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Brass Key posted:I mean, I guess if you call "levering the shielding up with a flathead screwdriver whoops my hand slipped" and "dropping a loving brick on it" one small mistake. "Safety culture" as it's called today did not exist back then. Los Alamos was run by civilian scientists with little supervision. Recording notes was not done reliably. Weapons parts were one-off with little-to-no paper trail. Production was lab-scale with a lab attitude. Everything was a prototype. The first few years after 1945 were a rude awaking to the US Government when it realized that the Los Alamos operation absolutely could not be depended upon to churn out nuclear weapons at any predictable rate. It was a mad scientist lab run by the very same scientists. TotalLossBrain has a new favorite as of 20:04 on Dec 22, 2016 |
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Dec 22, 2016 20:02
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If you read Feynman's book "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman" You will find out the military leadership at Los Alamos at the time was even worse. Actually everyone should read that book. It is an enjoyable read.
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Dec 22, 2016 20:46
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Yeah moonsour, I'm sorry for your loss. I have a close friend visiting Nashville right now and it unnerves the hell out of me to hear anything like that going on in that area. Reading that news site with the article about the disappearance and seeing all the recent news about murders and gun crime ramped up my anxiety a whole lot.
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Dec 22, 2016 20:49
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For the Brazilian caesium incident we need to rehash the most important part of the story: They were able to steal the stuff because the security guard took that day off to go see Herbie Goes Bananas.
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Dec 22, 2016 20:53
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E;fb
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Dec 22, 2016 20:56
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TotalLossBrain posted:"Safety culture" as it's called today did not exist back then. Los Alamos was run by civilian scientists with little supervision. Recording notes was not done reliably. Weapons parts were one-off with little-to-no paper trail. Production was lab-scale with a lab attitude. Everything was a prototype. Pretty good clip here from the movie Fat Man and Little Boy that is based off that incident. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0P7R9CfCY
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Dec 22, 2016 22:03
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that headline alone is so loving metal holy poo poo 
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Dec 23, 2016 00:52
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God drat. http://www.wtvm.com/story/31258816/special-report-east-alabama-boys-gruesome-murder-remembered quote:"Throat cut from ear to ear and you're crawling, walking a quarter mile, bleeding the whole way,” Sheriff Taylor said about the father.
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Dec 23, 2016 01:37
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Sponge Baathist posted:For the Brazilian caesium incident we need to rehash the most important part of the story: Well, this is the unnerving stories thread.
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Dec 23, 2016 01:47
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This one reminds me of Mary Vincent, who was picked up by Lawrence Singleton as a hitch hiker. Singleton then decided to rape her and cut her arms off with an axe, then threw her off a cliff. She was unconscious, but still alive after all that. She ended up waking up, and was found walking on the road, naked and holding what was left of her arms up above her head so she wouldn't bleed out. Singleton only got fourteen years for this, by the way, and was out after eight years. Then he killed another woman and was given the death penalty.
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Dec 23, 2016 03:14
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Magikarpal Tunnel posted:
 ABORT! ABORT!
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Dec 23, 2016 03:37
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A Pinball Wizard posted:
Nah, he died in prison, still on death row. Six miles away. 
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Dec 23, 2016 03:45
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Just ran across this in my news feed: After 20 years, Perth police have arrested and charged a man with the Claremont murders. quote:Police have charged a 48-year-old man with the murder of two women taken from the streets of Claremont in Perth, Western Australia, in the late 1990s, following a 20-year investigation into the alleged serial killings.
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Dec 23, 2016 06:21
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You wouldn't imagine that a story about a newborn baby left in a plastic bag in a graveyard would be a palate cleanser. But it is  .
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Dec 23, 2016 06:32
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Stare-Out posted:Yeah moonsour, I'm sorry for your loss. I have a close friend visiting Nashville right now and it unnerves the hell out of me to hear anything like that going on in that area. Reading that news site with the article about the disappearance and seeing all the recent news about murders and gun crime ramped up my anxiety a whole lot. As always, don't read the comments anywhere. A surprising number of people saying she should have known better than to go outside alone in a city. How many times have we all run outside for a few minutes?
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Dec 23, 2016 08:51
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moonsour posted:As always, don't read the comments anywhere. A surprising number of people saying she should have known better than to go outside alone in a city. How many times have we all run outside for a few minutes? gently caress, people suck. I'm so sorry 
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Dec 23, 2016 09:18
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bean_shadow posted:Well, this is the unnerving stories thread. I can't be assed to figure out the units but depending on who died there's an exact count on the number of bananas that Herbie went while the security was at the movies.
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Dec 23, 2016 10:39
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Besesoth posted:Just ran across this in my news feed: Oh poo poo, I was just listening to something about this but I didn't think it would ever be solved.
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Dec 23, 2016 12:46
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TotalLossBrain posted:"Safety culture" as it's called today did not exist back then. Los Alamos was run by civilian scientists with little supervision. Recording notes was not done reliably. Weapons parts were one-off with little-to-no paper trail. Production was lab-scale with a lab attitude. Everything was a prototype. anonymous web commenter posted:I know a woman who worked at Los Alamos as a nuclear engineer. Our babies were born around the same time, and we became friends. She would tell me hair raising stories. Apparently, the original scientists and workers, well into the sixties were incredibly lax about dealing with waste. Stuff got stuck in boxes and barrels and dumped willy-nilly in the rough countryside surrounding the lab. She was tasked at one point with going about with a partner and mapping where this waste had been dumped so it could be dealt with in a safer manner...or to rope the area off. Since so much time had past there was much vegetation grown over the stuff. She said it was not hard to figure out where the stuff was...find an old cattle trail or logging road, follow down its branches and often there would be stuff that set off their clickers. One afternoon they had gone uphill into a wooded area. At the end of a very rough disused track was a horse trailer, rusted out, wheels rotted. The door had a bar across it. her co-worker made some comment about how unlikely it was that anything would be stashed there and opened the doors. She said she never saw anyone move as rapidly as he did, jumping back violently. The whole trailer was stacked with barrels, many with lids off, and the barrels were in various states of decay...like lacework. They tasted metal on the air. They ended up having a scrubbing like that Silkwood scene, but she said she did not cry, that she was too busy cussing out the assholes who would put such dangerous waste out with no thought.
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Dec 23, 2016 12:51
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RC and Moon Pie posted:You wouldn't imagine that a story about a newborn baby left in a plastic bag in a graveyard would be a palate cleanser. This is wonderful Everything comes full circle at the end. No, I'm not crying...
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Dec 23, 2016 12:58
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Besesoth posted:Just ran across this in my news feed: Holy poo poo just read up on the murders. I lived at Claremont Quarter for 2 years, above Claremont Hotel/Bayview, and never knew there were unsolved serial killings that took place just below..
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Dec 23, 2016 13:29
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RC and Moon Pie posted:You wouldn't imagine that a story about a newborn baby left in a plastic bag in a graveyard would be a palate cleanser.
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Dec 23, 2016 16:37
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Its not that well translated tbh. It all makes sense and is clear and intelligible, but it's very awkwardly phrased. That said, i am glad I read it. Its pretty cool and moving despite its flaws
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Dec 23, 2016 17:34
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RC and Moon Pie posted:You wouldn't imagine that a story about a newborn baby left in a plastic bag in a graveyard would be a palate cleanser. That was a fantastic (if awkwardly translated) read.
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Dec 23, 2016 20:28
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Magikarpal Tunnel posted:This one reminds me of Mary Vincent, who was picked up by Lawrence Singleton as a hitch hiker. Singleton then decided to rape her and cut her arms off with an axe, then threw her off a cliff. She was unconscious, but still alive after all that. She ended up waking up, and was found walking on the road, naked and holding what was left of her arms up above her head so she wouldn't bleed out. I remember when Singleton was released on parole and everywhere he tried to settle, they either protested to keep him out of the neighborhood, or straight up burned down his house. He ended up having to live out the rest of his parole in a trailer on the grounds of a state prison.
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Dec 23, 2016 22:31
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Cat Army
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bean_shadow posted:They found the blue glow interesting and took it home to their families. One of their daughters played with it. This really gets to me. The fathers were idiots, the kid was just being a kid and it killed her. moonsour posted:Personally unnerving: Someone I've known online since I was 15 has gone missing after a party Friday night. Even the most tangential of connections can make you feel pretty messed up. This woman went missing earlier this month. She and I have never met, but nonetheless her disappearance feels super unsettling if only because she lives in the same apartment complex that I did when I first graduated college.
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Dec 24, 2016 04:02
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pookel posted:For some reason I think it's extra hard when someone's death is in the news. You're suffering a personal loss, her their death is being scrutinized by the public, her photos passed around, stupid comments being made about what she did wrong and how she could have avoided being murdered. Truth. An acquaintance was raped and murdered a few years ago; they eventually charged (and convicted) a man she was seen speaking to briefly on a club's surveillance. Cue comments section full of "THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR TALKING TO NIGGERS" and "WHITE WOMEN, AROUND BLACKS NEVER RELAX" in her local paper. No, I'm not paraphrasing.
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Dec 24, 2016 04:25
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It isn't relevant to the commentator's racism, but did the guy do it?
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Dec 24, 2016 04:32
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WickedHate posted:It isn't relevant to the commentator's racism, but did the guy do it? Yup. Snagged him via DNA, despite his weird conviction that cutting part of her mattress out would keep them from recovering any.
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Dec 24, 2016 04:56
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Forgive me if this got posted already, but I'm pretty sure it didn't. Apparently some burgeoning potential serial killer has been going around mutilating and posing animal corpses in London, ON , and they've been doing so for at least two years. It's extra unnerving to me, because I used to live a couple hours south of there until fairly recently, and have visited London a bunch of times.quote:At least 17 dead and mutilated animals have been found in public places around the city, including the latest incident of a skinned and beheaded dog that was missing several of its organs. Many of the animals are found in groups and placed in specific patterns. quote:Over the past year, Foster said, there have been at least eight incidents involving at least 17 dead animals, including a skinned and beheaded bunny found on the Western University campus; a mutilated cat found in a park; six dead coyotes — two of them headless and skinned — placed in poses in three different locations; and several dead snakes left in a strange pose. quote:Arntfield said there should have been an investigation when two mutilated coyotes were discovered in a sexual position along the Thames River bank on campus at Western University. quote:"It would border on statistical impossibility that two or more people in the city the size of London would find each other with a shared paraphilic interest in this and would agree to carry these out," he said. I really hope they figure out who it is before that person decides to make the leap to murdering people 
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Dec 24, 2016 05:37
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Speaking of horrible nuclear safety protocols, this article in today's New Yorker by the author of Command and Control. I knew about the nuclear codes being a string of zeroes for like twenty years but this was a new one on me.quote:The dangers of "launch-on-warning" have been recognized since the idea was first proposed, during the Eisenhower Administration. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara advised Kennedy that the United States should never use its nuclear weapons until a nuclear detonation had occurred on American soil, and could be attributed to an enemy attack. 
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Dec 24, 2016 06:30
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Any story in which Robert McNamara is the voice of reason is a loving terrifying story.
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Dec 24, 2016 06:53
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It's been said many times before in this thread, but I'll say it again: Command & Control is a fantastic book. So is Atomic Accidents and The Atomic Bomb.
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Dec 24, 2016 07:35
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Fanky Malloons posted:Forgive me if this got posted already, but I'm pretty sure it didn't. Apparently some burgeoning potential serial killer has been going around mutilating and posing animal corpses in London, ON , and they've been doing so for at least two years. It's extra unnerving to me, because I used to live a couple hours south of there until fairly recently, and have visited London a bunch of times. I have some family in London ON and live southwards of it. Hope they catch the guy.
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Dec 24, 2016 07:57
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TotalLossBrain posted:It's been said many times before in this thread, but I'll say it again: Command & Control is a fantastic book. The movie/documentary is coming out on PBS Jan 10.
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Dec 24, 2016 09:19
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Fanky Malloons posted:Forgive me if this got posted already, but I'm pretty sure it didn't. Apparently some burgeoning potential serial killer has been going around mutilating and posing animal corpses in London, ON , and they've been doing so for at least two years. It's extra unnerving to me, because I used to live a couple hours south of there until fairly recently, and have visited London a bunch of times. This is doubly bizarre as we have one here in London UK too. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/M25_cat_killer quote:The M25 Cat Killer (also referred to by the media as the Croydon cat killer or the Cat Ripper of Croydon) is thought to have killed, dismembered and decapitated more than 100 cats beginning in 2014 in Croydon, but since spreading across and around London. Further killings were recorded in November 2016, with 10 feline victims being confirmed by police as linked. He often leaves the cat outside the owners door for them to find
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Dec 24, 2016 10:38
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Gibfender posted:This is doubly bizarre as we have one here in London UK too. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/M25_cat_killer This happened to my friend's sister. Current theory is that he's watching their reaction as they open the door and find their dead cat, which is... unsettling.
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Dec 24, 2016 11:31
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Brass Key posted:Speaking of horrible nuclear safety protocols, this article in today's New Yorker by the author of Command and Control. I knew about the nuclear codes being a string of zeroes for like twenty years but this was a new one on me. The amount of times the earth was nearly destroyed in a nuclear hellfire by accident during the cold war is horrifying and frankly baffling that we're all still alive  It's also fun to explain to people that the plot of Peace Walker nearly happened a bunch of times except instead of someone rigging an AI, it was just human negligence
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Dec 24, 2016 12:32
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Mr. Flunchy posted:This happened to my friend's sister. You'd think with all the surveillance they'd of gotten video of him by now. Just assuming it's a him here. It's always a him.
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Dec 24, 2016 13:32
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Danaru posted:The amount of times the earth was nearly destroyed in a nuclear hellfire by accident during the cold war is horrifying and frankly baffling that we're all still alive And now Trump will be in charge of that stuff! I think I will learn how to stop worrying and just love the bomb. Here's a question: if a President wants to nuke other countries for no reason at all, can he be stopped? Or does he have complete control? Is there a chain of command or can he just, as it were, "press the button"?
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Dec 24, 2016 13:38
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