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Comments
Also this;
Happened before the more recent thing, which like... did they just assume all the male couples were celibate...?
namibia has fallen
In vaguely related news, Kyle Rittenhouse a.k.a. that kid with the gun has been declared a deep-cover transgender plant by the trumptards in less than a day after he criticized Trump over his gun control policy.
lol
Republican vice prez candidate JD Vance nurses a secret passion for Magic: The Gathering, says his wife
Glenn, I need your expertise to figure out what decks he'd play.
Also, Ukraine went YOLO and invaded Russia. Fun to see stuff's getting back to interesting. I should probably mention Bangladeshi YOLO as well, but being honest, I'm too distanced from that to follow the events closely.
The media fanfare over a 'nobel laureate' taking over from Sheikh Hasina is pretty hilarious considering how that went the last time.
Also the whole thing with supporting the student movement doesn't super sit well with me or maybe this is jist one of those cases where neither side is good but the other side had grip on power for 15+ years.
Like, they're what people who don't like you will be trying to prove you are.
Of course, the other kind of "Jews of today" are the Jews of today.
jeeeeeeerk
(this is hilarious)
Okay inasmuch as a/b/c about the actual issues, I find some sites which I frequent like PITT, which focuses on the parent's feelings over the issue, could have easily been a thing if the internet was as big in the early 1990s when parents claimed somewhat (somewhat!) similar things about their children's sexuality.
There's a lot of "woe is me, parent" and "it's clearly everybody else's fault".
https://thevitalcenter.com/spring-2024/the-making-of-the-pmc
https://joshuatait.substack.com/p/managers-and-elites
I am glad that phase is over.
Former finance minister of Greece, and also former economist-in-residence at Valve (yes the game company).
dafuq.jpg
Someone cut down a tree to get a better view of the harbour and they threw this up in response.
Also, you guys have a hurricane season or something right now, ain't it? What do you do when there's a hurricane anyway, hunker down in the basement bunker? Like, I imagine it's a tad bit more destructive (and lasting longer) than some heavy rain and wind, and I don't see all the folks in the area fleeing for the high ground, so I don't have a clear picture.
There is also no high ground. Florida is a very flat place, topographically. Technically there is higher ground, but at most we're talking about elevation changes of at most about 20 feet over many miles. Furthermore, a lot of the land is actually former marshland that's been filled in so it's artificially elevated, and interspersed with a variety of lakes and canals.
That said, people do seek shelter inland, to avoid storm surge, which is where the storm blows ocean water onto the land; this is more prevalent in coastal areas, obviously. Locations inland are also slightly higher overall, but there's more variation in elevation between things like swales intentionally created for channeling rainwater away from buildings/roadways than there is overall elevation, which means that shelters might be set up using individual buildings (e.g. school buildings) that are built higher. Furthermore, some older neighborhoods weren't built to have as good drainage as newer neighborhoods, and those older neighborhoods usually also happen to be somewhat closer to the coast on average. Freshwater flooding from rain events (even those outside of tropical storms) can more severely impact those older neighborhoods. (Remember that even if the land is overall flat in elevation, there's still a lot of stuff on it -- buildings, roadway features, plants, etc. -- so it takes time to drain away.) Newer neighborhoods tend to have more "micro-features" for water management -- more elevation contrasts, more artificial lakes to hold water, houses higher above the water, houses higher above roadways, roadways higher above swales, shopping center parking lots intentionally designed to temporarily hold excess water from rainstorms, etc. -- which makes things a little better.
So Tropical storms and hurricanes mainly cause damage through a combination of three impacts: storm surge, heavy rain, and high winds (which are usually described as sustained winds vs. wind gusts). They also spawn thunderstorms that can have occasional tornadoes. Ironically, it's the water that causes the most severe impacts nowadays. There was a major hurricane in 1992, Hurricane Andrew (because they all get human names per tradition lasting several decades now), which severely impacted Miami and resulted in a lot of changes to local building codes. As a result, most houses built since then -- at least here in southeast Florida -- tend to be built to withstand pretty high winds, and storm shutters and/or impact-resistant glass and doors (a.k.a. "storm windows" and "storm doors") tend to be pretty much standard on newer buildings here. (Not in central Florida, though, which I found out when I checked out some real estate there.)
With very intense winds, you'll still see some damage to structures, but it's less likely to be catastrophic to the point of fully flattening the landscape. That said, high winds can still do serious damage to structures, particularly poorly-built and poorly-maintained ones or ones at high risk (such as those that are also subjected to the wave action of storm surge), as well as knock down power lines and trees (including trees onto power lines), and blow various other things around, doing lighter but still significant damage such as wrecking vehicles, but the biggest impacts, particularly inland, tend to be power outages and impassable roads, as well as tons of random debris. (Trees that stand alone, particularly if they're over-trimmed or non-native species not accustomed to the wind, tend to fare worse in high winds. Compare trees in dense stands in more natural settings, which are more able to withstand them.)
Power outages and flooding are directly related to people being short on food as well as having no way to refrigerate food, not to mention people wanting their air conditioning. (Some people use their own gas-powered generators, which occasionally leads to carbon monoxide poisoning due to improper ventilation.) Municipal water supply can be disrupted as well. So it's common to see people stocking up on things like less-perishable foods, gasoline (sigh, so many vehicles are still gas-powered), and bottled water (sigh, people keep buying water in single-use plastic bottles rather ta just reusing their own water bottles with tap water which they can filter/boil to their hearts' content).
If you live in a place that is lower-lying or near the coast, you will probably be asked to evacuate to a shelter. I've had the fortune of never needing to do this, since we've always lived far enough inland. In our case what we usually do is some of the following, depending on the expected severity of the storm (they're nice in that there's a huge lead-time of warning):
1. bring any loose stuff in our yard (e.g. furniture, potted plants, other decorations) indoors (including in the garage).
2. fill drinking containers full of potable water, and fill buckets full of water for flushing toilets. buy food if needed; try to use up perishable foods beforehand or prepare to eat them up earlier if impacts are anticipate to be severe. (we do also have a small butane grill in case we need it.) if the power goes out, try to reduce how many times we open the refrigerator.
3. maybe also freeze some water in containers, to give extra bulk in our freezer. in case the power goes out we wanna help keep things cool.
4. for any windows/doors that aren't specifically designed to be more impact-resistant, put up metal shutters or wooden boards to cover them.
5. fill up cars on gasoline/electricity (as applicable) and also get necessary medication beforehand.
6. stay home through the storm, and maybe beyond, depending on local impacts, being prepared for potential outages to power and maybe even drinking water.
7. gradually clean up debris (like downed branches) after the storm passes. (N.B. don't do this while the eye is passing through you, if you're (un)lucky enough to have that happen.)
We're pretty lucky that we don't live near the coast or in older structures or more flood-prone neighborhoods. There are people out there who will drive home piles of sandbags just to try to keep water from getting into their house, and sometimes that still doesn't prevent it. And then there are people who live on barrier islands who either must evacuate or face extended periods of time with zero access to emergency services and who may be left for dead by rescuers due to being in places too hazardous to rescue from.
FWIW, you might think that taller buildings tend to get hit harder by the wind, but ironically it's actually smaller structures that tend to be hit hardest. This likely has something to do with (1) damage caused by debris rather than simply the wind as well as (2) wood-frame (i.e. most single-family homes) vs. concrete construction (more typical for mid-rises and high-rises), plus some other fluid-dynamics factors that I can't confidently speak about. Still, though, nothing is ultimately absolutely invulnerable, and it's all about preparation, in long-term design and short-term behavior/usage.
Though the most severe impacts you get if you look up pictures tend to be wind compounded by storm surge. So you have both wind and water pushing against structures and wrecking them.
Meanwhile, as construction standards and techniques have improved, the acute damage of a high-wind event has tended to become a little less severe in comparison to water-based impacts via flooding and storm surge, which can get people into trouble and keep causing people problems long after the wind has died down.
I know the thing about hurricanes ripping rooftops off, something I never noticed until it came up during a fluid mechanics exam. But I'm guessing the biggest factor is simply not being made out of wood.
There are two approaches to engineering: one is get the best polymerized metal ceramics you can get and math the shizzle out of it, the other is grab another piece and nail it down hard so it won't come off.
you can also use nails with sufficiently wide headsi feel like i should actually look up various informative sources for hurricane damage reports and summarize/present them to y'all but i feel lazy and i've been busy with work and gaming and other stuff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Milton#Florida_2
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/hurricane-milton-2024/
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/florida-hurricane-cleanup-intensifies-as-800k-remain-without-power-desantis/3443760/
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/determination-to-rebuild-follows-floridas-hurricanes/3443427/
https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-tornadoes-florida-deaths-climate-change-oceans-f197c258022c189c6ce8bc59dc88223e
https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2024-10-10-hurricane-milton-live-updates-landfall-aftermath-thursday
Major hurricane impacts affect coastal areas.
Various locations were flooded. Though, the worst impacts of the storm for inland areas came in the form of tornadoes. There were many tornadoes. These aren't just the bulk winds from the hurricane; these are separate, individualized twister events.
And it's been a few days but as of 3pm US eastern time on Sunday (today), over 800,000 customers remained without power. Power outages have a less visible impact than wind-blown debris and flooding, but of course these are still major impacts.
Thankfully, in modern times, loss of life has been minimized due to strong early-warning systems and good public education about storm impacts and preventative measures to protect people.
The same can't be said about property damage though -- lots of stuff is still built along the coast and on barrier islands and it gets hit hard. And even inland, there's flooding and wind impacts (primarily but not limited to tornadoes).
Also remember there are some "second-order effects". For example, that last story I linked (I edited in some more links) mentions someone who died due to cardiac arrest because first-responders couldn't reach them in time during the storm. And it's not that uncommon for people to become injured while preparing for a storm, or while cleaning up the debris, or while trying to survive after a storm; sometimes it's because they were stupid about something but sometimes it can be just bad luck.