> If transporting something from Shenzhen to Franfurt is cheaper than transporting the same thing from Krakow to Thessaloniki - means that EU has fucked up
Ummmm. No.
It means the United Nations Universal Post Union international treaties which effectively provide China with subsidised postage TO THE WORLD (as China is a "developing country") needs urgently updating....... Some of the postage you pay to send parcels within the boarders of your own country is used to subsidise crap posted from China.
UPU reforms were 6 years ago. EU/NA local posts hasn't been subsidizing PRC shipments for awhile. PRC volume vendors dispatching from local warehouses now, they simply sorted out their logistics from mainland to bulk/volume air freight to warehouse to private delivery for last mile to be more efficient than shipping within EU.
Except shipping from China really isn't cheaper than shipping within EU. You just do it from a reasonable hub, or get a third party to handle this for you.
Look at how The Hut Group handles logistics for MyProtein for example.
That's not reasonable condition, hence why EU is systemically more expensive.
THG logistics looks like warehouse->dispatch, i.e. it's for vendors of certain size that can prestock at regional warehouse. Private last mile always fast. But it doesn't address first mile to hub. Can a bumfuck workshop in a hamlet deliver in Greece deliver to warehouse in Poland across multiple jurisdictions for peanuts? My understanding is EU first mile is fragmented/slow if you rely on national post and expensive if you rely on private couriers.
PRC has unified mainland logistics, any sized vendor can get any standard sized item, in any quantity and PRC first mile logistics like Cainiao and JD will consolidate for cheap bulk (air)freight to regional hub where last mile is also fast.
PRC mainland->overseas complex is a system with low first mile + low last mile. EU has no integrated cheap first-mile, which raises price on SMEs, i.e. most of producers.
> But it doesn't address first mile to hub. Can a bumfuck workshop in a hamlet deliver in Greece deliver to warehouse in Poland across multiple jurisdictions for peanuts?
Yes, unless they're doing so at a ludicrously small scale. Sending a 20t lorry load from Thessaloniki to Warsaw will cost less than 6000 euros. I suspect it can be done for around 2400, but I don't know the route very well.
>My understanding is EU first mile is fragmented/slow if you rely on national post and expensive if you rely on private couriers.
Yes, it sucks at ultra-small scale. But that's really what that is. The private couriers have super attractive volume pricing, even 80% off public (consumer facing) rates isn't unusual.
So the answer is really no considering vast majorities of SMEs i.e. 99%+ of EU business operates at "ludicrously small" scale that can't fill a container, i.e. about half of EU internal trade. 80% discount off what base price, because if after 80% discount off high priced EU courier rates and final cost more than one euro, PRC still comes out ahead, i.e. PRC domestic first mile prices are like 20-80 cents per parcel. Unless private EU courier rates are 1-5 euros (they're probably not), they still lose to PRC first-mile. (TBF I'm just assuming EU courier prices, my knowledge more limited to PRC logistics). If that's the case, EU simply can't compete, as in EU systemically not capable of matching PRC price floor. Hence IIRC why EU plan to add flat custom duty per item on Chinese parcels to make them more expensive. Like I'm sure many established businesses factor/absorb higher shipping cost into opex, but ultimately shipping cost/friction affects things like startup formation in first place etc.
This is true, but you could also say the same about the phrases "English accent" and "Scottish accent" -- a Scouse accent sounds nothing like RP, and a Highland lilt is very different from the accent in the Gorbals.
And the Appalachian accents of Justified sound very different to the Mid-Atlantic accent of Frasier Crane -- yet to me, as an outsider, there is still an indefinable "Americanness" common to them all.
> there is still an indefinable "Americanness" common to them all
I believe it is more of self fulfilling prophecy imo. Some quality you treat as American AFTER you learn it is an american accent rather than something you see as american before (or regardless of whether) you even know if it is american
People who don't live there, or are selling to people who don't live there?
In the UK we use the phrase "American accent" and it's OK. It means "there exists an American who would use this accent" not "all Americans use this accent".
There's plenty of difference within English accents as well. I'll generally classify any of them as English, I think.
That said, when I use the term British accent, I do usually mean English, I think. Sorry. Also sorry for all the times I used England when I meant UK, or UK when I meant Great Britain, or vice versa.
The reality is that no accent (not even english ones) sound like each other technically. Consider a south east accent with a scouse accent, for example. Both English, both nothing like each other.
I believe the correct expression would be "British accents".
Reflecting X-rays is exactly what's needed for EUV litography, Hiroo Kinoshita had to fight quite a bit to have his research taken seriously back in the days but it's the foundation to how EUV lithography works.
There’s no “typhon” in this thread. Did you mean “typon”? I did reread his comment; it expressed a negative view of a specific generational cohort rather than old people in general.
I think it’s also important to remember that there are tons of terrible practicals out there, we just don’t think of them because they were bad and forgettable. Lots of great CG too that you likely never recognized as CG. Sicario is littered with examples. You’d be hard pressed to call out even most of them.
That's true on there being lots of terrible practical effects out there. The parent lauded Raiders of the Lost Ark for its practical effects. In contrast, Last Crusade was a great movie that had a few practical effects that were terrible. The scene with the tank going over the edge of the cliff is so bad and so fake that I could help rewind and pause to laugh at it when I was a kid.
Sure, the tank rolling at the bottom looks a bit like a model, but it isn't nearly as jarring as the part where the shot of the guy in the tank looks like it came from another world entirely and has been badly edited in on top.
True, but it really does hold up better than CGI. For example, a Dalek isn't really fooling anybody, but it's still far better than a CGI Scorpion King. I think it's easier for the brain to accept something as a representation of something it isn't when it's farther outside of the uncanny valley
You’re not comparing the worst practicals to what is considered one of the single worst CG renderings of all time though. There is also a camp culture that the Daleks fit in to - they weren’t trying to sell it as “very real” even at the time, that was “the look” and the budget. CG in live action is generally either shooting for 100% realism or is for comedic purposes intentionally absolutely awful. There’s a lot less in between than with practicals.
In the 1990's and for us Gen-X'ers, the worst thing you could do was to sell out; to take the mans money instead of keeping your integrity. Calling people and bands 'sell outs' (sometimes without justification!) was to insult them.
With the rise of 'influencers' the opposite appears to be the case; people go out of their way to sell out and are praised for doing so. This is a massive change in the cultural landscape which perhaps many born in the 2000's aren't aware of. (Being aware of this helps give some perspective to Gen-X media and films like hackers).
This is exemplified in Wayne's World product scene. I later found out none of the companies shown in the scene had paid for their products to be in the scene. Its also one of the most iconic scenes from the movie.
This is insightful. But I'm not sure it's completely true, I think people just have shifted their perception of what selling out means.
Content creators on YouTube, for example, get criticized when they literally sell their brand to a larger conglomerate. It seems people do not complain if they do sponsorizations tho.
I'd argue the very words creating "content" implies something commercial is already in mind and is a driver, rather than just doing your own thing online and not caring (such showing a video of your band/hobby on YouTube in case anybody is interested).
To a Gen-X'er, the former sounds like they are already a sell out :-)
I certainly agree with you that perceptions have shifted.
I agree with you and I find the term "creating content" awful, even though I'm forced to use it because it's something people immediately understand.
"Content creator"... what happened to artist, playwright, painter, hobbyist, etc? It makes it seem as if they were making stuff for a corporation to sell.
It is what's happening in some cases, not all. Also, language shapes thought, so we encourage this to happen if we frame it as "content creation". It's something to push against.
Note it's not even relevant whether something is commercial. Art can be commercial and not be just "content". A musician is not a "content creator" which happens to create content in the shape of music. "Content" implies it doesn't really matters, what matters is engagement and the platform (and advertisers, etc). It's not healthy to think of hobbies, art, and entertainment as exclusively about this. Imagine if Oscar Wilde, Herman Melville, Alan Moore, etc had been thought of merely as "content creators".
This is not a new idea. Stallman was already pushing back against this "content" term decades ago.
reply