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Inconel is through the roof and I know a few aerospace clients who are MONTHS behind due to shortages and bonkers material costs. Like holding up the military supply chain which is ludicrous. This admin is brain dead.
Same too with customers. The people buying bulk metal need is when they need it. They don't want to wait around, literally, for the winds to change.
The aluminium smelters I've had contact with have all avoided any shutdowns (back up generators, etc) because any significant breakdown in continuous processing involves several days of tear down in order to restart.
I am literally within 20 feet of someone who worked 5 years as a general foreman in charge of the smelter portion of the Portland aluminium smelter* who is not embracing the idea that this a process you can just turn off and turn on again later w/out a large chunk of effort.
I think at a steel smelter, since the heat does the work, they aren't as easily separable. You would still use less energy at the times when you processed less metal.
Aluminium smelters were traditionally some of the biggest loads on the grid. They were built near hydroelectric dams and had contracts with electricity providers to absorb excess energy and to pause operations on short notice when other demand is high. In exchange for this they get it very cheap, which is good because they need a lot of it. Variable energy supply is not new to them.
Now I've never worked at either and I'm just spitballing ideas on the internet, but you haven't either and you are too.
Even the MAGA folks I have to deal with are bitter about it. They still voted for Trump but they can't deny the cause and effect. I think they'd still vote for Trump though. I don't understand how they manage to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
It's funny... laugh.
Feel free to come back when you have something to add.
> I can't imagine having a conversation with someone like this for more than five minutes.
Judging from this and all your other dead comments, you don't seem inclined to have a conversation at all.
I'm sure fox news will give them some Olympic tier training in mental gymnastics and they'll be blaming - with certainty and conviction - brown people, democrats, trans people and/or women in no time.
> I don't understand how they manage to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
A family friend recently sent me this and it's been helpful to wrap my head around some of the naked hypocrisy:
``` The reason they aren’t more bothered by Q constantly getting things wrong, why they aren’t more bothered by the extreme inconsistencies and outright contradictions, by the claims that are just materially wrong, is because it gives them power over others who are bound by something as weak and flimsy as reality.
They claim to be against corruption while hanging their hopes on an openly corrupt man, and that naked hypocrisy is the point.
They will effortlessly carve out an exception because it makes them exceptional. They engage in wild hypocrisy as an act of domination, adhering to something demonstrably untrue out of spite, because they believe that power belongs to those with the greatest will to take it, and what greater sign of will than the ability to override truth?
Their will is a hammer that they are useing to beat reality itself into a shape of their choosing, a simple world where reality is exactly what it looks like through their eyes, devoid of complexity, devoid of change, where they are right and their enemies are silent.
They are trying to build a Flat Earth. ```
And of course there’s those that know exactly how wrong and awful this is, but support it out of self interest anyway (eg: Marco Rubio). That’s even worse.
Why Farmers Voted for Trump https://youtube.com/watch?v=badGHJLDpP8
A hypothesis: The "spite" is secondary to their insecurity and fear of not belonging to a "safe" group, in a world they assume has vicious and unavoidable hierarchies or cruelty. Having the out-group hurt (or even just baffled) occurs in service of that.
Professing and supporting stupid beliefs is "loyalty", an expensive (and therefore prominent) signal of membership. Like tattooing Dear Leader's name on one's forehead. It's less an opinion one holds and more a song they sing to fit in with the flock.
I find that focus on insecurity and loneliness and fear—versus the reward of belonging—a bit more comprehensible than spite as its own reward.
AKA shibboleths
Further, the rhetoric creates a permission structure which allows (enables?) people to be their worst selves.
Are they MAGA?
"Just find US suppliers."
It's not that simple. There are a lot of things that simply aren't made in the US. (The majority of tool steels, all titanium alloys, everything made of tungsten, and I could go on all day.)
Besides, dealing with the Chinese is like life on easy mode. Handshake agreements are always respected. In most cases service and support are 24/7. Importantly for QoL, they never make you fill out a dozen forms, pay for a D&B report, "let's get on a Zoom call to touch base," and all of that nonsense. American B2B firms aren't really into customer service, as a general rule, I think.
Trudeau was a colossal cluster f of a prime minister, but he’s nowhere in the same ballpark.