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Very excited to experience the late effects of eutrophication on a planetary scale.
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Mar 24, 2020 12:05
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The whole thing is a self-correcting problem. The more people die the less food you need and the more you have. Flippant or not that's loving bleak.
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Mar 24, 2020 12:06
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If people ate less meat you could probably double your food self sufficiency and overall health would probably improve Not to push the anti-meat angle but on a broad scale it's a massive problem, especially when you're talking about field output and efficiency
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Mar 24, 2020 12:07
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once the crises start hitting i expect a lot of the systems to revert - so while even france would jave to ration stuff, i do think that we should be able to shift to survival mode fairly adeptly, so long as we can actually get rid of capitalism
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Mar 24, 2020 12:11
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100YrsofAttitude posted:Flippant or not that's loving bleak. It's literally how it works with every other form of life on the planet, however. Humans are just unique in that we have a far larger capability to change our environment than most animals.
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Mar 24, 2020 12:13
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The whole thing is a self-correcting problem. The more people die the less food you need and the more you have. The curve would look pretty chaotic though. Once enough people are dead for industrial society to collapse you get a massive drop in agricultural production. The amount of food we can make without machine parts, fuel, medicine, weather data, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. is pretty miniscule. And even that miniscule amount would take a huge amount of labor. 80% of all people working in agriculture just to keep everyone fed.
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Mar 24, 2020 12:26
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Isn't large scale meat production also like a prime environment for the evolution of vira?
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Mar 24, 2020 12:31
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V. Illych L. posted:going to rock when france reemerges as the preeminent remaining western power because everyone else starved to death Excuse me but Dutch agricultural policy was that we should produce approximately enough food in this country to feed a billion people. A Buttery Pastry posted:The whole thing is a self-correcting problem. The more people die the less food you need and the more you have. Thanks for the input, Malthus. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 12:38
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SplitSoul posted:Isn't large scale meat production also like a prime environment for the evolution of vira? Not just viruses, also bacteria. Any sort of contagious disease will spread very quickly when cattle is densely packed together. That's why in megafarms the animals are packed full of antibiotics, which is also how capitalism is helping nature generate the multiresistant killer diseases of the future.
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Mar 24, 2020 13:00
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Orange Devil posted:Excuse me but Dutch agricultural policy was that we should produce approximately enough food in this country to feed a billion people. I had the impression that the NL produced a lot of agricultural output but it was mostly flowers and non-staple / cash crops. Are you also producing enough actual food to be self sufficient?
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Mar 24, 2020 13:04
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Sulla Faex posted:Not to push the anti-meat angle but on a broad scale it's a massive problem, especially when you're talking about field output and efficiency Animals can convert plants that are inedible to humans, into tasty meat, milk, eggs and so on, obviously. So some animal husbandry is fine and one could argue that it is even necessary, in some cases. We need to abolish factory farming ASAP, though.
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Mar 24, 2020 13:05
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Sulla Faex posted:I had the impression that the NL produced a lot of agricultural output but it was mostly flowers and non-staple / cash crops. Are you also producing enough actual food to be self sufficient? Way more than enough. Way, way, way more than enough. But as pointed out on the last page, it's all very dependent on import of inputs such as soy feed for animals, fertilizer etc. We do have enough pig poo poo to cover our own fields, but farmers prefer the stable and predictable nutrient content of fertilizer over pigshit.
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Mar 24, 2020 13:05
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Sulla Faex posted:I had the impression that the NL produced a lot of agricultural output but it was mostly flowers and non-staple / cash crops. Are you also producing enough actual food to be self sufficient? We produce a lot of expensive stuff for exports (so for example meat and dairy products, the feed for which comes from places like France). There's also the Westland though, which is like an entire section of the country completely covered in greenhouses which ensures we have many seasonal products year-round in stores here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_(region),_Netherlands Seriously look at some satellite pictures, it's a little crazy. But in general when it comes to agricultural stuff, NL produces way too much of just about everything, except you know, input which you can't make profit on but can squeeze some lovely developing country to do for basically free #neocolonialism.
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Mar 24, 2020 13:13
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KozmoNaut posted:Animals can convert plants that are inedible to humans, into tasty meat, milk, eggs and so on, obviously. There are also a lot of terrains -- such as rocky, hilly highlands -- that are unsuitable to growing crops but can still serve just fine as pastures for cows, goats, and sheep.
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Mar 24, 2020 13:21
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European countries generally mostly rank fairly highly on food security. We should be comparatively ok on the starvation front in the upcoming global thunderdome: 
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Mar 24, 2020 15:04
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Blut posted:European countries generally mostly rank fairly highly on food security. We should be comparatively ok on the starvation front in the upcoming global thunderdome: I think this chart needs a bit more explanation, and/or it's not describing the same kind of self-sufficiency that the thread is discussing. Like, I see Singapore on the list. It's a city-state with zero arable land and it imports 90% of its food. It undoubtedly gets a high score because it has an excellent supply chain and it imports from many different countries (160 at a quick googling), but at the end of the day it's still fundamentally dependent on foreign imports and if literally everybody locked their borders, however unlikely, they'd starve.
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Mar 24, 2020 15:19
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NihilCredo posted:I think this chart needs a bit more explanation, and/or it's not describing the same kind of self-sufficiency that the thread is discussing. They do apparently have a "30 by 30" goal - to produce 30 per cent of Singapore's nutritional needs locally by 2030. But I'd imagine the limited local agricultural capacity is why it went from 4th to 19th once the "natural resources" category was added in 2017. I'd agree though - agricultural infrastructure should have a far higher weighting. But most food security studies done in the recent past seem to assume the international capitalist system will stay functional, so they don't see relying on 90% imports as much of a problem as long as its from a very wide array of sources. The rest of the European/Anglosphere countries on that list are far, far more self sufficient in comparison.
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Mar 24, 2020 15:56
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I can't buy that chart since it puts Sweden over Finland. Sweden is in terrible shape with all things regarding self sufficiency and preparedness, from food (around 50%), to infrastructure, to the economy (bubble). They've been cutting and slashing and selling off for ages for short term economic boosts.
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Mar 24, 2020 16:03
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A funny thing about the End of History is that it made most governments assume they'd never ever have to deal with a major problem ever again.
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Mar 24, 2020 16:10
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Portugal rise in that chart is mainly because we have a huge oceanic economic zone.too bad jellyfish aren't edible. Anedoctal, but the fisherman's club around here as been cataloguing the biggest catches every year for 40 years.each year the weight and size of the biggest catch as been trending down. You can live on a diet of potato, onions , garlic's and beans, but you're not going to enjoy it much.
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Mar 24, 2020 16:29
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:You can live on a diet of potato, onions , garlic's and beans, but you're not going to enjoy it much. I resent that statement. My best dishes are based on the latter 3 of those ingredients. Sure if it was nothing else but onions, garlic, and beans, it'd be tougher, but if you can grab a bit of salt and pork fat then you're more than good. (I realize the cumin that I so dearly love to cook with would be hard to come by unfortunately.)
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Mar 24, 2020 16:49
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I already live on basically that diet. Onion and garlic are the two great gifts of god to show that he loves his creation, IMO.
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Mar 24, 2020 17:02
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I will add though that European beans pale in comparison to American (from the Americas not the US) beans. Black and Pintos for life over your red and white nonsense. I'd miss good rice too. The stuff that comes from the Camargue in France is fine, but I like my long-grain South American rice.
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Mar 24, 2020 17:06
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If exports stop, Denmark will have lots and lots of bacon and butter. So it means that I might die from newly-diagnosed diabetes, but at least I won't starve?
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Mar 24, 2020 17:23
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You can totally eat jellyfish. I have, several times, and its delicious.
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Mar 24, 2020 17:27
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Dawncloack posted:You can totally eat jellyfish. I have, several times, and its delicious.  I have a phobia of jellyfish.
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Mar 24, 2020 17:35
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I can't imagine what the texture would be like, but I'm guessing egg white. Which I guess is also basically what squid is like.
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Mar 24, 2020 17:36
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D. Ebdrup posted:
As do I, but only when they're alive. So kill and eat every single one of the little bastards, in my opinion.
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Mar 24, 2020 17:40
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OwlFancier posted:I can't imagine what the texture would be like, but I'm guessing egg white. Frankly, I found they have the consistency of cabbage. A bit more crunchy perhaps, like slightly undercooked cabbage. And for all of you that want to kill all jellyfish: I get you. But isnt it better to kill and then eat your enemies?? You gain their strength! Funny thing about the jellyfish: I tasted it because some Chinese collegues of mine took me to a real Chinese restaurant in Rome. They ordered for me and decided to have some fun with my by ordering a shocker menu. Ducktongues, jellyfish, eel, chiken hands, you name it. Joke was on them though, I am not squeamish and everything was actually really good. The funniest part was looking back at the 5 of them, who could not pry their eyes from me, until one broke down and asked me "But do you know what you are eating??". I did know 
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Mar 24, 2020 17:47
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I've seen chicken feet served as a side a few times but I'm still not sure how you're supposed to eat it. Like are you just supposed to gnaw the skin off? WTF it's like 90% tasteless gristle
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Mar 24, 2020 17:58
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Speaking of food security, here's a map making a convincing argument that Germany is the true larder of Europe:
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Mar 24, 2020 18:02
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PT6A posted:As do I, but only when they're alive. So kill and eat every single one of the little bastards, in my opinion. 
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Mar 24, 2020 18:04
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who are the seven billionaires on cyprus?
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Mar 24, 2020 18:19
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Probably people who bought cypriot citizenship. It used to cost about 2m euro afaik and gets you EU citizenship.
OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 18:21
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Squalid posted:I've seen chicken feet served as a side a few times but I'm still not sure how you're supposed to eat it. Like are you just supposed to gnaw the skin off? WTF it's like 90% tasteless gristle And? I had chicken feet in Korea. They were super spicy and I loved it. Dawncloack posted:Funny thing about the jellyfish: I tasted it because some Chinese collegues of mine took me to a real Chinese restaurant in Rome. They ordered for me and decided to have some fun with my by ordering a shocker menu. Ducktongues, jellyfish, eel, chiken hands, you name it. That sounds great. I wish I knew the secrets to proper Asian cuisine around here. Just about anything is good when prepared well. I think I'd have trouble with live food, but I don't know anyone who wouldn't.
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Mar 24, 2020 19:59
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100YrsofAttitude posted:And? Only because the pleading would get distracting. And uh didn't know that some species of jellyfish are edible. Uh salted and dried, ok never mind bring on the soup oceans
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Mar 24, 2020 20:10
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Hi kids, do you like violence? Remember last week when I told you how dead Deutsche Bank is? So you'll recall Deutsche had to post their 2019 numbers last Friday and they are certainly interesting. You can open them here: https://www.db.com/ir/en/download/Deutsche_Bank_Annual_Report_2019.pdf Let's go through some highlights shall we? Please turn to page 4 of the pdf to find our first fun fact. All the way at the bottom here, Deutsche is telling us that their tangible book value per share is 23,41 euros. So they're saying if you would completely liquidate the bank (aka close up shop and sell all the assets for what they're telling you they are worth in this document and pay all the outstanding liabilities) they'd be able to give every shareholder 23,41 euros per share. This also means that if what Deutsche is telling us is true, their share price should at minimum be this amount, as otherwise any shmuck could make very easy money. Deutsche share price as of this writing is 6,19 euros and today was a bounce day on the stockmarkets. Yesterday it was 5,51 euros. Deutsche share price has been below book since the end of 2015. This is a very big warning sign. Clearly the market isn't buying Deutsche's bullshit. Now let's turn to page XVIII (22 in the pdf) to get some crucial background info on what Deutsche has been up to the last couple of years: quote:Stabilizing and building momentum in the Core Bank So back in July of 2019 Deutsche basically admitted they had a whole bunch of lovely assets and created a new division they called the Capital Release Unit to (1) tell investors that they had some problems but hey look it's a managable amount, we'll set aside monies to cover this poo poo and take the hit right now and carry on and (2) actively find suckers dumb enough to buy the lovely assets off of them. Now, some of this surely was legitimately assets that Deutsche decided was no longer core to their business but not otherwise terrible, some of it was terrible for Deutsche to own but might have some real value for someone else, but the rest is pure, unmitigated garbage. They later had to admit they had even more assets like this than they first said, and shovelled them into the CRU as well. This is Deutsche's second attempt to purge their balance sheet of garbage assets since the 2008 financial crisis. The "Core" part of Deutsche consists of 5 parts: 1. The Corporate Bank. A bank for primarily German corporations, from mom and pop stores to big industrial agglomerates and multinationals. Has an international part to support those clients in international trade and the like. 2. The Investment Bank. Cocksuckers on Wall Street. And in the Bankenviertel in Frankfurt, obviously. 3. The Private Bank. A consumer bank like the one you use. Except only if you are rich as gently caress. Wealth management and "individual advisory solutions" and all that poo poo. 4. Asset Management. Deutsche owns a majority stake in asset manager DWS group for some reason. This might be some investments directly into startups or whatever, but I'm pretty sure most of this is just more cocksuckers on Wall Street. 5. Corporate & Other. The head office basically, not very interesting right now. Keep this background info in mind as you go to page 11 (pdf 38) to quickly see how 2019 went. In case you are unfamiliar with financial statements, numbers shown within parenthesis like so (42069) mean a negative number. At the top left of a table it tells you what unit is being shown, millions in the case of this table. The bottom line is a loss of 5.2 billion euros in 2019. So things are going well so far. Now let's go to page 18 to see the breakdown on which parts of the bank contributed what in terms of revenues and costs to the result we just saw on page 11. Right away the first line is very interesting, we see significant revenues at all parts of the bank except the head office (expected) and the CRU. The line "profit (loss) before taxes" is also very interesting, as this shows losses at head office (again expected), CRU (expected, but holy poo poo look at how much that is, especially compared to revenue) and also at the Private Bank. I think all kinds of alarm bells should be going off if one of the four "Core" parts of your bank is still operating at a loss after you've already shifted all your lovely assets to the CRU, but what do I know? Apparently investing other peoples money and giving them advice (which they pay for!) has led to Deutsche losing 265 million euros in 2019. Whelp. Anyway, the real interesting part remains the CRU, and on page 19 you can find the results back in 2018 and 2017 to compare with 2019. If you're thinking, hold on a minute, the CRU didn't exist yet back in 2017 you are correct and perceptive, what they're doing here is reporting on the results generated by those assets if they had been in the CRU back then so that you can follow this trend. They're required to do this by accounting regulations. So we're seeing that the CRU had a revenue of around 2 billion back in 2017 and 2018 and only 208 million in 2019. Meanwhile, the total pile of assets which generated these revenues shrunk from 462 billion in 2017 to 370 billion in 2018 and 260 billion in 2019. Looks like they managed to get rid of all the parts that still made some money. Hurray. Unfortunately that still leaves 260 billion in assets which generates somewhere between jack and poo poo. Actually, that's too optimistic, turn to page 28 (55 in pdf) and let's read how Deutsche has decided to explain this: quote:The increase in loss over the prior year was mainly driven by lower revenues, higher restructuring costs and higher general and administrative expenses Your loss was higher because your revenues were down and your costs were up you say? Alrighty then. Furthermore they tell us they got out of some poo poo they didn't want anything to do with anymore, but crucially they don't talk about what those 260 billion in assets they have remaining actually are. It'd be fun to know just how dumb this gets, but we'll probably have to wait for the Oscar winning documentary or something. Now let's take a look at the actual balance sheet over on page 31 (58 pdf). Here I note three very interesting things: 1. Deutsche had 200 billion euros in cash at the end of 2018. Now, that might seem like a good thing, but the whole point of a corporation is to invest money to make more money. So Deutsche was basically saying they couldn't find anything useful to do with 200 billion in cash to make money. They're not alone in this, Google and Apple, to name two well known examples, have also been sitting on unimaginable hoards of money they don't have a clue what to do with like a bunch of loving dragons for years and years. This is also why so many dumb tech startups have so much money thrown at them. The rich of this world must keep accumulating more money by investing their wealth (it's literally the basis of capitalism) but they've run out of places where they can actually do that. Could be a big problem, but I'm sure everything is going to work out just fine. 2. Deutsche's total assets decreased by 50,463 billion in 2019 while their cash reserves decreased by 50,385 billion. So they're not investing this money, but it is leaving the bank. Wonder why. Wonder where it went. In the text below the table they try to spin it by saying: quote:As a result of the continued optimization of the bank’s funding, cash and central bank balances decreased by € 50.4 billion, reflecting our previously announced plans to reduce surplus liquidity and shift of liquidity reserves from cash to securities. 3. Total equity is 62 billion, down from almost 69 billion in 2018. Equity is the money that is left over after all the liabilities are paid for and the assets are sold. It's what the book value we talked about earlier is based off of. Basically, it's the value for the investors in Deutsche. It going down isn't good, obviously, but what I find much more worrying is the size (that's what she said). You see, if a corporations equity reaches 0 or less, that means it is worthless at that exact time. Its continued existence then hinges entirely on the faith of the investors that the corporation will be able to generate profits such as to create equity. If this isn't realized before this investor confidence runs out, the corporation is loving done, as investors will try to firesale the whole thing to salvage what they can. So if we just learned that Deutsche has 260 billion of book value worth of assets which hardly generate revenue we could start to wonder whether those assets are actually worth 260 billion euros. And if it turns out those assets are actually worth say, 200 billion instead of 260, then Deutsche's investors are in the hole for 10 billion euros. Let's also take a quick look at page 33 (60 pdf) where we can read about what the credit agencies think about Deutsche: quote:Reflecting the bank’s challenges in improving its profitability and stabilizing its business model under its previous strategy, in June 2019, Fitch downgraded Deutsche Bank’s ratings by one notch (counterparty assessment and deposit ratings to BBB+, ‘non- preferred’ debt to BBB) with the outlook set at “evolving". Ok, we're starting to piece together that things aren't going so hot over at Deutsche right now, but hey, maybe the future looks promising! Let's go to page 35 (62 pdf) for some hearty laughs and joy! It looks like Deutsche thinks the global economy will grow by 2.4% in 2020. Keep in mind, this was published last Friday, well into the COVID-19 pandemic. Don't worry guys, the US GDP will grow 1.4% this year and the Chinese GDP will grow 4.6%. Hilarious. Now for the real kicker, let's go to page 41 (68 pdf) and see what the future holds for the CRU: quote:We expect that CRU in 2020 will have significant negative revenues compared to a small positive revenue in 2019 which benefitted from positive operating business revenues in the first half of the year. Think about the insanity that you have just been told. Significant negative revenues. What the gently caress even is a negative revenue? Like, revenue is the money you get for selling goods or services. Then you also have costs, and obviously if costs are bigger than revenues your results are negative and you aren't doing so well, but how the gently caress do you have negative revenue? That means having to pay someone to take your goods or services, while also still having costs to produce those goods or services. There's actually some accounting bullshit that leads to this kind of insanity being possible, here's a link with some explanation of how something like this can even exist: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/rep.../article595623/ Again, we don't know the exact ways in which these assets will generate negative revenues next year, because Deutsche won't tell us what the gently caress these assets are. So the 260 billion worth of assets is not going to be generating revenues between jack and poo poo. That was too optimistic. Jack poo poo is going to be looking good from the perspective of these assets next year. If some sucker were to buy these assets off of Deutsche at book value, which again, they're explicitly trying to divest these as hard as they can, not only would they be out 260 billion euros, not only would they then have a whole bunch of assets which cost around 3.2 billion euros a year just to operate, but on top of that they could also look forward to those assets needing YET MORE MONEY just to continue to do their thing. Do you think maybe nobody in their right mind would pay 260 billion for these assets? Do you think maybe nobody in their right mind would even pay 200 billion for these assets? If you do, based on all this, now believe these assets are worth less than 210 billion, then you believe that Deutsche is technically bankrupt. Personally, I believe the vast majority of these assets are hot flaming garbage that nobody in their right mind would pay anything at all for. I also believe this isn't even the extent of the hot garbage on Deutsche's balance sheets, given how one of their core business parts is also operating at a loss. So why aren't investors liquidating Deutsche yet to save what they can? Well, 50 billion worth of cash disappeared in a year, so are you sure they aren't already doing this? But I think the real answer is that investors are actually making a different bet. They're betting that Deutsche will find a humongous sucker to buy these 260 billion worth of assets for book value. And that sucker is all of us! Government going to bail this bitch out just you watch. COVID-19 will function splendidly as cover. As for the financial geniuses running this whole operation? Well, they didn't get most of their bonuses in 2019 on account of that whole 10% loss thing, but don't worry, these banksters are doing just fine for themselves, take a quick gander at pages 178 through 181 (205 through 208 pdf) to see just how much these assholes got paid in 2019. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 21:02
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Nice find and explanation orange devil, fr from my very limited experience operations like the private bank usually don't turn up a whole lot of profit because other sectors use it as a loss leader (i.e. sure sheik well do your taxes and investment and manage your offshore accounts if you also do some business with our other banks), and straight tax sink for other parts of the operation. The hilarious thing is that there's no way they have 200 billion liquid just sitting there.or that they can pull it at will. It's gonna be something like "we have 200 billion liquid! (Previously invested in stock buybacks of our own massively overpriced stock). We always knew that DB was a poo poo bank , but Frankfurt would light itself on fire before they would let it fall.so yeah, they are getting bailed out, again.maybe this time they'll do it in the open instead of cratering Greece.
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Mar 24, 2020 22:49
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Deutsche Bank told the world about the CRU in July 2019. Ursula von der Leyen, a German, wasn't even a candidate but through some backroom dealing managed to become the EU president in July 2019. Merkel was against the European banking union and the European deposit guarantee scheme for years until suddenly in November 2019 she was for it. It's all very curious.
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Mar 24, 2020 23:31
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V. Illych L. posted:for real, i've thought my country's preoccupation with food supply was sort of quaint for many years, but now that we've got an unstable global situation that 90% potential self-sufficiency rate is very reassuring I did not know you could survive on cod alone
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Mar 25, 2020 01:15
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