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Halloween Jack posted:I don't have economic data to point to, but my understanding is that there's stark inequality between the retirees and professional athletes/entertainers who move there for tax and other reasons, and everybody else. Pretty much. Florida's economy is basically just "agriculture" and "providing services to tourists, snowbirds, and retirees", so jobs there tend to be lovely and poorly paid. Healthcare is a growing sector there, but that's mostly gonna be an army of poorly-paid caretakers for the one-fifth of the population that's over age 65. CuddleCryptid posted:Every time I see this I wonder how they expect their world to function without it. Senators and soldiers don't get paid without taxes, boyo. Its not like a social media platform where you can make "Freedom Revenue Service". They claim that the IRS is only needed for all the kinds of taxes they hate, and that things like sales taxes could be run just fine without a dedicated enforcement agency.
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Feb 17, 2023 21:02
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Is East Palestine discussion still okay here? https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1626642903924674572 Is this Nick Sortor guy on the level? I don't like this guy's presentation style since he just seems to be tweeting stuff instead of coming out with longer pieces for me to read, but I don't want to be blinded by my own biases. I don't like that he's been on Tucker Carlson, but I do agree that mainstream media has been really sluggish on covering this story.
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Feb 17, 2023 21:02
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Eric Cantonese posted:Is East Palestine discussion still okay here? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4020995&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post529879377 edit: the NYT article excerpted in that linked post opens by acknowledging the fear of residents, chemical smell in the air, dead fish in some places, and chemicals in the water/soil, I'm not sure what you mean by the mainstream media being sluggish, exactly? Then it discusses the right-wing media ecosystem running with conspiracy theory stuff, including Sortor. edit2: I didn't look too far back in Sortor's Twitter but it looks like they were posting anti-vaxx and anti-mask stuff before they started tweeting about East Palestine, so make of that what you will. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Feb 17, 2023 |
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Feb 17, 2023 21:10
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Blue Footed Booby posted:I'm just saying he seems to have underthought it even as bad faith nonsense goes. It's kind of amazing. Ahh, gotcha. Yeah, I don't think he thought it through at all, which is why I think he's genuinely surprised and flustered by the pushback.
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Feb 17, 2023 21:11
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Eric Cantonese posted:Is East Palestine discussion still okay here? I dunno, it kind of seems like he's not the best person to consult on matters of public health. https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1613205293315543040 https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1615428761591111684 Aside from that, notice the lack of specific claims in the tweet you posted. Yes, there's a body of water with a shimmery sheen on top of that. But what does that actually mean? Does it show that the municipal water is unsafe to drink? Unlikely. East Palestine's municipal water system doesn't take in surface water. They use wells situated a mile from the derailment site, which means this contamination isn't affecting the water supply anytime soon. Does it show that the EPA is lying about contamination of surface water? Not by itself. The EPA acknowledged pretty much from the beginning that some of the spill made it into nearby bodies of water, which they claim they were able to isolate to contain the contamination and prevent it from spreading further. Does it show that the EPA is lying about their success at containing the water contamination? No, because the video doesn't specify where it was taken. The EPA openly lists exactly which bodies of water are contaminated and how severe the contamination is, so it seems like it would be very easy for anyone to go debunk their claims if they're lying. On the other hand, I can't help but skeptically think that if someone was wanting to make alarmist videos for people who aren't aware of any of the above nuances, the EPA's reports tell them exactly where to find the most contaminated water.
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Feb 17, 2023 21:19
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Eric Cantonese posted:Is this Nick Sortor guy on the level? “China is now DEMANDING the U.S. return their spy balloon. Sure, we’ll return it. Right after China returns the $7 TRILLION we were forced to spend when they unleashed COVID across the world.” “SO many reports of major outages globally for some of the world's largest websites. Twitter, FB, YouTube, etc. What is going on?” “So Biden is now trying to convince us Trump knowingly let MULTIPLE Chinese Spy Balloons overfly the US while President. Does anybody REALLY believe Trump wouldn’t have blown them out of the sky immediately?!” https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1621699204182687745?s=20 “The new House Majority has jumped in QUICKLY to expose Fauci’s atrocious lies. He KNEW the lab leak theory was the most plausible origin BACK IN FEBRUARY 2020.” … No
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Feb 17, 2023 21:22
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Seems like a lot of these people only care about the environment when they can use it to attack Democrats. Weird.
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Feb 17, 2023 21:24
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Something smelled about how that Sortor guy was presenting everything, but I've been in some back and forth with one of my more left-leaning friends about East Palestine and I started wondering if I was being too trusting myself. I appreciate you guys taking the time to lay it out for me.
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Feb 17, 2023 21:30
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Main Paineframe posted:On the other hand, I can't help but skeptically think that if someone was wanting to make alarmist videos for people who aren't aware of any of the above nuances, the EPA's reports tell them exactly where to find the most contaminated water. Not to mention that it also wouldn't be the first time that someone on the right simply faked a video for 15 minutes of fame. Olive oil is available in grocery stores.
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Feb 17, 2023 21:37
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Eric Cantonese posted:Is East Palestine discussion still okay here? What the gently caress is wrong with these people https://www.dep.pa.gov/OurCommonWealth/pages/Article.aspx?post=45
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Feb 17, 2023 21:38
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Gotta add "it's the Russians retaliating for the other conspiracy about Nordstream" to the list of conspiracy theories btw https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1626358783181000709?s=20 don't do cocaine folks
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Feb 17, 2023 21:44
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"Future EPA guidance will recommend that citizens be informed about contents of spills so long as there is a verbal promise to 'be normal' after information is divulged". I really wonder how far this is going to spread. Much like the new covid vaccine technology its something that sounds scary and most people know very little about so it's absolute prime material to become a breeding ground of conspiracies. I've already seen it moving around where the idea that the VC has evaporated has percolated down so now they're going after the acrylates. Throw on some people who are probably looking to make a packet and rumors are going to be going completely wild. I'm not sure what is going to come out of this but it's probably not going to be reasonable changes to railway procedures.
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Feb 17, 2023 21:46
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Staluigi posted:What the gently caress is wrong with these people Maybe there is something the gently caress wrong with me but I would've assumed a sheen on a body of water like that is pollution. I think it's probably expecting a bit much of the residents of East Palestine for them all to have read that specific article from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to know the difference between a bacterial and an oil-based sheen. But at least I now know the "rock test" to assess whether a sheen is organic or not.
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Feb 17, 2023 21:48
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I think there is way more confidence in the spill being over than is truly justified, given that the combustion of chlorinated organic compounds leads to dioxin formation. Dioxins are a large category of chemical compounds that are implicated in developmental defects as well as cancer formation. Dioxins are extremely toxic at very low concentrations, like nanogram quantities, and are produced whenever chlorine and organic materials are burned together. They are not washed away with water and they accumulate up the food chain. They also are not detectable unless relatively expensive and specific techniques are performed. There have already been scientists who have mentioned dioxin production as a potential concern of this event. In this article, Professor Neil Donahue expresses concern over the production of dioxin compounds https://apnews.com/article/rail-accidents-evacuations-ohio-health-climate-and-environment-3f84663f0b97837cc74a8ce9a50ef6c7 The production of dioxins is extremely variable, with different conditions leading to dioxin outputs ranging from 1ng/g of burned material all the way up to past 1000ng/g of burned material. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0734242X15590651 Since specifically incomplete combustion is a cause of increased dioxin production, an emergency flare of thousands of gallons of chloronated chemicals is a likely source of substantial dioxins. Its also very difficult to measure dioxins in the environment, because they are toxic at such low concentrations. Additionally, the fact that dioxins are a class of heterogenous compounds makes them difficult to analyze. Mass spectrometry is required to detect dioxins, which cannot be performed on site. The EPA is also not saying that they are testing for dioxins in their reports. https://ema.ohio.gov/media-publications/020523-train-derailment It is unlikely that the EPA is secretly measuring the levels of highly toxic compounds while publically announcing that less toxic chemicals are not present. Since dioxins are extremely persistent in the environment, it is likely that at some point the soil and water of East Palestine will be measured to see whether dioxin levels have increased. Any environmental scientist worth their salt will be aware of the potential for this train derailment and emergency burn to produce dioxin compounds. In that case, if the burning of hundreds of thousands of gallons of chlorinated organic material did in fact lead to dioxin production, there will likely be a response. This is not something that can be easily ignored due to the longevity of dioxins in the environment, as well as their ability to bioaccumulate. Ultimately, it is very plausible that the EPA is both telling the truth, in that vinyl chloride and phosgene levels are negligible, while underselling the dangers still present due to other combustion products of the burn. As dioxins are persistent, this will eventually resolve itself once other entities and interested scientists begin testing the soil and water around East Palestine.
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Feb 17, 2023 22:30
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Mooseontheloose posted:That's not even close to what I am saying. Yup - you're right - I was confusing part of your post with another poster's allusion that I deserve "it" (whatever "it" turns out to be), however I stand by "Tourism" and "the voters do what they can" - and would emphasize that they're not given much to work with, on a spectrum that spans from Officer Bumblefuck For Senate all the way to Former Republican Governor for Governor. koolkal posted:Creating 1 state where all the chuds congregate and pass their insane poo poo seems like a good thing. The Florida Quarantine.
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Feb 17, 2023 22:44
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There's a bunch of GC-MS results for organohalogen compounds here: https://epa.ohio.gov/static/Portals/47/citizen/response/East-Palestine-Water-Data-021023.pdf and in other reports. I don't spot dioxins in there specifically but I also don't have time at the moment to look too closely. If they're not part of that report, I presume they will be assayed relatively shortly.
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Feb 17, 2023 22:48
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the_steve posted:I wonder, other than "lol, because the supreme court can just decide it does," how that would even be able to hold up in court.
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Feb 17, 2023 22:58
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Dioxins are more of a concern for polyvinyl chloride as well, as the linked study above mentions. While it is *technically* correct that vinyl chloride could spontaneously polymerize, its vastly more likely to then degrade back into components than decide to start making dioxin. I don't think that there was a lot of bushfire either, was there?
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Feb 17, 2023 22:58
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Judgy Fucker posted:Maybe there is something the gently caress wrong with me but I would've assumed a sheen on a body of water like that is pollution. It's not even really about that, not specifically. It's that this video shows nothing and proves nothing. Is there an associated date or could it have been taken years ago? Is this in the affected area or could it just be some woods wherever? Does it demonstrate anything you can associate with the toxins of the wreck? Yet share it and it gets eleven trillion bites and crowds of people going "oh my god I knew it" for days and days
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Feb 17, 2023 23:18
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CuddleCryptid posted:Dioxins are more of a concern for polyvinyl chloride as well, as the linked study above mentions. While it is *technically* correct that vinyl chloride could spontaneously polymerize, its vastly more likely to then degrade back into components than decide to start making dioxin. I don't think that there was a lot of bushfire either, was there? this is a really important detail that I missed, too
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Feb 17, 2023 23:27
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CuddleCryptid posted:Dioxins are more of a concern for polyvinyl chloride as well, as the linked study above mentions. While it is *technically* correct that vinyl chloride could spontaneously polymerize, its vastly more likely to then degrade back into components than decide to start making dioxin. I don't think that there was a lot of bushfire either, was there? once this entered non-road-based chemistry it escaped my personal understanding so I really appreciate this whole discussion
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Feb 17, 2023 23:35
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CuddleCryptid posted:Dioxins are more of a concern for polyvinyl chloride as well, as the linked study above mentions. While it is *technically* correct that vinyl chloride could spontaneously polymerize, its vastly more likely to then degrade back into components than decide to start making dioxin. I don't think that there was a lot of bushfire either, was there? Most of the research is based on PVC, I think because the general concern is in the creation of dioxins from house fires and from trash incineration, where PVC would matter but vinyl chloride itself wouldn't. But since there is a paper in the review which describes how dioxins are formed in significant quantities when you soak paper in saltwater, I don't think there is much specificity in which chloronated organic compounds create dioxins. Essentially, if you can create dioxin by just putting NaCl next to cellulose before burning it, probably any combustion reaction involving carbon and chlorine will be producing dioxin to some extent. I don't think this event necessarily created a dioxin-based nightmare across all of Ohio, but given the range of dioxins produced in these sorts of combustion reactions, its very reasonable that its non-negligible. There were 5x30,000 gallon tank railcars that were burned, which is 550,000L of vinyl chloride, which is 450,000kg, and based on the review I linked, should produce somewhere between 450mg and a half kilo of dioxins. And the latter value is about a third of the total yearly dioxin production of the US, per this report https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/risk/recordisplay.cfm?deid=159286 Again, I don't think that the East Palestine crash created an airborne toxic event and ruined that area for a hundred years. I mostly think its maybe not the best idea to say everything is ok and nothing is poisoned when theres very good reason to believe that a long lasting poison that is functional at extremely low quantities may be being produced. I also did look into the document that you linked Fritz, but since the sensitivity there was in the ug/mL I don't know whether it is as relevant for compounds that are concerning at a thousand times less concentrated.
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Feb 18, 2023 01:38
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celadon posted:Most of the research is based on PVC, I think because the general concern is in the creation of dioxins from house fires and from trash incineration, where PVC would matter but vinyl chloride itself wouldn't. But since there is a paper in the review which describes how dioxins are formed in significant quantities when you soak paper in saltwater, I don't think there is much specificity in which chloronated organic compounds create dioxins. Essentially, if you can create dioxin by just putting NaCl next to cellulose before burning it, probably any combustion reaction involving carbon and chlorine will be producing dioxin to some extent. I think you should just say that a toxic-chemical-spewing disaster is obviously not great for the surrounding area without having to make ridiculous hedges every few sentences
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Feb 18, 2023 03:06
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This has great deal of information on the derailment and general trends in railroading that contributed. It’s also exclusive of why as derailments are going down significant event like this are increasing. A lot of it is graphic so I’m not going to copy paste the text. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/opinion/ohio-train-derailment-safety-regulation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
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Feb 18, 2023 03:58
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gazza posted:I think you should just say that a toxic-chemical-spewing disaster is obviously not great for the surrounding area without having to make ridiculous hedges every few sentences i think maybe it's reasonable to express that we should utilize actual available data regarding a potential toxic chemical spewing disaster, rather than relying on my admittedly quite impressive gut
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Feb 18, 2023 04:23
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I think ultimately it depends on how much you trust a heavily gutted government agency and the various contractors they end up having to use for even rudimentary tasks like taking soil samples and air/water quality measurements.
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Feb 18, 2023 05:17
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:I think ultimately it depends on how much you trust a heavily gutted government agency and the various contractors they end up having to use for even rudimentary tasks like taking soil samples and air/water quality measurements. Unfortunately the EPA needs at least five glass vials to do their testing and their ten billion dollar budget was only able to purchase four. They'll be fine. They're not going to cheap out on something this big. And they have portable laboratories that are able to do GC/MS, although they're probably contracting out the LC/MS and such to contractors because of the risk of travel time/conditions affecting the samples. CuddleCryptid fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 06:02
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Friends of mine in new england have all been talking about finding weird orange residue on their cars. I've heard the theory that it's pollen from the strangely warm winter we're having though. I have to admit I'm feeling concerned....
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Feb 18, 2023 06:05
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pencilhands posted:Friends of mine in new england have all been talking about finding weird orange residue on their cars. I've heard the theory that it's pollen from the strangely warm winter we're having though. I have to admit I'm feeling concerned.... Southerner here - that's pollen. Plant jizz season is upon us. Welcome to allergy hell. e: Do your friends watch Fox News? They may be parroting what they're hearing on there https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-york-residents-report-unusual-odor-residue-cars-officials-say Youth Decay fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 06:12
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Youth Decay posted:Southerner here - that's pollen. Plant jizz season is upon us. Welcome to allergy hell. None of my friends are the kind of people who would watch fox news. I believe they really did find orange stuff on their cars. If you're right and it's pollen, it makes sense that they would be weirded out because well frankly 50-60 degree weather here in february is uh, a new one.
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Feb 18, 2023 06:16
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pencilhands posted:None of my friends are the kind of people who would watch fox news. I believe they really did find orange stuff on their cars. If you're right and it's pollen, it makes sense that they would be weirded out because well frankly 50-60 degree weather here in february is uh, a new one. Also could be cedar rust fungus https://www.wlky.com/article/seeing-orange-dust-in-your-neighborhood-its-probably-a-fungus-butchertown/36914405
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Feb 18, 2023 06:19
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pencilhands posted:Friends of mine in new england have all been talking about finding weird orange residue on their cars. I've heard the theory that it's pollen from the strangely warm winter we're having though. I have to admit I'm feeling concerned.... I miss winter
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Feb 18, 2023 09:46
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Push El Burrito posted:Seems like a lot of these people only care about the environment when they can use it to attack Democrats. Weird. Harold Fjord posted:Yeah they will always cynically grab hold of any criticism of a Democrat administration and try to weave it into all their other bs I'm noticing this sudden very serious concern about wasteful spending in the military now in the wake of using a $400,000 missile to take out a balloon. Even though like a week ago Trump and every other CHUD was asking why Biden didn't just shoot it down immediately. Republicans asking for restraint in exercising the military budget is an unusual thing to see. If a dem administration wanted to slash military funding by even four loving cents the GOP would be screaming about gutting the military. Hell, the MIC probably spent/wasted 400k in the time it took me to write this post.
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Feb 18, 2023 13:32
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BiggerBoat posted:I'm noticing this sudden very serious concern about wasteful spending in the military now in the wake of using a $400,000 missile to take out a balloon. Even though like a week ago Trump and every other CHUD was asking why Biden didn't just shoot it down immediately. Republicans asking for restraint in exercising the military budget is an unusual thing to see. Warhawk Dems need anti-war rhetoric to be a republican talking point, so now it is.
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Feb 18, 2023 14:20
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BiggerBoat posted:I'm noticing this sudden very serious concern about wasteful spending in the military now in the wake of using a $400,000 missile to take out a balloon. Even though like a week ago Trump and every other CHUD was asking why Biden didn't just shoot it down immediately. Republicans asking for restraint in exercising the military budget is an unusual thing to see. Remember Trump having one of those big stealth bombers drop a "MOAB" Fuel Air Bomb on some terrorist tunnels in the hills? I remember that technically the thing was apparently near the end of its usable/stable life and detonating it was cheaper than dismantling it, but I also remember Trump and the GOP making a giant spectacle over us effectively running a live fire weapons test of the biggest non-nuclear bomb in our arsenal on foreign soil. Edit: or at least I think that was a thing? I swear every time I remember something crazy happening during the Trump administration I have to double check and figure out a) if this poo poo I remember happened and b) was it just as dumb as I thought or actively dumber?
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Feb 18, 2023 14:24
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So this is the kind of thing I was talking about when I said "the people who are scared to return home aren't being entirely unreasonable given all of US history". Hopefully no kids are swimming in the wrong unmarked streams on any of these UNUSUALLY warm February days https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ohio-train-disaster-water-sampling_n_63ef034be4b022eb3e35e585?92b quote:The testing that Ohio authorities relied on to declare the municipal water in East Palestine safe to drink after a disastrous train derailment was funded by the railroad operator itself and did not initially comply with federal standards, HuffPost has learned. Also enjoying this good article about how trans panic is used to steal kids https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the-traffic-in-children
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Feb 18, 2023 15:01
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pencilhands posted:None of my friends are the kind of people who would watch fox news. I believe they really did find orange stuff on their cars. If you're right and it's pollen, it makes sense that they would be weirded out because well frankly 50-60 degree weather here in february is uh, a new one. Everyone weirded out needs to reread this: Sultry Nights and Magnolia Trees: New York City Is Now Subtropical https://nyti.ms/2CLtzCN Warmer winters are typical for subtropical climates, this is the new normal.
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Feb 18, 2023 15:02
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Alkydere posted:Remember Trump having one of those big stealth bombers drop a "MOAB" Fuel Air Bomb on some terrorist tunnels in the hills? It was and i remember it fairly well. IIRC, we basically bombed a big pile of dirt for no apparent reason or something like that
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Feb 18, 2023 15:18
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BiggerBoat posted:It was and i remember it fairly well. IIRC, we basically bombed a big pile of dirt for no apparent reason or something like that I think we used it on an airfield? And it was meant for something else and did minimal damage. Maybe that was something else I distinctly remember we used a very expensive weapon to make potholes Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 15:20
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Harold Fjord posted:I think we used it on an airfield? And it was meant for something else and did minimal damage. That was something separate, I believe in response to the Syrian use of gas weapons. We bombed a runway and a mess hall with a fortune in missiles but because iirc there was a possibility of russian soldiers being there we told them that we were going to do it and all the stuff that could have been damaged was removed. The MOAB was dropped on a cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Nangarhar_airstrike
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Feb 18, 2023 15:43
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