceburg lettuce. Zero. I resigned myself to paying the fifty cents more for the leaf lettuce. Iceberg lettuce has been of pretty poor quality in these parts for some time and I have seen small quantities or none at all as of the last few months.

Berries – I always toss a hand full of berries onto my shredded wheat every morning and the berry selection at the store has been awful or non existent as of late. I’m hoping that Michigan has a fantastic harvest (probably going on right now or very soon) as we are quite fond of the blueberries, apples, peaches, and other things that come from across the lake. We may even take a short road trip over there and pick up a bunch of stuff ourselves. But back to the berries. I have seen blueberries from all over the USA in the store (I always look at where my produce comes from) and also Mexico and a few other places. I wonder if there is some sort of supply chain disruption in berry world.

Anyways, let me know in the comments if you are seeing things missing, and don’t limit it to groceries if you don’t want to.

In industrial distribution world, we are still missing quite a few things but this is almost all a chip deal now. And the good news is that we are doing pretty well for the most part.

Speaking of Resilience and Renewal

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The story of Guiness.

(via Marginal Revolution)

Original R&R post here.