[HN Gopher] "Logistics", an 857-hour movie, tracks a pedometer f... ___________________________________________________________________ "Logistics", an 857-hour movie, tracks a pedometer from shop back to factory Author : dzuc Score : 205 points Date : 2022-08-13 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (readpassage.com) (TXT) w3m dump (readpassage.com) | kevbin wrote: | akudha wrote: | Most people have no clue where/how everyday things are made. | Reminds me of this video where a teenage girl was saying food | comes from supermarkets, not farmers | zdragnar wrote: | My grandparents (who were farmers) would frequently joke that | city folk always thought beets came from cans at the store and | didn't know they grew in the ground. | | I imagine the same city folk laughed at all the things country | rubes like my grandparents didn't know. Of course, one being | the child of an immigrant and the other immigrating as a child, | and quite poor to boot, they would have faced plenty of | derision for that as well. IIRC they also didn't get indoor | plumbing and toilets until the early 1950's, so they probably | would have been laughed at for that too. | AlbertCory wrote: | "City folk encountering their country cousins" used to be a | standard trope of comedy. The very fact that it's not anymore | tells you all you need to know about urbanization. | danjoredd wrote: | That was pretty much the entire joke behind both Green | Acres and the Beverly Hillbillies, to show the difference | of cultures in America in an absurd way. Seeing everything | become homogeneous is kind of sad | mbg721 wrote: | Sort of...Green Acres seemed more to exploit that | difference to create an absurd environment in general. | (Filmways had a lot of trained farm animals around | anyway.) The recurring joke was that Eddie Albert had an | idyllic vision of being a lawyer retiring to farm life, | and all of the objectively insane things people there did | made perfect sense to everyone except him, including Eva | Gabor. | [deleted] | 29athrowaway wrote: | In 1957, the BBC pranked people for April Fools' day claiming | that spaghetti comes form spaghetti trees. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax | KptMarchewa wrote: | The video is worth a watch' https://youtu.be/tVo_wkxH9dU | lumost wrote: | It does make one wonder how long the supply chain can get | before people forget what's on the other side of it. The | Roman's only had a vague concept of how silk was made and | where it came from. The Chinese a vague idea of daqin, the | opposite of the Qin empire. | | A farmer be forgiven for believing that their fertilizer is | made from manure and not petrochemicals made thousands of | miles away? | seabird wrote: | Farmers know absurd amounts about the fertilizer they're | using. Frankly, they probably know more about any given | facet of the modern world than the average person. Having | to pull multi-million dollar lines of credit and constantly | staying up-to-date with any technology that touches your | business will do funny things to people. That extends to | most people that make things; they know who it goes to and | how it gets there, but the person who gets it doesn't know | where it came from and how it got to them. | philwelch wrote: | Yeah there was a viral video awhile back where this young | woman on a family farm was sitting in her tractor talking | about how everything worked. The tractor has more | computer screens than my desk ever had and a GIS system. | | > That extends to most people that make things; they know | who it goes to and how it gets there, but the person who | gets it doesn't know where it came from and how it got to | them. | | People who make things seriously, at least. People who | think groceries come from the store and haven't thought | past that will still be able to cook a meal while a more | serious home cook or a good professional chef knows more | about where their ingredients come from. But this only | goes a couple levels deep at most. The chef might know | where the farmer's fertilizer comes from (I think that's | part of what's implied by "organic food") but the farmer | will definitely know. But for petrochemical fertilizer, | there's a whole petrochemical supply chain before that | which the fertilizer manufacturer will understand even | better than the farmer. | 29athrowaway wrote: | They have a Star Trek-style replicator. | | "Computer, 1 whole of chicken please. Roasted." | [deleted] | kzrdude wrote: | There used to be plenty of how stuff is made documentaries on | tv, so I don't know. Nowadays I don't see tv, not that linear | medium anyway, so is it gone? | wishfish wrote: | There's still plenty of professionally produced | documentaries. There are a zillion videos on Youtube which | talk about how stuff is made. Plenty of videos telling you | how to make your own stuff. There's subreddits directly or | indirectly dedicated to this. There's also quite a bit of | how-stuff-is-made on TikTok too. | | Speaking of the latter, there's one related phenomenon on | TikTok which I never see talked about, but is quite | interesting / educational. Some production workers set up a | TikTok live feed at work so you can see their part of how | things are made or shipped. I've seen factory workers in | Vietnam, farmers from all over the world, loggers, | construction workers, and too many craftsmen to count. Once | had insomnia and ended up watching a 5 AM livestream of a | sawmill worker methodically turning various sized tree trunks | into uniform planks. That was oddly relaxing and fascinating. | kzrdude wrote: | (Since you mentioned it) I just recently watched all of | Stuff Made Here (brilliant guy and channel). One thing | really opened my mind - he built his own CNC machine! Now | that I know this I could almost believe that I could build | anything too. At least that it's possible to build at home. | | Interesting about TikTok. But all the content niches are so | segregated now due to algorithm recommendations, I'm not | sure if these are being watched by only the interested, or | are they watched by "everyone" in general? | germinalphrase wrote: | That is classic "evergreen" content, so it's probably still | airing. | UIUC_06 wrote: | > However, if Logistics showed me anything, it's that time | belongs to the working people of this world, when we can find | ways to take it. | | So deep. So profound. | | > Logistics is the filmic annihilation of capitalist relations to | time by a force of ultra-cinematic space. Logistics isn't a feat | of temporal duration, it's a feat of spatial presence. | | Such overwrought prose. Such "forcing everything into a Marxist | framework." | | Leonard A. Read talked about the pencil and how no one person | could possibly make one, in 1958: | https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl.html?chapter_n... | and he wasn't the first, either. | | The supply chain expands, but the principle stays the same. | lisper wrote: | > Such overwrought prose. Such "forcing everything into a | Marxist framework." | | One of the reasons Marx is so popular is that his writing is | vague enough that people can read a very wide range of meaning | into the words. Religious leaders and politicians often follow | the same playbook to great success. | eternalban wrote: | https://content.csbs.utah.edu/~ehrbar/cap1.pdf | | For those interested, I recommend Michael Heinrich's | biography of Marx ( _' Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern | Society'_; volume 1 covers the young Marx up to the end of | his studies and delves deep into the intellectual and | political context of that time in Germany and Europe. Very | informative.) | | His 'An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's | Capital' is on my to-read list: | | https://files.libcom.org/files/Karl%20Marx%20and%20the%20Bir. | .. | | https://files.libcom.org/files/Michael_Heinrich,_Alex_Locasc. | .. | bsenftner wrote: | My art school friends used to point out "artful ambiguity" as | a key success factor beneath religious leaders, political | movements and pop music. | kqr wrote: | Sure, also "early access" video games. People are willing | to pay a lot for them because it is still ambiguous enough | that everyone can imagine it will turn out into | specifically their future vision. | bjt2n3904 wrote: | That was a magnificent essay. Thank you for posting it! | forgotmypw17 wrote: | The crazy part is that this journey is only the tip of the | iceberg for this pedometer. It is made of many components, all of | which follow similar journeys to the pedometer factory from their | respective factories. And the components are made of raw | materials, which are also shipped around in a similar manner | after being mined. And the mining itself displaces those who live | in that space. | 7373737373 wrote: | I, Pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws | thefourthchime wrote: | Thanks, that was great | capableweb wrote: | That's a great perspective to have on what it takes to make | even the simplest things, like a pencil. Unfortunately, (but | not unsurprising), Friedman makes the grand claim that | capitalism crates harmony in the world at the end of the | video, but besides that, it was a interesting and quick | watch. Thanks for sharing it. | ed wrote: | > Unfortunately | | What's the argument against capitalism/international trade | in this context? Trade increases the cost of war, which is | a good thing, right? | desindol wrote: | There is also one more focused on manufacturing from Red Bull. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iptAkpqjtMQ | logisticsfilm wrote: | Yeah its unfathomable, we were inspired by an article in the | German magazine Der Spiegel about the components of an electric | toothbrush. Our dream was to follow the components of the | pedometer all the way back to the mines, however, we haven't | done so yet. | wizardforhire wrote: | While not nearly as harrowing a journey nor the commitment as | watching the film described in this article, reading this article | in its entirety was surprisingly riveting and oddly fulfilling. | permo-w wrote: | I found the opposite. to me it felt like retracing the same two | - admittedly interesting and valuable - meta points over and | over*, while refusing to describe what the film was actually | like to watch. I assume it did actually get to that point, but | I stopped reading after the nth paragraph that I didn't feel | provided any new information. | | this isn't to say you're wrong to enjoy it, or that my | impressions were correct, just that I felt differently. I'm | also extremely aware of the irony of complaining about the | length of an article about the experience of watching an 857 | hour film, but c'est la, as they say | | *i.e. how it is an art piece about capitalism compressing time | and space into innocuous objects; and how much of a time and | schedule commitment it was for him | codeflo wrote: | So the entire freighter journey is shown in real time, to show | how "crushing" (a word used in the article) capitalism is? | Because before capitalism, there were no freight ships, or what? | lm28469 wrote: | Every week my office restocks on bananas from Latin america | | Every week at least a few end up in the trash, because they | turned black and no one wants them anymore | | So some dude, thousands of kilometers away, grew his bananas, | put them in a boat, for a weeks long trip to Europe, followed | by hundreds of kilometers in a truck, to end up in my office | trash | | This is a simple example | | It's not about what was possible before, of course we've been | shiping stuff world wide for a long time, it's about the scale | and banality of it and the scale and banality of waste that | comes with it. Nothing is measured with the "absurdity" scale, | everything is measured with the "money" scale. A lot of what we | now consider normal is complete madness | philwelch wrote: | It's not like each individual banana was artisinally grown in | a flower pot. They literally grow on trees. | lm28469 wrote: | And petrol grows in the soil so I guess we're all right | then | | I took a single banana as an example, now think about the | millions of animals we slaughter every year which end up | straight to the bin etc. | | It's like cars, a single car is fine, 1.4 billion cars are | not, I think most people just don't comprehend the scale of | it all | philwelch wrote: | Petrol does not, in fact, "grow" on human timescales. | onos wrote: | I don't like the waste but I also like bananas. Not sure what | to make of your example. | kortilla wrote: | The economies of scale make this nearly no different than you | wasting a locally grown banana. Very little energy was spent | on that particular banana to get it do you. | drexlspivey wrote: | Alternative: You've never eaten a banana because they don't | grow in Europe. How does this measure in the absurdity scale? | lm28469 wrote: | Who cares, I haven't tried the majority of fruits, | vegetables, meats out there, I'm fine | | Life isn't a race to consume everything as much and as fast | as possible | bm3719 wrote: | You can take them home to add to your compost bin. Then you | can put this excellent and free compost in your garden. | bitwize wrote: | Blackened bananas can also be frozen and used later to make | banana bread. | lm28469 wrote: | I don't know if you're sarcastic or not, because this is | exactly what I mean by using a monetary scale. It's free to | me but it still is an incredible waste of energy, time and | ressources | bm3719 wrote: | I'm being serious, and I do this when possible. My non- | gardening relatives will sometimes even drop off a pile | of unusable produce for such purposes when visiting. | | Ideally, it's better not to overproduce and overbuy. But | I'm suggesting making the best of a situation where the | bananas can either go to the landfill or still be of some | use. | delusional wrote: | In that case we shipped literal dirt around the world so | that he could put it in his garden. Is that any less | absurd? | spookthesunset wrote: | What do you propose as an alternative? | stevenally wrote: | Eat locally grown food? | jimbobimbo wrote: | So, no banana for you, eat potatoes instead? | lm28469 wrote: | You haven't tried the vast majority of fruits, veggies, | meats, fishes out there and I'm sure you don't feel like | you're life is miserable because of it | nautilius wrote: | That argument makes no sense. Presumably, jimbobimbo | already sources ~100% of their intake from some producer | outside of their apartment, to not be stuck on eating the | mushrooms growing in the bathroom. | | Just because there is _even more_ out there to miss out | on doesn't make missing out on bananas less of an issue. | | I assume you can just stop to eat altogether, because | you're not consuming the vast majority of food out there. | jimbobimbo wrote: | You do understand that this position comes across as | incredibly paternalistic? It's like mom telling a child | they can't have a cookie until they finish their broccoli | first. | | I don't have to try "the vast majority" of other stuff to | enjoy the banana. | karaterobot wrote: | This may come as a surprise, but there's plenty of | wastage in locally shipped produce too. It's not so much | the distance as the act of picking things and putting | them into boxes, and taking them out of boxes again that | does it. | orangecat wrote: | _So some dude, thousands of kilometers away, grew his | bananas, put them in a boat, for a weeks long trip to Europe, | followed by hundreds of kilometers in a truck, to end up in | my office trash_ | | Along with millions of other bananas that got eaten. You're | arguing against economies of scale here, and you'll need to | show your work rather than dismissing long-distance trade as | "madness". | rakoo wrote: | That's the thing. Under capitalism the only way to measure | something is money. Millions of tons could be sold, profit | was made, so it's OK to throw away a few tons. | | Environment, living and working conditions, resources and | materials being taken from non-renewables sources, all of | those are unimportant under capitalism, all of those are | unimportant with capitalism and are the reason why no one | asks themselves whether it's really worth shipping fruits | from the other side of the world. Sometimes even by plane. | kqr wrote: | Right. In a system where people feel forced to work crazy | hours in the middle of the ocean; in a system where | someone else pays the externalities of petroleum; in a | system where the raw materials for a freighter can be dug | up by people who may not need to understand why anyone | would need bananas shipped to them; in a system rich | people have shaped so that it feeds them whatever exotic | fruits they desire... only in such a system can shipping | bananas to be thrown out be considered "cheap because | economies of scale". | | Economies of scale means individual suffering turns into | statistical noise. | fallingknife wrote: | Because the environment is so much less polluted and | working conditions are so much better in non capitalist | countries? | kqr wrote: | I don't know if there's been a good example of an | actually non-capitalist country yet. I'm not a historian, | but all examples I can think of have a small class of | people owning the means of production. They aren't always | the bourgeoisie but sometimes a political elite or | dictator's following. | | What I can say is that on a more local scale, the non- | capitalist systems I've had experience with have been | much more pleasant than the ones where a small set of | people held most of the power over production. | lm28469 wrote: | They're virtually all playing the capitalist game, | slapping "communist" in your country/government name | isn't enough | [deleted] | robocat wrote: | Can you name a mostly capitalist country? Most countries | have a significantly socialist element, greater than 30% | of the economy. | | For example, the government sector makes up a third of | New Zealand GDP. | https://www.statista.com/statistics/436523/ratio-of- | governme... | | Also if you look at how you "spend" your own time you | might find that a lot of it is not on purely capitalist | hours, but instead time is spent on hobbies, sports, | children, friends, family and other pursuits that would | be regarded as non-capitalist. | | Edit: I would be regarded as a capitalist within New | Zealand (I am a successful founder, I don't much believe | in agricultural/industry subsidies), but I would be | regarded as on-the-left in the US (I'm generally | supportive of government health systems and social | equality). | philwelch wrote: | The problem isn't capitalism; it's the imperfection of | humanity. No economic system in history has eliminated | waste. The only industrialized alternative to capitalism | was notoriously even more wasteful. | | Price systems work by simplifying and transmitting | information relevant to production and consumption | decisions. If the price goes up, consumers who can go | without the thing can stop buying it and producers who | can make more of the thing can start making it, and they | each have the incentive to do so. | | When it comes to externalities with the environment, | these can be incorporated into the price system. That's | how a carbon tax would work. It turns out that the | intuitions of would-be central planners are often | completely wrong. | | The truth is, lots of people do ask themselves if it's | really worth it to ship bananas from Latin America to | Europe. They work for the fruit company and their | decision is based on the costs and benefits. If there are | costs that they aren't considering, then the solution is | to incorporate those costs into the price system, not to | have some banana commissar decree that oceanic banana | shipping is banned because, in his enlightened gut | feeling, it's "absurd". | lm28469 wrote: | > The only industrialized alternative to capitalism was | notoriously even more wasteful | | Or eating locally grown stuff that doesn't need to be | shipped form the other side of the planet, but when you | say that people think you're the mad man... I'm telling | you, the whole system is mad, you're just too deep into | it to realize, the dissonance would be too strong | missedthecue wrote: | Are you under the impression that Ecuadorians never | discard brown bananas? | philwelch wrote: | What exactly is your basis for thinking it's crazy to | ship things from the other side of the planet? What cost | benefit analysis have you done to come to this | conclusion? Or are you just appealing to your own amateur | intuitions? | | If there's an ecological cost that isn't being accounted | for, the solution is to adjust policies so the cost is | reflected, e.g. via a carbon tax. And I'm sure if we had | a carbon tax, we would eat more locally grown food | because it would be more cost effective. On the other | hand, different parts of the world vary widely in terms | of what can be grown there and how efficiently it. It's a | complicated problem that can't be solved top-down, and | certainly can't be solved by some armchair hippie going | "the whole system is mad, man!" | agalunar wrote: | This may be a bit pedantic, but I think it's worth | discussing. | | > The problem isn't capitalism; it's the imperfection of | humanity. No economic system in history has eliminated | waste. | | The fact that no economic system yet implemented at scale | has eliminated waste does not necessarily imply that | waste is unavoidable; we'd need to convincingly show that | no such economic system could be possible. Similarly, I | don't believe we can conclude that capitalism minimizes | waste among all feasible, stable economic systems. | | As far as balancing exploration and exploitation goes, it | might be argued that we should focus on reaping the | benefits of our current economic system and deprioritize | the exploration new economic systems, but it's too much | at this point (imo) to assert that exploration is futile. | | My other thoughts: | | * "Capitalism or central planning" is a false dichotomy; | there are economic systems besides capitalism that have | free markets. | | * The goal of capital holders in a capitalist system is | not efficiency (in the colloquial sense), but profit - | planned obsolescence is perhaps the perfect example of | this. | | * I agree with you that central planners can be | catastrophically wrong, and my current opinion is that | incorporating externalities into the pricing system | (through taxes) is a good idea. It can be difficult to | correctly identify, distinguish, and price externalities; | I wonder if a benefit of more local economic systems is | that there are fewer externalities (by which I mean, | actors experience more of the effects that they cause and | impose fewer incidental effects on third parties), which | would reduce the number of things we need to manually | identify and correct. | jstummbillig wrote: | People did ask themselves. They found, yes, it's worth. | You might disagree, but I don't I think the number of | rotten bananas a process produces offers any meaningful | answer. At best it's a baseline and by itself about as | useful as "x people die from y every year". What about | it? Is that number supposed to be good or bad and what is | the bigger context? | | Doing stuff causes other stuff to happen. People die in | car accidents, but a lot of death is prevented _because_ | we have cars, but then people also die because of | pollution or get depressed because of noise pollution, | and it keeps goin from there. It 's hard. Let's be | empathetic with each other, and good, and also think a | lot about what is going on. | yellow_postit wrote: | I can recommend "The Fish that Ate the Whale" [1] -- this | race against time for bananas is a tale told over many | different phases of shipping. | | [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13166586-the-fish- | that-a... | AlbertCory wrote: | I actually see a food bank "gleaner" regularly at my Safeway. | Bananas with any black spots at all are considered | unsaleable, although they're perfectly edible. | | So long before they turn all black, they're taken to the food | bank and given away to whomever wants them at their central | location. If a banana does make it all the way to black, it | means someone bought it and then didn't eat it. | | There is actually competition among the food banks for | supermarkets' unwanted food. One will go to the supermarket | manager and ask for their unwanted food and get told "Sorry, | we're already giving it to Second Harvest." | | It isn't only produce. The gleaner regularly fills up his car | with breads, milk, and lots of other stuff. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | This is a failure of your office, not of the logistics | network. The bananas arrive just fine, why does your office | stock so many they go bad? | | I eat plenty banana and _almost_ never throw any away. And | when I do, the reason is never "because I didn't eat it in | time". | karaterobot wrote: | I apologize for my ignorance: under what economic system do a | small fraction of bananas not get bruised during shipping? | Sign me up! | iforgotpassword wrote: | Before "capitalism" (globalization really I guess), you were | eating apples from your neighbor's garden, wearing shoes made | by your town's shoemaker, not from half around the world. | Manuel_D wrote: | This is not correct, the ancient world and the ancient | Mediterranean especially saw food get transported by sea. | Rome.had to import much of it's food, for instance, as did | Athens. | iforgotpassword wrote: | Well you're not wrong, but that was still the exception, | and on a smaller scale. So maybe food wasn't the best | example to get my point across. Like you said, they _had | to_ , it's not like some clever Roman said "hey you know | what, I'll just buy cheap stuff from overseas to make more | money and then fuck our farmers." Nobody sent locally | harvested produce for processing to a country half around | the world and then back. Or look at when ancient Rome and | China did trade. That was for luxury goods, not for basic | household items the average Joe would buy. | yunohn wrote: | You could do that in the modern day too, if the West decided | to stop their exploitation of developing/colonial countries. | | Instead, they've decided that minimum wages at home need to | be X $PSEUR and X/100 everywhere else, so they can offshore | everything. Nobody is forcing the West to make shoes in | China! | cptnapalm wrote: | Expand that to things like olive oil, wine, lumber, jewelry, | and the like, you'd have to go back before the bronze age. | dijit wrote: | Not sure that's the strongest take you could have made. | | Some things cannot reasonably be produced domestically. | | Some things are about attempting to shrink labour costs. | | It's cheaper for Britain to send its shellfish to China to | be de-shelled by hand, then send it back than it is to pay | some folks to do it in the UK (or mechanise the task). | | This is an extreme example (and a real one) that highlights | what the parent is talking about. | | Even when accounting for the human, fuel, cooling and | spoilage cost of shipping around the world it's "cheaper", | but that doesn't make sense to me because at the end of it | there is much less fuel and much less fish than it would | have otherwise been. | | There's also not a strong reason to buy shoes made in China | except for economic reasons, and more recently supply chain | ones. | | We can weave fabrics and we have domestic cotton. However, | the economics (pushed cheaper by dirt cheap freight) are | emphasising a global supply chain where one isn't needed in | most cases. | | I'm picking on China a bit but it applies to basically | everything where the labour is cheaper and the supply chain | bends itself in a more inefficient path (everything else | being equal) to capitalise(heh) on the lower labour costs. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | > It's cheaper for Britain to send its shellfish to China | to be de-shelled by hand, then send it back than it is to | pay some folks to do it in the UK | | This is a tiny fraction of a much bigger picture. The | shellfish do not get their own private ship. It's cheap | because the UK is already importing so much that when the | ships return to China empty, they might as well pick up | some shellfish on their way home. Then, the de-shelled | shellfish is valuable enough to get a spot on the next | full ship heading out again. | | Not nearly as crazy sounding. | iforgotpassword wrote: | I think it's still as crazy sounding! We send shellfish | around the globe and back to get them de-shelled. Not | because they do it better, but _cheaper_. And for the | company doing it it makes sense, since they benefit, and | the now unemployed countrymen get compensated by the | government, ie. taxes, ie. everyone. | | And yes, of course there's always one more step that | leads you to where you got in the end. Nobody established | a new shipping route and built a new dedicated ship just | to start de-shelling in China. | | It's like when you look at some complex software that has | a batshit crazy architecture, spaghetti code, 5 different | code styles, hacks and is half procedural half OOP, and | whatever else you consider a crime. But then you look at | its history, how it's almost 30 years old, started | procedural on a different OS, how its requirements vastly | changed and extended over the decades in ways nobody | could possibly anticipate, and suddenly, most of the | crazy things don't seem so crazy anymore if you know the | story behind the individual "crimes" committed. But thst | still doesn't mean that looking at the whole picture | can't reveal a batshit crazy codebase that you wouldn't | touch with a 5ft pole if you can avoid it. | UIUC_06 wrote: | > a global supply chain where one isn't needed in most | cases. | | And you say this from your vast expertise in global | economics? | | Things evolved this way because a whole globe full of | individual actors thought they made sense, based on | prices. If they cease to make sense, those same actors | will start doing something else because the prices they | see will change. | | It could take a while, but so would having another | meeting of the Global Planning Committee. | dijit wrote: | I'm drunk right now, so I can't give you much rebuttal | honestly. | | But it's kinda funny you said this: | | > And you say this from your vast expertise in global | economics? | | Because I actually have a masters degree in international | economics (with a focus on China) from Lund university in | Sweden. | UIUC_06 wrote: | Well, sorry, then you're _certainly_ qualified to | reorganize the whole world 's economy. | dijit wrote: | I am certainly qualified to understand it. | UIUC_06 wrote: | No doubt. You must have global companies calling you all | the time, seeking to hire you for your expertise. Why not | work for one and apply it? | dijit wrote: | > You must have global companies calling you all the | time, seeking to hire you for your expertise. | | Technically yes, though that's because I'm working in | tech. | | I think you're being sarcastic, though but you should | understand that my education is not esoteric. | | 30 people in my class. Countless classes of the same | curriculum in the same years. Countless years that this | has been a thing. | | I'm not sure what your problem is. That someone knows | something with regards to global economics? That despite | understanding economics I gave an argument from the | ecological perspective? | | Honestly. Get over yourself, you're not as smart as you | think by trying to drag people down. | | I mean. For christs sake if not _a person with a masters | degree_ in this topic, then who on earth can weigh in | with an opinion do you think? | UIUC_06 wrote: | > if not a person with a masters degree in this topic, | then who on earth can weigh in with an opinion do you | think? | | Who on earth? Someone with skin in the game -- someone | who actually makes business decisions about shipping and | manufacturing things. As opposed to studying them and | teaching about them. | dijit wrote: | > Someone with skin in the game -- someone who actually | makes business decisions about shipping and manufacturing | things. As opposed to studying them and teaching about | them. | | Cool. | | I'm CTO at a company of 150 people. | | To be fair, we make video games. | | I'm sure you'll find a way to disqualify me from having | an opinion in some other way. | UIUC_06 wrote: | > I'm sure you'll find a way to disqualify me | | No. You've got skin in the game. Calm down. | have_faith wrote: | This reminds me of that fields medal HN comment. | Different scale but same theme. | lm28469 wrote: | But this was still sustainable, what happened in the last | century on the other hand.... | tpmx wrote: | Trade is capitalism. It's how we push forward. It's inevitable, | but some people do hardcore roleplay that it's not. The world | is worse for that. | WalterBright wrote: | People trade under socialism and communism, too. Stone age | tribes trade. Families trade. Communes trade. Everybody | trades. | tpmx wrote: | > People trade under socialism and communism, too. | | In trivially provably less efficient ways. | bitwize wrote: | > efficient | | Economists and market fundamentalists keep using that | word. I do not think it means what they think it means. | WalterBright wrote: | Economists know what words mean. | moritzwarhier wrote: | Efficiency can mean a lot though. It depends on what you | want to maximize and what to minimize. | tpmx wrote: | They also know that free trade is superior to planned | economies, soviet union style. | WalterBright wrote: | Planned economies haven't worked in the US, either. For | example, before Reagan deregulated the airlines, the | airline schedules, routes, and fares were set by the FAA. | | The result is airliners often flew nearly empty. | | Once that was deregulated, a titantic shift occurred, | such as the emergence of the hub-and-spoke system. | Airplanes have been packed since then. | | The FAA bureaucrats proved incapable of efficiently | setting routes, schedules, and fares. | | In the 1970s, the Energy Department decided a gas | station's gas allocation. They did this for every gas | station in the country. The result was simultaneous gluts | and shortages of gas. Reagan deregulated that with his | very first Executive Order, and the gluts, shortages, and | gas lines disappeared literally overnight. | | Planned economies just don't work. | kzrdude wrote: | At what level of regulation is a market free? As an | example of a hard to capture word. | WalterBright wrote: | Regulation to prevent use of force and fraud, and | contract enforcement, and dealing with externalities. | moritzwarhier wrote: | Who decides when "dealing with externalities" has been | done in a proper way? | | The very word "externalities" and the state of the global | environment don't inspire much trust in the efficient | management of "externalities" through capitalism. | | Pointing this out doesn't mean that I am a socialist ot | communist, I don't like this this kind of black and white | thinking. | | Wouldn't "efficiency" mean that we use natural resources | sustainably? | | That's not happening as far as I see. | ModernMech wrote: | Trade exists apart from capitalism, and is found in any | number of alternative economic systems. Capitalism is about | who has ownership of productive assets. Conflating capitalism | with trade makes it seem like no alternative economic systems | are possible. | [deleted] | Seattle3503 wrote: | It makes about as much sense as saying watching paint dry | defines the experience of having decorated walls. | delusional wrote: | Observing the absurdity of something doesn't necessarily mean | you have a more desirable alternative. I can observe that it's | absurd that my apples were shipped halfway around the world | without saying "so i don't want them". | | Capitalism is absurd, what it makes humans do is absurd. It's | also useful and has some worthwhile properties. | permo-w wrote: | the mid-section of this article is just rephrased paragraph after | rephrased paragraph, each less philosophically sound than the | last. | | we get it, the film is an art piece making a point about how | capitalism compresses time and space into inconsequential | objects. it was a big undertaking schedule-wise. you don't have | to say this backwards and forwards 5 times | | compress your article space and time-wise | [deleted] | manytree wrote: | What a lovely article and piece. Tremendous. I don't think I will | make such a commitment to this film as did the author, but in a | way I feel it is perhaps the only way to understand it: at the | speed of undilated time. | radicality wrote: | Is it available anywhere? Article says was on Vimeo but that it | was taken down. | | I don't see any info on their page either | https://logisticsartproject.com/ | | I wonder how large (in file size) the final cut was and what | codecs were used. Such slow moving footage probably compresses | well, but at 857 hours of footage it's probably still big. | logisticsfilm wrote: | We had the film on Vimeo for a year but had to take it down due | to the cost of Vimeo hosting. | | The original film is around 10TB of mpeg2 1080p 25mbit/sec 25 | frames per second. | | We later transcoded to h264, it now clocks in at about 2TB. | chaostheory wrote: | Out of curiosity, why aren't you on other platforms? Is it | mainly due to the size, maintaining rights, or a combination? | logisticsfilm wrote: | Size and rights are definitely an aspect, but so is | context. If we were to upload this to YouTube for example | we imagine that the film would be interrupted by commercial | breaks every now and then. Plus there is the 12 hour length | limit. | | We did livestream it on Youtube back when you could opt out | of commercials. And in a way a livestream is our preferred | way of showing the work but doing so from home forces us to | make sure the stream is running 24/7 for 37 days... | philistine wrote: | Yeah, you should definitely find a way to stream it from | a third location. You have the same problem as the lofi | girl stream: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk | | Before their problem with content ID last month, their | stream had been uninterrupted for two years. | [deleted] | drited wrote: | The author mentioned that they started out looking for the | world's longest horror film but ended up finding a film which | exposes capitalism's underbelly and brings home why life is | turned into a blur by capitalism. | | If you ask me though, based on this paragraph they did actually | find the world's longest horror film! As for the anti-capitalism | hints in the article, try watching an 857 hour film without | starving in a non-capitalist economy! | | "There came a point about three weeks into my viewing where the | maddening, non-Euclidean shape of Logistics fully formed in my | mind. I had an unnerving migraine. I could barely get myself | together, let alone watch a boat not move for nine hours. I | thought about quitting or taking a few days off, but then it | occurred to me: the crew of the ship couldn't quit, and the | filmmakers couldn't take a day off. I was now a part of this | filmic thing, and I couldn't stop until it was done." | rahimnathwani wrote: | I really enjoyed Ascension https://g.co/kgs/agLbnp | boomboomsubban wrote: | I think I could handle watching the boat, 857 hours of silence | would drive me insane. I wonder if they supplemented their own | background music. | chha wrote: | Not quite that long, but the Norwegian national broadcaster NRK | did a week-long trip one one of the coastal shipping routes in | the nortern part of the country. Might be of interest for you. | I know they used to offer the whole thing as a torrent, but it | can also be found here: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/hurtigruten- | minutt-for-minutt | drdebug wrote: | You don't have kids do you? Silence is under-rated. | RajT88 wrote: | Still. For my tastes at least, this is time better spent than | _The Cremaster Cycle_. | [deleted] | rendall wrote: | > _Going on the Logistics journey means encountering a staggering | depiction of alienation, isolation and just how much capitalist | social relations have distorted our ability to understand time | and space._ | | Bit of a stretch. Would anarchist shipping take less time or be | less boring somehow? | exitb wrote: | One could question the decision to make the pedometer on the | other side of the world. Or even its necessity in the first | place. | UIUC_06 wrote: | One could, if "one" were an intellectual who thought himself | qualified to question everything, because reasons. | | Someone wants a pedometer, and magically, or not so | magically, one appears on a shelf near them, or on their | doorstep. | sixstringtheory wrote: | Why did they want the pedometer? Did they come to that | desire in isolation, or were they advertised to by the | pedometer maker? | UIUC_06 wrote: | Maybe they're humans with agency? Just a thought. | fallingknife wrote: | You can decide on its necessity for yourself by buying it or | not. You are not entitled to make that choice for other | people. | kqr wrote: | Certainly the parties involved would have a _better | understanding of_ the time and space under discussion, because | they would have taken part in the decisions about sourcing and | logistics. | rendall wrote: | I mean, it seems like the guy went into the viewing already | with a notion that capitalism is bad, and then watched a lot of | really boring video, and then attributes the self-imposed | tedium to how capitalism "distorts or ability to understand | time and space". Only someone predisposed to this perspective | would think that makes any sense at all. | kuramitropolis wrote: | Increased likelihood of piracy, less stuff shipped overall, | probably less of the blandness inherent in economy of scale. | arise wrote: | So less boring, if nothing else. | Ygg2 wrote: | Sure. If you count waking up tomorrow as boring. | delusional wrote: | I don't think anarchy is the negation of capitalism. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | In practice, was communism _less_ alienating than capitalism? | I doubt it. | AlbertCory wrote: | Soviet workers used to say "We pretend to work, and they | pretend to pay us." | teakettle42 wrote: | Czech workers during the communist era used to say "If | you're not stealing from the state, you're stealing from | your family" ("Kdo neokrada stat, okrada rodinu") | kuramitropolis wrote: | Nah GP actually has a good radical/reductionist approach by | jumping straight to anarchies. | rakoo wrote: | The side effect of capitalism is that not only money becomes | concentrated, but also power. Not only because money buys | power, but because the one who ones the machines can dictate | how the one who operates it works. Anarchism refutes the idea | that one has power over another, and as such accumulation of | money and not owning the means of production _is_ | antithetical to anarchism | docandrew wrote: | This reminds me of a small organic farm owner who said | something to the effect of "why can't I just trade my extra | produce with the farmer down the street who has extra eggs? | And then I can use the eggs to make pastries and trade | those with my neighbor who makes homemade clothing?" | Someone responded, "congrats, you just invented | capitalism." | | Since eggs go bad and produce is heavy, maybe we could | invent a durable "value storage" or "token" or "fiat" to | trade instead. Storage and transmission of this value store | could become useful trades in their own right. | | This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it | would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ | this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other | economic system, including your definition. In your | "anarchism" how do you enforce the non-ownership of the | means of production except by force? Do you force the | farmer not to grow anything? | logisticsfilm wrote: | Hi there, creators of Logistics here. Super happy to see this | featured on Hacker News. | | Feel free to ask us anything! | | official site is logisticsartproject.com | gtsop wrote: | Where can we see it? | logisticsfilm wrote: | Right now only at the library at Johns Hopkins University in | Baltimore. We had the full film up on Vimeo for a year but it | was too expensive too keep it there. Its hard to find a good | cheap place to host a movie of this length. | corny wrote: | The Polygon Gallery (North Vancouver, BC) hosted The Clock | a few years ago. But staying open for a 24 hour long film | must be much easier than for a month long film. | radihuq wrote: | out of curiosity, how big is the file? | | EDIT: never mind, I see you answered this in another | comment: | | > The original film is around 10TB of mpeg2 1080p | 25mbit/sec 25 frames per second. | | > We later transcoded to h264, it now clocks in at about | 2TB. | [deleted] | kevinmchugh wrote: | Could you continuously stream it on twitch or YouTube or | the like? | logisticsfilm wrote: | Great idea, thanks! | | Since several of you have asked how to watch the movie, | we spontaneously decided to stream the first 21 hours of | Logistics on Twitch. Since it will soon be night here in | Sweden, we will not be able to keep track of the stream. | We're keeping our fingers crossed that it works. | Unfortunately we will not be able to stream the entire | film this time, but hope to do so later. | | The stream is live now at | https://www.twitch.tv/logisticsartproject | logisticsfilm wrote: | Youtube has commercials which we would like to avoid, but | we had not considered twitch. Perhaps that's a good idea. | We have livestreamed it before, but it's quite a | commitment to keep a stream running 24/7 for 37 days. | junon wrote: | Torrents? | madmod wrote: | Can I please buy a copy? | logisticsfilm wrote: | unfortunately its not for sale, but we are actively | looking for a place to host it as a VOD again. Send us an | email if you want to be notified if and when its | available again. (email in profile) | buck4roo wrote: | Have you considered archive.org? | gregsadetsky wrote: | Really great suggestion -- @logisticsfilm you should | consider it! | | Also https://ubu.com/ might be interested to | host/distribute it and it's a great fit as well. | chrismiller wrote: | Would love to help you get this back online if you are | interested! Happy to host it or point you in the right | direction if you'd like to do it yourself. | logisticsfilm wrote: | Sounds great! Our email is in our profile. | metadat wrote: | Are you open to distributing via torrent? | logisticsfilm wrote: | So far we have chosen not to because we consider the core | of the work to be the continuous length of the film. A | torrent would enable timelapses and short versions. But | we will think about it. | t6jvcereio wrote: | This is weird. No normal person is going to watch 857 | hours. The only person to watch that long are movie | industry people, so they can write about it. | | Separate question, how do you monetize this? | yunohn wrote: | What's wrong with a timelapse? Seems like the perfect | opportunity. | djbusby wrote: | That can/will happen regardless of distribution via Vimeo | or torrent or YT or whatever. | | Torrent doesn't enable that any more than any other | distribution channel. | djbusby wrote: | Is this a case for PeerTube? | epolanski wrote: | Split it in different pieces and upload it on YouTube? | boomboomsubban wrote: | Why is it silent? Was a camera with an acceptable microphone | too expensive/difficult to maintain? | | The article makes a big deal out of finally seeing a person. Is | that person aware of the movie? | | Sounds like an interesting film, thanks for answering questions | about it. | logisticsfilm wrote: | We couldn't figure out what sound to have, so we opted for | silence. We also hoped it would be more contemplative without | sound. | | Yes he is aware that the camera is recording, he needed to | wash the windows on the bridge. | Balgair wrote: | What was the hardest thing about accomplishing this? | | What was the easiest? | | Any advice for other film-makers? | logisticsfilm wrote: | Some of the hardest things were: - Gathering facts about the | product, where it was manufactured and what its shipping | routes were. - Getting permission to film during the trip. - | Finding a technical solution (in 2011) that could record | continuously during the entire journey of the container ship. | | It was comparatively easy to design the concept, it then took | a very long time to implement. | | We are not professional filmmakers, but something that helped | us was to be stubborn. | junon wrote: | Being stubborn is highly underrated! | testplzignore wrote: | How many times have you watched it yourself? | logisticsfilm wrote: | Since several of you have asked how to watch the movie, we | spontaneously decided to stream the first 21 hours of Logistics | on Twitch. Since it will soon be night here in Sweden, we will | not be able to keep track of the stream. We're keeping our | fingers crossed that it works. Unfortunately we will not be | able to stream the entire film this time, but hope to do so | later. | | The stream is live now at | https://www.twitch.tv/logisticsartproject | caymanjim wrote: | Why did they do this backwards? It sounds like they took the trip | in reverse. I thought they recorded it forward (tracking an | actual object the whole time) and presented it in reverse, but it | looks like they didn't actually follow a real object. They just | chose a path and took the path in reverse, using the types of | transportation that such an object might in theory have taken: | | > They write that, "Four years later we found ourselves on the | largest container ship in the world on our way from Sweden to | China." As per the trip: "We had started the journey by truck to | Middle Sweden, then by freight train to the port of Gothenburg, | and after four weeks at sea, we filmed from a truck again, this | time from the port of Shenzhen to a factory in Bao'an." | | The idea of following a single, real object from point of | manufacture to destination--documenting all the transfers and | hiccups along the way--is interesting to me. Presenting it in | reverse chronological order is an artistic decision I'm | ambivalent about. But it doesn't sound like that's what they did. | They didn't track a pedometer; they just took freight vehicles | along a path that maybe the thing went on, without following the | actual transfer of the item from box to container, from truck to | ship, etc. | | I'm disappointed. I was ready to actually watch the whole thing. | But it's contrived. | logisticsfilm wrote: | Absolutely, the best thing would have been to actually follow a | specific, unique product. We tried for one and a half years to | get the company where we bought the pedometer to cooperate with | us. It was impossible. But we managed to get the company to | tell us which route they used in most cases. | gizajob wrote: | It's only contrived in the way all art is contrived. The very | idea of an 857 hour move mostly filming the bridge of a | containership is a contrivance in the extreme. | fullshark wrote: | Your ideal film is the opening of the film Lord of War (edited | for time). | | https://youtu.be/VHn1zogeyO4 | reidjs wrote: | One of the most entertaining intros of any movie, ever. | 1-6 wrote: | vachina wrote: | How did you conclude it was communism/socialism that enabled | them to benefit from capitalism's extremes? Or is this another | attempt at "China Bad"? | steve76 wrote: | dang wrote: | Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological | arguments. Those are extremely repetitive and therefore off | topic here. | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | idiocrat wrote: | Here is more of container shipping pron. | | A container ship is sailing through a water highway, docks. The | containers are getting unloaded/loaded. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h16zyxiwDLY | 7373737373 wrote: | Also this one by JeffHK: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHrCI9eSJGQ | ThinkingGuy wrote: | Also worth a listen: the Omega Tau podcast episode on container | ships: | | https://omegataupodcast.net/146-container-shipping/ | mpalmer wrote: | Was the author inspired by the filmmakers not to edit this piece | down to a sensible, non-redundant length? | keepquestioning wrote: | Container ships seem very inefficient. Is that why shipping from | taobao is horrible? | lifeisstillgood wrote: | I want to see (edited highlights) of the film now. | | It is extraordinary but then again it's just "the container will | be here in three weeks" | Voloskaya wrote: | 72 minutes edit [1]. | | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYFG0xP12yE | logisticsfilm wrote: | Actually we did not create this, its made out of 2 minute | clips we hosted on our web page a few years back. The | original film has no sound. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | Well thank you for creating such an amazing piece of ... | art / documentary / politics. | | Please do tell us where we can see the full work / where it | is available. | [deleted] | tasuki wrote: | > It was on, in front of my eyes, while I worked, ate and lived. | | Either you're working or you're watching a movie. I know people | who claim they do both at the same time, but I don't think | they're actually doing either. | colinsane wrote: | "either you're working or you're listening to music". | | the progression of my career has looked like this: | | - need total quiet: no music, no talking. | | - some music is fine: it can't have lyrics though and it's best | if it's more textural. | | - i can listen to (and process the lyrics to) hip hop and rap | and still type. | | - i can listen to YouTube educationals and catch about a third | of the content. | | - i can rewatch movies i've seen before and keep up with the | important plot parts. | | sure, for the parts of the day where i'm working out | differential equations or solving circuits and such, i go back | to silence. but if 90% of your work is just plumbing values | from one place to another... if you've progressed anywhere | along that sequence i listed then i think it's naive to take | that simple "either/or" view of things. | Swenrekcah wrote: | It is in fact possible to do certain repetitive tasks and keep | track of a simple movie or tv show at the same time. | | I find neither particularly enjoyable though. | tasuki wrote: | Yes, if one is doing menial work, sure. I thought the author | was a writer, which is in my opinion creative work requiring | full attention. | joemi wrote: | The author is a professional writer, so depending on what | specific writing tasks they're doing, they may be able to | do portions of their job almost automatically, devoting far | less than full attention to their work. (I know a few | writers who do this.) Additionally the movie is silent, so | I'd imagine that leaves the language parts of the brain | fairly free when watching the movie. | Swenrekcah wrote: | That's true. Although now that I read the article, the | quoted sentence comes right after they mentioned 9 hours of | a stationary ship so I guess it's possible to keep that on | in the background and not miss the plot. | [deleted] | neilv wrote: | If this were an ambient display on a wall in a living space or | work space, I wonder what effect that would have on mood and | mode. | collegeburner wrote: | in the same vein (tho lots shorter) i reccomend giving _I, | Pencil_ a read: https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil/ | logisticsfilm wrote: | oh nice! didn't know about this book. | hef19898 wrote: | Not a critique if the film, but rather the article ablut it: | | >> Logistics may have been birthed into this world in 2012, but | the past few years have given the film a second life, with the | pandemic laying bare the fragility of just-in-time logistics. | | I so hoped we got past that already... JIT had nothing to do, as | a root cause that is, with the supply issues the world is facing | since the pandemic. I hate this meme so much. | | That being said, I live the film project! Even if I would never | watch 35 days plus on part of my day job, the idea is great so! | causality0 wrote: | _just how much capitalist social relations have distorted our | ability to understand time and space._ | | This is meaningless bullshit. The fact you can purchase, for an | hour's wage, a digital pedometer than was built on one continent | from raw materials from another and then shipped to a third is a | breathtaking triumph. | gurumeditations wrote: | So much fluff I couldn't finish it. | toiletfuneral wrote: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-13 23:00 UTC)