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El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch

Aesop Poprock posted:

That sounds... weirdly out of where I would consider his expertise

It's actually really good to have talks given to security people by people who are not part of the industry. Once you've spent enough time submerged in security jargon and study you often take certain things for granted and miss common sense stuff. With situations like this it's almost always better to have them be explained by historians or laymen because that's how the information is going to be perceived and related to you as a security professional (if you are the head of security or working with a fed team, 9/10 times you're getting your initial information from 12 dollar an hour guards or police officers not trained security operatives or government agents). This is why I go and see Jason Scott talk at basically every conference he's ever spoken at that I am also attending, because he's a computer historian not a security expert, and while it's always cool to get useful info from real rear end security guys who have been to the middle east or who have experience doing random stuff like hacking elevators, sometimes it's even more valuable to have an outsider perspective on information.

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Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Mercury Ballistic posted:

That was a fascinating article, but I have to state I don't really think he should be posting excerpts from inmates mail. That just rubs me the wrong way. It one thing for guards to read it for work, another for them to read and then post it online for the world to see.

It's all subject to reading anyway. You can make a case that it shouldn't be a public record but they have no expectation of privacy in it and they know it.

swamp waste
Nov 4, 2009

There is some very sensual touching going on in the cutscene there. i don't actually think it means anything sexual but it's cool how it contrasts with modern ideas of what bad ass stuff should be like. It even seems authentic to some kind of chivalric masculine touching from a tyme longe gone
The part where the kid is just matter of factly like "my brother is bad now" in his letter to his imprisoned dad made me have to stop reading for a while. I'm not 100% sure on the ethics of reprinting that but it sure makes a point.

RNG
Jul 9, 2009

swamp waste posted:

The part where the kid is just matter of factly like "my brother is bad now" in his letter to his imprisoned dad made me have to stop reading for a while. I'm not 100% sure on the ethics of reprinting that but it sure makes a point.

Yeah. The whole article was :smith: but seeing someone's kids hurt in real time...

Prof. Moriarty
Dec 6, 2003
Not the regular Professor Moriarty, the hologram Professor Moriarty where the holodeck malfunctioned and he created the whole fake hologram enterprise and fooled the Captain. Oh, and he tried to escape with his girlfriend once, but he was foiled.
If you need an antidote to depressing prisoner letters, check out some letters sent to Books to Prisoners, an organization that mails out free books. Most are really uplifting and a reminder that not everything in prison is terrible (like the prisoner who is teaching a poetry class!). Just...most of it (like the people who write about their libraries being shut down and being paid pennies for work). At least everyone who wrote received some books, so that itself is kind of uplifting, I think.

Judoon Platoon
Nov 1, 2010

Axeman Jim posted:

In a horrifying million-to-one chance, the driver’s control lever from the front cab of the doomed Poole train was fired like a missile across the tracks, punched through the driver’s window of the Haslemere train, and landed on the floor of his cab. It was covered in blood.

Boy, did I choose the wrong day to accept a trainee driver job. :stonk:

Kirk Vikernes
Apr 26, 2004

Count Goatnackh

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang posted:

Not to derail this charming line of discussion, but there has been a development on one of the missing hikers we were talking about during the "gently caress the woods" portion of this thread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...alachian-trail/


“When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry,” she wrote in the note, dated Aug. 6, 2013. “It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me — no matter how many years from now.” :smith:

I know I'm way behind, but are sat phones that expensive or is it against some unwritten "hiker rule" that would negate your success completing something like the Appalachian Trail with one? Another forum I'm on (ADVRider) , riders almost always take them if traveling alone out west or especially in Mexico and on into south America so they don't seem to be made of unobtanium.

Also, wanted to give a belated thanks to Kermit, droogie, and others that posted some great reading material. The autism and HOA: English vs American derail a few pages back was almost stupid enough to be unnerving, but goons will be goons.

E. Oh, and if I ever buy a classic car, I am going to sue the poo poo out of whatever company built it because it wasn't built to future safety standards. Whenever you do something, be sure to know what the rules and regulations will be 50 years later and follow them or you are a monster of a human being. Just another tidbit I learned on SA.

Kirk Vikernes has a new favorite as of 00:48 on Jul 5, 2016

Varkk
Apr 17, 2004

I think satellite phones are simply too expensive for most casual use. But EPIRBS are relatively cheap and around here you can hire one for a week or so for about $50 from the local park wardens.

AlbieQuirky
Oct 9, 2012

Just me and my 🌊dragon🐉 hanging out
Sat phones cost a minimum of $500 US. But I don't think it's so much people cheaping out or trying to be rugged as thinking they aren't necessary for a route as well-trafficked as the Appalachian Trail. 2,000 people attempt a through-hike every year, and though more than half of them give up, people hardly ever die. When you count in the number of people doing day hikes or multi-day hikes and trail volunteers, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people hiking the trail every year.

ETA: Wikipedia says that 2 million people per year do at least one day of hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

AlbieQuirky has a new favorite as of 00:54 on Jul 5, 2016

Chichevache
Feb 17, 2010

One of the funniest posters in GIP.

Just not intentionally.
https://satellitephonestore.com/catalog/sale/satellite-phones/sort/price.asc

The first link I clicked has the phones starting at $500. Or $30 a week for rental. Neither one of those seems like it is a completely unreasonable price for a person who has the time and money to disappear into the wilderness for a week or two.

FrozenVent
May 1, 2009

The Boeing 737-200QC is the undisputed workhorse of the skies.
They're not super light to carry, though... And the batteries aren't great.

Last time I had to pay for sat phone time it was multiple dollars a minute, too, but that was ten years ago.

Mak0rz
Aug 2, 2008

😎🐗🚬

When I was doing field work last year I carried a SPOT Messenger with me at all times. They are a must-have for anyone that hikes in remote areas. They are certainly cheaper and way easier to carry than a sat phone.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

FrozenVent posted:

They're not super light to carry, though... And the batteries aren't great.

Last time I had to pay for sat phone time it was multiple dollars a minute, too, but that was ten years ago.
Keep in mind we have Lithium-Ion batteries and better satellite coverage these days, which cuts required battery and antenna sizes dramatically. That doesn't make satphones comparable with cellphones by any means, but more portable than luggable like they were in the past.

For anyone interested, here's a teardown of a 2000-era Globalstar satellite phone from EEVblog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyr1ICZxJYI

And a similar teardown of an obsolete analog EPIRB beacon, also from EEVblog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVAQONKyMv8

BOOTY-ADE
Aug 30, 2006

BIG KOOL TELLIN' Y'ALL TO KEEP IT TIGHT

Chichevache posted:

Until your Uber driver picks you up from your place, drops you off at the airport, and turns right back around to rob your house.

That's why paranoid people choose a neutral place close by

Madkal
Feb 11, 2008

Fallen Rib
My girlfriend and I recently went to South Africa and in Johannesburg the local transit is a joke and cabs are known for ripping off customers. They have Uber there though, and with the app you enter in your destination and it shows the route the driver will be taking and it also gave an estimated price for the trip when we ordered a driver.
Other words Uber was awesome when traveling. That is my Uber anecdotal story.

Mercury Ballistic
Nov 14, 2005

not gun related
Speaking from the backpacker perspective, and as someone who has thru hiked the AT, I honestly don't know how you would get so lost on the AT in the hiking season. There are generally a few dozen people within 10 miles of you at any given point, and more near scenic areas. If you have to take a poo poo away from a shelter and privy, you walk a short bit into the woods. The paranoid are better served with a map and compass than a SPOT.

To be fair, some people have no sense of direction though. They need all the help they can get.

AlbieQuirky
Oct 9, 2012

Just me and my 🌊dragon🐉 hanging out

FrozenVent posted:

They're not super light to carry, though... And the batteries aren't great.

Last time I had to pay for sat phone time it was multiple dollars a minute, too, but that was ten years ago.

It's still at least $6.00/minute. But again, it's not so much the price as who would think they'd need it on the AT? People hardly ever get lost and die there. Ms. Largay's story is sad, but really unusual.

Maximum Sexy Pigeon
Jun 5, 2008

We must never speak of this!
I am so weighing in here!

Cyclone Tracy
Part One

I am fascinated with natural disasters, the fear attributed to unstoppable forces in humbling.
In Australia, we have had our fare share of disasters, I have personally ridden out a small number of cyclones, the only notable one being Cyclone Nancy in Brisbane in 1990, I was 5 and I had nightmares because of it, even though it didn't do a whole lot where I was.

The undisputed champion of famous Australian cyclones is Tracy that devastated the northern city of Darwin on Christmas in 1974. Tracy lives on in Australian folklore and to this day every major cyclone that makes landfall draws a comparison to it.

But what made her so special?

Well, first we must look at the relationship between cyclone and city.
Darwin, the capitol of the Northern Territory, sits just about at the most central and northern point of the country against the tropical Arafura Sea and was no stranger to these monster storms. During the peak of the 'wet season' (November to April), the city can expect a spectacular lightning storm most nights in it's hot and disgustingly humid environment. It is during these times that tropical cyclones come to visit the country.

Coming up to December 24th, 1974, Darwin had 3-4 no show cyclones and tropical depressions cry wolf on the city. By the time Tracy was first observed on Dec 20th, no one would take her seriously.

Darwin was not only ill-prepared for her arrival, but severely ill-equipped.
Over the previous 20 years, the city had expanded tremendously and new suburbs popped up everywhere. The common housing being thin weatherboard structures atop metal stilts, which is normal for northern Australia. The houses themselves were a cheaper version of the typical Federation era 'Queenslander' houses, designed to maximise air-flow in hottor months (This is important, believe me)
Though the Queenslander was typically made of wood, built very well with heavy wooden pylons and rather ornate, unlike the new houses in Darwin, which were prefab walls on a light frame on thin metal poles usually with a storage room/laundry directly underneath.


Typical old Queenslander house

Darwin house.

So no one was taking the storm seriously and put their attention on Christmas instead.
Tracey was looking to miss Darwin by a long shot as she headed to the south west as a low level storm. However as if consciously picking a target out of spite, on the morning of Christmas Eve, she took a hook turn to the south east and started to severely intensify in strength.

quote:

"Cyclone Tracy was first observed on the Darwin radar on the morning of 22 December. Over the next few days, the cyclone moved in a southwesterly direction, passing north of Darwin on 22 December. A broadcast on ABC Radio that day stated that Cyclone Tracy posed no immediate threat to Darwin. However, early in the morning of 24 December, Tracy rounded Cape Fourcroy on the western tip of Bathurst Island, and moved in a southeasterly direction, straight towards Darwin. The bureau's weather station at Cape Fourcroy measured a mean wind speed of 120 kilometres per hour (75 mph) at 9 a.m that morning"

Most of Darwin had spent a normal day at work or with family making preparations and such. The driving rain that would get heavier as the day progressed would phase them not as it was a normal occurrence. Many people had their Christmas parties that night and nothing was going to stop them having their fun.

quote:

...And you started to almost think that it would never happen to Darwin even though we had cyclone warnings on the radio all the time ... most of the people who had lived here for quite some time didn't really believe the warnings.

The warnings ignored, disaster was imminent. Many people would be drunk instead of evacuating coastal suburbs.
Another factor in Tracy's ignorance was that she was a tiny storm. Tiny in relation to typical storms, especially famous ones like Hurricane Katrina.
Tracy's damaging winds only extended 48km (30mi) from the eye (Whereas in 1979, Typhoon Tip had a wind radius of 1,100 km (684mi)) and only made it to a Cat-4 cyclone (Aus scale) or a Cat-3 on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale.

It was not until late on Christmas eve when people started taking Tracy seriously, the winds were getting stronger, the rain heavier, and damage was starting to occur.
Tracy had made a direct hit on Darwin, and it was too late to do anything about it...

To be continued

Maximum Sexy Pigeon
Jun 5, 2008

We must never speak of this!
Sod it, actually just gonna chuck the next part in because I already done it. ENJOY!

Cyclone Tracy

Part 2





Tracy made landfall sometime around Midnight and slowly started tearing the city apart, and it was the northern suburbs that got hit first and the hardest.
The Northern/Coastal suburbs of Nightcliff, Rapid creek, Alawa and Casaurina sustained the most damage, almost total. By the time most were aware of the present danger, the noise was alost unbearable, it was more than whipping branches, heavy rain and thunder, now there was sounds of things banging into the sides of houses and sheets of corrugated iron scraping down roads. There was a steady unease building over the city all afternoon and into the evening, it had dawned on everyone what was happening

ABC NEWS interview with Police Superintendent John Wolthers posted:


On the afternoon before the cyclone there had been many worried calls and officers had told callers "in a very quick voice" to get into the smallest room of the house.
"It was just pick up one and drop it down" he said of the calls.
There were more and more calls until abruptly there were none.
Communications had gone down.
Mr Wolthers rang the police inspector to ask if the men could fetch their wives from home and bring them to the police station. By midnight 150 non-police were sheltering at police stations in Darwin.
Soon the wind had grown too strong for anyone to leave the station.
Mr Wolthers remembered watching a car roll over and then, when the red brake lights came on, knowing somebody was inside.
At 1:00am call-outs ceased.
"I just made sure nobody went outside." he said.

There had been attempts from people to seek out family and loved ones, but the driving rain and high winds started making travel impossible. One man remembered travelling down one road in his 4WD at 40kph in neutral.
Another witness reported watching someone attempt to travel up their road in an old FB Holden wagon, get blown back down the road 20-40 meters and try again. This repeated a few times until they gave up and turned the car around.

Interview with firefighter Jock MaCleod posted:

It had been an eery, quiet afternoon, and the family's pug dog had been "acting strange", according to one of the firefighters on duty that night, Jock McLeod.
"It was really too quiet and later on when I thought about things the animals had actually nicked off" he said 40 years later. "The birds weren't around chirping like they normally are."
About 10:00pm Mr McLeod had taken a taxi down Bagot Road to relieve the day crew. He had left his wife, son and daughter at home.
The taxi had also behaved strangely - automatically changing into low gear and revving too high. Mr McLeod had told the driver he should get the car serviced.
"He said to me, 'It's not the car'. He said, 'It's the wind. The wind is starting to get really strong'."

The feeling of unease was very present by early evening, but many noticed it first in their own pets and the lack of native animals around. One family remembered the ordeal with their dog, which ultimately saved their lives.

Interview with Fay Karamanakis posted:

Ms Karamanakis remembered when the rain began to fall more heavily. She brought her sister's dog Blackie, a labrador-cross, in from the cold.
"He was scratching the window and really sort of yelping - 'let me in' sort of thing," she said.
"When I opened the door ... I had the towel to dry Blackie because he was wet."
But Blackie was not interested in keeping dry. He rushed to where Ms Karamanakis' daughter Sylvia was asleep in her cot.
"He pulled the sheets off the baby, tried to pull the baby, knocking the baby's head on the cot," Ms Karamanakis said.
"I was screaming at the dog 'how dare you!'.
"The next thing the dog saw that I was holding the baby, so he ran off and went into the other room to where Katie was sleeping."
Blackie then grabbed Ms Karamanakis' other daughter's sheets and dragged her down to the ground.
Ms Karamanakis could not understand the dog's behaviour, and picked him up by the scruff of the neck and dumped him outside, while she consoled her two children.
"I was so devastated because this dog I thought was naughty," she said.
Not long afterwards her husband returned to the home and also took pity on the dog that was still yelping outside. He brought Blackie back into the house.
"He was looking at me in a funny way, trying to talk to me," Ms Karamanakis said.
"The dog was actually trying to talk to me." she said, more emphatically.

The winds continued to build up, the noise becoming louder and louder as high winds battered walls with debris, whistled through now useless wiring and dragged a seemingly infinite amount of refuse along roads.
Power had gone. Communications were non existent. Escape was not an option anymore.

Families huddled in what they could find, the safest places being vehicles or in the concrete block rooms underneath houses. The dramatically differing air pressure changes meant water was being sucked into and out of things, later reports told of petrol tanks being siphoned overnight and in kitchen cupboards, sealed mason jars full of rain and sea water.

Massive air pressure changes were the cause of extensive damage in houses, as well likely resulting in many of the deaths attributed. While people remained safe in their cars and heavily built storage rooms, others were not so lucky. Some hid under beds and in linen closets, many hunkered down in the smallest room in the house, hanging on to the base of the toilet while their houses disintegrated around them.
Some houses imploded or exploded with the pressure changes, some inhabitants went with the houses, having to find their way to safety in stinging rain and strobe like lightning, others remained trapped under massive parts of their own homes now in backyards.

quote:

Shards of broken glass swirled around rooms as if in a giant blender. Some people couldn’t breathe, the wind was so ferocious.
Houses rocked like boats at sea. Thousands of sheets of corrugated iron scraped and scratched along the ground, sounding like millions of fingernails running down a blackboard.
One woman was blown out of the house with her five-month-old son in her arms.

Jock Macleod posted:

On the night of Cyclone Tracy, firefighters saw a caravan sail through the air above the fire station, cross the highway, strike a stand of trees and explode.

The moment when the petrol station sign crashed through the front of the fire station was when "all hell broke loose".
"The next minute we look up and there's all this water gushing in, like someone's throwing buckets of water in on us," he said.
"We could see the lightning flashes and the roof came off and then came back on again.
"We had a 15 tonne truck that was moving across the floor because of the wind
"

With communications down, he had no way of knowing whether his family were still alive. He told the other firefighters he would drive home as soon as the wind died down.
"They reckon, 'No you're not'. I said, 'Yeah I've got to'. They said, 'No you are better off staying.They said, 'If you go out now you will kill yourself'. They said to me, 'You try and get that Toyota and we're going to knock you out'.
"I said 'oh yeah, I can understand where you are coming from'."

The winds had slowly gotten more intense over the course of the evening, but it was as if they doubled in strength suddenly when Tracy hit with full force. The noise now consumed everything: Thunder, breaking trees, shattering windows, it was all indistinguishable from the hellish cacophony that raged all around. Of the common remarks from survivors, the noise is what sticks with them the most. The NT museum has an exhibit on Tracy, there is an isolated booth that is supposed to mimic the noise of the storm, most survivors cannot stomach being near the thing.


Fay Karamanakis posted:

Blackie's bizarre behaviour did not stop there.
"The dog grabbed me ever so gently by my skirt and was sort of pulling me and in the meantime, watching me in the eyes, telling me to get out with the kids," she said.
"He saw me pick up the baby and walk out the door and he ran to my husband, grabbed his pants while he was holding Katie, and was dragging him to the door to try and make him get out."
"As soon as we got out the dog ran after us."
With the winds picking up and rain pelting down, her family raced to a granny flat underneath the home while Blackie hid under a car.
There they met up with some guests staying with them, but they barely had time to get settled when they heard a sound Ms Karamanakis will never forget.
"When you hear the cyclone hitting, the whole house coming down and you are underneath the house - it is only floorboards - the noise is magnified," she said.

And it was going to get worse.

Coming up:
The Eye, the Second Wind and the Aftermath.

Maximum Sexy Pigeon has a new favorite as of 09:23 on Jul 5, 2016

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Mercury Ballistic posted:

Speaking from the backpacker perspective, and as someone who has thru hiked the AT, I honestly don't know how you would get so lost on the AT in the hiking season. There are generally a few dozen people within 10 miles of you at any given point, and more near scenic areas. If you have to take a poo poo away from a shelter and privy, you walk a short bit into the woods.

This is almost certainly a case of a person thinking 50 yards from the track is not enough, they might still be seen. So they go another 50, then they maybe hear someone still so they go another 50. Then they just had to find the right place to poo poo, so they're not sure which way they were facing. They can't see the track, and they can't call for directions because they went out of earshot of the track.

Filox
Oct 4, 2014

Grimey Drawer

Maximum Sexy Pigeon posted:

Sod it, actually just gonna chuck the next part in because I already done it. ENJOY!

Cyclone Tracy

And it was going to get worse.

Coming up:
[b]The Eye, the Second Wind and the Aftermath.


I'm hooked. The eye witness testimony, drat. It's all making me glad I don't live near the coast.

Aesop Poprock
Oct 21, 2008


Grimey Drawer
Really well done with the cyclone posts. Man the quality of posts here had skyrocketed recently

Helith
Nov 5, 2009

Basket of Adorables


I can't wait for the next Cyclone Tracy posts. We're planning on visiting Darwin this September so I think a visit to the NT museum is in order!

Thanks for all the great effort posts in this thread recently, they've been a great read.

Tristesse
Feb 23, 2006

Chasing the dream.
As a former Florida resident and survivor of a few big named storms, I'm really really digging the Cyclone Tracy writeup.

The sound really is something else entirely. You will never hear wind howl like that and it's downright haunting. All you can do is hide in your house hoping it all holds together well enough to keep you safe while what sounds like a thousand freight trains barrel through at top speed right outside the walls. For hours. You'll feel the whole house rocking and swaying, if you're really foolish you can see the glass in your windows bowing in and out due to the pressure changes.



I cannot go within 10 feet of those wind booths that recreate storm noises.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Tristesse posted:

As a former Florida resident and survivor of a few big named storms, I'm really really digging the Cyclone Tracy writeup.

The sound really is something else entirely. You will never hear wind howl like that and it's downright haunting. All you can do is hide in your house hoping it all holds together well enough to keep you safe while what sounds like a thousand freight trains barrel through at top speed right outside the walls. For hours. You'll feel the whole house rocking and swaying, if you're really foolish you can see the glass in your windows bowing in and out due to the pressure changes.



I cannot go within 10 feet of those wind booths that recreate storm noises.

Current Florida resident who's survived a couple of big hurricanes. It's an experience you never forget, and odd thing is I've heard lots of stories similar to that survivor testimony about the dog. I've heard, but have no idea if it's true or not, that animals are more susceptible to atmospheric pressure changes and so they realize that something's going wrong long before a human would notice anything awry.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
We were disturbed by gas gangrene, right? Well...

Brendan Kiley broke the story of how levamisole is being used to cut cocaine back in 2010. Levamisole is mostly used in medicine to de-worm livestock, but in humans, can cause a condition known as agranulocytosis. Kiley's series of articles in The Stranger were probably the first journalistic investigation of what was happening to the coke supply moving into the US and why.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-mystery-of-the-tainted-cocaine/Content?oid=4683741#longreads

Brendan Kiley posted:

Agranulocytosis can kill you, but its symptoms are frustratingly broad. Some people's throats close up. Some people get diarrhea. Some people get skin infections, sores in their mouth or anus, or just a fever. Some people have it, don't know it, and get better without seeing a doctor. Some people don't see a doctor until it's too late.

Basically, agranulocytosis is a catastrophic crash in a person's immune system, which can turn a zit, a scratch, or even the bacteria that normally live in and around your body into a life-threatening infection. In one vividly described case from the 1920s, an otherwise healthy 40-year-old woman came down with a mysterious fever. Over the next nine days, under the care of baffled physicians, she sprouted "brownish papular eruptions" all over her face and body, necrotic abscesses on her neck and buttocks, and "a greyish-green dirty membrane" covering her mouth and throat with "scattered small greyish ulcers." In one cubic millimeter of blood, her doctors found 4,000,000 red blood cells but only 1,000 white blood cells. Then, after a blood transfusion, she died.

Kiley has written several fascinating longform articles on drug use, including the surge of fetanyl abuse. I found this story unnerving in particular because it seemed very few people legitimately had any idea why coke was being cut with levamisole, and users were up and dying in hideous, painful ways, not knowing that the supply was tainted, lacking any means to test it, and being compelled by addiction to continue using anyway. Coincidentally, Kiley's coverage came up the same year that the media noticed krokodil.

https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs40/40392/abuse.htm

Potential Health Risks Associated With the Abuse of Cocaine Cut With Levamisole posted:

Public health officials in New England, some other regions of the United States, and some foreign countries are investigating the potential health consequences to patients who abused cocaine that had been cut with the diluent levamisole and were subsequently diagnosed as having agranulocytosis--a condition that destroys bone marrow, makes it difficult for a patient to fight off infections, and can be fatal because it compromises the human immune system. Levamisole, a drug initially developed to treat worm infestations in humans and animals, has been encountered as a cutting agent in some bulk and user quantities of cocaine. The New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory reports that it encounters levamisole in 30 to 40 percent of the cocaine exhibits submitted for analysis. Levamisole-contaminated cocaine has also been encountered in other New England states.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/01/22/solving-the-mystery-of-the-tainted-cocaine

Brendan Kiley posted:

Typically, drugs are made and shipped in a relatively pure state (less volume means less chance of detection) and cut when they reach their destination market. Why would Mexican smugglers, for example, be willing to buy bulked-up cocaine off of Colombian manufacturers and cart that around instead of the pure stuff?

A Pinball Wizard
Mar 23, 2005

I know every trick, no freak's gonna beat my hands

College Slice

Maximum Sexy Pigeon posted:

Ms Karamanakis remembered when the rain began to fall more heavily. She brought her sister's dog Blackie, a labrador-cross, in from the cold. 
" He was scratching the window and really sort of yelping - 'let me in' sort of thing," she said. 
" When I opened the door ... I had the towel to dry Blackie because he was wet." 
But Blackie was not interested in keeping dry. He rushed to where Ms Karamanakis' daughter Sylvia was asleep in her cot. 
" He pulled the sheets off the baby, tried to pull the baby, knocking the baby's head on the cot," Ms Karamanakis said. 
" I was screaming at the dog 'how dare you!'. 
" The next thing the dog saw that I was holding the baby, so he ran off and went into the other room to where Katie was sleeping." 
Blackie then grabbed Ms Karamanakis' other daughter's sheets and dragged her down to the ground. 
Ms Karamanakis could not understand the dog's behaviour, and picked him up by the scruff of the neck and dumped him outside, while she consoled her two children. 
" I was so devastated because this dog I thought was naughty," she said. 
Not long afterwards her husband returned to the home and also took pity on the dog that was still yelping outside. He brought Blackie back into the house. 
" He was looking at me in a funny way, trying to talk to me," Ms Karamanakis said. 
" The dog was actually trying to talk to me." she said, more emphatically. 

The last season of quantum leap got really weird.

pookel
Oct 27, 2011

Ultra Carp
Dumb question: is "cyclone" just Australian for hurricane, or is it a different kind of storm? (I always thought cyclones were tornadoes, but obviously not, based on this writeup.)

Maximum Sexy Pigeon
Jun 5, 2008

We must never speak of this!
There will be a bit of a wait on the rest, I have work most of the next 24 hours.
Also there is still a massive recourse I haven't tapped that will lay into more experiences from people, but it's from a book I own so it's going to take some time.
But I promise it will be a riveting read...

LostCosmonaut
Feb 15, 2014

pookel posted:

Dumb question: is "cyclone" just Australian for hurricane, or is it a different kind of storm? (I always thought cyclones were tornadoes, but obviously not, based on this writeup.)

It's just the Australian term for a hurricane.

(Technically, "cyclone" is a term for any low pressure system, with hurricanes being a type of tropical cyclone.)

Maximum Sexy Pigeon
Jun 5, 2008

We must never speak of this!

pookel posted:

Dumb question: is "cyclone" just Australian for hurricane, or is it a different kind of storm? (I always thought cyclones were tornadoes, but obviously not, based on this writeup.)

A Cyclone is the same as a Hurricane, with only two differences.
One is the name, which seems purely regional, a Typhoon is also the same thing.
The other is that in the northern hemisphere, tropical storms spin in a clockwise direction whereas in the southern, the spin counter-clockwise for the Coriolis effect.
FUNFACT: Because of the Coriolis effect, tropical storms do not form on the Equator.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

Filox posted:

I'm hooked. The eye witness testimony, drat. It's all making me glad I don't live near the coast.

Writing can never do a hurricane proper justice. You want to talk about "unnerving", try the dead-still-extremely-humid hours you get before the first bands come in. Not to mention the weird pre-storm behavior of your pets.

Tristesse posted:

The sound really is something else entirely.

This. I was working as a delivery driver during Fran 20 years ago, and was out right until the police department made us close; I remember delivering to a house on the edge of a forest. The sound of a couple of hundred acres of trees blowing in a steady 30mph breeze/50mph gusts, and later that night the sound of the entire east facing side of the house groaning under 85mph gusts are two things I will never forget. As rough as it was, we were still a good 40 miles from the eye at our closest.

nockturne
Aug 5, 2008

Soiled Meat
The Darwin museum sound booth is on Youtube. Turn it up to get a good idea of the impact of the sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvyuFmk6s_U

From the comments:

quote:

I am 47 years old and remember it like it was yesterday. I am a native north queenslander and have been through around 10 cyclones since Tracy, some of them on a par with her as far as wind speed etc (Larry, Yasi) is concerned. I was 8 yrs old then but will never forget Xmas Eve, Darwin, '74. The one thing that has been etched indelibly into my memory from that night was the sound. I'll never forget it. I have never been back to Darwin since, partly though circumstance, partly because a piece of me is still unsure about the feelings it would evoke. You have to take the time frame into account. It was 1974, there was no such thing as cyclone rated housing then, which is why so many places were flattened. Listening to your recording just now made me well up with tears. Isn't it funny how sound can be one of the most powerful memory triggers. 

One of my mum's friends had survived Tracy. She didn't like to talk about it, and she also could never go back.

Resisting the urge to post too much about it so as not to spoil MSP's excellent retelling, but yeah, it was bad. And on Christmas Day. Which, being Australia, was hot as hell.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Man I just discovered this thread, didn't feel like reading the whole thing so skipped back to a random page and hit smack dab at the prison riot story and why england can't have trains. Good thread, good posting.

big trivia FAIL
May 9, 2003

"Jorge wants to be hardcore,
but his mom won't let him"

Rev. Bleech_ posted:

Writing can never do a hurricane proper justice. You want to talk about "unnerving", try the dead-still-extremely-humid hours you get before the first bands come in. Not to mention the weird pre-storm behavior of your pets.


This. I was working as a delivery driver during Fran 20 years ago, and was out right until the police department made us close; I remember delivering to a house on the edge of a forest. The sound of a couple of hundred acres of trees blowing in a steady 30mph breeze/50mph gusts, and later that night the sound of the entire east facing side of the house groaning under 85mph gusts are two things I will never forget. As rough as it was, we were still a good 40 miles from the eye at our closest.

For like 5 or 6 hours Katrina was and is still the scariest thing I've ever lived through, and my mother still talks about Camille with awe and terror.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Rev. Bleech_ posted:

Writing can never do a hurricane proper justice. You want to talk about "unnerving", try the dead-still-extremely-humid hours you get before the first bands come in. Not to mention the weird pre-storm behavior of your pets.

And the eye is downright spooky if it passes over you, usually coming in between the two fiercest parts of the storm.

I still remember the eye of Hurricane Andrew. Was so drat freaky to leave the house's hurricane room for a bit and walk around outside in a complete and utter calm in the air.

KIT HAGS
Jun 5, 2007
Stay sweet

Cythereal posted:

And the eye is downright spooky if it passes over you, usually coming in between the two fiercest parts of the storm.

I still remember the eye of Hurricane Andrew. Was so drat freaky to leave the house's hurricane room for a bit and walk around outside in a complete and utter calm in the air.

Hey fellow Andrew buddy. It's one of my first memories.

There were a lot of dead birds and frogs, I remember that.

I'd love to do a write up but I won't have time til the weekend. I was closer to the homestead area which got hosed the hell up.

verbal enema
May 23, 2009

onlymarfans.com
I am very grateful I have never had to experience a natural disaster

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.
If you want insane imagine you have responded to the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina and you are now the on site Ambulance crew for 10,000 or more people. You end up locking yourself in the med room because a angry crowd believes you are withholding medicine from people suffering delirium tremens and narcotic withdrawal. You are now trapped inside a small room for several days with no access to the outside and no one who knows where exactly you are because your batteries ran out on your radio. Meanwhile through out the ordeal people continually scream in pain/ terror /anger at you from beyond the door and you know if they break through they'll probably murder you. I know the guys this happened to.

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Mr-Spain
Aug 27, 2003

Bullshit... you can be mine.
Growing up in east Colorado I remember being scared of tornadoes, and went through one or two. After Ike, it never really compared.

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