News Miscellany

[Miss Shelby]

Originally Posted by davidm

Did you have some reason to link to another tedious story about a senile old idiot?

because i found it interesting.

[Crumb]

I don't think anybody is surprised that Richard Dawkins is a bigot.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by Crumb

I don't think anybody is surprised that Richard Dawkins is a bigot.

Dear Muslima,

I wouldn't want to live in your shithole country.

Sincerely,
Richard Dawkins

[Miss Shelby]

Originally Posted by Crumb

I don't think anybody is surprised that Richard Dawkins is a bigot.

It kind of surprised me several years ago to learn he was a mild mannered English man. I had up until pictured him as a loud mouthed obnoxious American ( or that’s how I imagined him anyway). When my current obsession of that era of my life was to expose fake mediums.

[JoeP]

Taiwan 7.7 magnitude earthquake: four dead and dozens injured amid landslides and collapsed buildings | Taiwan | The Guardian

There are buildings at crazy angles.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Holy shit. Messaged a friend in Taiwan right away, they’re okay not near the action.

[mickthinks]

When you first see the photo that accompanies this grisly story you probably expect something along the lines of "God, how dumb is MAGA!".



But it's a whole mindfuck worse than that ... Ringleader of global monkey torture network, 'The Torture King', is charged

[Sock Puppet]

Holy shit. If there were a Hell, dude would've earned a special place in it.

[LarsMac]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Holy shit. If there were a Hell, dude would've earned a special place in it.

He is of the type that makes some of us hope that there is such a place, I think.

[Ari]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Taiwan 7.7 magnitude earthquake: four dead and dozens injured amid landslides and collapsed buildings | Taiwan | The Guardian

There are buildings at crazy angles.

I love the physics shown in these photos. Such amazing engineering to get buildings to sink as units and hold together at wonky angles instead of just flattening at the first lateral movement.

Earthquakes are such a weird natural disaster in that almost all the danger is from human infrastructure, sometimes killing hundreds of thousands, but also with enough work so much of that danger can be managed.

[JoeP]

Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in trophy hunting row | Botswana | The Guardian

If they've got spare elephants I want one. A family.

[seebs]

i'm so curious about the height of buildings that can do that. some people i know are 9/11 truthers and are convinced that these pictures prove that buildings won't just collapse down without intentional and controlled demolition.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by seebs

i'm so curious about the height of buildings that can do that. some people i know are 9/11 truthers and are convinced that these pictures prove that buildings won't just collapse down without intentional and controlled demolition.

I think construction standards and practices on the west coast and Asia are different than in Manhattan, specifically because of earthquakes. Probably new buildings constructed in New York today are more earthquake tolerant, but not the ones built early last century like the twin towers. In the pacific ring of fire area, we have fewer of those older, out of spec buildings because the old ones fell down, you know ... during earthquakes.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

In the pacific ring of fire area, we have fewer of those older, out of spec buildings because the old ones fell down, you know ... during earthquakes.

Natural selection!

[Ari]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Natural selection!

So amusingly, the Uranus building, which has become symbol of the quake, was damaged in a 2017 earthquake but fully repaired.

I've been trying to find details but from the way people talk it really sounds like liquefaction sank one side of the building but all the columns remain essentially intact, just changing their above/below ground status. It's being demolished so I guess we'll find out eventually, but if so, you can bet its design will be used for future buildings.

[specious_reasons]

The Seattle Times has a big article on the history of why Boeing is so fucked right now:
How Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout | The Seattle Times

The headline is pretty accurate. The company basically took a "stock price first" approach to building airplanes. It was idiotic on its face, but a series of Jack Welch acolytes thought they knew better.

Boeing executives chose to play hardball with suppliers and employees, they were anti-union and treated their skilled employees as interchangeable and expendable. They pushed airplanes through the manufacturing process to meet schedules at a cost of quality. They relied on outsourcing designs because they cut back on those departments in house. They chose to do incremental changes to existing planes rather than create new ones, even though the success and reputation of Boeing was made on building new planes every generation.

As a result:

Analysts project it will take considerable time for Boeing to restore its culture and regain anything like its former glory.

“Boeing’s delivery volumes are unlikely to catch up to Airbus this decade,” Melius Research analyst Rob Spingarn told investors at the end of March. “If Boeing does not launch a clean-sheet aircraft, it may not catch up to Airbus in the 2030s either.”

It's so sad.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Why improve the product when it would be cheaper to lobby Congress to do to Embraer what the last lobby did to Bombardier?

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

The Seattle Times has a big article on the history of why Boeing is so fucked right now: ...
The headline is pretty accurate. The company basically took a "stock price first" approach to building airplanes. It was idiotic on its face, but a series of Jack Welch acolytes thought they knew better.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver had an episode on Boeing recently, with largely the same "stock price first" themes.

Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, who were primarily known for military planes, and had a lousy reputation for commercial airliners — most notably the DC10, which had multiple accidents resulting in over 1,100 passenger fatalities. And look — was merging with the McDonnell Douglas areospace manufacturing corporation/murder emporium that Boeing CEO’s worst decision? Probably not, because he also — and this is true — married his first cousin, so the last decision I’d ask this guy to make is who it’s a good idea to couple up with.

[specious_reasons]

OMG. I just had my favorite movie tainted by the presence of a child molester. The attacker of Drake Bell (and possibly others) was Scuz from Return of the Living Dead.

I watched a video that was an infodump on the awfulness exposed about Nickelodeon, starting with the accusations from the "Quiet on the Set" documentary series. The video showed the person, but I didn't recognize him because he had gained a lot of weight recently, but the video showed an earlier image of him, and then I recognized him.

The rest of the video was disturbing as hell. Nick seemed to allow an insular group of friends around powerful producers run rampant over the production of shows for and starring children.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

What to know about Vietnam tycoon sentenced to death in $12.5 billion fraud case | AP News