on 30-Apr-2021 (Fri)

Now, to begin, the phrase “golden age” really invokes two different unrelated things:

(1) an era that achieved great things, art, science, innovation, literature, an era whose wondrous achievements later eras marvel at

(2) a good era to live, prosperous, thriving, stable, reasonably safe, with chances for growth, social ascent, days when hard work pays off, in short an era which—if you had to be stranded in some other epoch of history—you’d be likely to choose.

The Renaissance fits the first—we line up to see its wonders in museums—but it absolutely positively no-way-no-how fit the second, and that’s a big part of where our understandings of Renaissance vs. Medieval go wrong.

And in his autobiography he’s talking about this lawsuit that arose because of the della Rovere tomb project, in great detail, and then there’s a line that says Michelangelo realized that, while dealing with a bunch of lawsuits and Pope Adrian and such, he’d been so stressed he hadn’t picked up a chisel in four years. Because he spent the entire time just dealing with the lawsuit. (Anyone feeling guilty about being overwhelmed by stress this year, you’re not alone!) And we have four years worth of lost Michelangelo production, because he didn’t do any art that entire time, because he was just dealing with a stupid lawsuit. And that’s not the sort of thing that fits into our usual way of thinking about these great historical figures. We imagine Michelangelo in his studio with a chisel. We do not imagine him in a room with a bunch of lawyers being curmudgeonly and bickering and trapped in contract hell.

Those sorts of things are important, I think, to reintroduce into the way we imagine historical figures. That they have an everyday mundanity that we imagine that they don’t. And I think that’s a big part of why when we compare ourselves to them we feel as if we can’t live up to that greatness. Because we tell edited versions of the lives of great men and great women, in which we edit out the things that feel like us. So of course we feel as if our everyday lives full of mundanity can’t rise to those levels, because we’re not comparing ourselves to the real people, we’re comparing ourselves to the edited version in which we take out the mundanity! So Machiavelli’s letters give us that. And they give us a person with problems, and a person with mistakes, and a person with a sense of humor, and a person with sexuality, all of these elements we erase from our marble busts on pedestals. And so that’s a big part of why I use the letters while teaching, and when my students read them I want them to put together “Here is a real person who is like us,” as well as “Here is the everyday on the ground experience of what it’s like to live in this crisis.”

We need that, when we live in a real crisis ourselves, and it makes us feel so often like we’re powerless and weak compared to these impressive people in the past–but they felt that way too.

Most beverage bottles are produced from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is transparent and light. Detergent and household good bottles are primarily produced from high-density polyethylene (HDPE), which is a stronger material and not transparent. HDPE bottles are produced using a blow-molding process that involves feeding blended HDPE resin pellets and colorants into an extrusion machine and using heat and pressure to form the resin into a round hollow tube of molten plastic called “parison”. The parison is captured by bottle molds and is mounted radially on a wheel as it leaves the extruder. Once inside the mold, air pressure blows the parison into the bottle shape of the mold. The mold is rapidly cooled and removed, producing a bottle.

PET bottle production involves a stretch blow-molding process, by which a test-tube-shaped preform is made by injection molding and then heated, stretched and filled with compressed air to fill the mold and form the bottle. This process provides the enhanced physical clarity and gas-containing properties commonly required for soft drink bottles.

Major companies continue to develop new ways of manufacturing bottles to increase automation and efficiency, reduce material per unit and streamline processes. New proprietary technologies are sometimes patented, giving the company that developed them a competitive advantage. For example, recent hot-fill technology for PET bottles enables the finished bottle to withstand filling temperatures of over 180 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition to possessing the structural integrity to withstand extreme filling conditions, hot-fill PET bottles that are filled with food or beverage products can be shipped and displayed without refrigeration. As a result, the need for added preservatives in the product is eliminated, which in turn lowers the cost of storage and transport. The reduced costs give the companies who can use the technology a competitive advantage over those who cannot.

One of the main concerns with using plastic bottles is bottle creep. This is created when the dimensions of the bottle increase under pressure, disrupting the carbon dioxide equilibrium and causing lower levels of the dissolved gas. Creep can occur over time if the material is exposed to levels of stress beyond the strength of the material, and will ultimately cause a permanent deformity. Another concern is the high carbon dioxide solubility of PET plastic, which can cause a 1.0%-to-3.0% loss of gas. However, more recent barrier technologies have improved oxygen and carbon dioxide protection up to 45.0%. Barrier technology for oxygen-sensitive beverage and food products involves the application of a thin layer of carbon to the inside of the bottle, providing a barrier against oxygen and carbon dioxide leakage.

The world is a long way from vaccinating most of the human population. But here in the United States, nearly a third of Americans have gotten the COVID-19 shots they need for full immunity; we have three safe and effective vaccines, and in the coming months, more will join them. With inoculation comes a ballooning list of perks. But after a year underground, many people, myself very much included, are hesitant to shed their solitude and reestablish the norms we so staunchly swore off.

Learners’ study decisions tend to be driven by [...] , and the benefits of activities such as self-testing and reviewing studied materials are mostly unappreciated

Individuals who believe that intelligence can be increased through effort were more likely to value the pedagogical benefits of self-testing, to restudy, and to be intrinsically motivated to learn, compared to individuals who believe that intelligence is fixed

research on learning, memory, and metacognitive processes has provided evidence that people often have a faulty mental model of how they learn and remember, making them prone to both misassessing and mismanaging their own learning.

Consent is a bedrock principle in democratic society and a primary means through which our law expresses its commitment to individual liberty. While there seems to be broad consensus that consent is important, little is known about what people think consent is.

In Florence, there are little kiosks near the David where you can buy replicas of it, and alongside the plain ones they have copies dipped in glitter paint, so the details of Michelangelo’s design are all obscured with globs of sparkling goo. That’s what the golden age myth does to the Renaissance.

A contract manufacturer ("CM") is a manufacturer that contracts with a firm for components or products (in which case it is a turnkey supplier). It is a form of outsourcing. A contract manufacturer performing packaging operations is called copacker or a contract packager. Brand name companies focus on product innovation, design and sales, while the manufacturing takes place in independent factories (the turnkey suppliers).

Benefits [ edit ]

• Cost savings – Companies save on their cost of capital because they do not have to pay for a facility and the equipment needed for production. They can also save on labor costs such as wages, training and benefits. Some companies may look to contract manufacture in low-cost countries, such as India, to benefit from the low cost of labor.^[2]
• Mutual benefit to contract site – A contract between the manufacturer and the company it’s producing for may last several years. The manufacturer will know that it will have a steady flow of business until then.^[2]
• Advanced skills – Companies can take advantage of skills that they may not possess, but the contract manufacturer does. The contract manufacturer is likely to have relationships formed with raw material suppliers or methods of efficiency within their production.^[3]
• Quality – Contract manufacturers are likely to have their own methods of quality control in place that helps them to detect counterfeit or damaged materials early.
• Focus – Companies can focus on their core competencies better if they can hand off base production to an outside company.^[3]
• Economies of scale – Contract manufacturers have multiple customers that they produce for. Because they are servicing multiple customers, they can offer reduced costs in acquiring raw materials by benefiting from economies of scale. The more units there are in one shipment, the less expensive the price per unit will be.^[3]

Risks [ edit ]

• Lack of Control – When a company signs the contract allowing another company to produce their product, they lose a significant amount of control over that product. They can only suggest strategies to the contract manufacturer; they cannot force them to implement them.
• Relationships - It is imperative that the company forms a good relationship with its contract manufacturer. The company must keep in mind that the manufacturer has other customers. They cannot force them to produce their product before a competitor’s. Most companies mitigate this risk by working cohesively with the manufacturer and awarding good performance with additional business.
• Quality concerns – When entering into a contract, companies must make sure that the manufacturer’s standards are congruent with their own. They should evaluate the methods in which they test products to make sure they are of good quality. The company has to rely on the contract manufacturer for having good suppliers that also meet these standards.
• Intellectual property loss – When entering into a contract, a company is divulging their formulas or technologies. This is why it is important that a company not give out any of its core competencies to contract manufacturers. It is very easy for an employee to download such information from a computer and steal it.
• Outsourcing risks – Although outsourcing to low-cost countries has become very popular, it does bring along risks such as language barriers, cultural differences and long lead times.^[3] This could make the management of contract manufacturers more difficult, expensive and time-consuming.
• Capacity constraints – If a company does not make up a large portion of the contract manufacturer’s business, they may find that they are de-prioritized over other companies during high production periods. Thus, they may not obtain the product they need when they need it.
• Loss of flexibility and responsiveness – Without direct control over the manufacturing facility, the company will lose some of its ability to respond to disruptions in the supply chain. It may also hurt their ability to respond to demand fluctuations, risking their customer service levels.
• Pricing – This addition of a second company and second profit margin to be achieved, adds in cost to the product. The impact is seen either in a higher selling price to the customer or in a reduced profit margin for the company

When well executed, credit analysis will do what it’s supposed to do: answer questions related to the probability of loan repayment and the mitigation of risk