madza

People enforce rules with a single minded focus that can be self defeating. Change the circumstances slightly and people are not likely to reinterpret the rules, even if this would seem “obvious”. This is one of the reasons top down management is so inefficient in the long run. Circumstances change but the person who made the rule is not around to reinterpret the rules.

A friend told me of a person in a flying club with him who went to the airport to go on a hunting trip. They had slung their guns over their shoulders and walked to the entrance of the airport to get to their plane. Security officials scanned them with hand held scanners and waved them through...

Lest we forget.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition

This is not a massive break from the international status quo by a any means. The USA and all other nations have operated in a similar manner for a long time with equally gruesome outcomes.

If I recall the head of Interpol “disappeared” not long ago, and that little kerfuffle died away right quick.

Perhaps the reasons are more mundane.

1. The Saudis got caught out by the Turks with the evidence. Which has been used effectively. The Turks have a lot to gain by seeing the alliance between SA and the US weakened. 2. The senior leadership of SA can be more directly tied to this incident, as opposed to more common case where plausible deniability exists. Rookie mistake. 3. There exists internal opposition to the leadership in the US and SA that find it convenient to escalate the profile of this issue for their own purposes.

This will blow over and business as usual will resume shortly.

Cell phone banking is wide spread in Madagascar. Where there is reception...

Thank you. That is a great collection and brought back some very good memories of some great stories.

I have a large collection of old science fiction books (60’s and 70’s) from spending a lot of time in second hand book stores.

Growing up before the internet and the explosion of the genre in the 90’s that use to be the only way to find new books or authors.

The art of sci-fi book cover has certainly lost something...if only for being more pc.

Forgive me. It’s been stuck at the back of my brain for 30 years now.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/

I’m not alone then. I moved my subscription from the NYT to FT looking for a less politically slanted product but the tone at the FT is definitely going in the same direction. Any suggestions?

P.s I have to phone the FT to cancel my subscription apparently.

Premise of a novel by Clifford D. Simak. Good read.

The current demand for high quality nickel used in batteries is very small in comparison to overall world nickel production. This will continue for the foreseeable future.

Nickel is trading at very low prices historically and most producers are losing money at current prices.

This would imply that the current supply of nickel is more than sufficient for the worlds needs and that some producers need to shut down. (Why they don’t is fascinating on its own)

Most of the worlds nickel production is low quality ferro nickel used in the production of stainless steel.

Despite this we are not seeing larger premiums for high quality nickel products which would indicate that there is more demand for high quality nickel.

High quality/ high cost nickel producers know that their only chance to survive the over supply of cheap nickel in the world is if we see the same over exuberance as which we have seen with cobalt trading in recent months.

The only problem is that nickel is a much larger market than cobalt and as such is not as susceptible to small market changes, and as the article points out nickel does not face the same geopolitical supply risk as cobalt does in the Congo.

We are unlikely to see a shortage of Nickel.

Currently CFO of a mining company.

Started with degrees in cs and then decided to get a cpa after too many nights in a lab.

It was an interesting change, but it took a bit of time...