Back in my days in retail, we were ordered to put resupply as FILO into the shelfs. It makes sense to sell the oldest products first. So why the transfer shuffle?
Since I've had to deal with a similar issue professionally, maybe think of a retailer with 5 distribution warehouses and 50 stores. Normally you want to pick from the closest distribution warehouse to minimize transport costs. However, for food items that expire sometimes it might make sense to pick from the furthest warehouse if their stock is getting older, you need to optimize both for transport costs and the cost of having to throw food away. It's beyond a HN comment, and I'd have to review what isn't NDA, but the optimization math for such a scenario gets both really complicated and really interesting.
Hope this clarifies why they would be moving stick though.
We also had commercial stores spread out which were in essence local warehouses. Those stores spent a large part of their time handling stock transfers. They held specialty products small stores rarely need and couldn't justify the minimum order quantity.
It's a lot more efficient and much faster than having product shipped across the country.
</hn programmer pedantry>
Perhaps fresh in, last out?
Hard to address the consumers' tendency to "reach out in the back", to get longer expiration time products.
Seems kinda like farting in a crowded room and then slipping out the door.
I however choose not to do so quite deliberately. I want to avoid food waste. I just check the date is "good enough". My regular shop has a good enough flow that I usually pick from the front.
Food waste is a trending concern around here. But I think you and I who cares about shelf life belongs to the same minority. The majority has enough other worries and does not spend bandwidth to care as it is usually good enough.
I consider fish a "fresh" item and care more for looks and smell.
Same as with vegetables. But I hate people who prod everything - that is detrimental to the product.
* the amount of stock going through one fulfillment center instead of landing on shelves in smaller stores, means we never have old products laying around. The cucumber you get from us came in a few hours ago. The one in your store has been laying there for days and touched by many. 10 stores each need their own buffer to handle variable demand and thus overstock and get deliveries for certain products rarely. We don't. Our spoilage is so so low compared to traditional stores. * anyways, to alleviate the fears of ordering something that's about to expire, we guarantee x amount of days for perishable products.
The OP is talking about how they handle keeping fresh stock of products with lower sales volume. (Or at least, that's the way I'm reading it)
By the time covid started all of this PPE had gone past its use by date. The incompetence is breathtaking.
In fat, lazy, individualist countries like the UK and US? No way.
For the positive, see Finland, which is working hard to be a very well-prepared nation. Heavy buy-in from all across the populace. Exactly the kind of nation I was talking about - their survival depends on it. Poland, Sweden, Denmark all doing similar.
For the negative, see UK and US during COVID. The individualism that has underpinned society since Thatcher/Reagan as made us less likely be prepared, less likely to look out for our neighbour. Both are isolated by water, so we're naturally less bothered about invasion.
And the only ones who do buy-in are gun lovers and preppers, which are not a major demographic.
I thought I had read that Sweden had made some changes to military service recently, is that not true?
And regarding the changes to the military, that is still a very small amount of people who are doing the basic conscription service.
Friends in London seem to talk about it as if we don't have it in the UK (I know that's true) but that Sweden does.
Not claiming it's a bad place to live in or that there aren't worse places, but the high trust society thing is a myth.
I've had my wallet disappear while I fell asleep on the shore of a lake, in one of those tiny villages where everybody knows each other for example :)
You don't know anything about sweden, clearly. The only people I speak to in the neighborhood are immigrants and homeless people who live in the nearby shelter.
> I thought I had read that Sweden had made some changes to military service recently, is that not true?
Yeah they are wasting time and money with conscription. Very useful.
The people in Warsaw, Stockholm and Copenhagen aren't more prepared than the people in Madrid or NYC, most people in medium/large cities give 0 shit about these scenarios, they're the same as everywhere else. Having studied in Denmark I can tell you that if anything the Danish youth is even more oblivious to risks in general given that they live in such an utopia. The state and older generations might be more aware of their perilous position but that's about it.
In my opinion, and that's all I have here, they are much, much more likely to do the right thing for their neighbour in an emergency than a Briton or American.
All of my friends from Baltic nations are concerned about Russia. All of them. Maybe its an age thing, we're early 30s and some have children.
All my shelf stable products have been in my pantry for a few months before I even open them. You can do FILO yourself and have always a nice emergency supply and it can even cheaper because you can buy the stuff on sale most of the time. The problem is that many people just buy day to day and already have a problem when the shops are closed for a holiday they haven't anticipated because they buy just in time.
Hate having to annotate explanations to obvious things but I guess it wasn't obvious:
Stock up for the next few months. (after paying for it)
If they don't need/use it, it gets redistributed. (from the local shared storage unit)
Doesn't realy change the second part of my answer though. People could already keep some stock at home right now but most just don't. I don't see how such a shared storage would change that.
Also stock up for a few months is what the government is for at least where I live. [0] Personel emergency supplies are only for the time till the government can start distributing their own stocks.
[0]: https://www.bwl.admin.ch/en/we-advise-emergency-supplies
The services sold are, for example, Betalingsservice in Denmark and AvtaleGiro/eFaktura in Norway.
To be honest, my concern is that Nets is that Nets is entirely unable to competently provide any services competently and reliably, so while they shouldn't be moved to a US company, I sure do hope that we get everything they do replaced by something else.
Only Nets could somehow manage to make it much more expensive in fees to have a scheduled direct bank transaction (Betalingsservice - for reference, bank transfers are free and instant here) than using a VISA card with fees going to the US. They have also completely ruined Dankort adoption and reliability, and made MitID into a great big mess of a reliability and usability nightmare.
In India, the universal payments interface (UPI) has been hugely successful in providing instant, commission less payments for a vast majority of the population.
Similarly, RuPay is the common standard for credit and debit cards.
It's eye opening to see just how effective and impactful these two have been, particularly UPI. The smallest seller in the remotest village will likely accept UPI payments.
What's mind blowing is that all of this came about in the short span of just under a decade.
The US uses its so-called SDN list which in general prevents the person having a bank account in any western country. It also caused Microsoft to kill off the email account (I believe the full azure services - ie. Active Directory - rendering his work computer useless) of a prosecutor at the international criminal court:
https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...
Microsoft didn’t cut services to International Criminal Court, its president says
Chief prosecutor’s email issues have spurred fears in Europe that Trump could trigger a “kill switch” through U.S. tech giants abroad.
...
A Microsoft spokesperson said that it had been in contact with the court since February “throughout the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services.” The spokesperson added that “at no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC.”
To be fair, under US law Microsoft doesn’t have much choice either. Companies operating under US law inherit the untrustworthiness that comes with this.
Because I too am a Swede and in mine I don't think the normal attitude is one where we have any limit to our commitment to Danish territorial integrity.
We do as we have said we will. There's no reason to be afraid. We get what we get and if they come we'll fight.
We know that Russia still uses similarly subversive tactics internationally, especially in public messaging (popularizing multiple mutually contradictory narratives at the same time to compete with any attempt at "factual reporting", e.g. in its many justifications and descriptions during the early months of the invasion of Ukraine or following the infamous civilian plane crash during the "civil war" before that). There have also been credible accusations against China of employing disinformation campaigns to disrupt criticism. The first year of Israel's ongoing military campaign (initially in Gaza) also saw many people pointing out what they described as examples of Hasbara.
Under the first Trump presidency we saw the term "alternative facts" being used by US officials. Trump himself also popularized the term "fake news". Trump even bragged about "stopping Nord Stream 2", implying US involvement in the sabotage that so far has been considered to have been carried out by Ukranian nationals.
We also know (via Snowden and Wikileaks) that under the Bush and Obama governments the US actively used its intelligence apparatus even against its allies, at the very least for surveillance operations and infiltration (allegedly even industrial espionage). There's also the dissolved BND/CIA co-operation (via a Swiss proxy I think?) that came apart when the German BND was dissatisfied with the CIA's willingness to sell the faulty encryption technology they were disseminating to their shared allies to maintain cover for the operation.
During the Euromaidan protests (2014), the US diplomat was caught on tape exclaiming "Fuck the EU". During the Security Conference earlier this year, VP Vance explicitly promoted European far-right political movements and questioned the legitimacy of European countries' governments. Trump himself has repeatedly referred to the EU as an organization created for the specific purpose of screwing over the US.
In aggregate, the EU's nominal GDP right now is slightly higher than that of China. Germany alone has the third-highest nominal GDP in the world right now.
The US has for a long time at least engaged in hostile behavior against its own allies, including the EU. Trump has at several points been openly hostile against the EU. Trump has been promoting a policy of unilateral "peace through strength" over promoting cooperation and the pretense of mutual benefit and engaging in trade wars against all of its trading partners.
The US is acting as a hostile force against the EU and has redefined the EU as a hostile entity. It hasn't severed diplomatic nor economic ties to the EU but neither has it to China. Whatever you think the US might stomach to covertly do against China it therefore stands to reason they would have an interest in also doing against the EU. It's also worth considering that militarily China poses a much greater risk of retaliation and the EU is currently much more economically dependant on the US than China is (especially following the sanctions against Russia which previously acted as a major trading partner in the region and the rising tensions in the Middle East).
It seems extremely plausible to me that the US engages in activities intended to disrupt the integrity of the EU and consequentially the mutual trust and diplomatic relationships between EU member states. We know (with receipts) that Russia has been directly contributing to far-right nationalist anti-EU political movements throughout Europe prior to the invasion of Ukraine and even before Trump's first term and continues to support the anti-EU rhetoric of a "Europe of fatherlands" intended to fragment and individualize EU member states either as a "divide and conquer" tactic or at least to reduce their collective capability for actively opposing Russia's interests.
We don't know what the US has been doing or is doing beyond what it has been doing in the open. But given how much deeper the US's battle chest runs and how advanced its offensive technology (both from private industry and internally) that we know of is, it seems far more likely to me that this is not because it doesn't exist but because they've been better at not getting caught. Not to mention that European governments still refuse to treat the US with the same level of suspicion they treat China or Russia, thus making it far easier for the US to get away with actions even when they are caught. There's no need to worry about your covert operations becoming public when their target actively collaborates in supporting your operations against them.
sounds like Crypto AG[0]
Canada will welcome you at thier clubhouse. Friends are enemies and enemies friends. And Putin is all smiles. (Let us not kid ourselves about who wants disharmony amongst arctic nations.)
That is pretty obviously the nature of the environment. You can’t blame Denmark for it being like that, it isn’t a function of resources delivered. No one has ever been able to convert any part of the polar regions into a glorious utopia.
There is no basic infrastructure there! First deliver that, than blame "polar regions". Denmark ks treating Greenland as it's colony!!!
Iceland has very similar situation, but farfar better infrastructure!!!
Yes greenland is a colony. But I don't think that making them USA's colony would improve their situation… see how the natives of guam or hawaii are doing for example.
I'm not disputing the colonial history of Greenland/Denmark or the oppression inflicted on the Inuit (which didn't end in 1953) but I struggle to see the point you and the other poster are trying to make. You both seem to be making insinuations based on facts that are simply not true/up to date.
Anyway the campaign for Greenland is ramping up. And it goes from all the way from weird social media posts, oddly timed attacks on Danish companies (Orsted), huge US "diplomatic" build up in Nuuk, weird "little green men", various statements of agression by Trump and surrogates. And there is a Danish campaign on other side with a silly number of visits by the PM and the king, lots of political wins for the Greenlanders, Danish military build up, French involvement etc.
Entertaining to follow and also with consequences in unrelated fields like tech.
Alaska seems to be doing pretty well!
Denmark treats Greenland as pristine natural reserve, where people should not exists, and are just nuisance!
> Alaska seems to be doing pretty well!
Alaska has towns not connected by roads and rail, so maybe you could start there. Maybe start by connecting Nome[1].
(tldr Sweden is pretty cashless and a lot of shops don't accept cash)
I’m not even joking.
And, most companies don’t take cash, especially smaller ones.
Large companies (ICA the supermarket) takes cash but it’s like 1/200 who use cash and the cashier is often visibly flustered when cash is presented.
I happen to be in sweden in this very moment. And no, cashiers are not flustered and alarmed when they see cash, old people pay with cash every day.
Yes there is some restaurants that will not take cash.
Last april I was in a place where they did not take cards :)
There's more to sweden than what you personally experience.
I could write a huge diatribe of statistics and behaviours that back me up, it's quite public that even in 2022 across the entire country only 8% of transactions were made in cash- which is even lower in the cities. https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/rapporter/betalni...
And it's also quite well known that many independent businesses do not accept cash (my Coffee Shop, the restaurants I frequent (Quan in Malmo, Marvin in Malmo)).
And yes I've visibly seen cashiers recoil after putting a transaction through to the payment terminal; only to have the person tell them that they'd rather pay in cash (leading to the cashier becoming flustered).
Yes, it's more common that old people use cash (from my observed experience) but increasingly they're using debit cards (not mobile payment methods like younger folks), but no: the country is pretty much cashless; and coming from the UK (where not accepting cash is definitely a more controversial decision outside of London): here it's seen as pretty normal to say "no cash" or "cash free".
Speaking for: Stockholm, Malmo, Gothenburg, Lund, Sundsvall, Oskarshamn and Umeå, and after being in the country for 11 years. I'm not sure what other representation I should be seeing.
Talking about my personal observed experience doesn't invalidate yours, but it feels like I can speak for the overwhelming majority of the population here.
And incidentally I'm also in Sweden right now (https://mrkoll.se/person/Jan-Martin-Harris-Harasym-Kattsunds...); if you'd like me to document a day trying to use only cash I'll let you know how it goes. But I won't be able to get to work (Malmo Busses do not take cash) and I won't be able to eat at any of the restaurants in Malmo (Saluhallen and the others I mentioned above are entirely cashless) so I'll have to use COOP, Willis or ICA exclusively.
I assure you that pressbyrån accepts cash and you can buy tickets there to get to work. Also having a long subscription for public transport on the phone is a bad idea, because if you drop your phone you'll also lose your subscription. And depending on how many days you had left and what phone you had, it could cost you more than the phone.
And handpicking restaurants that don't accept cash is no more a proof than if I were to do the same but handpicking restaurants that don't accept cards.
[1] https://www.dr.dk/drn-video/67b5f9f966d82a0507aeda6a
[2] https://www.berlingske.dk/politik/mette-frederiksen-vil-slaa...
[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/denmark-boost-2025-26-d...
We are thankfully on quite the shopping spree, we have also decided to include women into conscription (and that conscripts can be used for real missions, iirc) and we are financing and building Ukrainian weapons like the Flamingo.
Also, Scandinavia has pooled our airforces into one airforce, surpassing the UK, France etc. in size.
As for the army vacation camp, I think it's good experience (same with scouting for example), although there's probably a huge recruitment angle there.
Personally I wouldn't mind a stint in the military, but at the same time I'm nearly 40 and not exactly fit if you catch my drift. That said, the military is also looking for a lot of reservists, people who do some jobs outside of their day job, some in IT security, base guarding, that kind of thing.
I tried to sign up as a reservist - civil personell - because I feel like my logistic expertise could come in handy but sadly I passed 40 a few years ago and I'm deemed to old for service, even as a reservist.
Credit card bills, notices, etc. I don't want to have to log in every time I want to check a bill / notification, only to have to pull out my Yubikey or phone.
Not to mention having to click 'no' to all the popups about new credit cards or subscription upgrades.
The main one is a private company that provides an authentication system using private certificates. When you try to login to an authenticated website your phone pops up a message asking you to verify the login and enter your PIN. That signs the request with your private certificate and sends it back to the provider. Other actions such as transfering money or signing contracts require you to authenticate using a different certificate, with a different PIN. The private certificate stays on your device (there are mechanisms to generate a new one if you lose your device).
The other options are ID cards with a USB card reader or a mobile signature in the SIM card of your phone. For government website and utility companies you can usually authenticate with your bank as another option.
I prefer it to username/password as all I need is my ID number (which unlike the US doesn't need to be private) and my phone. And basically everything you need to use to adult uses this system.
One particular concern I have is whether that company will be connected to the Universal Postal Union; if they aren't, sending letters to and from foreign countries will suddenly be a minefield. I don't know and have been trying to find out.
But Eboks is not holding all digital post of all our citizens, it's one of at least 3 services who we can choose from to read our mail from the governmental organizations. It's a freemarket compromise with multiple private and public solutions the public can choose from.
Also while yes the private company that did deliver physical mail no longer will, another have taken its place for physical letter... Isn't that freemarket capitalism? Why should one private entity have the contract for all time?
Your post does read like the old "Denmark is a specialist hellhole" posts from the conservatives when Bernie Sanders dared using the country as an example of doing Social Wellfare + Free market right.
In the same way, it concerns me how much Sweden relies on BankID, but that's a different thing.
They could have started some kind of certification thing for email providers and even funded a couple of certified email providers much more effectively than the digital post monstrosity.
That would have been awesome and forward looking, and perhaps even helped ordinary people get better security for their personal emails.
Perhaps we'll get there some day.
We as a country are exposed to being attacked by Russia. Be that cyber attacks or destruction of assets by sleeper agents.
So instead of decentalizing the electrical grid and making sure it's secure someone at Dansk Supermarked thinks it will earn them money to be prepared for some future crisis.
I find the article native.. it says they trust Nets (payment company) to work offline ..
(Worth noting: Your comment sounds like “I have a feeling fixing (critical bug 1) would be a better investment than (fixing critical bug 2)”. You fix both.)
Attacking a distributed grid would probably not be cost effective.
No you are not. First - no one can find you on a map. You are so tiny. Second for a conventional warfare Russia will have to go trough many many countries to get to you, no matter which road they take (also anyone that thinks Russia is a credible threat is smoking something strong - they don't have the capacity to subdue backwater as eastern Ukraine, let alone more developed and prepared countries as Poland, Germany or Finland, Sweden). And preparedness won't help you for nuclear.
Sabotage by agents is an attack.
Russia is a terrorist state and will attack this country sooner or later. It's just a question of time.
The reason it hasn't happened yet is that they'd either have to increase tax income greatly, or reduce public spending greatly with financial support from Denmark. As I gather, infrastructure up there is really expensive.
>The military powerhouse that is Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad actually does have a sizable (for Russia) military investment, which is why the west would expect them to defend it in that way.
I don't think Russia COULD do that anymore, unless it was entirely a Belarus operation. But if they succeed at rushing that gap, current war "meta" is extremely defensive-sided. Russia may not have a meaningful "fleet" but they certainly have enough working and pretty good submarines to make hell for anyone trying to then supply Lithuania.
China is betting on us rather pivoting than engaging with Russian army. If we seem tough enough, we call it.
We can then also negotiate better rate for the US protection racket, becauss the US fuckers decided to more than double the rate recently and we are unhappy about that. Long term we will rearm ourselves on our own terms.
Every country that has nuclear weapons has them because of the threat of using them.
If a state would say "we will never, in no circumstance, ever use these weapons" then why spend the money to have them in the first place?
USA, pakistan, russia, france, india and so on… they all have these weapons to threaten using them.
Denmark specifically is not a populous country. You could probably keep the entire country fed with just the capacity of e.g. the US military airlift capability, which has been used in these situations. The emergency reserves mostly only need to exist until supply chains are established. It is a balancing act.
What would be a signal that you should panic buy to beat the rush? A drone shot down over Poland? Article 4 being invoked? What if a falling drone causes a casualty?
Simply having deeper stocks will let them avoid the empty shelf photos that can tip the balance into panic buying.
In the Netherlands the power grid is at capacity, which effectively means new businesses are on a waiting list to get connected; they do that to try and prevent power outages, but it does imply (to me, a layperson) that it wouldn't take much for the grid to get overloaded and shut down. It happened a few years ago [0], with high-voltage cables getting so hot they started sagging etc.
You can be forgiven however if you're a millennial (as I am) or younger, because the long peace has been so long that it seems crazy that Russia might start dropping bombs, say, on Copenhagen or London. "They wouldn't dare attack NATO" we would have said 10 years ago. But today, NATO is at risk since too much of its credibility is tied to the US and the US is now unpredictable. With one stroke of an "executive order" pen the US could just call backsies and pull out if one man considers it politically advantageous to him to do so. That has been unthinkable for 75 years and now it's just reality.
Russia is a lot less afraid of Western Europe than they were/are of NATO. Would they win? IDK. But my perception is that the very notion of war would shock the s**t out of the 20-somethings that Western Europe would need to conscript in order to fight an all-out war. If too many refused to fight, Putin might just roll in there relatively unchallenged.
Note: US civilians are certainly not any more ready to enlist than Europe's! But the US is the only Western country with (almost) enough people already enlisted to be a credible threat in a major war.
There's no plausible world in which Russia has the strength to take on the rest of Europe, in, say, the next ten years.
(Let's assume nukes are out of the question)
Sure they do. Total war + support from norks and China will do it.
If it's that costly to hold onto areas where most people actually like Putin relatively speaking, how much more expensive wouldn't it be to hold onto areas to where people hate him?
Is it true? No.
Also air force is not so useful and we are spending insane amounts into that.
I'm being cute above with the phrasing, but your attitude of "why spend on military, it's wasted money" is obsolete thinking. It's based on a world where the US was spending enough to intimidate Russia or anyone else from stepping out of line, and where the US could be relied upon to keep their commitments.
It was logical for Germany, for instance, to spend only 1.2% for the past 25 years because the NATO obligations guaranteed the US's support and the US's leaders understood the qualitative ROI of having all of Europe firmly in its own sphere of influence.
Now, regardless of how we feel about it, it's foolish to depend on the US anymore. NATO still has some value -- the US may defend parts of Europe, and under this presidency it probably depends on stupid stuff like how impressed Trump is by your head of state's handshake, how hot their wife is, whether they compliments Trump, etc. But you can't stake your safety on that silliness.
as a 20-something western european i don't see why i should die because some politicians behave like absolute fucking pieces of shits. if war breaks out in my country or they start conscripting people like me i'll just flee the country together with whomever would like to join me.
thanks for your service.
Rememeber also that there was a hot war in the middle of Europe (former Yugoslavia) during the 90s with the US even carrying airstrikes on an European capital (Belgrade).
Obviously this does not mean that European countries should have weak militaries or not show strength. But the threat of Russia is overblown and used to manufacture consent in public opinion for more spending and more EU integration at a time when people already suffer economically and are already squeezed, and growing disatisfied with the EU.
IMHO, the highest risk of violent instability in Western Europe now and in the coming years is not Russia but mass immigration and islamist terrorism at large. And perhaps that's also partly why governments are trying to deflect attention...
> it seems crazy that Russia might start dropping bombs, say, on Copenhagen or London.
Yes, that is totally crazy.
What NATO? The one that included the US? Have you not been paying attention to Trump directly stating that he might not honor Article 4 if he doesn't feel like it?
And let's be completely honest, I'd be willing to bet any amount of money that European governments would for their part completely decline to send any significant manpower to intervene if the US were attacked by China or North Korea. In spite of Article 4, public opinion would be that the US "deserves it" for its poor diplomacy and for electing Trump.
NATO is no longer relevant, sadly, unless the US makes a huge turnaround in its commitment to it. NATO is in 2 parts: America, and everybody else, and neither side any longer has a firm commitment to actually go to war for the other. So the relevant part of NATO is "all NATO countries except the US":
https://www.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1cud48e/nato_...
That's exactly why there's gonna by full scale war with russia. It's simply the best moment for it and russia showed it can't be left alone.
That's bonkers on all levels, and more.
I want to remind you Russia's long distance rockets have largely self destructed on Russian territory even without a liftoff: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/24/europe/russia-sarmat-miss...
A single misstep of the Russian war criminals on EU soil, and they will be obliterated in seconds. It's bonkers to think otherwise.
Hopefully I'll have my new life sufficiently set up to help those I love and left behind, and even more hopefully they'll be able to get out, once the shit actually hits.
I'd like for them to come to me earlier, but I don't think I'll get more than visits until bombs start falling. If I'm lucky some of them will already be here visiting me when that happens. Then they can just stay. The rest will at least know they have a safe haven if they can just manage to get here.
It's not trouble free, not by a long shot. I have family connection to here though and I recon Mexico is not very likely to partake in WW3 in any meaningful way, so should be safe from what I worry is coming soon for Europe.
For now tho, I'm definitely less safe than my friends and family back in Sweden. In the short term at least. I don't think Putin is going to change that this year, and probably not next year either, but honestly who knows.
The lifestyle is legit. No one requires you to go to the famously sketchy parts.
Imagine leaving the US for Mexico in 1962 because the "cold war is about to go warm"
Gotta focus on the bright side, and I do love the climate here!
I could do with a little less cartel parties that go on through the night at the neighbours house. They're loud and it's not like I'm gonna go knock on that particular neighbours door, knowing fully well who the guests are...
Unless you like to ski, and the long dark winters, weather in mexico is an upgrade, except for the occasional hurricane.
These things are the equivalent to people having an emergency backpack with their travel documents a bottle of water and a few dehydrated meals, statistically you will never need it but if anything happens you'll be glad you're not roaming the streets in pyjama, barefoot and without any documents/food
Germany had their nationwide emergency test yesterday. there are various suggestions in countries about how to stack essentials for few days without anything - mostly means power that drives everything -, keeping some amount of cash at home, train citizens (mandatory) for basic defensive abilities.
Since there are these stupid 'we are good, fuck everyone else' kind of movements all around the world including US and parts of EU (look at the practically Russian ally Hungary by the way, protecting Russian interests directly inside EU) the whole thing became very reasonable, approaching essential level.
Not to mention we get to deal with all the refugees from that godforsaken war.
The climate is changing. Natural disasters are going to be more common. It's prudent to prepare for it.
Preparedness is vital!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/us/texas-heb-winter-storm...
Here in Germany foreigners often scoff about how prevalent cash is, but to this day nobody has yet invented a payment technology that works without electricity, without transaction costs, and without a third party. As far as I'm concerned cash is still the most futuristic technology we ever invented
In fact, many retailers will tell you that cash is more expensive to handle than card, because every deposit requires staff time and often explicit bank fees. Society also pays indirectly through tax evasion and black-market activity, which cash enables far more easily than digital systems.
You’re right that cash is robust in a blackout, and there’s something elegant about a technology that works offline, peer-to-peer, and without needing servers to stay up. But the idea that it has no transaction costs is not realistic.
Having survived an above average number of these in my life myself where basic services were down for many days, I have a pretty good idea of what happens. Having cash versus digital doesn’t matter. No one is keeping track, people just take care of people. Everyone writes it off, moves on, and the community becomes stronger.
This is pretty wired into the culture. No one will accept your money in these scenarios even if you have it.
1g is ~100 of money today, which would be enough for a weekly supply of groceries for a person in HCOL areas.
The balance of power is tilted against Russia much more than during the Cold War. That threat does not stand the most basic scrutiny. Russia couldn't reach Western Europe if they tried. Claims that it is the worst since WWII conveniently ignore the Cold War and even the 90s. Western Europe is better off now.
It is incredible the amount of BS we are spoon-fed by the media and governments in Europe... but perhaps even more worrying is how docile the people are and just eat it.
The good question is: what is the ulterior motive of the alarmists?
My view has been that we should be going in, bombing the Russian positions in Ukraine with stand-off weapons, bombing war-relevant infrastructure in Russia and going in where they don't have forces to oppose us-- seizing ships at sea. I'd like to see the Russian Baltic fleet sunk. It'd like to see parts of the Russian Northern Fleet sunk.
I'd also like to see a surrender of Kaliningrad forced by means of blockade.
If we want to do things like this we have prepare a bit.
>> Russia openly subjugated Belarus
>> Russian jets, drones and war ships routinely enter NATO without any response
> Urop has never been safer than this, comrades! No reason for panic at all!
That's exactly why the full scale war is going to happen. There wasn't any better time to deal with russia than it is now.
Businesses try to keep minimum stock. Single disruption in integrated circuit supply disables whole industries. And so on.
Capitalism is incompatible with resiliency.
The participating commenter base on this site has been much wider than could be described that way for many years.
- 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-val...
- 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...
It’s tougher to quantify and building a connected community than just profiting off users, though.
The Ukraine- Russia war is a regional war that is happening outside our borders- all we should have done was to use diplomacy to make sure that our interests and good commercial relations with all sides were preserved.
Yes, we should all just stop building our defenses and increasing our resilience and roll over. Let's roll out a red carpet for Russians all the way to Paris (or maybe Lisbon?). The same peaceful folks who talk about bombing our cities every week on their national TV.
This is the kind of platitudes I'm talking about.
Russia is struggling to advance in a couple of regions in Ukraine, how do you think they would fare with attacking Europe and reaching Paris or Lisbon? Seriously.
Russia’s war against Ukraine has underscored the importance of air defence, as Kyiv begs the west for additional systems and rockets to protect its cities, troops and energy grid against daily bombing raids. But according to people familiar with confidential defence plans drawn up last year, Nato states are able to provide less than 5 per cent of air defence capacities deemed necessary to protect its members in central and eastern Europe against a full-scale attack.
The same applies to tanks, artillery, and pretty much everything else.
Europe's aid to Ukraine is also limited by the fact that it doesn't want to be seen as an active part in the conflict, so it provides only arms with a limited range and that can be used only defensively. All this of course would not apply if it were attacked directly.
No - I am saying that this "enormous amount of modern weaponry" that you speak of doesn't exist anymore. The large Cold War era stockpiles were simply destroyed. Even basic weapons, like artillery shells, are now in short supply.
It literally does not.
US built 6700 Bradleys. US built 10,000 Abrams. Thousands of these machines are already stationed in Europe just waiting to shoot Russians.
Germany built 3600 Leopard 2 tanks. They built 2k Marder IFVs.
Saab built 300 Grippens.
The Brits alone built over 400 main battle tanks. France alone built 800 of theirs.
You should divide all these numbers by half or more to estimate ones with modernization upgrades, but Russia ran out of modernized equipment a while ago, and NATO 80s equipment has demonstrably outclassed Soviet leftovers.
The US is bad at producing Artillery shells because we utterly refuse to use State power to induce business nowadays, because of stupid "Capitalism good, gubermint bad" ideology, but Europe ramped up shell production. Manufacturers have openly said that all they need is a commitment, and they will build capacity.
The anti-air missile problem is because NATO always intended to rely on US air power (and our thousands of aircraft) to utterly own the skies and deny any air attack. Also the Shahed situation is somewhat novel. The US once produced 40,000 HAWK Anti-air missiles, which would be perfectly sufficient against something like Shahed.
Nobody wants to disarm themselves to give everything they have to Ukraine, but there is substantial arms that are just waiting for use, while Ukraine suffers. US alone could arm Ukraine twice over and not even feel the pain. Most of our equipment is considered not useful against China and is slated to be replaced, but we STILL refuse to sell it.
Nor are there thousands of American tanks in Europe ready to fire at the Russians. The last permanently stationed US tanks were withdrawn from Europe in 2013. At any given time, about 100 to 200 US tanks in total are scattered across Europe on temporary rotations (exercises etc).
These figures pale in comparison with independently verified Ukrainian tank losses, which currently stand at 1267, with total losses estimated between 1500 and 1900. In early 2023, the Ukrainian high command requested 300-500 tanks from allies for the next counteroffensive. The US was unwilling to provide such support, and other countries could not supply anything comparable, even through a joint effort. Hence the stalemate.
If Europe had deep stockpiles to draw from without compromising its own military readiness, the picture would be completely different. During the Cold War, Europe maintained such stockpiles, but they were dismantled in the 1990s and early 2000s as a cost-cutting measure.
I dont think that is how it works? That is assuming people wont flock out to buy everything in the emergency store. And do people visit it every day or are these "Emergency Stores". After all they need to replenish stock.
Or are these simply some form of marketing play?
Off-Topic: Its been while since I last visited a The Mastodon site and it seems a lot faster than before.
Well, you could make everything really expensive in these emergency stores during an emergency.
So if an event happened that even slightly appeared to suggest things might get tough for a while people will always panic buy. Without limits those with money will buy it up.
I did the same thing like a couple years after initial Covid when we had massive flooding in Abbotsford. I heard on the news something like an estimated 100,000 chickens were killed in the flood. I stood up, grabbed my keys and got into my car. I went and bought like a few hundred dollars in chicken. 2 days later facebook was full of posts about how all the chicken is gone and none on the shelves. Luckily it didn't last long and I believe they managed to get a bunch from Washington state but it was all at an increased cost.
I am not rich but I am thankful that I am in enough of a position that I can load up if I feel there might be a need to. A few people said I was part of the problem buying lots like that buy I always did it preemptively before the surge started. And in my defense when you literally could not buy toilet paper, I kept a bunch in my car. I work as a health care working visiting people at home. I gave out dozens of rolls so elderly could have it meaning I would at times run out. I also have helped out countless clients with no food out of my own pocket. But I am the provider for my family so I need to ensure they are okay.
It sounds like you’re trying to clear your conscious from panic buying. However, some people went to the store to find nothing because they weren’t able to go at the same time as you.
I didn't rush off to panic buy, but when I first heard about it happening, I did go to do a normal grocery run in case things later ran out. There was nothing on my list. Also, there was almost nothing on the shelves. It was like the supermarket had been looted. Well, of everything edible or useful anyway. Probably high-value, non-essentials were still there, unlike in real looting.
I walked and walked the aisles, and the only thing I could find that we might eat were black olives. I disliked black olives (as apparently did everyone else), but I bought (and later ate) them anyway. That wasn't the only thing edible in the supermarket - it was a while ago, so I forget what was still there. Perhaps condiments, and obscure baking ingredients.
I held out from panic buying right through, but once the shelves were restocked I started buying a couple extra of everything each time, as long as there were lots on the shelf. I gradually filled one cupboard shelf with 6-7 of every canned and jarred food we eat. Later on, there were a few more instances of people panic buying at the slightest provocation (1), and I now assume people will do it if allowed.
1) https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/473591/you-don-t-need-to...
I am not trying to clear my conscious. I know I am a good person and literally would give the shirt off my back. But I had a hint things might get bad and as a father of young children above all and everything in this world I had to make sure I had at least a bit or reserves if things got bad. I am not rich at all so when I say I did a costco run I am not talking like thousands of dollars. More like an $800 run which is nothing, but I know how to make that much last a long time. I got a bunch of flour and rice. Some meats and tomato sauce. I would not be eating in luxury had their been a long term shortage but I would at least be able to make some bread and basic foods to keep my family feed even if poorly.
action speak louder than words I'm afraid
The government announced that there was plenty of stock, but panic buying would mean it couldn't be brought onto the shelves in time, so please don't. People didn't.
I get you were anxious about what was going to happen and I hope that you now have emergency supplies that you regularly stock. That way it won't damage the normal supply chain.
Which is backed up by stock piles of essential goods: https://www.huoltovarmuuskeskus.fi/en/organisation/the-natio...
The 72Hour emergency preparedness sites suggest every household have some emergency cash: https://72tuntia.fi/en/
If an emergency store costs 10% more to run, and emergencies are only 1 day in 10,000, then prices during emergencies would need to be 1000x normal for it to make business sense.
Unfortunately anti-price-gouging laws wouldn't allow that, nor would you manage to keep law and order in the shop when telling customers that a bottle of water is gonna cost them 2000 dollars/euros.
“This is our core task and a responsibility we take on, and we also believe that it is timely […] that we – like other countries – prepare for possible crisis situations, which a good and constructive dialogue with the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness has also confirmed. We hope that this will not be necessary, but should it happen, our customers can count on us.”
https://www.esmmagazine.com/retail/salling-group-advances-wo...
From https://benevity.com/resources/corporate-social-responsibili... "CSR increases customer retention and loyalty: Research shows that 87% of Americans are more likely to buy a product from a company that they can align their values with, and over half of all consumers are willing to pay extra for a product if they’re buying from a company with a sturdy CSR strategy."
I applaud this kinda thing.
In a sensible world, that'd mean not just positive PR alongside the actual social utility, but also maybe the government being a bit more encouraging when it comes to taxes etc.
Plus, who knows, if they stock up a bunch on canned goods and still need to sell them in a reasonable amount of time, it might lead to a few good discounts here and there and also be a good thing for the regular consumer.
Aside from that, having a generator and accepting cash payments just seems like good common sense stuff to do.
I'm with the mormons on this issue, who emphasize preparedness for emergencies. Typically storing up to a year of non-perishable food.
Combined with things in people's houses that likely gets you to about a week before anyone is going without.
This is a common way people get their current accounts into debt without authorising an overdraught.
I misunderstood the nature of the book, assuming it was a list of valid card numbers. It was, of course, the opposite, so when I said to my mom “I hope they find your number in there” she replied “I hope they don’t!”
Im not that familiar with the protocol, but i could see there being a special clause to allow larger off-grid payments in emergency situations.
How can these store be profitable when there isn't a crisis? Or will they be closed when there isn't a crisis?
They are meant to be available as reliable and functioning stores throughout a crisis period. Your go-to destination for purchasing vital goods during the crisis.
If you've only got two days supply, you may not be so generous.
[1] My elementary schools had a good program of bring in canned food at the start of the school year in case of emergency, have a picnic to eat it in the last month of school. I also did have a disaster can when I lived in California; I'm less prepared at the moment.
If power goes out really bad, there's some kind of major weather event in some part of the country etc 3 days is a reasonable time frame for emergency measures to be put in place
10kg bags of rice is not a common supermarket item in Denmark.
And we stock coffee too, not just grain. :)
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/mandatory-reserves_why...
During the Cold War, even the Soviet Union had better missile defense and civil defense infrastructure than the US.
Civil Defense was taken seriously in the US for a while (I was trained as a radiological monitor in high school) but fatalism and optimism took over. Countries like Switzerland made changes to their national building code requiring all homes and larger buildings to have shelters. IMO the US should have standardized shelter plans as an optional part of our building code, so if someone wants one, there's a proven design available.
With regard to Denmark, look to the Mormon Church. They have a mandate (not always followed!) to keep a years supply of food in the house. So the church has distribution warehouses and publishes information about long-term storage.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/topics/food-storage/long...
I've been involved in several different cities emergency preparedness plans though, and there is actually a lot more happening in the US than most people think or know. It rarely if ever makes the news, but it happens.
It also doesn't even sound like that great of an idea. Is each store going to have enough to serve everyone in the 50km region for 3 days?
IRL market demands are massive for a western country so it’d require a lot more than a single chain of grocers staying open late. Or more accurately a huge devastating emergency to kill off essential industry like food production/distribution.
Also: This might be a good idea for them, but it's not a good idea for the US, the US is not exposed to a level of risk that makes this worth it.
Being somewhat of a "cautious" prepper mentality, though never having really done any prepping, I thought I would walk to the supermarket at night in a suburb of Copenahgen to get some extra tuna just in case. Mind you this was about an hour after the announcement say 8pm.
There was a queue of about 30 meters out of the supermarket of danish citizens, scared and ( possibly for the first time ever thought as a visitor I couldnt know for sure - the queue had ever been so long. As I walked away I could see through the window, that they were limiting the amount of people going into the store to a handful at a time.
And, very suprisingly I saw a normal Dane running round the aisle grabbing the milk cartons so quickly he knocked some onto the floor before continuing to run off down the aisle. Very movie like so to speak. Not something I ever saw in the UK during the same announcement a month earlier. Bear in mind this was also at night! A night food panic.
Well, the good news, is ( other than this one incident that lasted an hour or so), the Danes IMO handled the whole COVID thing with a stable level headed attitude, that night was the only mild panic I witnessed.
Months later they had a very honed and IMO fair, calm approach to testing and although teachers were forced to "take the vaccine" or "get into trouble" ( a teacher was expected to show they had taken it or a test or they simply coudln't be in school, thought the punishment was never explained), they were also the only country I noticed where if you were not vaccinated yet , you could still go to cafes as long as you had a "free" test in one of the many marquees around the city. ( To compare, in the UK for about half a year ALL cafes were closed, and it was mandatory to wear masks in public - not so in Denmark). One old lady started shouting at me whilst I drank coffee ( below my mask), on a train in the UK. When I asked her to calm down and stop shouting, that masks were not even worn in Denmark, she actually got extremely confused. (Just a memory.)
I just thought this was of interest. Clearly they are still trying to learn lessons. Good stuff.
EDIT> Sorry and my one funnny memory ( Im not complaining honest). Was a time in Denmark when it was (a) Cafe was open (b) You could go to cafe if you had been tested (c) You were given a literal FLAG that you would put on your table to warn other poeple you had ben tested but NOT vaccinated. A little white flag!!! Only once, I think that was at it worst, and about a month later I never saw the little flag again. Ah good times though.
Conveniently, none of it actually means anything at all, so it is routinely reinterpreted to mean exactly the opposite of what it might appear to mean.
That's not quite true. You still can't quarter soldiers in somebody's house. We Americans have a firm fixed belief in the Third Amendment.
If it were possible to amend them, then it wouldn't be necessary; we'd already agree on a less-unreasonable interpretation.
I think it is entirely clear that after 250 years they aren't even slightly fit for purpose, if they ever were. But I cannot see a way to revisit them without re-applying the process under which they were written in the first place.
https://missouriindependent.com/2025/09/08/missouri-house-ad...