Adventures of a tribal dancer...

COVID Conversations - The Pinball Effect

by Shay Moore The TribalDancer Thursday, April 30, 2020

Right now, when it comes to C-19 numbers, I think the world is being subjected to what I have been thinking of as "The Pinball Effect".

The Pinball Effect is a term I coined in my own mind, and it doesn't have to do with things bouncing around. It has to do with numbers. Older folkses will remember that vintage pinball machines had nice reasonable numbers on them. In the hundreds. Thousands were really really high scores.

Then in the advent of the video game era, when we had electronic pinball games, those numbers started to get ridiculous. Pinball game scores were now in the millions! It was just ridiculous. The numbers ceased to have meaning any more because every *beep* *boop* *PING!* was, like, 10,000 points. End scores were stupid high. It wasn't even exciting any more, really, when a number racked up. Numbers didn't have impact.

In the modern age, we don't talk in tens or hundreds. Thousands don't thrill. When we talk about money or sales units or scores, we speak in millions, Billions, or TRILLIONS. So tens, or hundreds, or thousands doesn't sound like much.

EVEN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LIVES.

And it fucking SICKENS me that when we are talking about LIVES, talking about hundreds to THOUSANDS of people dying A DAY of a disease, people are like "Whatever, they said it would be worse, so we should just get back to life already." Or they look at the worldwide death toll of 230,000+ to date and they say, "Oh, well they said it would be over a MILLION, and it's not, so it's NOT A BIG DEAL. Calm down, let's get back to it."

First of all, it's this "low" BECAUSE WE QUARANTINED and so many of us still are. The fact that flies over so many people's heads is just...ugh. I can't even begin to...

And second of all, this isn't a score on a pinball machine. These are HUMAN GODDAMN LIVES. 230,000 PEOPLE WHO WERE LIVING AND BREATHING. And we have every reason to believe this is not the full number and it is in fact higher.

But that number doesn't sound like anything to people any more. It's beep boop blip so high. And because of the news headlines--which rightly warned us it could be much, much worse--also so low at the same time. It ceases to have any context any more.

Then I want to pull it back, and say okay...so how many people work in your office building? Or how many people do you see in your church every week? Here's a number you can wrap your head around:

We had 2390 deaths just yesterday in the US alone. More than the population of many people's entire office buildings, and more than many people's entire church populations. In one day. And it has been this way every day for WEEKS. And that was just in the US. And that was while many states were under quarantine and taking precautions.

What number do you need to hear? What pile of bodies do you need to see to make it real to you?

This isn't a game.

COVID Conversations - SUPPLY CHAINS

by Shay Moore The TribalDancer Friday, April 17, 2020

SUPPLY CHAINS
And why you should buy things you think you need now-ish (especially things from China)

Friends who have been following closely (it's okay if you haven't, I am not the funnest ball of sunshine lately) know I have been struggling to get some tech bunnies in line lately. Largely this is because everyone is trying to get tech bunnies in line right now and everything is sold out everywhere. But the mad rush is only part of the problem. The other problem is the supply chain is down, and worse yet...it's not going to get better any time soon.

On another thread on a friend's page, there was discussion of the food supply chain similarly in danger right now. A commenter flippantly said there was plenty of food on the shelves right now, and we have no reason to worry. Well, friends, I don't want to add to your stress, but I do want you to have a healthy sense of reality and preparation for the year(s) ahead. Because gently and methodically stocking your larders now would be a Very Smart Move. NOT HOARDING, NOT PANICKING; but just picking up an extra can or two when you shop each week, and stocking some dry beans/dry goods is literally always a good idea. Let's have a chat about why everything looks fine when supply chains are collapsing.

Like all wonderfully terrible things, it starts underneath (in the chain), and then it shows up at the surface (the markets).

Take things like...how about electronics--the very thing that is making me insane right now? Right now you could go out and buy a TV, right? Well, that TV wasn't made yesterday. It wasn't even shipped here yesterday. Those TVs on the shelf were shipped 6 months ago from a port in another country. They were made maybe even over a year ago in another country--let's say mostly China, in this case.

When those TVs run out on the shelves, the store fills from the back room.

The people at the store will order from a local warehouse, and the back room's backstock will fill up again, fine, good.

When the warehouse is empty, the warehouse orders from the distributer/shipper in China.

The distributer orders from the manufacturer in China.

So track it back to the source. If China is shut down, they aren't making any more and aren't shipping any more, that goes back in time, far before your shelves are ever empty. 6 months to a year.

A store shelf empties out, so the store fills from backstock. Backstock fills from a local warehouse. The warehouse ships all they have left, and now that warehouse is empty; but the store backstock is full, the store shelves are full, and you the consumer see a shelf full of TVs.

That local warehouse calls the distributor to fill up, but China is shut down--nothing is being manufactured or shipped. Now local warehouses are empty. You the consumer never see that. You just see full shelves and think everything is business-as-usual.

Next time the shelves empty, it gets filled from backstock.
The warehouse has none. Now the backstock and warehouse are both empty. You don't see that.

Next time the shelves are empty, there is nothing to fill it because long before you saw that happen, the chain had collapsed. Only now do you see the impact.

Same for every supply chain, from widgets to food. We haven't yet begun to see the impact of every supply chain around the world, because the impact will ripple out in time ahead of it. You are still seeing full shelves, but there are supply chains breaking down due to worker shortages and shutdowns, inability to source supplies and repair parts for machinery, and countless other little details we the consumer don't have to think about when we're filling our carts.

Being price-gouged on CraigsList for a webcam so I can Zoom my dance classes is just one small way I am experiencing what will be a months-long, or potentially years-long, drought in high quality electronics in the market (and the absolute flood of cheap off-brand garbage right now is alarming from an environmental standpoint, but I digress). What comes next could be potential continued scarcity and higher prices when things do return to market. Because we don't know what the world financial market is going to look like, nor how long this virus is going to be a real threat in our population.

How this will play out for clothing and food and other necessities I can't speak to (Tracy below reminds us that if you think your food all comes one state over, or even within the US--even if it says US on the label--think again, and do a little reading on the topic). For durable goods--particularly ones manufactured largely in countries hardest hit by COVID-19--my general thought has been that if you need it, and you are seeing it becoming harder to come by, get it now. It's likely only going to get more scarce and expensive for a while.

For foodstuffs, no hoarding, no freaking out; just think about what you would stock away in your larder for winter and start putting a little bit away every week. This isn't happening tomorrow, but it's something worth being prepared for.

That's my take. Any thoughts or sources to add to the discussion?

garden musings

Conversations with Lawns

by Shay Moore The TribalDancer Monday, April 13, 2020

memes musings

FIXED IT - How to really save the USPS

by Shay Moore The TribalDancer Monday, April 13, 2020

INFO ABOUT HOW TO REALLY SAVE THE USPS HEREIN.
(Absolutely, if you need stamps, please, do go buy stamps. But if you don't need stamps and are just buying to "help", read on...)

Raising $1.5 billion is nice and all, but thanks to Republican bullshit, they need in excess of $10 billion. And really...much more than that.

A reminder for those who forgot, and a brief education for those who may never have known why the USPS is where it is:

Republicans hate unions. The USPS is one of the single largest unions in existence. They want it gone for that alone. But also...

like all government entities, they want to kill the USPS with fire and privatize it. The USPS has been one of the most successful examples of an agency overseen by the government that WORKS. They have been trying for a long time to dismantle it, and one of the most recent successes they have had toward this end was--under Bush--Congress forced the USPS to fully fund its retiree benefits plans. Not current retirees. All retirees. For the next 75 years.

"Congressional Republicans mandated that within 10 years the United States Postal Service would have to fully fund retirement health care benefits for the next 75 years. Or to put it more plainly, the Postal Service had a decade to fully fund the retirement health care benefits for future employees that will not even be born until 2057 at the earliest."

We still need to get rid of that damn stipulation. If we could, the USPS would be improved exponentially almost overnight. Yes, literally.
https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis-and-how-to-fix-it

A good history of the situation here, very well-written:
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/why-the-gop-is-killing-post-office/Content?oid=3480985&showFullText=true

So no, you and me and our friends buying a book of stamps isn't going to save this. And we know our current government is going to do everything in their power to bury them, because they already have been. The sweet, sweet opportunity to kill mail-in voting is a bonus, but not the root cause of the GOP's hatred of the USPS. Their war on the mail has gone on far longer than that...

VOTE BLUE. GET THE REPUBLICANS OUT OF POWER.
That's how we save the USPS.

business COVID-19 studio

A Studio Dream, Dying?

by Shay Moore The TribalDancer Wednesday, April 08, 2020

I have barely told anyone this, but here goes...

Here in Seattle, we are "COVID-19 Ground Zero" in the US. Due to social distancing--and later by the governor having been shut down as non-essential--my dance studio has been out of regular business for weeks now with no end in sight. But, we still have to pay rent and all utilities as expected. We fall through every crack imaginable for assistance--I don't employ anyone, so grants for small businesses employing X# of employees aren't available to me. Chris makes too much money for us to qualify for any artists/small business program assistance programs I have come across. The stock market is in the ditch, and with our other house project under way (and also completely frozen due to work stoppages), we have debt tied up in it, and don't have enough liquidity to prop up the business for any length of time and still pay our current living expenses (talk about the worst timing ever). Unemployment doesn't apply to me. Some of my renters are trying to pay in a little bit to help so the roof stays over their head to return to, but they are mostly out of work as well, so it doesn't even cover a tiny portion of the total lease/costs on the space. Looking at arts grants, and there is hot competition for very small amounts of funds; and since they given in small doses to spread as far as they can, most of them wouldn't even cover a portion of one month of our rent. I would have to win out on multiple grants every month to cover our losses. Impossible.

Our mayor did put into place a 30 day moratorium on both residential AND commercial evictions, but we haven't heard if it will be extended. Even if it were, it isn't debt forgiveness, so it means when this is all over we would need to come up with all the back-rent. My credit union is giving a small interest free loan to every member who applies, but it would cover a little less than a month of rent (not expenses), and then I am under that debt, too, with just more months ahead of me without a plan.

Hard fact for me: my lease term is up this July. I only just got started--my studio has been over a decade in the planning, but only 3 years in the fruition of it. It was going beautifully, and I was going to re-up for another 3 years, but now I have to wonder if my dream is about to die ignominiously in this pandemic.

I am mentally composing the mail to my landlord to see what options he may have for me, if any. He owns many properties and is a good landlord. I am sure he has a lot of renters in the same boat, and is fielding a lot of similar messages right now. I don't know what his financial position is and how much wiggle room he has. For instance, I know for a fact a chunk of his portfolio is closed restaurants, and the business I share the building with is a nail salon which has been closed for weeks, with a minimum of another month of closure ahead (and we all know more than that). ALL of us won't be able to pay our rents--where does that put us; where does that put him? He certainly won't want us all moving out en-masse and have to look for new renters, but the financial and legal conundrum it puts him in is no small potatoes, either. I am empathy for the position he is in, as well.

This all just sucks so much.