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At 2:54, the commentator says "[...] as little as half of the 2750 sacks of ammonium nitrate". At 6:06, the commentator says "The 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate [...]". There is a possibility that they're describing 1 tonne sacks, but I'm left wondering whether they meant to say something else. An image search for ammonium nitrate packaging shows many 25-50 kg range sacks, and a 500kg industrial sack, leaving me a)…
In the past this kind of material would be collected and analyzed by state intelligence services. Combined by allies and used to gain leverage for individual or combined strategic priorities. Something like, “Here is how negligent you were. Install this person in power or we leak this and your people revolt and you won’t be able to walk away.” More recently, it seems, some news organizations have begun assembling rep…
> the advertising-funded third state Did you mean Third Estate? Or a state-like entity governed by ad revenue?
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> Have you ever thought about your house? The whole damn thing is fuel. analogizing a house, the purpose of which is to store and house human occupants, ran by non-professionals, to a dock store-house that houses hazardous compounds and is staffed by employees is pretty useless. Yes, most everything is fuel. Storing large amounts of explosive chemicals is beyond the scope of purpose behind a household. Dock storehous…
Yes, you're right. They deeply failed as a port authority and a warehouse. I was trying to explain why civilian city leadership might not have good intuition for why the storage issue would be a problem for them.
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NDP won fewer seats than Bloc Québécois in the last election. And it’s worth pointing out, I think, that the most prominent US politician who would be aligned with the NDP ideologically, Bernie Sanders, is actually an independent rather than a Democrat.
> NDP won fewer seats than Bloc Québécois That's mostly because Bloc Québécois is concentrated in a specific province, and often specific parts of that province, while the NDP's support is spread across all the provinces. It's the same in the UK, where the Lib Dems got triple the vote of the SNP, but less than a quarter of the seats.
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How much money would it really have cost? Worse case they conscript a dozen guys with plastic snow shovels to dump it onto the water. That would be very far from ideal, but a hell of a lot better than half the city blowing up. If they paid a dozen guys double the minimum wage for Lebanon and it took a whole month, that would be about $10,000.
They were probably not deciding between moving the AN or twiddling their thumbs. They were likely faced with a thousand other prospective things to do, many of which seemed more important than the AN. After all, the AN had been lying there without blowing up for years, so surely someone else is keeping tabs on that too. ---- What I'm saying is that it's easy in hindsight to see how stupid a decision was, but to the a…
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> you know that grant money is working hard here Am I the only one who finds this a little disturbing? I mean the thing is beautifully produced, no doubt, I don't want to take anything away from the skills of the people who made it. But the slickness moves it somehow from "scrappy bunch who gathered all the open data & collaboratively figured stuff out" into a different category. More like "someone with very deep poc…
If I’m not mistaken Forensic Architecture have a lot of connections to the art world (and architecture of course, it’s in the name of the project). Some of them teach at art schools (Goldsmiths etc.), they were nominated for the Turner Prize. I don’t know if it shows a shifting definition of what art is, but it’s interesting that this is the context that (in part) enables them to do their work. It also helps to expla…
But carefully weighing evidence and doubt isn't exactly the core idea of the art world. You will win few prizes by pointing out factual mistakes in others' work. (Not saying I know of any factual inaccuracies here, to be clear.)
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Facebook, willingly or not, is part of the same entities' sourcing and influencing activities. We know this as established fact. Both your side's and various multipolar others.
Snowden. Cambridge Analytica. Cozy Bear. Black Cube. "How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps" https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqm5x/us-military-location-... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25113117 )
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>I'm somewhat mystified as to who exactly it is that recklessly put the ammonium nitrate where it is Some underpaid and undereducated laborers. Unfortunately, this society did not have sufficiently developed governance to force the proper storage of ammonium nitrate. There were multiple warnings issued over the years, and multiple mandates by the judicial system, but the political will to spend the money to move it d…
How much money would it really have cost? Worse case they conscript a dozen guys with plastic snow shovels to dump it onto the water. That would be very far from ideal, but a hell of a lot better than half the city blowing up. If they paid a dozen guys double the minimum wage for Lebanon and it took a whole month, that would be about $10,000.
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From what I remember, the welders did their job and left, then the fire started later. Also, they never question why 2 tons of unclaimed ammonium nitrate was just sitting in the warehouse for 5-6 years. This stuff is expensive yet no one was trying to get it back. They never touched those controversial parts of the explosion: -jets -was the fire intentional? -what was it doing there to begin with
the welders did their job and left, then the fire started later. Are you familiar with tire fires? That's what the welders set off. These are not rapid combustive fires, they are slow burners that take some time to really get going. The fully expected result of welding setting off a tire fire is that it would smolder and get worse over a prolonged period of time (compared to an explosion) * they never question why 2…