| Author | Message | ||
     Aesquire |
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/trump _flirts_with_banning_chineseowned_datamining_app_c auses_meltdown_in_gen_z.html I view this like a chimp watching a Chekhov play. It makes no sense, and I don't know why it's happening. Or maybe it's just a generation thing. I ride motorcycles, learned to fly, scuba dive, ski, shoot real guns... Basically wanted the real world skills of James Bond, and the experience of exotic locations. Sure, Sparta ( NY ) isn't Rio, but I'm not rich. And my parents never even considered sending me to Spring break in Cabo or Daytona. So publishing selfies as a means of lifestyle mimicking the rich & famous while never learning to even drive a car... Baffle me. It's like Lorde's hit Royals... Pretending wealth... Not my bag. Of course I'm probably missing a lot of talent and the point of it all. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/j-p -sears-on-wokeology.php Get your PhD in Woke White Person. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beirut- explosions-what-we-know-so-far My first thought, on seeing the color of the smoke of the initial explosion, ( cameras were pointed After the first bang ) was "solid rocket fuel" and the violence of the second obvious explosion matched my expectations for a fire in a ship or warehouse with a shipment of Iranian made rockets for Hezbollah to shoot at Israel. But it could be other military explosives, the reddish smoke is typical of nitrogen oxides, and modern explosives, like rocket fuel, are full of unstable nitrogen bonds. We always expect Hezbollah to lie. | ||
| Hootowl |
I agree with that assessment. Children playing with things they do not understand. Same goes for the virus lab in Wuhan. This wasn’t the first breach. | ||
| Hootowl |
Could also have been an Israeli op to destroy bomb making material. | ||
| Hootowl |
Word is it was ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored near a grain silo. That would account for the color of the smoke. Can also be used in truck bombs and bomb making. Will we ever know the truth? Unlikely. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/stran ge_times_in_new_york_city.html One of the unintended consequences of lockdown culture is the removal of the perceived value of big city life. It doesn't matter much to Amazon if they deliver your groceries to a suburban house or a city apartment. And if you are banned from bars, clubs, parks, in the city, why be there? The folk rich enough to have 2 homes are better off away from the plague, riots, and high living costs. The same is true of public schools. If the kids are stuck at home and using tablets to take classes until after the election in November anyway, why ever send them back to brick and mortar indoctrination centers? They get that online, and smarter, richer, parents are already sending their kids to better private schools. Why not everyone? And there's an opportunity for more private schools to exist without the costs of classrooms. Teachers can be in Yuma and Fargo and still teach kids in Manhattan and Daytona. Centralized schools, and expenses are now proven obsolete? Unions are already freaked about, and battling legitimacy of Charter schools. If there's no need for 6 vice Principals and more paper pushers than teachers as is becoming SOP in public schools, how does bloated bureaucracy central school compete with distributed streamlined remote learning. And with no need to live in the Good School District, why pay those taxes? Unintended consequences... | ||
| Ratbuell |
Speaking of public vs. private schools... https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/marylan d-gov-larry-hogan-needs-to-strike-down-montgomery- countys-arbitrary-and-capricious-private-school-ba n Trying to force private schools to stay closed...but it's OK to indoctrinate students at the public schools. Fortunately our Governor got involved and it looks like he'll shoot it down. | ||
| Aesquire |
Children playing with things they do not understand. Adult power mad thugs, not children. Don't fall into the trap of underestimating/misunderstanding greedy murderous Men, and thinking them innocent in any way. As to Israeli commando action, I thought about that in the first 10 seconds after I saw the blast on TV. The Bad Guys ruling the country already claim it was an Israeli attack, ( and fireworks, and fertilizer, they feel no need to be consistent or logical ) but it would be a horrible public relations move. Israelis know most Lebanese are just regular folk, you can't count on destroying but not setting off a warehouse full of unguided terror rockets, and in the middle of a heavily populated city? Not impossible, but stupid like that is unlikely. Or it could be a rival faction internal to Hezbollah, or a Lebanese Patriot sick of Hezbollah rule. Even an actual accident! Fertilizer? I'd believe that, if Hezbollah hadn't made the claim instantly. I'd bet $10 it was rockets. | ||
| Hootowl |
News now says 2750 tons (5.5 million pounds) of ammonium nitrate was left in the port for years after being confiscated from a ship. Head of customs asked for it to be removed three times over several years and was ignored. Perhaps I should have said people with the knowledge of a child playing with things they don’t understand. Several officials have been arrested. 300000 homeless. Death toll climbing as they sift through the debris. This is a tragedy of gargantuan proportions. | ||
| Aesquire |
  Yeah, sorry, about the snappish comment re:children. I'll withhold judgment on the cause until someone competent looks at the evidence, which might be never. But 2750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate should be about right. It was a big building. | ||
| Hootowl |
Looks like it knocked over a ship. Wow.  | ||
| Ratbuell |
To quote the Fifth Element... "Biiiig baadda-boom". Saw it on the news this morning - looked more like ordinance to me. High-speed expansion, at least to my uneducated civilian eyes... | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.timesofisrael.com/mystery-swirls-aroun d-what-caused-ammonium-nitrate-to-explode-in-beiru t/ Hmm. The rocket fuel plant explosion. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cPVpzjxRjPk Note in the dry Texas air you don't see the condensed water vapor "ball" seen in the Beirut blast. And the color of the smoke looks similar. | ||
| Chauly |
Similar event in 1947. My Dad's first project: find out what made the ship explode.:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster | ||
| Chauly |
And Halifax, NS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion A school friend's grandfather was on a ship in Halifax Harbor when the explosion occurred. He broke both legs when the ship jumped up from the blast (Message edited by Chauly on August 06, 2020) | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/mor e-evidence-of-the-racism-of-leftists.php My high school best friend's mother was in Halifax as a little girl for that. Eyeballs in the streets. Prayers for the people of Beirut. | ||
| Hootowl |
Big fire before the big boom. The view from the water is terrifying. I would have thought a nuke went off. | ||
| Hootowl |
What I assume is a ground wave, followed by the atmospheric shock wave. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/08/gall up-one-third-americans-would-not-get-coronavirus-v accine/ Instead of the Chinese Communist Virus thread, I think this might be better for this. First, I doubt the accuracy of this poll. Second, if you assume it's basically political propaganda, the intent is to make Republicans look stupid. ( good reason to doubt it, right there ) But for giggles, let's assume it's reasonably accurate. You can spin this so many ways. Democrats are obedient sheep. Republicans are Luddite fools. The government has lost all credibility. It's Obama's/Trump's/Nixon's/Wilson's/Rothschild family's fault! Pundits are having joygasms. The cynic in me welcomes the evolution of the species, but which sets of idiots pass from this mortal coil will make a difference to me, personally. Darn. Going on the assumption the first approved vaccine is fairly effective, and the 51% of R voters passes, you'd fear that about half a percent of Republican votes vanishes due to Covid-19. Huh. Doesn't sound that bad, and the cynic welcomes a smarter R Party constituency. The hype will be that half the R voters are doomed and the Socialist Democrats will thus rule forever, unopposed. The paranoid assumption that the vaccine is a mind control/time delayed poison/fake by the Illuminati reverses the # of eliminated voters. ( and boy, won't my ghost be embarrassed! ) I'm just gonna go on with ignoring polls, for multiple reasons, and not jump on either of the above band wagons. YMMV. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-tv-hezbollah- apparently-wanted-beiruts-ammonium-nitrate-for-isr ael-war/ Reports from Israel allege the fire started at a Hezbollah weapons cache. I thought Beirut was a Hezbollah weapons cache. Hiding explosives & themselves behind civilian population shields is SOP. Increasingly looks like an accident. Criminally stupid, sure. & kiloton class detonations are a great way to move evidence at supersonic speeds. So... If the fire began with Hezbollah's Iranian made rockets carelessly stored and handled, but the detonation that killed 150+ ( and counting ) was Ammonium Nitrate stolen to be used as bombs, do I owe myself $10? | ||
| Aesquire |
https://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/01290.htm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_n itrate_disasters Sacks stored in a Mediterranean port next to the water in a warehouse without climate control for 6 years certainly was subject to variable humidity, and much probably fused into rock hard lumps. The size of houses or bigger. I noticed multiple times in history that folk tried to break up hardened improperly stored AN with industrial explosives, & detonated it. ( makes me wonder if some lucky sod got away with it and somehow that became accepted? ) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion I did notice in the video Hoot posted, that the smoke from ( what was probably the initiating ) fire was grey. Not Ammonium Nitrate fire reddish, until the big blast. The first 2 segments clearly show small, sharp flashes, which may be exploding munitions, or other ??? tossed in the air by the initial fire/explosions. So I'll go with the Israeli speculation that the initiation was an arms cache, since "we didn't have anything" from Hezbollah is so obviously lies. Remember Baghdad Bob? Reporting the Americans were nowhere near Baghdad & you could hear tank cannon fire in the distance? ( ignore the memes with photoshopped U.S. Tanks behind him ) | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/wha t-happened-in-beirut.php | ||
| Aesquire |
https://babylonbee.com/news/public-school-teachers -adamantly-insist-their-jobs-are-non-essential | ||
| Bandm |
Looks like they are finding an underground network of tunnels and rooms. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/bytedance-b reaks-tiktok-deal-talks-game-political-chicken-int ensifies https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-slaps -retaliatory-sanctions-ted-cruz-marco-rubio-other- china-hawks WW2 began, for the U.S. when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines in "response" to U.S. oil embargo on Japan because of their invasion of China. WW4 might begin because the U.S. embargoed a Social Media Spying Software. Of course that's nonsense. The ONGOING war against us by the CCP has been happening for years. Just ask Hunter and The Clintons, who are paid by the CCP. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/taibbi-new-pur itans I don't know how college idiots have twisted this into utter madness. Upfront, I admit I have zero understanding of college Gay culture... Or Gay culture elsewhere, come to think of it. And I might be too influenced by cliche media impressions. But I thought gay college students were just like straight ones. They want to get laid. The gay male lifestyle is a parody of male straight cliche. Lots of one night stands, wham, bam, see ya around, then with maturity comes a desire for long term relationship and marriage for some, probably many. Pretty much everything feminists hate about men, but without the fears of pregnancy. ( but the spectre of HIV ) So some college teacher that screws students, but not his own or as bribes for grades, seems to me like a desirable thing. I know I would have been flattered if a female professor seduced me, if I wasn't in a committed relationship. Sure, the lines in consensual sex are complicated when there's an authority relationship. Bill Clinton screwing willing interns, employees, that he has power over, was considered by many folk criminal. Or potentially so. ( not, of course by his fellow sexual harassment predators ) But the professor in a different major? And progressive/leftist/revolutionary meetings have always been the place for horny males to find silly hippie chicks. I don't see the difference here. Otoh, you might see this as typical creepy older predator preying on youthful innocents. Social media pressure stuff I don't understand. There's Lots of suicides among the young since the cruelty of semi anonymous internet harassment is perhaps worse than the bullying I remember from pre-twit dark ages. In the end I'm left with not knowing who to cheer, or fear, in this case. | ||
| Aesquire |
Not news, but closer to diagnosis. https://babylonbee.com/news/confirmed-missing-fbi- text-messages-either-huge-scandal-nothing-dependin g-political-leanings | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/the -college-death-spiral-chapter-2.php Students aren't customers? Then they're Product. And it's not that in demand. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2 020/08/13/a_growing_case_that_brocks_media_matters _were_illegal_hillary_matters_124821.html |
