Anurag SoniMar 12
Catherynne M. Valente

I love how random X users are like "Surely I have the solution no one else on this planet has thought of! I, Rando, have done it!"

They think just like their idol. Yes no one's ever considered getting around the Strait of Hormuz in the history of being a dick in the Middle East.

Mar 12 at 4:00pmWeb
Show threadDisisdeguey🔻PalestineAction🇵🇸Mar 12
@Catvalente Well you can do it...in a cute drawing. 😄
Show threadFrançois @JuraMar 12
@Catvalente one more wanna be Elon Musk who wants to “revolutionise” transit with its own failed “hyper loop” or “vegas loop”… these libertarian tech bros are literally babies
Show threadPaddyMar 12

@Catvalente Impractical, let's just pull the ships over land, "Fitzcarraldo" style.

https://www.imdb.com/de/title/tt0083946/

Show threadTubemeisterMar 12

@Catvalente Big "it works on my laptop" vibe.

Sure, one set of half a dozen barrels in the back of a pickup will likely work just fine.

Scaling up is always a bastard...

Show threadPeter BrownMar 12
@Tubemeister @Catvalente I’m still trying to work out how many hundreds of trucks would be needed for every single oil tanker. And oil is so relatively cheap that would cost more to move it than to sell it.
And let’s not even start on the costs of building a brand-new tanker terminal at each end of the truck route
Show threadTubemeisterMar 12

@peterbrown Or indeed the pile of spare tankers not stuck behind the strait that weren't doing anything else already.

Soooo many things that even a mere 10 seconds of thought would catch.

Show threadJonathan McKeownMar 12
@peterbrown @Tubemeister @Catvalente quick google suggests VLCC, the largest tankers, carry around two million barrels. A truck carries about 200. Even assuming half that tanker capacity, you need 5000 trucks per tanker. Each one is going to take 15–30 minutes to load and VLCC have four offload pumps. Taking the 30-min figure to allow for truck handling, it's going to take around a month to offload each tanker, of which there are around 20 a day.
Show threadJonathan McKeownMar 13
@peterbrown @Tubemeister @Catvalente [edited for a factor-of-ten error] Also, if you park those tanker trucks in a grid with a quarter-width and quarter-length separation, you need a parking lot the size of Little Rock AR, or Durham NC. And at a truck-length separation on the route from Abu Dhabi to Muscat, they'd cover half the distance.
Show threadFlaming CheetoMar 12

@peterbrown @Tubemeister @Catvalente

Per American Petroleum Institute:

An average-sized product tanker is able to carry as much gasoline, diesel fuel or home heating oil as are 1,700 tanker trucks.
------

Sooop, about 12 miles of truck on 75 miles of road.

Show threadMarcMar 12
@Catvalente the cherry on top: he has asked a LLM to draw it for him... The comment was probably "Yes this is a great idea, here is a map of what it could look like:..."
Show threadGailenMar 12
@corpsmoderne
I hate this about llms. It's bad enough when you're aware they're programmed to flatter you. On top of that, there are so many idiots on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger curve that will just get further hardened into their idiocy because the chat bot told them that they're smart. And that feels good.
@Catvalente
Show threadToni AittoniemiMar 12
@Catvalente The whole US empire at this point is looking more like smoke & mirrors, honestly. Well done protecting your Gulf allies from attacks! 🤔
Show threadjmjMar 12
@Catvalente I’d love to see the math on how many lanes of back to back trucks it would take 😉 and how much diesel they would consume. Not to mention what percentage of the existing world wide truck fleet would need to be moved there. Calling minutephysics…
Show threadBujoldMar 12
@Jmj @Catvalente I did some quick napkin math just to get a sense of the scale of the numbers involved. A large oil tanker holds about 20 million gallons, a tanker truck holds 8 thousand gallons. That's 2500 trucks for each ship. The road from Abu Dhabi to Muscat is about 500km. Imagine a truck every 200 meters (not an enormous gap at highway speed), then remember that this is all just *a single ship's* worth of oil
Show threadArgonelMar 12
@Catvalente has anyone told the muskrat that he should offer to load the oil in rockets and shoot it directly to the destination? It's only a couple orders of magnitude dumber than this "plan".
Show threadsailboatMar 12
@Catvalente i cackled hard at this version too https://tech.lgbt/@somebody/116212676550755100
Show threadBent ChinrestMar 12
@sailboat @Catvalente gotta love the mind that sees a narrow passage of water that can be restricted by nearby interests and thinks the solution is a narrower passage of water that can be restricted by nearby interests
Show threadTubemeisterMar 12
@paneerakbari @sailboat @Catvalente I mean, having two options instead of just the one would've been really quite nice right now, but the time to start digging that canal would've been at least 10 years ago if not 20, as there's _quite_ a bit of land involved indeed.
Show threadAleksi StenbergMar 12

@Tubemeister @paneerakbari @sailboat @Catvalente I looked this up, and even if we took the easiest mountain passes, the highest point the canal would have to go through would be well over 300 meters above sea level. As the water in the canal must be, well, at sea level*, that would mean digging a ditch some 350 meters deep, 350 meters wide and 100 kilometers long. Many many dig dig indeed.

* We can’t use locks to lift the ships up as there is no (economically feasible) way to get the water up to the higher levels. In Panama there’s a conveniently located lake to tap into, but in Arabia, oddly enough, those are harder to come by.

Show threadAmro has beenMar 12
@sailboat @Catvalente
And kids, this why we are raising the sea level. More water, more room for boaty floaties
Show threadBill deWordeMar 12

@Catvalente there ought to be a named law hat says something like: you probably didn’t solve a problem in ten minutes that experts have been thinking about for years.

I guess It’s a variant of Menken’s Law (every complex problem has a simple, straightforward, incorrect solution). And it’s in the same ballpark as the Dunning-Kruger Effect (novices misunderstand how much they don’t know) and Chesterton’s Fence (do not remove a fence unless you fully understand why it was there in the first place).

But I see this particular scenario often enough that it seems like it should have its own name.

Show threadCorb_The_LesserMar 12
@Catvalente Wait until that guy finds out all those ships and all that oil transiting Hormuz are insured. Guess what's happening to the premiums?
Show threadMark AsbachMar 12
@Catvalente Why don’t they mention Fitzcarraldo as well?!? 🤡 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo
Fitzcarraldo - Wikipedia

Show threadGentleman ProgrammerMar 12
@Catvalente Surprised they didn't suggest an oil pipeline, also on wheels of course
Show threadEric BonoMar 12

@Catvalente

WCGW?

Show threadPeteMar 12

@EricBono @Catvalente

Such an incredible film.

I'd love someone to go back and fix up some of the blood special effects. Other than that the film really holds up. Looks amazing, superb performances.

Show threadEric BonoMar 13

@pete @Catvalente

I finally just watched it recently, don't remember the blood somehow, but can imagine you're right. 70s blood was problematic. I guess that's when it was first depicted in color and graphically so they hadn't perfected it yet. I still don't get how they filmed scenes like the one depicted. Sure, it's movie magic but it's absolutely insane.

Show threadPeteMar 13
@EricBono @Catvalente it’s a real “set piece”. I imagine Spielberg loved it.
Show threadRaymond RussellMar 12
@Catvalente
Its an elegant solution, as we all know oil comes in barrels so they can be easily put on the backs of camels. They don't call them the ships of the desert for nothing.
Show threadMatthew WaltonMar 12
@Catvalente pffft there's no ambition why not use a massive catapult and just throw it all the way to America
Show threadbeaiouns Mar 12
@Catvalente big patrick energy
Show threadStefan RitterMar 12
@Catvalente They just stole it from Reddit.
Show threadProgrammer 832-529 🍅Mar 12
@Catvalente i liked the "just dig a canal through Abu Dhabi" one too.
Show threadArapallaMar 12

@Catvalente

Talking to Furiosa and her team about costs and availability.
She wanted to know about the wild car builders and whether or not that guy with the guitar and the big amp could be made available.

Show threadBashStKidMar 12

@Catvalente Always fun to watch the armchair generals come out.

As it actually has Red Sea ports, KSA can actually pipeline a fair amount of crude over to their western side. But it’s still not their total output, and it’s not an option for any other Gulf country to use.

Show threadPino CarafaMar 12

@Catvalente Of course there are potential solutions. Saudi Arabia, for example, has huge pipelines to the Red Sea. Of course, building that infrastructure will take AGES. Wikipedia doesn't tell me how long it took to build and how much it cost but you can rest assured it was NOT cheap and it wasn't built overnight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Crude_Oil_Pipeline

East–West Crude Oil Pipeline - Wikipedia

Show threadstandevMar 12
@Catvalente well, a trailer is about 2,000 barrels of oil, so you’d only need to magic up 10,000 trucks going each way every day and two ports each capable of handling 50 super tankers a day. (Numbers courtesy of NPR)
Show threadChancerubbageMar 12
@Catvalente maybe they can just order some oil from Amazon. Next day delivery!
Show threadWolfgang HagenMar 12
@Catvalente What about building rockets to shoot the oil from the drop off point to the pick up point? 🤔
Show thread𐁂𐀑𐀐𐁐Mar 12
@Catvalente
Show threadChookMother 🇦🇺🦘Mar 13
@Catvalente If the trucks are that much bigger than the ships, it could work??
Show threadCodey McCodefaceMar 13
@Catvalente Wait, you wouldn’t even have to drive the trucks! Just set them up one hose length apart - the tanker pumps into the first truck, which pumps into the second, all the way down the line to the other tanker!
Show threadbaconandcoconutMar 13
@bcasiello @Catvalente Just Human Centipede a bunch of trucks together!
Show threadCodey McCodefaceMar 13
@baconandcoconut @Catvalente 1) *shudder*, and
b) exactly!
Show threadLeBonk3d ago
@Catvalente
I'm starting to think a significant portion of them genuinely believe that most human beings are actually literally "NPCs" with no agency or inner lives.
and there's probably certain trends as to who they think those "NPCs" tend to be.
Robert Kirk's "zombie problem" was never just a hypothetical thought experiment.