Randomness XVI: Brains versus Bleach - an Epic Rap Battle in Iambic Pentameter.

[Grumpy Cave Bear]

12 hours ago, haldir said:

I seen today, OR is suspending it's bottle deposit redemption program. Hell in this town, that is gonna cause & even worse crisis then TP.................

 

My wife asked over the weekend if I could help her return bottles at the local BottleDrop (we have a backlog of soda cans in the garage), and I told her it probably wasn’t a good idea to visit that place right now.  I’m glad to see that our state agrees.

 

Speaking with sympathy here... once CV gets into the homeless population, places like public transit and bottle returns and shelters will be hotspots for contagion, especially for the homeless, who are trapped into having to use them.  Many of the homeless are distrusting of authority, so asking them to change their behavior will just backfire — and they still have to find what shelter and income they can.  It’s a problem with no good solution.

 

Anything more belongs in BeeKeepers, where I do not tread.

[Kangaroorex]

1 hour ago, TGP said:

Why the multiple times?  Didn’t I read this Virus is a one and done?

 

For most people ...85% of the horde... it is a mild illness, to which they then develop, anti-bodies, and then it has difficulty spreading because most folk are immune. 

 

Because viruses are mutable creatures and will change pretty much on an annual basis meaning that just because you got version A this year does not mean you are immune to version B this year.  there are even some studies (believe them as you will) that show that being immune to one strain can make you more susceptible to another because your immune system keeps attacking the wrong spot

 

It boils down to why its a different flu shot every year.  They find the most common viruses, develop the dead or weakened strains of the most common mutations and inoculate you for them.  If the virus mutates halfway through the year than that shot is worth absolutely nothing.

 

Unfortunately, this one is unlike the SARS virus which we (as a race) were able to contain to one region and burn out, the Covid-19 is in the general public and will be with us for the rest of eternity.  I suppose we could get lucky and it could be a non-mutating form, but I'm not holding my breath.  I am hoping it stays rather innocuous and doesn't take a turn for the really nasty in the future.

 

52 minutes ago, TGP said:

The whole economy of the US is deliberately designed to breakdown easily if there is an unexpected event. 

 

Efficiency = Profit$ = Vulnerability to Disruption

 

48 minutes ago, Doug Sundseth said:

 

Efficiency -> Increased societal wealth -> increased resiliency

 

from my experience:

Just in time inventory -> increased personal wealth for a very few -> decreased resilience

 

In general the system works as long as everything goes right and sufficient redundancies are in place.  the problem is that someone has to hold that inventory if you want the redundancy and that person or corporation is not going to be making as much money unless something goes wrong with the system.  My company shows this in their raw material buying.  normally we run raw material inventory at 2 days, however, when we see a potential disruption we increase those inventories to 2 weeks.  Our company has the storage and capacity to handle that between storage tanks and rail car spurs and we are high enough up the finished goods chain that our suppliers come real close to pumping it out of the ground, allowing mother nature to be our redundancy

 

but for something like toilet paper (to name a popular one) they can only produce so much in a day but they also have to have the treatment chemicals, the tree pulp and the packaging to get their product out. if any one of these paths fail, they cannot make their product. and since the pulp mills are also running hand to mouth, there is no room for a plant to switch on short notice so production levels have to stay at a certain rate regardless of demand

 

On the flip side too much inventory has other issues in that a lot of intermediaries are unstable and keeping them for a rainy day can result in unusable raw material which has to be written off as a loss.  So companies have to walk a pretty fine line between inventory and production and a smart company spends a lot of time and effort on this balance.  The problem comes when someone in the chain makes the decision for profit over stability and guesses wrong.  in this day and age that guess does not just affect the company that made the mistake but a lot of others up and down the commodities train and lately, in order to make shareholders happy, a lot of companies are making that profit decision

 

Is it right or wrong, I am not one to tell. but it does make the system more fragile.  I can hope that this causes some federal agencies to rethink their stance on mergers and megacorps but it probably wont happen.

[redambrosia]

We have toilet paper! :rejoicing: 

 

MIL kindly purchased a package for us on her way home from her work. So that is one worry eliminated. 
 

8 hours ago, Green Eyed Monster said:

Most stores here have instituted shorter hours for the duration of the shortages.

Best time for a shot at stocks of shortage items being right after AM opening.

GEM

Hubby told me that as soon as the doors opened a stream of about 60 angry faced people came in and started buying as much stuff as they could. I’d rather have no TP than deal with that nonsense. 
 

On Wednesday I’ll just need to go to the store and see if I can buy any meats. Like @Marvin I forgot to get a decent supply 

[PaganMegan]

On 3/15/2020 at 12:01 PM, redambrosia said:

Sephy’s is being caused by her antibiotic. It’s turned her poop very acidic, though it hasn’t given her diarrhea (thank goodness). The rash is already better, but we have to keep putting aquaphor on her tush. I do not like seeing my little imp that distressed.

One of the ways we are lucky is BD loves baths, and has since she was about two months.

 

But Grump quoting Silence of the Lambs while we put the lotion on her skin got old a lot faster than he thought it did. 

Quote

On 3/15/2020 at 12:01 PM, redambrosia said:

Sephy’s is being caused by her antibiotic. It’s turned her poop very acidic, though it hasn’t given her diarrhea (thank goodness). The rash is already better, but we have to keep putting aquaphor on her tush. I do not like seeing my little imp that distressed.

 

 

5 minutes ago, redambrosia said:

We have toilet paper! :rejoicing: 

 

MIL kindly purchased a package for us on her way home from her work. So that is one worry eliminated. 
 

Hubby told me that as soon as the doors opened a stream of about 60 angry faced people came in and started buying as much stuff as they could. I’d rather have no TP than deal with that nonsense. 
 

On Wednesday I’ll just need to go to the store and see if I can buy any meats. Like @Marvin I forgot to get a decent supply 

Grump managed to snag some more corned beef last night.

Weird, the forum tucked anoter copy of the quote on my post, but different.

[haldir]

I heard on iheartradio (classic rock station) that there is a tabloid in Australia that is adding 8 pages to it's 'zine to combat the tp shortage.....

[redambrosia]

1 minute ago, haldir said:

I heard on iheartradio (classic rock station) that there is a tabloid in Australia that is adding 8 pages to it's 'zine to combat the tp shortage.....

I dunno... wiping your tush with tabloid filth might just give you a rash

[Kangaroorex]

1 minute ago, redambrosia said:

I dunno... wiping your tush with tabloid filth might just give you a rash

 

It was good enough for grampa and beats the heck out of leaves... especially if it was growing next to poison ivy!

[haldir]

21 minutes ago, Grumpy Cave Bear said:

 

My wife asked over the weekend if I could help her return bottles at the local BottleDrop (we have a backlog of soda cans in the garage), and I told her it probably wasn’t a good idea to visit that place right now.  I’m glad to see that our state agrees.

 

Sad part is when we visited the one in Bend last September to drop off a close to a week accumulation on our trip, it was soooooo much nicer then the one here. Ours is a virus with walls....sheesh. I hate going into that place. In a way I kinda wish my mom would just sign up for an account, get the bags & be done with it. I do get the cash for turning her cans, but yah nasty place.

3 minutes ago, Kangaroorex said:

 

It was good enough for grampa and beats the heck out of leaves... especially if it was growing next to poison ivy!

 

& uphill both ways & in snow!!!

[Kangaroorex]

8 minutes ago, haldir said:

 

Sad part is when we visited the one in Bend last September to drop off a close to a week accumulation on our trip, it was soooooo much nicer then the one here. Ours is a virus with walls....sheesh. I hate going into that place. In a way I kinda wish my mom would just sign up for an account, get the bags & be done with it. I do get the cash for turning her cans, but yah nasty place.

 

& uphill both ways & in snow!!!

If your outhouse is uphill from the house you need to rethink your waste disposal system...

 

The snow of course was 6 feet deep and you had to dig to get to the door! and that was when the wind wasn't blowing so hard you couldn't get the door open

[Cygnwulf]

18 minutes ago, Kangaroorex said:

 

It was good enough for grampa and beats the heck out of leaves... especially if it was growing next to poison ivy!

Now i'm wishing I hadn't thrown out all those phonebooks I didn't ask for but got left on my doorstep anyway.....

[TGP]

49 minutes ago, Grumpy Cave Bear said:

13 hours ago, haldir said:

I seen today, OR is suspending it's bottle deposit redemption program. Hell in this town, that is gonna cause & even worse crisis then TP.................

 

My wife asked over the weekend if I could help her return bottles at the local BottleDrop (we have a backlog of soda cans in the garage)

 

You don’t recycle?

In my state: cans, bottles, boxes... dump it in a bin. Done. 

 

(Or that’s where the consumer is done.)

 

A truck empties the bin. The truck empties itself at a recycling plant. The great machines inside the plant sort through it all. Much of the burnable material is used as fuel for a boiler, that generates steam, that spins a turbine, that turns a generator, that generates the electricity used to run the operation. 

[Grumpy Cave Bear]

Just now, TGP said:

You don’t recycle?

In my state: cans, bottles, boxes... dump it in a bin.

 

Oregon recycles of course, and you can recycle bottles and cans.  But Oregon also has a bottle bill that predates recycling.  Every soda can and bottle has a 10-cent refundable deposit, and if you just toss them into your recycling bin, you’re giving up that deposit.

 

Getting back the deposit involves returning them to the store, or increasingly now, returning them to a centralized bottle drop station.

 

Collecting and returning soda cans is a good bit of pocket change for the homeless in Oregon.

[Pezler the Polychromatic]

2 hours ago, Chaoswolf said:

Apparently,  I have angered the spirits of winter. I woke up to this:

 

That's first thing in the morning. None anywhere else,  and the whole yard was clear at midnight last night. 

That was just a warning shot.

 

-Your friends in Canada

[Marvin]

Hmm. Area and population density.

 

People don't seem to understand that shutting down a country the size of the US is a bit more complicated than shutting down one the size of Arizona.

 

Good morning to everyone except people not covering their mouths to cough.

[Serenity]

RTB Pro Tips! Giant Weasel Fur! Part 2! SKU:03897 with Anne started shortly after 11 AM.  She's continuing to work on the giant weasel modeled on ferret colors.  She is working at home, and said she'll be taking over for Ed's Terrain Tuesday stream today at 3 PM.

 

https://www.twitch.tv/reaperminiatures