Lord Liaden Posted July 15, 2021 Report Share Posted July 15, 2021 This is tragic, but not shocking. If you make a point of confronting organized criminals (whatever they may call themselves), you risk being killed, whoever you are and whichever society you live in. De Vries had to have known that, so his courage and that of other journalists in similar situations is to be commended; but no one should be surprised. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted July 15, 2021 Report Share Posted July 15, 2021 Andy Fordham former BDO World Champion dies aged 59 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/darts/57856227 I recall seeing him win the title and also getting knocked out in years before. He was likeable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 16, 2021 Report Share Posted July 16, 2021 Southeast Amazonia is no longer a carbon sink Cygnia 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted July 17, 2021 Report Share Posted July 17, 2021 Biz Markie Dead at 57 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 17, 2021 Report Share Posted July 17, 2021 Hubble Space Telescope is operational again ... fifteen years after its design lifetime. I have said before ... that when our descendants look back on this era, they may judge that our truly superheroic creations have been things we sent to space. DShomshak, Cygnia, L. Marcus and 2 others 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted July 17, 2021 Report Share Posted July 17, 2021 14 hours ago, Cancer said: I have said before ... that when our descendants look back on this era, they may judge that our truly superheroic creations have been things we sent to space. I'm not so sure. We sent Godzilla into space twice and that did not end well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted July 17, 2021 Report Share Posted July 17, 2021 "Heroic" is an important qualifier there. But I agree with Cancer. Orbital telescope, Mars rovers, deep-space probes... most of them far outlasted how long they were expected to survive. It will be a crime if we don't eventually recover our Mars probes and display them in a place of honor in some museum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted July 17, 2021 Report Share Posted July 17, 2021 On 7/16/2021 at 9:45 AM, Cancer said: Southeast Amazonia is no longer a carbon sink What's happened there is a major reason why I'm fundamentally pessimistic. We've done too much damage, and this has been undercutting any ability to repair the situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted July 17, 2021 Report Share Posted July 17, 2021 Of course, that's only in our foreseeable future as a species. The Earth will eventually heal itself just fine after we're gone. We're hurting ourselves far worse than we're hurting the planet. unclevlad, Matt the Bruins and assault 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted July 17, 2021 Report Share Posted July 17, 2021 1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said: Of course, that's only in our foreseeable future as a species. The Earth will eventually heal itself just fine after we're gone. We're hurting ourselves far worse than we're hurting the planet. Well, you did say "eventually." With no timeline...yes, probably true. But it will be horribly slow. The rain forests are extremely complex environments. The reason they're such incredible carbon sinks is at least in part due to the multi-layered vegetation. Where it's gone, the soil will be trashed quickly, and conversely will take HOW long to reconstitute? It quickly gets stripped, so it'll only reconstitute from the edges. And the larger the area, the more likely that it'll go the other way around. And the process of reversal itself needs the carbon sinking. The oceans are another aspect. Increased atmospheric CO2 translates directly into increased ocean acidity. What does this cause? Shell-like structures don't like it. So, shellfish small and large get hurt...and this includes tiny sea snails at the base of the food chain. Coral becomes more fragile; the reefs are already showing serious damage. Coral reefs are the rain forests of the underwater world, hosting enormous biodiversity. Jellyfish like the warmer waters, and sea surface temperatures have been rising alarmingly. So what we get when this is all done, is probably QUITE a bit different from what we have now. The other piece of news...no one's mentioned this, but the roof of a Miami condo collapsed 2 days ago. Obviously this raises concerns about the safety of ALL south Florida condos. Once is accident; twice is coincidence. Third time is enemy action...the enemy here being warm, humid, salty air. I also wonder if even slightly rising sea levels is subtly disturbing the limited stability of the ground in the region. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted July 18, 2021 Report Share Posted July 18, 2021 1 hour ago, unclevlad said: Well, you did say "eventually." With no timeline...yes, probably true. But it will be horribly slow. For us, sure. For geologic time? The last glacial era lasted around 100,000 years, an eye blink in the lifetime of the Earth. And that's actually considerably less than Homo sapiens sapiens have been around. Most scientific projections I've seen calculate that if humanity disappeared tomorrow, practically all visible signs we were ever here would be erased in a few millennia. Modern architecture and infrastructure isn't built to last the way our ancestors' was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted July 18, 2021 Report Share Posted July 18, 2021 Well, certainly if construction in South Florida is any evidence. No, there's no real risk that humanity will make the planet permanently uninhabitable. But I take no comfort from the fact that it might be fixed in 100,000 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted July 18, 2021 Report Share Posted July 18, 2021 HOLY MOLY!!!! https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/nationals/2021/07/17/nationals-park-shooting-mlb-game-padres-washington-dc/8005989002/ At this point, there's not a lot of info about motive. Kudos to the Nats for their handling of the whole mess. On top of that, there was this...this one is another piece of egregious fan behavior: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/nationals/2021/07/17/nationals-park-shooting-mlb-game-padres-washington-dc/8005989002/ I suspect the Yankees know who it is, and doubt he'll ever be allowed back in. Some form of, probably misdemeanor, charges will also be filed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted July 18, 2021 Report Share Posted July 18, 2021 The RNLI save a deer https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-57880039 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted July 19, 2021 Report Share Posted July 19, 2021 Oh the tragedy of running out of parking tickets in Northern Ireland https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-foyle-west-57885076 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted July 20, 2021 Report Share Posted July 20, 2021 How Bad Is the Bootleg Fire? It’s Generating Its Own Weather. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted July 21, 2021 Report Share Posted July 21, 2021 When the war starts, the Palestinians will be blamed...Israeli forces raid Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, allowing Jewish settlers to pray at site Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archer Posted July 21, 2021 Report Share Posted July 21, 2021 All this recent unrest in the area started a couple of months ago when rockets were shot out of Gaza at Israel's nuclear power plant. (What they thought they'd accomplish if they actually hit the power plant, we'll probably never know.) But that got the Israeli public stirred up enough that they've been OK with the government taking some pretty extreme actions against the Palestinians. (And I can understand that because if someone shot rockets at one of our nuclear power plants, there'd be a significant fraction of the public who'd want the "bad guys", liberally interpreted, to be obliterated. Then obliterated again, just to be sure.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ranxerox Posted July 21, 2021 Report Share Posted July 21, 2021 44 minutes ago, archer said: All this recent unrest in the area started a couple of months ago when rockets were shot out of Gaza at Israel's nuclear power plant. (What they thought they'd accomplish if they actually hit the power plant, we'll probably never know.) But that got the Israeli public stirred up enough that they've been OK with the government taking some pretty extreme actions against the Palestinians. (And I can understand that because if someone shot rockets at one of our nuclear power plants, there'd be a significant fraction of the public who'd want the "bad guys", liberally interpreted, to be obliterated. Then obliterated again, just to be sure.) The rockets were fired out of Syria not Gaza. The attack was likely by Iranian backed militias rather than Palestinians, and certainly not by the woman praying in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. But I guess questions of actual guilt aren't important. Cygnia and archer 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted July 21, 2021 Report Share Posted July 21, 2021 Dinosaur fossil footprint found by four year old in Wales https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-57910510 And Jurassic Pompeii yields thousands of small fossils https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57853537 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 21, 2021 Report Share Posted July 21, 2021 On 7/16/2021 at 5:15 PM, Cancer said: Hubble Space Telescope is operational again ... fifteen years after its design lifetime. I have said before ... that when our descendants look back on this era, they may judge that our truly superheroic creations have been things we sent to space. NASA news and image release associated with the above tkdguy, Cygnia and Pariah 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted July 21, 2021 Report Share Posted July 21, 2021 Liverpool stripped of UNESCO World Heritage Status https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-57879475 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted July 21, 2021 Report Share Posted July 21, 2021 Ya miao: Taiwan's workers revolt by ‘squeezing the second’ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted July 21, 2021 Report Share Posted July 21, 2021 Another pretty big, well-known brand does a pivot. Uncle Ben's rice products are now "Ben's Original" and the facial drawing has been removed. Motivation was very to pull the perceived stereotyping involved, quite similar to Aunt Jemima's recent shift. Bigger news... Unlike the tobacco lawsuits that were dragged out as long as possible, the opioid cases are being settled relatively quickly. New York announced their settlements; tentative settlements were announced today, involving 40 states. They have not been approved; the states individually will probably have to do that, but it's still a significant milestone. And we're talking $26 BILLION dollars. So quite clearly, both sides will proceed with great attention to detail. This doesn't cover everyone; Purdue Pharma declared bankruptcy, for example, so that complicates things. The currently proposed settlement plan got *blasted* this week... https://www.npr.org/2021/07/19/1018028179/justice-department-blasts-purdue-pharma-bankruptcy-plan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted July 21, 2021 Report Share Posted July 21, 2021 Brisbane Australia will host the Olympics in 2032 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/57912026 You know what this means ? Bazza will be insufferable in 11 years time. And be aware that Bazza will try all sorts of scams to get money to build facilities overv the next decade. It used to be the case that Brisbane men stayed at home at night as Bazza outlawed all of the vice. Pariah 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts