Nobody Cares: PRS

[Tirellia]

The Chief Minister of Gibraltar should extend an invitation.

 

[Free]

Another one.

Trump appointee Merritt Corrigan fired from USAID amid anti-LGBTQ tweets

Merritt Corrigan, a deputy White House liaison for the U.S. Agency for International Development, was fired amid ranting about LGBTQ issues on Twitter. She claimed she had been targeted for her "Christian beliefs."

www.cnbc.com

• Corrigan, who had only held her post for several months, wrote on Twitter that she had been targeted for her “Christian beliefs.”
• Corrigan had written on Twitter on Monday, before her termination was announced, “For too long, I’ve remained silent as the media has attacked me for my Christian beliefs, which are shared by the majority of Americans. Let me [be] clear: Gay marriage isn’t marriage. Men aren’t women. US-funded Tunisian LGBT soap operas aren’t America First.”
• Corrigan had written on Twitter on Monday, before her termination was announced, “For too long, I’ve remained silent as the media has attacked me for my Christian beliefs, which are shared by the majority of Americans. Let me [be] clear: Gay marriage isn’t marriage. Men aren’t women. US-funded Tunisian LGBT soap operas aren’t America First.”
• She said she would be appearing at a press conference with two notorious, conservative conspiracy theory peddlers, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who have a pattern of making outrageous claims unsupported by credible evidence.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free

Paywalls are justified, even though they are annoying. It costs money to produce good writing, to run a website, to license photographs. A lot of money, if you want quality. Asking people for a fee to access content is therefore very reasonable. You don’t expect to get a print subscription to the newspaper gratis, why would a website be different? I try not to grumble about having to pay for online content, because I run a magazine and I know how difficult it is to pay writers what they deserve.

But let us also notice something: the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New Republic, New York, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and the London Times all have paywalls. Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, InfoWars: free! You want “Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets,” “The Moral Case Against Mask Mandates And Other COVID Restrictions,” or an article suggesting the National Institutes of Health has admitted 5G phones cause coronavirus—they’re yours. You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions, the reasons contact tracing is failing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s undercutting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the website a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall. This doesn’t mean the paywall shouldn’t be there. But it does mean that it costs time and money to access a lot of true and important information, while a lot of bullshit is completely free.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Desert Dust-Up by jollyjack on DeviantArt

A manly, pulp adventure scene.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free

 

[Innula Zenovka]

How did Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump earn as much as £120m last year?

You would think advising the president of the US was a full-time job. Yet Donald’s daughter and son-in-law found time for a few side hustles, writes Arwa Mahdawi

www.theguardian.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Holy smoke guys this explosion just a bit ago in Beirut

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Massive explosion in Beirut's harbor district

Beirut, Lebanon (CNN) - A massive explosion ripped through the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday, injuring many people and blowing out windows in buildings across the city.

The source of the explosion was initially believed to be a major fire at a warehouse for firecrackers near the port in Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.

The blast sent up a huge mushroom cloud-like shockwave and damaged buildings miles from the port, including the headquarters of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and CNN's bureau in downtown Beirut.

A red cloud hung over the city in the wake of the explosion as firefighting teams rushed to the scene to try to put out the fire. Large numbers of people were wounded in the blast, authorities said, and footage from the scene captured the injured staggering through streets in the capital.

 

[Free]

Firecracker warehouse?

 

[Free]

2,750 tons of chemicals detonated in Beirut blast

The president of Lebanon has said that 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate were detonated in massive blasts in Beirut that have killed at least 100 people and injured more than 4,000.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Lebanon's Head of General Security says the blast was caused by a fire in a depot of highly explosive material, including Sodium nitrate, at Beirut's port. He said that material was confiscated from a ship months ago and stored there.

 

[bubblesort]

Here's a video where you can see the mushroom cloud it made:

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Grandma Bates]

It sounds like there was a rather large load of ammonium nitrate that was confiscated some time ago, and it has been impounded since that time. A similar event happened in Cypress in 2011. People do not learn.


The speculation about this is of course running into the absurd.


Some very rough calculations about the size of the blast are already starting to filter out:

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Scary:

 

[Free]

Rep. Marshall Wins Kansas GOP Primary Over Kobach

Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) won the Senate GOP primary in Kansas on Tuesday night, fighting back former Kansas Secretary of...

talkingpointsmemo.com

Makes a Dem pickup here a little harder, since Marshall is a bit of an unknown while Kobach was pure radioactive.

 

[Free]

God. Here's a photo of aftermath in Beirut, with a previous satellite map image of the location.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Secret footage shows Uighur man’s detention inside Chinese prison

Merdan Ghappar’s texts and videos reveal shocking conditions in Xinjiang internment camps

www.theguardian.com

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

God. Here's a photo of aftermath in Beirut, with a previous satellite map image of the location.

WTF are those silos made out of? Mithril?

 

[bubblesort]

It sounds like there was a rather large load of ammonium nitrate that was confiscated some time ago, and it has been impounded since that time. A similar event happened in Cypress in 2011. People do not learn.


The speculation about this is of course running into the absurd.


Some very rough calculations about the size of the blast are already starting to filter out:

Here's a more detailed explanation of how the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate got there.

Basically, it's been there since a ship brought it in 2013, and the owner abandoned it when the ship failed an inspection. They put the ammonium nitrate in the warehouse in 2015, where it sat until it blew. Ship and crew abandonment has been an issue since the early days of sea faring. I know some historical economists have worked out the mathematics of when to shanghai and when to maroon sailors in the 19th century, to maximize share values. It still happens today, apparently. There should really be better policies for handling situations like this.