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On 3/2/2023 at 7:37 AM, Cygnia said:

 

Heck yeah.  That's nasty lookin' stuff.  And this:

 

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The fungus - named Baudoinia compniacensis - is named after the director of the French Distillers' Association that discovered it growing near cognac distilleries in the 1870s.

It has led to complaints and lawsuits from Scotland to Canada and the Caribbean.

Federal agents in Tennessee used to look for the fungus as a sign that illegal alcohol - moonshine - was being made nearby, Mr Holleman says.

 

That last is a fascinating bit of history to me, but clearly, this is a well known problem at least in the distilling industry, and the distiller would seem to have a clear obligation to mitigate it, during any new construction.

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23 hours ago, tkdguy said:

Iranian Schoolgirls Poisoned

 

I'll leave it here for now, as it's not (yet) a political issue.

This made me think of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Gasser_of_Mattoon. That case was never definitively solved. All of the three explanations offered -- mass hysteria, accidental chemical release/industrial pollution, and malicious act -- seem plausible, or at least not implausible, given the limited information in the article and a BBC story about the events. Or it could even be a combination. I hope someone is looking to see if any of the schools are near chemical plants or other industries that use chemicals which could cause the described symptoms. Real, initial events could then inspire hysteria among other people. And it being Iran, the idea of zealots trying to poison girl's schools does not seem far fetched -- perhaps as a first cause, perhaps later, inspired by the news stories.

 

We shall probably never know. Quite possibly, the Iranian authorities shall never know, either.

 

Dean Shomshak

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2 hours ago, Cygnia said:

 

Wow.  The root cause appears to be abject, extreme mismanagement, and one has to wonder about its country cousins, corruption and embezzlement.  Terrible that it takes a disaster on this scale to *maybe* trigger changes.  

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56 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

 

Wow.  The root cause appears to be abject, extreme mismanagement, and one has to wonder about its country cousins, corruption and embezzlement.  Terrible that it takes a disaster on this scale to *maybe* trigger changes.  

 

Way more likely for that accident to trigger changes than the one in Ohio that poisoned half the state.  'Murrica!

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9 minutes ago, death tribble said:

Couple who stole $1.7 million of wine are jailed for four years

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64865977

 

Even had the wine been recovered fairly quickly, there's little chance it would've been salvageable.  VERY old wines are delicate as heck.  Even the theft itself...just stuffed into backpacks?  IDIOTS.  VERY good chance that ruined them right there.  It'll force any sediment...and the vast majority of age-worthy wines throw substantial sediment.  They're kept in *carefully* controlled vaults for constant temperatures.  

 

4 years isn't close to enough.

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Here's a tidbit for you on the trains.  From The Independent:  

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/train-derailments-per-year-usa-b2294966.html

 

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Steven Ditmeyer, a former top official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), told investigative news outlet The Lever that the severity of the crash may have been aggravated by the lack of Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes.

Former US president Barack Obama passed legislation making it mandatory for trains carrying hazardous, flammable materials to have ECP brakes but the order was rescinded in 2017 under a Trump administration assault on “red tape”.

The National Transportation Safety Board has confirmed that the trains that were derailed in East Palestine were not equipped with ECP brakes, The Lever reports.

The Railroad Workers Union has meanwhile argued in The New Republic that a management practice adopted by rail companies called Precision Scheduled Railroading – which organises freight scheduling based on individual cars, rather than considering the balance of the train as a whole – may have played a role and could contribute to future accidents by sidelining safety concerns.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Cancer said:

Geologists no longer optimistic about perdicting strong earthquakes

 

(from Nature; background is the recent strong quakes in southern Turkey.  Includes an impressive picture of the surface rupture tracing the fault)

 

There was a video on Reddit the other day about the surface rupture, which ripped a tree in half and carried both halves, still standing, fifty feet away from each other.  Must have been a hell of a thing to see if you were there when it happened.

 

The discussion quickly turned to property lines.  :)

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