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Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

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Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#221
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural Ohio is my home, and I will one day come back if I have the money to make meaningful change amongst its downtrodden & underprivileged, or if they’ve managed to sort things for the better themselves. I’m currently living the life of an absolute pauper on the West Coast - I could have magnitudes of a much nicer living back home But, You can’t reason with unreasonable people, which is what the majority of rural Oh…

The federal conditions that bring about the rail lines as they are today have more voting influence from California than they do from Ohio.

The greater Los Angeles metro area is home to more than 20 million people.

We have 2 senators.

Please tell me the population of the entire MidWest & also how many senators they have.

Anyways, getting overtly political at this point- will excuse myself from further discussion.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#222
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One political side seems to think she's the spokesperson for the other political side.

Does she pick and choose what environmental causes are worthy of her attention?

No idea. Why do you think anyone here would have a deep understanding of how she operates?

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets, plotted against the general tone of the coverage, you'd probably come up with something resembling the news room agenda It's not like it's subtle. There have been hundreds of Chinese weather balloon stories in the past week. Have there been hundreds of stories about this? US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose mon…

WA state passed a law that says a cop cannot chase a suspect unless they committed a violent crime. This resulted in a surge of crimes where the suspect driver just flips off the police and drive off. Common crimes resulting from this: 1. catalytic converter thefts 2. thieves steal a car, ram it into a store, loot the store, drive off in another stolen car

Um if a person drives a car into an occupied structure with people is that not violent? If you drove into the police station the officers would say they feared for their lives and open fire.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#224

I explained to my sister that this was "Bhopal[1]" level bad and she didn't believe me because "If it was that bad the news would be covering it." Sigh. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

Let's compare- Bhopal: 2000-8000 estimated deaths within 2 weeks of disaster 2023 Ohio train derailment: 0 estimated deaths within 10 days of disaster I definitely see why it's appealing to exaggerate something that has been under-reported, and it's popular to do, but I don't think it's a winning strategy. I think the max number of people will listen if the severity of events is portrayed in context. People mistrust…

>2023 Ohio train derailment: 0 estimated deaths within 10 days of disaster

And if it causes cancer for four generations? No big deal? We're 10 days out and they just poisoned a region that has a history of it, again: https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-decepti...

It's weird to me that so many people in this thread are downplaying it. As someone with family niblings in Ohio and WV downstream from East Palestine, I'm very interested.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#225
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the people in Ohio wondering if they're going to be in a Flint-like situation, WTF these chemicals the average person has never heard of are, and what's going to be done about it are all interesting subjects. Alas, I haven't heard much about them from those knowledgeable enough to chime in on the subjects and I'd love to. As for balloons, they got boring last week, other than some airspace closures that only…

> the methods might be new, but not the fact of it It’s a diplomatic escalation with global geopolitical ramifications. If you have any business or personal exposure to China, or anything in Southeast Asia, that’s directly relevant in a way lives in Ohio, unfortunately, are not. Also, Ohio is out of immediate crisis. Now is the time for investigation and litigation. The train has derailed. Yet balloons may keep comin…

For that last part, some people are worried it might not be. I don't claim to know enough about it to say who is right, but the people there are understandably concerned about what to watch for and want more info. Some of that might be worrying too much, but hey, a train full of hazardous chemicals did just explode out there.

It's not like we can't point to a time when things were majorly screwed up in a way that didn't just go away quickly despite the news moving on (Flint says hello).

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#226
post #134

This is going to sound exceptionally crass… But as somebody who’s from the outright poorest part of Ohio, with generations of coal workers in the family… I’m sitting here, in the West Coast sun, laughing about this. I’ve also spent significant amounts of time in the general region of this disaster It’s awful. The situation is absolutely awful, that town & everything in a radius around it is genuinely fucked, and from…

I'm also from Appalachia. But just across the river in WV. > from what I’ve heard but not completely personally confirmed, it’s already contaminating downstream into the Ohio river. As someone who grew up in the town both The Devil We Know (Documentary on Netflix) and Dark Waters (loosely based on real events) are about - and the bizarre fillings to prove it - when it was happening to the people living there, this is…

>> Appalachia goes all the way up into NY state, homie.

Given the fact you’ve presumed I’m not able to make factual assertions about geographically bounded regions, I’m not going to give the effort to seriously read the rest of your reply.

Northern Ohio is not Appalachia, outside of one eastern most county.

Southern-Eastern Ohio mostly is.

Oh, yeah - if you’re right over the river, 20 years of my life is right next to you & I’ve had many a trip to the Parkersburg mall in my youth :)

Perhaps you know the route towards your river crossing I had to take that is a few strung out miles of completely crumbling mobile homes & the smell of natural gas/sulfur that stings your nostrils when rolling down your car windows.

IIRC there is even a small, many decades rusted over & tree vined carnival/amusement park type thing with a little rollercoaster that you pass on the way to the toll bridge. Can only imagine that was some day a fun place, now it stinks of gas & sulfur runoff.

Thankfully I was lucky enough to not grow up in that exact zone. Cannot imagine the cognitive deficits a childhood of breathing that in causes.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#227
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What media? I saw it on CNN today. Fox News's website has multiple stories about this from the last hour. The only place where the train stuff seems underrepresented is on some of the big subreddits (which are echo chambers already, so not surprising)

> today > last hour It happened a week and a half ago, so...

They have been covering it the entire time.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#228
To those in the meta talking about how people are talking about this: congratulations on being extremely online.

As of now:

https://www.cnn.com/ (ctrl-f 'ohio' - 0 results / 'trump' 2 results)

https://www.foxnews.com/ (ctrl-f 'ohio' - 1 result / 'trump' 2 results)

https://www.nytimes.com/ (ctrl-f 'ohio' - 0 results / 'trump' 4 results)

https://www.msnbc.com/ (ctrl-f 'ohio' - 2 results / 'trump' 9 results!)

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#229

I see a million tweets on Twitter about this story that "I haven't heard of."

Let's not forget the dozens of Reddit posts that have made it to the front page of /r/all

This might be hard to believe, some people don't use reddit or twitter! You bet your ass I still heard about balloons, though.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#230
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also add on that the rail workers tried to strike over the issues and Biden was like "lol nope" It's just capitalism being capitalism in the end For all of you who down vote: https://time.com/6238361/joe-biden-rail-strike-illegal/

> Biden decided the broader economy was a bigger priority than 100,000 freight rail workers having any paid sick leave in their next contract. After campaigning as the most pro-union presidential candidate in history, Biden signed into law a measure that makes a rail strike illegal. Forcing it like that is not capitalism.

The greatest trick capitalism ever pulled is convincing people that it's not a form of government.
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