I'm chuckling at the way this article is written. And stranded in Egypt. what a headache. Who can come up with a relatable animal simile form me for 2,000 blue whales? Or at least better than my pathetic 66,000 elephants. These are the 4 items the author chose to represent the mind-blowing product diversity onboard. OK then. Although managed by a German company, the Ever Given’s Japanese owners, Shoei Kisen Kaisha, have leased the ship to Taiwanese firm Evergreen. Insured by a British broker, run by an Indian crew, it flies the flag of tax haven Panama.
Fully loaded, it’s as heavy as 2,000 blue whales.
NAME A PRODUCT and it’s probably on the Ever Given. Its 18,300 containers hold everything from IKEA furniture to dildos, from microchips to pillow cases.
I think we should stick with aquatic animals, this being a ship and all. But yeah, I don't imagine anyone here has ever tried lifting a blue whale. Neither other big aquatic animals like hippos or crocodiles. How about trouts? By my maths (and Wikipedia's numbers), there's about 10,000 trout to a blue whale, which means the fully loaded Ever Given is as heavy as 20,000,000 trouts. Or maybe we should stick to floating animals, that makes more sense for a ship comparison than underwater animals. If my maths are correct, the fully loaded Ever Given weighs as much as roughly 250,000,000 ducks. Maybe more relatable, but those numbers are so big the human brain can't really make sense of them.Who can come up with a relatable animal simile form me for 2,000 blue whales? Or at least better than my pathetic 66,000 elephants.
Hey hey! Who's got two thumbs and had an international maritime shipment at sea while the Ever Given ran aground? THIS GUY! The whole catastrophe is a buried lede deep down in the bowels of the story: Let's rewrite that to actually reflect the facts on the ground: Maritime law is so Dutch East India Company Olde-Tymey that the vessel is legally entitled to shake down its cargo to cover fines, ransoms and extortions. Now - the different cargo owners, shipping agents, aggregators and other ne'er-do-wells in the story all have everything wrapped in an Everlasting Gobstopper of territorial laws, agreements, binding arbitration contracts and hold-harmless clauses but those things exist in ports, not the "high sea". And so long as the vessel is not in port it is at "high sea" where the laws haven't changed substantially since the age of tall ships. For example, the vessel is fully crewed because otherwise it would be "in distress" and shift into a salvage category. If there is no designated officer of record on board, it becomes pure salvage and whoever boards it and holds it claims legal title to it. All this will crash into the litigious realities of multinational corporations pissing on each other if anybody actually moves. Maersk will have beef with Egypt and file an international claim etc. and things get ugly forever. In the meantime, Egypt is shaking Maersk down and everybody knows it and nobody who has any cargo on that ship has any fucking recourse whatsoever. Been there, done that, have the eight notarized forms signing over all my legal authority to everything to prove it. The people I signed my authority over to don't have any either - my shit sat in holding for ten days because Customs had beef with something else in the container and as far as Customs is concerned, one box = 1 beef. Ships are fuckin' heavy. See this guy? That's a 30' Bayliner Ciera. It weighs 12,000 lbs empty. Ready to go cruise drunk around the lake, it weighs double one of these: But that's okay, because vessels don't "weigh" because you're not picking them up. They "displace" because there's water involved. And the Ever Given "displaces" more than twice as much as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.Alongside lost cargo, businesses are also facing ‘general average’ costs. This principle of maritime law means that if shipowners incur losses for the common good, everyone – including cargo receivers – is asked to proportionally share expenses.
Who can come up with a relatable animal simile form me for 2,000 blue whales?
Oh man that sucks. How many ducksworth do you have on that lake? I'm fascinated by the space between borders. Saw a documentary about Mehran Karimi Nasseri a refugee who was stuck at Charles de Gaulle Airport for 18 years - not this one but I can't find the original I saw. I have so much empathy for him because... funny story. I got held up with my wife at Bucharest airport for 3 days. We got diverted due to bad weather and when we landed they wouldn't let her board the onward leg since she'd lost her travel permit in transit. She couldn't get a stamped visa - for reasons - so it was stapled onto her passport. I actually think it was stolen at Delhi where we'd flown from. Landed in the small hours of Friday morning. Spent most of the day held and questioned by the authorities who eventually let us into the transit area. Had lots of conversations with security who eventually gave her passport back and had to hole up there over the weekend until the British consulate opened up... except it was a national holiday on Monday so we had to wait until Tuesday. Massive coincidence that we bumped into someone we'd met in India during our stay in "Hotel Transit" becuase their flight had also been diverted, They gave us contact details of a friend of theirs who lived in Bucharest We managed to gain entry to Romania to pick up emergency travel papers, but they sent us through a unmanned channel with no-one checking passports or anything so we'd entered illegally. The consulate said it would take 3 days for security checks etc so we looked up the address we were given and had an incredible unexpected stay in Bucharest getting shown around by locals - pointing out buildings still peppered with bullet holes and shell damage from the revolution and stories about what it their life was like and losing family members to Ceaușescu's regime. One weird detail I remember was pointing out watermarks near the ceiling of the underground station as we descended the escalators from when it had flooded. Such amazingly warm and lovely people. To cap it all we had to bribe our way back into the airport and onto the onward flight because we had no stamp to enter the country. I'll always wonder if we could have avoided the whole ordeal by offering a bribe when we were initially refused to board the plane but we would have missed out a really special heart-warming break in Bucharest.
I'm fascinated by the space between borders.