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I've been reading links from Longform and am drawn to the stuff from Texas Monthly. Here is Wheel in the Sky, about a small town high school band and a Ferris wheel accident. The linked article is a bit vague on what actually happened, so here is a contemporary article that describes the accident part in detail. If that isn't enough Texas tragedy, the New London school explosion.
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Dec 31, 2014 23:14
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RC and Moon Pie posted:I've been reading links from Longform and am drawn to the stuff from Texas Monthly. drat, I looked up the "Larry Ed" from the article, wondering what became of him... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Combest His mother committed suicide, his sister died in the accident, after apparently becoming a nervous wreck during his school days he grows up to become a congressman, and then his daughter dies at 34. I feel awful for the man. RNG has a new favorite as of 12:33 on Jan 1, 2015 |
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Jan 1, 2015 12:28
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Herv posted:Unnerving, I can't believe that to this day, the president has just a few minutes to make this caliber of a decision. The best part of that wiki article is the story about Brezhnev "unexpectedly" driving away with Nixon in the passenger seat of a Lincoln Continental leaving the Secret Service behind. WTF?
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Jan 2, 2015 21:03
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Nixon mentions it in his memoirs and it got dramatised in a TV movie at some point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgIpVULKAEI
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Jan 2, 2015 23:08
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I'm fond of the idea that possibly at this very moment, the loving Coast Guard has the football.
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Jan 3, 2015 04:13
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Loomer posted:I'm fond of the idea that possibly at this very moment, the loving Coast Guard has the football. 
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Jan 3, 2015 04:26
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Herv posted:Unnerving, I can't believe that to this day, the president has just a few minutes to make this caliber of a decision. Want to know what one of the proposed alternatives by Roger Fisher to the nuclear football was? The guy would have a briefcase containing a knife. The man carrying the briefcase would have the launch code surgically implanted in a device near or under his heart. If the president wanted to get the code out, he'd have to take the knife and cut the guy open to get the launch codes, killing him in the process. This proposal was shot down because it was said that the president would be too traumatized by having to kill him to get the launch codes. (The hundreds of millions of deaths in nuclear fire and fallout, well, that's not so bad.)
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Jan 3, 2015 04:35
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Three-Phase posted:Want to know what one of the proposed alternatives by Roger Fisher to the nuclear football was? Put the president under, implant code under president's own bicep, so in order to launch nukes, president must cut codes out of own arm first  Scramble codes after change of administration, of course.
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Jan 3, 2015 04:44
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Three-Phase posted:Want to know what one of the proposed alternatives by Roger Fisher to the nuclear football was? That's an incredibly method and I heartily endorse it. If you're going to murder millions of people with atomic fire from thousand of miles away, then you should be non gender-specifically man enough to murder one with a knife.
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Jan 3, 2015 04:46
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Literally Kermit posted:Put the president under, implant code under president's own bicep, so in order to launch nukes, president must cut codes out of own arm first Yeah, right. Then one day he's flexing at some trailer park floozie, and BAM! No more Tajikistan. Well, that would have been a danger with Clinton. I am not sure who Obama flexes at. Maybe just Michelle?
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Jan 3, 2015 04:53
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Three-Phase posted:Want to know what one of the proposed alternatives by Roger Fisher to the nuclear football was? I get the point but.. What happens when the guy with the codes in his chest retires, or transfers to another position?  Anyways it turns out that running Mount Weather (aka The Special Facility, aka High Point, aka the Classified Location, aka the President's nuclear bunker) is mind numbingly normal.       Also, random nuclear war stuff.    
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Jan 3, 2015 05:00
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Screaming Idiot posted:That's an incredibly But like a lot of these  proposals to counter human nature, it doesn't really take into account the practicalities of the situation. The Soviets would have completed their first strike by the time the President got word, got the knife, and then cut the guy's heart out. And any implant small enough to not interfere with the person's life would be hard to find in that spurting arterial blood.Obviously it wasn't a serious proposal, but there's a metric ton of reasons to reject it other than the pat "the president can't kill one guy to his face" excuse given.
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Jan 3, 2015 05:43
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Random Stranger posted:But like a lot of these Fine, the nuclear football stays as it is, but using it activates a device in the aide's heart that kills him anyway.
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Jan 3, 2015 06:29
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WickedHate posted:Fine, the nuclear football stays as it is, but using it activates a device in the aide's heart that kills him anyway. I'd volunteer for that; I wouldn't want to survive to see what would be left of the world when the nukes were done being tossed around.
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Jan 3, 2015 06:31
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BattleMaster posted:I'd volunteer for that; I wouldn't want to survive to see what would be left of the world when the nukes were done being tossed around. Suit yourself. I'll be having the time of my life fighting mutant bears and raiding Survivo-Cubes for protein bars.
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Jan 3, 2015 06:41
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WickedHate posted:Fine, the nuclear football stays as it is, but using it activates a device in the aide's heart that kills him anyway. The president has a black box with a single button on the top. If he presses the button, the Soviet Union is destroyed by atomic hellfire but someone he doesn't know will die (who is not one of the millions incinerated by Soviet or American missiles).
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Jan 3, 2015 07:51
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At this point I think we just want the president to kill more then he already is. I suggest dropping the missile part and just making it a button that blows up the whole planet, and cuts off life support for any astronauts in space.
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Jan 3, 2015 07:58
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Self-destruct button.
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Jan 3, 2015 09:16
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Jack Gladney posted:The president has a black box with a single button on the top. If he presses the button, the Soviet Union is destroyed by atomic hellfire but someone he doesn't know will die (who is not one of the millions incinerated by Soviet or American missiles). I read once that the nuclear "football" was basically a mockup. A military spokesman said it was to reassure the president that he was in control.
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Jan 3, 2015 11:02
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Wasn't the original launch code something like 00000000?
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Jan 3, 2015 16:49
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Solice Kirsk posted:Wasn't the original launch code something like 00000000?
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Jan 3, 2015 17:05
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Solice Kirsk posted:Wasn't the original launch code something like 00000000? That is the code for the actual missile launch consoles themselves. Which to be fair, if someone actually got to one who wasn't authorized we already have a big problem.
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Jan 3, 2015 17:37
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muscles like this? posted:That is the code for the actual missile launch consoles themselves. Which to be fair, if someone actually got to one who wasn't authorized we already have a big problem. Good thing the people manning and heading your Nuclear Weapons are competent, trained, and definitely do not cheat on their tests or prop open silo doors with crowbars.
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Jan 3, 2015 21:08
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Everyone should read Command and Control and marvel at the fact that we haven't all died in a nuclear holocaust caused, not by any act of malevolence, but by simple incompetence.  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452798-command-and-control
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Jan 3, 2015 22:34
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Brainbread posted:Good thing the people manning and heading your Nuclear Weapons are competent, trained, and definitely do not cheat on their tests or prop open silo doors with crowbars. And yet I somehow still feel better about how the US handles its nuclear arsenal than how Russia does... Now I'm kind of curious about the horrifying things in the Chinese nuclear program. We know they have to happen just by human nature, but they must have had some spectacular problems given how China keeps finding new and better ways to shoot themselves in the foot.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:43
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Thoughts on the death of 30s film star Thelma Todd? She died at the age of 29, apparently of carbon monoxide poisoning in her garage. Turbulent private life. You may remember her from a couple of Laurel and Hardy films. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelma_Todd
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Jan 3, 2015 22:59
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Random Stranger posted:And yet I somehow still feel better about how the US handles its nuclear arsenal than how Russia does... And for true  level, imagine the North Korean nuclear program.
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Jan 3, 2015 23:13
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Hijo Del Helmsley posted:And for true Given the seismic data from their previous tests it's possible that they faked the tests with loads of conventional explosives buried underground and only killed a mass of slave labourers in the progress.
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Jan 4, 2015 03:02
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Random Stranger posted:But like a lot of these Look man, is it so wrong to want to see a crazed, blood-soaked President Obama screaming at a news camera with a knife in his hand yelling, "THIS LIFE TAKEN IS BUT THE FIRST OF MANY, AND WITH THIS MAN'S BLOOD I SHALL SUMMON PURE OBLITERATION!" I mean, hey, I don't want to see anyone get hurt, but if we're going to initiate a nuclear apocalypse let's at least get some badass Youtube clips out of it first.
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Jan 4, 2015 03:21
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Hijo Del Helmsley posted:And for true That one I don't have to imagine. There's a US diplomat who went to one of those six-party nuclear disarmament talks in North Korea and he tells a story about how in one meeting a North Korean representative sets a briefcase on the table, pops it open, and inside are two glass jars with some silver metal in it. Yes, they were carrying around plutonium in glass jars and a briefcase and brought it into negotiations. At least the health effects for the people in the room were relatively minor. Pu-239 has a half-life of over twenty thousand years so unless you build your house on it there's not a lot of threat from the radiation. OTOH, it is toxic beyond belief and I would wash my hands until they were raw after shaking hands with someone who touched the jar just because I wouldn't trust them to have the outside clean.
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Jan 4, 2015 03:32
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Random Stranger posted:That one I don't have to imagine. There's a US diplomat who went to one of those six-party nuclear disarmament talks in North Korea and he tells a story about how in one meeting a North Korean representative sets a briefcase on the table, pops it open, and inside are two glass jars with some silver metal in it. Yes, they were carrying around plutonium in glass jars and a briefcase and brought it into negotiations. M-M-Martin Random?
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Jan 4, 2015 03:44
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Last Chance posted:M-M-Martin Random? Only if in his actual identity he wrote a memoir and gave an interview on NPR about it.
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Jan 4, 2015 03:59
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Zombie Raptor posted:Like a lot of other posts, this isn't a Wiki--I couldn't find anything about this on there. However, I was going through Longform.org's 'Best of 2014' articles--many of which are really good, by the way--and I came across a story from Peru that's not exactly the most horrifying thing in the world by any means, and it's not something that would bother me as much as some of the other cases and posts in here, but in all, I would argue all day long that it's pretty loving unnerving and scary to think about. It's these stories about the dark potential of popular culture and subjective morality that really spook me. Her life ruined for a game show...
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Jan 4, 2015 05:52
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Thoughts on the death of 30s film star Thelma Todd? She died at the age of 29, apparently of carbon monoxide poisoning in her garage. Turbulent private life. You may remember her from a couple of Laurel and Hardy films. Here's a super write-up of the story. http://thesilentmovieblog.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/the-death-of-thelma-todd/  warning: there's a death photo of her. It isn't disgusting or anything; she's just slumped over.
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Jan 4, 2015 07:49
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Khazar-khum posted:Here's a super write-up of the story. Pro-click there. The whole blog is worth a look. The writer thinks that the only book on Thelma Todd is rubbish and suspect he might be right. Problem is, as all the participants and witnesses are dead now I doubt there's any way to solve the riddle. E: Worth going through the blog to see photos of catty letters from Louise Brooks, actress, model and uberbitch... Josef K. Sourdust has a new favorite as of 12:19 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 12:04
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Speaking of CO poisoning, I Googled my friends name way back when and this poo poo popped up.
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Jan 4, 2015 16:52
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How about a music break? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayhem_%28band%29 Some murders, a suicide, corpse necklaces, churches burning... (you'll need to click around, it's not all on this page)
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Jan 4, 2015 17:21
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a kitten posted:Everyone should read Command and Control and marvel at the fact that we haven't all died in a nuclear holocaust caused, not by any act of malevolence, but by simple incompetence. Rachel Maddow's "Drift" also has a chapter about the US's dilapidated nuclear arsenal.
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Jan 4, 2015 18:53
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Doctor Malaver posted:How about a music break? Varg Vikernes on his own is enough to make it into this thread. He is a very disturbing individual.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:32
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Brainbread posted:Good thing the people manning and heading your Nuclear Weapons are competent, trained, and definitely do not cheat on their tests or prop open silo doors with crowbars. To be fair, none were cheating because they were incompetent, everyone passed the retests. They cheated because the only way to get promoted out of the nuclear base in the middle of nowhere was to consistently get 100% on the tests, which is something they have fixed: http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/334501037/to-stop-cheating-nuclear-officers-ditch-the-grades
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Jan 5, 2015 07:44
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