shammer8

@lacuna: perception of scarcity and exclusivity. People want what they can’t have, so it gives allure to a brand, and also strengthens brand association/identity with the pro riders who have access to exclusive parts/colors that are flaunted rather than covered up. Or so the armchair marketing psychologist in me suspects the rationale to be. I know I’d buy hope green accented brakes in a heartbeat, but that’s because I want to bling my incoming Ripmo AF with colors matching the DVO suspension. I did find a British site that stocks a lot of green hope brake parts... where there’s a will, there’s a way.

the editing and angles were good, it just seemed like it was recorded on shitty gear or got way too compressed which is a shame.

So if my calculations are correct, you don’t like it?

@SuperHighBeam: These are all valid points. The fact that this is the first a ship has block this passage (or any major canal for that matter) in my lifetime (to my recollection, anyways) does suggest that it is a rare occurrence. Now that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be more redundancy, and perhaps it will be a more frequent event with the larger supertanker sizes that have been rolled out in the last decade (or less?). As for estimating cost, I was actually very surprised to find out how relatively inexpensive the proposed cost of the Nicaragua project is (in 2014, this article suggests they estimated the cost to be $40 billion): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-canal-through-central-america-could-have-devastating-consequences-180953394/ I have no idea where exactly you're imagining a redundant route for the Suez Canal to exist, but assuming you're thinking it would flow roughly in parallel, I'm not sure there are really any comparable projects to estimate a cost from—the distance is at least 100 miles (160km) by land, which is somewhat longer than the land route necessary to be dug if the Nicaraguan canal were to have gone forward. This is all pure speculation on my part, but I'm assuming the $40 billion number was an underestimate of what the true cost would have been (these mega projects almost always seem to go over budget), and since that article was written in 2014, this figure would be higher in todays dollars either way. But even at $100-200 billion, it would seem like it would make a lot of sense given that I've seen estimates ranging from $5-10 billion per day in trade disruption (I doubt those figures accurately capture the full extent of disruption further down the supply chain either). So while this is all based on pure speculation, you've got the armchair civil engineer and global industrialist in me is convinced.

@SuperHighBeam: Well first of all, it isn’t so easily disrupted. This was a rare and catastrophic series of unfortunate events, leading to an unprecedented and extremely costly supply-chain disruption. Secondly, I’m not sure how easy you think it is to just build a “redundant” route for super tankers. These ships draw massive amounts of water and need very deep harbors/shipping lanes. There’s a reason there are very few passages across continents. For decades there has been a push to build a second lane through lake Nicaragua, which fortunately hasn’t happened—it would have devastating ecological consequences, and would likely not benefit the Nicaraguan people. So for now, certain key shipping lanes get bottlenecked in fairly tight passages that are typically a combination of naturally occurring geography with some man-made improvements/changes (typically dredging) to accommodate these massive ships. In other words, tl/dr; “redundancy” is easier said than done.

So if these are Fyre tech, does that mean you go to put them on and it turns out the lenses don't actually exist, you can't take them off, and then you need a class action suit to get your money back?