Genar-Hofoen felt the Diplomatic Force officer’s kiss through the few millimetres’ thickness of the gelfield suit as a moderately sharp impact on his jaw followed by a powerful sucking that might have led someone less experienced in the diverse and robust manifestations of Affronter friendliness to conclude that the being was either trying to suck his teeth out through his cheek or had determined to test whether a Culture Gelfield Contact/Protection Suit, Mk 12, could be ripped off its wearer by a localised partial vacuum. What the crushingly powerful four-limbed hug would have done to a human unprotected by a suit designed to withstand pressures comparable to those found at the bottom of an ocean probably did not bear thinking about, but then a human exposed without protection to the conditions required to support Affronter life would be dying in at least three excitingly different and painful ways anyway without having to worry about being crushed by a cage of leg-thick tentacles.
It’s an idea from Lean management. Everything you need to keep, prevents you from keeping something else; requires you to remember where it is, where you could be remembering something else; takes longer to move when you have to move it; takes longer to organise than having less would. It poses fire hazards that having nothing wouldn’t pose. Blocks light that having nothing wouldn’t block. Keeping stuff is inherently wasteful.
None of this is to say that keeping stuff is bad. It may be very useful to keep it. But you should always recognise that doing so incurs a cost that you need to trade off against its usefulness.
While we’re on it, inventory is one of the eight kinds of waste identified in Lean. They are:
Transportation
Inventory
Motion
Waiting
Overproduction
Overprocessing
Defects
Skills (misuse of)
Remember TIM WOODS.
All of this is meant for running a factory, but I’ve found a lot of them useful in other bits of life, especially the idea that Inventory is a form of waste.
No disagreements here! What you’re doing here is recognising that the waste incurred from storage is less of a problem than the waste incurred through Transportation, or Waiting for resupply. In this case, inventory is waste worth doing. Any workshop needs to keep SOME spare parts, every house needs to have SOME food in the freezer. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a kind of waste to store stuff – a fact people acknowledge when they choose not to rent a warehouse to store even more.
What I’m saying is that it’s a trade-off. In fact it’s a pretty bland statement, obvious when you think about it, but putting it into words like this can be helpful when making processes more efficient.
I’m in awe of Naoki Urasawa’s storytelling abilities. He has a marvellous way of handling suspense by controlling the way critical details are revealed, or not. I love his crisp art style....
Chat Control, the new EU law project to weaken messaging systems and get rid of E2E encryptions so as to scan in clients sides the content of the messages (but only for children safety, of course).
Dancers. Technical pen, May 2024 (feddit.uk)
Quick sketch of a statue. Technical pen, April 2024. (feddit.uk)
What was a book that you have actually ReRead it?
What small piece of advice you would like to give that isn't heard enough ?
Computer related:...
the now-finalized Alyaza read list of 2023
newest to oldest...
What I read in 2023
BEST NOVEL: We Need to Talk About Kevin...
Today I finished 20th Century Boys
I’m in awe of Naoki Urasawa’s storytelling abilities. He has a marvellous way of handling suspense by controlling the way critical details are revealed, or not. I love his crisp art style....
4 billion if statements (andreasjhkarlsson.github.io)
What distros have you tried and thought, "Nope, this one's not for me"?
I’ve been using Linux Mint since forever. I’ve never felt a reason to change. But I’m interested in what persuaded others to move.
Six books (and one play) to read to understand British politics today (theconversation.com)
I've got a couple of days off, 2 kg of sculpting clay, and zero previous experience of sculpting. What should I make?
Lay it on me, people!
Just played my first game of Escape the Dark Sector (feddit.uk)
A lot to remember when doing the combat sequences, but a really fun co-op game! Anyone played it?
Statistical Rethinking - A Bayesian Course with Examples in R and Stan (and PyMC3, brms, and Julia too) (github.com)
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/6990204...
Two Women at a Window - Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1655-6) oil on canvas (upload.wikimedia.org)
Stop ChatControl! (de.indymedia.org)
Chat Control, the new EU law project to weaken messaging systems and get rid of E2E encryptions so as to scan in clients sides the content of the messages (but only for children safety, of course).
A thing I made once for my friend Viktorija (feddit.uk)
What are you looking forward to in 2024?