A thread for general discussions of news items.
I’m seeing images of the levels of flooding in Houston. Absolutely harrowing. Hopefully everyone will be alright at the end. My absolutely eternal respect to the relentless helpers rescuing people, including several people who are using their own private means of transportation.
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I wanted to say something witty about all the dumb people in my neighborhood playing and swimming in the fire ant-debris-alligator-poo flood water, or the people who got their boat stuck trying to get down the street and had to push it back to their house. But, there’s water in my house now and I just want this disaster to be over.
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I am not in Florida or even North America, but this doesn’t seem good:
Irma is currently Category 5, strongest hurricane since 2007. Harvey was Category 4.
So Texas is under water, the west coast is on fire and the southeast is about to get blown to bits. Also FEMA is out of money.
This is pretty cool, and I guess this is the right place to post this?
"The Hamilton 68 dashboard provides a near real-time look at Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts online. The top of the page shows tweets from official Russian propaganda outlets in English, and a short post discussing the themes of the day. This is Russia’s overt messaging.
The content this network tweets reflects Russian messaging priorities, but that does not mean every name or link you see on the dashboard is pro-Russian. The network sometimes amplifies stories that Russia likes, or people with like-minded views but no formal connection to Russia. Importantly, the network also tweets about stories and people that Russia seeks to discredit or attack."
Everything from the name to the about page of this tickets every reactionary american cold war propaganda outlet box. It is almost like I opened one of my cold war history books and this group fell right out of it. I guess after seventy of years these people have it down to a science.
True, but it’s still kind of cool seeing this being tracked.
I do find it all devastating, but at the same time interesting seeing this all happen. When I first heard about Irma it was a 4 and a state of emergency was declared. Then it became a 5 and temporarily a 6, then back to 5 and half way through Florida it bumped down to a tropical storm. My prayers go out to those people in harm’s way, but you can’t help but be impressed by how nature can just screw everything up like this.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a category 6. Saffir–Simpson scale - Wikipedia
Well what do you think about that? Never knew that.
Last night (I live in Asia), my racist Australian coworker tried to tell me that A) Irma suddenly weakening like that was “God’s work” and B) Florida isn’t a peninsula (I’m from Florida). Most of the things I said in response were unkind, but I don’t care because he’s wrong (and also a racist).
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Like doesn’t he look at a map? or does he believe Peninsula are only a certain size.
What a fucking moron. Is there anything actionable by HR that he’s been doing, or are you stuck with the useless shitheap?
His argument was that because the top of Florida doesn’t protrude, Florida as a whole isn’t a peninsula. In hindsight, I think the word for what he’s describing is “island.”
He’s Chinese-Australian, so It’s not the people here in China he’s got a problem with, it’s white folk. He’s thinks that all white Americans have an inherent, genetic guilt about slavery (whether or not their ancestors had anything to do with it) and that all modern Germans must hate Jews because Hitler and the Nazis were a thing.
I don’t think there’s anything actionable, so I’m settling for avoiding / ignoring him.
So like, he’s saying 90% of Florida is a peninsula but not the northwestern-most part? I guess maybe that’s technically correct, but it’s dumb regardless.
Basically. And because of that 10%, Florida the State isn’t a peninsula.
It’s like saying that the Korean Peninsula isn’t a peninsula because Best Korea is attached to China.
This still isn’t the dumbest thing he’s said.
Ahhhhh. I’ve heard this sort of stuff before. Yeah, that’s shitty, but I doubt it’s actionable. It’s arguable if it’s even racist(well, the latter one is anti-semetic) but I’m not particularly well equipped for that argument, and I doubt HR would bother with it unless it caused serious distress for any coworkers or impacted profits either way.