Wednesday, June 30, 2021
1-18
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue's record tonight after seven days is one person rescued, eighteen bodies recovered. They are also on an 18-cadaver losing streak.
“A new way to humiliate the city”
That was the accurate characterization of the New York City Board of Elections in the Times editorial today. They are so proud, so boastful, New Yorkers, the Times, and this was humiliation. To the people and city that gave America and the world Donald Trump, many humiliating returns.
Donald Rumsfeld Dies at 88
A brilliant man, a two time Secretary of Defense, I admired him, I admire him still. Justly condemned by history for the Iraq war, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, his mammoth memoir justly ignored, "It's hard to remember but he was once the future," Kenneth Adelman said of Rumsfeld in 2006. Until he ruined it.
Bill Cosby Freed, Re-Trial Barred
The entertainer was convicted of sexual assault charges in 2018 and sentenced to three to ten years in prison.
Bruce Castor, the former District Attorney, had given testimony that he believed the evidence he had at the time insufficient to convict Cosby and told Cosby that he would not charge him; Cosby was then compelled by subpoena to give his deposition in a civil suit filed by Andrea Constand, the victim in the criminal case. Castor was defeated for reelection because of his declination to prosecute Cosby. His successor charged Cosby and obtained a conviction with the civil deposition as key evidence. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, rightly it seems to me, ruled that that was government foul play which denied Cosby his due process right to a fair trial.
Aside--Castor was the dope who defended 46-1 in his second impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate with an infamously discursive, nearly incoherent opening statement.
The elite rapid-response personnel at the New York City Board of Elections have met the enemy and he is them.
The BoE revealed that yesterday they had done a "test run" of their new-fangled electronic ranked vote counting machine, and then personnel had mixed the 135,000 test votes in with the actual. So yeah.
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
New York City Does Not Work
My goodness.
Now, in New York City the best and the brightest approved "ranked voting" in a a referendum in 2019. The Democratic mayoral primary, the winner of which is the next mayor, was the first city election to "implement" ranked voting. On primary night Eric Adams held a 8.4% lead over Maya Wiley. Kathryn Garcia was third with 19.5% of the vote. This morning the city Board of Elections ran their electronic ranked vote counting machine and published that Eric Adams’ lead had shrunk to a vanishingly small percentage--over Kathryn Garcia, the third place finisher in votes cast on primary day. Maya Wiley, second then, was third now. The hell. Then late this afternoon the BoE announced a "discrepancy" in the ranked vote counting machine and after that took the results published in the morning down. New and improved! ranked voting results will be issued "starting on June 30," tomorrow. Results are due in mid-July.
The BoE's first mention of the bird that hit the air pump was:
NYC Board of Elections
@BOENYC
4h
We are aware there is a discrepancy in the unofficial RCV round by round elimination report. We are working with our RCV technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred. We ask the public, elected officials and candidates to have patience.
6:20 PM · Jun 29, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
To which one follower tweeted a seminal point,
Adrian IAB
@adriaeln
Replying to
@BOENYC
My dude why didn’t you double check it before you posted it
6:21 PM · Jun 29, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
The board would not elaborate on the nature of the discrepancy; Valerie Vazquez-Diaz, a spokeswoman for the board, said only that it was related to the “difference in votes cast” between what was disclosed on primary night and on Tuesday.
And the air pump is almost sure to scatter bird feathers further when absentee ballots are counted.
Liberals, and I wave the yellow flag as vigorously as any, have a repetitive tendency to make things like clear binary choices and arithmetic more complicated than God intended them to be. Purple fingers, well, the very idea of Manhattanites walking around with purple fingers. If it's simple it's not worthy of consideration. Elections must be complex and if they're not we must complicate them up to New York City standards. They have done that and they look like bird brains.
Champlain Towers South
This is significant documentary addition to the tragedy by the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. This letter was sent by the condo association president in April. It is follow-up to the 2018 Morabito report and states plainly that the deterioration in either the columns or the concrete structual slab or both has worsened significantly since. $15M in repairs were estimated by Morabito, who was to do the repairs, in 2021. The condo association was on top of it, the letter is thorough, the problems are clearly identified for unit owners, the costs justified, and owners are forewarned that the deterioration could be greater when Morabito digs deep and the costs even greater. I would be surprised if anyone finds fault with the condo association. No one could have been aware that the "foundation," catchall for the fundamental support of the building, was two months away from giving way entirely at the time of this letter. Only when the building was completely unpeeled would that have been evident, and I thought when I read this that the building would have collapsed when Morabito began the work.
Miami-Dade Dire Miscue
"Either rain or noise or heat or pausing to pick up mementos or too many people or gloom of night will stay these rescuers from the swift completion of their appointed work."
..some of the world’s most elite rescue crews tunneled and dug, sometimes with their hands, in hopes of finding hints of the living. As the afternoon dragged on, it appeared their hopes would be dashed for another day.
Yeah, you haven't any "hints" for five days, it's been five days of dashing. Not that you have been dashing. But don't give up, I'm sure you can spread this out another five days or so.
But on occasion, the workers would pause, and bend down, and collect what amounted to small, fragile consolation prizes: the personal photos from the residents of the Champlain Towers South,
No, those are really not consolation prizes, this is not a yard sale, you should not be pausing to pick up mementos, inanimate objects, you should be fulfilling your job description of rescuing the animate. You're 1-11 in the Rescue /Recovery standings, you don't get a point for each memento you collect.
The pictures, and a few other personal effects that somehow managed to survive the collapse, were at least something.
No, they're not something, they're nothing. You have done nothing.
Castro, is that you? Yes! Maggie-it's-hard-on-Fire-Rescue-not-too-find-survivors-Castro. You look like a tough broad, Castro, but you're just a self-centered, unempathetic, blob of timid, bureaucratic inertia..
The careful effort to preserve at least some of the belongings of the people who had lived in the tower is one of many ways that rescue officials are acknowledging that the daunting, and sometimes harrowing, technical challenges they face are only part of their job.
Translated: That's our job but we don't have the right stuff to do it so we're picking through the ruins like a yard sale.
Some families have been frustrated, and even angry, with the slow pace of the rescue work. But Ms. Castro said she hoped the families’ ability to see the magnitude of the disaster might help them understand why it is so slow-going — and perhaps help them process a reality that can still feel like a nightmare.
No, it doesn't help them Castro, you miserable wretch. You and the other "elite" FIRE-RESCUE personnel are supposed to know how to do this. You don't and you're not.
“It’s one thing to sit somewhere and imagine what is happening, and it’s another thing to see it for yourself,” she said.
Do you have like dyslexic judgment where you just can't help get things backwards? "It's one thing to see it for yourself," like you and the rest of Miami-Dade Tired-Withdrew, what's "another thing is to sit somewhere and imagine what" the fuck the Tired-Withdrew are doing collecting mementos and posing for news photographs.
“For some of them, this might be as close as they get to their families ever again.”
It WILL be Castro, with you and your Retired-Adieu colleagues on the job.
Officials have explained to families that having too many rescuers on the pile could collapse the narrow voids beneath and further hamper rescue efforts.
Too many? Okay! Get rid of a wholle bunch of 'em, starting with Megaton Castro.
Thunderstorms have complicated the rescue effort, and more heavy rains blanketed the pile on Monday.
Okay, let's quickly tick them off: thunderstorms, heavy rains, fires, noises, dust, unstable structures, pausing for mementos, posing for photos, too many people, these are all matters of first impression for you and your colleagues, eh, Castro? You're "elite," so you had training in what, getting cats down out of trees?
Ray Jadallah, the assistant fire chief of operations for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, was adamant that officials had not made the grim decision to end search-and-rescue operations and focus on the uncovering of remains.
You're afraid of reality Jaballah. You're afraid of everything, especially FAILURE. You're terrified of going 1-161 for the season, a worse record over a full season that even the Miami "Marlins".
Can we agree, Jaballah, Castro, that when, not if, you go 1-161, in rescues to cadavers, that you will then acknowledge, unequivocally and completely, that you FAILED, and that because you FAILED, you will RESIGN and take your talents to a job less taxing like delivering Amazon packages? You're petrified because you KNOW you're going to go 1-161 and you can't face that, you don't have the GUTS to admit that you were just not up to the job.
What do you look like, Jaballah? I have you pictured in my mind as steroided out with a shaved head?
I'll be a sonabitch, he is. Like Megaton, he looks like a brave guy, maybe he wouldn't if he covered his pall with a Pizza Hut hat.
“Being there for people at their worst time is something that is just a calling,” [Castro] said.
You shouldn't have taken that call, Castro. You should have waited for a call from an adult website specializing in BBW.
Monday, June 28, 2021
11
Miami-Dade Dire Miscue is now 1-11 with 150 left to play.
City and state officials involved in the response gave several updates throughout the day on the mechanics of the rescue operation, reassuring families that there was still hope for survivors, however slim, and pushing back at those impatient with the pace of the response.
They'll be pushing back when they're 1-161.
10
“The search-and-rescue operation continues,” Mayor Daniella Levine Cava of Miami-Dade County said Monday. “Right now, our top priority is search and rescue.”
Sunday, June 27, 2021
RESIDENT SAW "HOLE" OPEN NEAR SWIMMING POOL RIGHT BEFORE CONDO COLLAPSE
Oh, this is huge!
...Immediately before the collapse, one of the residents saw a hole of sorts opening near the pool.
Michael Stratton said his wife, Cassie Stratton, who is missing, was on the phone with him and was looking out through the window of her fourth-floor unit when, she told him, the hole appeared. After that, the call cut off.
I did not see the back falling separate from the others in the surveillance video and had to look twice at the Times’ enhanced version to see it.
The investigation into what may be the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history has just begun, but experts who have examined video footage of the disaster outside Miami are focusing on a spot in the lowest part of the condominium complex — possibly in or below the underground parking garage — where an initial failure could have set off a structural avalanche.
…
Structural engineers were shocked that a building that had stood for decades would abruptly crumble on an otherwise unremarkable summer night.
But three years before the deadly collapse, a consultant found alarming evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage under the building.
…
From what can be seen in the video, part of the structure first slumped, seemingly falling vertically in one giant piece, as if the columns had failed beneath the southern edge of the center of the building, not far from the pool. Like a nightmarish avalanche, the failure quickly spread and brought down the entire center of the building. Seconds later, a large section to the east also toppled.
…
[Donald O.] Dusenberry, a consulting engineer who has investigated many structural collapses...whose impressions matched those of several other structural engineers who examined the video, said such a failure “would suggest a foundation-related matter — potentially corrosion or other damage at a lower level.” But he said it was not certain that corrosion was the culprit, and added that “you certainly can’t rule out a design or construction error that has survived for 40 years.”
…
One other clue that a problem started at the bottom of the building: Immediately before the collapse, one of the residents saw a hole of sorts opening near the pool.
Michael Stratton said his wife, Cassie Stratton, who is missing, was on the phone with him and was looking out through the window of her fourth-floor unit when, she told him, the hole appeared. After that, the call cut off.
...
Explanations for an initial failure at the bottom of the building could include a problem with the deep, reinforced concrete pilings on which the building sits — perhaps set off by an unknown void or a sinkhole below — which then compromised the lower columns. Or the steel reinforcing the columns in the parking garage or first few floors could have been so corroded that they somehow gave way on their own. Or the building itself could have been poorly designed, built with substandard concrete or steel — or simply with insufficient steel at critical points.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. The Times is missing a step. In vertically-ascending order it's, 1) the reinforced "concrete structural slab", singular, below the pool and driving entrance. That is the "foundation", it "supports the design load," that is, it is what the entire building sits on. It is to that foundation that Morabito Consultants found "major structural damage". And if a sinkhole developed beneath that then the foundation would buckle or give way all at once and that would bring down the entire structure all at once. 2) the reinforced concrete pilings which are set vertically in the horizontal concrete structural slab. It is these pilings that the Times has first. 3) the ground-level surfacing of the parking lot and pool.4) The reinforced concrete columns driven vertically into the parking lot surfacing. 5) vertical reinforced concrete columns that are the superstructure of the building and to which each of the twelve floors of the building, and the individidual unit floors are anchored.
…
Evan Bentz, a professor of structural engineering at the University of Toronto, said that the best evidence so far had come from the video and some simple reasoning — pointing a finger of suspicion at the supporting columns in the underground parking garage.
“The primary purpose of all the columns in the basement is to hold the structure up in the air,” he said. “Because the structure stopped being held up in the air, the simplest explanation is that the columns in the basement ceased to function.”
😂I love Prof. Bentz.
“The primary purpose of all the columns in the basement is to hold the structure up in the air,” he said. “Because the structure stopped being held up in the air, the simplest explanation is that the columns in the basement ceased to function.”
😂I love Prof. Bentz.
...
The structural fiber of the building was largely reinforced concrete. That means the floor slabs upon which apartments sat were made of concrete that was poured around horizontal lengths of rebar, or stout steel rods, that provided critical strength when the concrete dried. Likewise, the columns that held up the slabs were created by pouring concrete around vertical stretches of rebar.
The corrosion of the rebar in the slabs, as revealed in the 2018 report, was probably significant only if it occurred in places where the slabs joined with the columns, Mr. Dusenberry said. Corrosion there could have weakened the connection to the columns, potentially leading to a failure, he said.
Respectfully, but I realize arrogantly, the Times is confused. "The structural fiber of the building "was largely reinforced concrete." But the apartment "floor slabs", like the floor of the condo unit that my chair is sitting on which I am sitting in as I type this, has got nothing to do with this collapse. The Times is mixing their slabs. It is the foundational concrete structural slab that Morabito found had "major structural damage," not the goddamned floor slabs of the apartments!
The same idea holds for the reinforced concrete pilings — deeply buried, vertical supports on which the entire building sat…
Omg Quasis. What do the "deeply buried" "vertical" "pilings" sit on that "the entire building" sits on, sand? You know better than that you just stick sticks of pilings into sand to support a twelve story structure, no, the pilings sit on the concrete structural slab. Come on now, pull yourselves together.
…
Danger would emerge only if there had been something like a void or a sinkhole that had caused one or several piles to settle downward and left the others unchanged. That could have threatened the structure that sat atop those piles: columns in the underground parking garage.
...No. a "void" or "sinkhole" would cause the CONCRETE STRUCTURAL SLAB to buckle and crater and the pilings which rest on that would then "settle downward", with extreme prejudice.
…
Another possibility is improperly installed piles, [Dusenberry] said.
😂 Alright Quasis.
-Paragraph* written by Ernest Hemingway in February, 1923 for The Little Review. Re-published 1925 in In Our Time.
That's about sex. That's not about bullfighting.
He lay there and felt something and then her hand holding him and searching lower and he helped with his hands and then lay back in the dark and did not think at all and only felt the weight and the strangeness inside and she said, “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?
No.
-The Garden of Eden, Hemingway, 1946-1961, published posthumously 1986.
He lay there and felt something and then her hand holding him and searching lower and he helped with his hands and then lay back in the dark and did not think at all and only felt the weight and the strangeness inside and she said, “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?
No.
-The Garden of Eden, Hemingway, 1946-1961, published posthumously 1986.
The themes of sexual transference and gender identity blurring during sex were explicit in Eden. To the literary world, even to Hemingway watchers, they were a slap to the face. whisper whisper hemingway didn't want this published whisper whisper. Did we ever know Ernest Hemingway? (No.) The Villalta paragraph is one of the very earliest surviving literary efforts by Hemingway and right there, from as close to the beginning of his writerly life as we can get, are the themes of sexual transference and gender identity blurring. They were there until his death.
*Yes, paragraph. That is all there is. Hemingway had not written anything since December 2, 1922 when a valise containing all of Hemingway's earliest writing was stolen from Hadley Richardson Hemingway when she left it unattended on a train for just the time it took to get a bottle of water. Commissioned by Ezra Pound in February, 1923 Hemingway slowly wrote six new paragraphs. The Villalta was one of them.
9 Now Dead, Champlain Towers South*
*Updated.
...run[ning] out of time to find survivors four days after the accident.
...
...there were still more than 150 people unaccounted for...Officials continued to say Sunday morning that they remain hopeful in their search for survivors...
Unbelievable.
...
The search has been painstakingly slow, hampered at times by smoke from a fire beneath the rubble...
You are the Miami-Dade FIRE-RESCUE Department. You can't put out a fire and you haven't rescued anybody since Thursday.
Erika Benitez, the spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said that rescuers are moving as fast as they can and have not stopped working, even though their work looks slow. Rescue workers are taking a strategic approach, officials added, taking care to not shift the rubble, put excessive weight on it or cause another collapse.
Strategic approach, my ass. McClellan had a strategic approach during the Civil War, too: don't fight; He never had enough soldiers, always thought the enemy outnumbered him; too much danger in attacking; "hampered" by everything, oh, the obstacles. Like Francisco Schettino, the Costa Concordia "captain." "Do you realize it's dark out there?"
“Moving something that could cause an additional collapse would be negligent,” Ms. Benitez said in Spanish.
Bingo! The Miami-Dade Negligence-Avoidance Department. They are concerned about everything----their own safety, their own liability, the weather--except other people. It is beyond negligence, Benitez, for your department to dangle false hope in front of the noses of loved ones while you check with you legal department on liability.
The mission of search and rescue teams remains to look for survivors, but because of the magnitude of the disaster, Ms. Benitez said more deaths are inevitable.
“It takes a toll to work days on end and not find any life,” said Margarita Castro, a member of Florida’s Task Force 1 at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The "toll" on rescuers! Castro, you callous bitch, what about the toll on victims' loved ones? You are disgraceful--you, Benitez, Levine Cava, you're disgraceful.
12:30 p.m.:
Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced this morning. Yesterday the mayor tweeted the following:
Daniella Levine Cava
@MayorDaniella
·
Jun 26, 2021
The top priority of every agency on the ground remains the search and rescue operation and saving all the lives we can — with our teams working around the clock.
They have failed in saving lives. Since they pulled one boy from the debris Thursday they have saved no lives. They have recovered nine dead.
Some families frustrated by pace of search
and rescue efforts in Florida building collapse
(CNN)
A mother who said she is worried about her 26-year-old daughter who is missing after the partial building collapse in Surfside, Florida, desperately urged officials on Saturday to do more.
"I'm a mother. I don't know the best way to go about this. ... Imagine if your children were in there.”
I know you're doing everything you can, but it's not enough," she said in an emotional video posted to Instagram Saturday.
No, it's not enough.
The families of the dozens still unaccounted for following Thursday's partial collapse of a condo building a few miles north of Miami Beach are growing impatient, desperate for faster results from the search and rescue crews who have been digging through the rubble around the clock.
Miami-Dade Dire Miscue
Rescuers battle fire, noise and shifting steel and concrete as they scramble to save lives
(CNN)
“Noise”? Ho-ho-ho. Guys, that’s okay, forget about it, go home to your air conditioning, your easy chairs, your quiet living rooms. How about a nice office job?
People can survive a week or more beneath rubble, so despite being a day-and-a-half into the rescue efforts, the mission is still at an early stage, officials said.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava echoed Jadallah's concerns.
"This work is being done at extreme risk to these individuals," the mayor said. "Debris is falling on them as they do their work. We have structural engineers on site to assure that they will not be injured, but they are proceeding because they are so motivated."
Heroes, every one.
"(Crews are) willing to put themselves in harm's way to the point of going to the edge of the bridge, going to the edge of the dock and saying, 'I'm here and I'm going to stay here and help as much as I can until somebody forces me off or the consequences of what's going on force me off,'" Hernandez said. -Joe Hernandez, an urban search-and-rescue expert.
I'm here! You're there! I'm going to stay here! You're going to stay there! I'm not going there! I'll help from here!
Saturday, June 26, 2021
The Fire-Rescue Debacle in Miami-Dade
In less than four hours it will be three full days since Champlain Towers South collapsed. Fire-Rescue has moved too slowly. They are deterred by everything, rain, heat, smoke, fire that they can't find the source of, fear of instability and falling debris. Search and rescue is their job, braving danger is part of the job spec. I don't thank them for doing their jobs. I don't praise them for doing their jobs like this: timidly, tentatively, slooowly, adding up to callousness.
There are five dead at this writing and 156 missing. Fire-Rescue may yet pull a live one or two out of the rubble but their pace makes that less and less likely with each hour that passes. Families of the missing are in exasperated agony, with good reason. Fire-Rescue has kept them dangling on "hope." Let's call it what it is: forlorn hope, a cruel tease. Those 156 missing are dead, or will be dead from dehydration by the time Fire-Rescue delicately picks their way to them.
Spo
I didn’t know this. NBA.com polls GM’s before the start of each season on “who’s the best ___”. They’ve done this polling for nineteen years. On December 18, 2020 they published their poll before the start of the 2020/2021 season. Eighty-one percent of general managers responded:
A clean 🧹of all three categories.
It Looks Like We [Don't]* Have An Answer
*Updated. I am not a structural engineer. I have read the 2018 Morabito Consultants structural engineering report, which was the basis for the New York Times banner headline this morning. The report did not strike me as the smoking gun. Nor did it "Gregg Schlesinger, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contractor and attorney who handles structural failure cases, told NPR that the report doesn't show why the building collapsed..."
The report states,
"...the waterproofing below the Pool Deck & Entrance Drive as well as the planter waterproofing is beyond its useful life and therefore must all be completely removed and replaced. The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas." (emphases added)
Other experts:
"This collapse is a classic column failure. Which means the building itself was supported by a series of pillars. If the pillars fail, everything fails," said Kit Miyamoto, a structural engineer and California Seismic Safety Commission chairman.
A "classic"! No doubt, right Kit? Not the concrete structural slab that the columns rest on, the columns themselves, like in a controlled demo. Case solv-ed.
Or was it a general "sinking" feeling:
...a study, published last year...showed the collapsed condo -- unlike other buildings around it -- had been sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters per year between 1993 and 1999. The research was focused on the effects of subsidence, the gradual giving way or collapse of land, on coastal flooding hazards. It did not follow up on the status of the condo, so it is unclear whether the structure continued to sink at the pace described in the study.
But Shimon Wdowinski, a co-author of the study and professor with Florida International University's Institute of Environment, warned that his research did not provide a smoking gun.
...
Asked directly if the sinking -- or subsidence -- could have been a contributing factor to the collapse, Wdowinski said additional information was needed before rendering judgment.
"If everything moves downward at the same level, then not so much," but "if one part of the building moves with respect to the other, that could cause some tension and cracks," he told CNN.
You be the judge.
In an interview on Friday, Kobi Karp, a member of the American Institute of Architects, said that if the "settlement" of the build was "not equal," residents would have recognized the symptoms.
"People in the building would see cracks in their floors, the table would not be flat, things would roll off," Karp said. "You would see cracks in your walls. You look up in the ceiling and you see cracks in the ceiling."
Right? Kobi's right, the fucking thing, both "wings," just pancaked, Shimon's "moves downward at the same level".
The concrete structural slab theory is the most compelling to this expert. The concrete structural slab "support[s] the design load," i.e. of the whole structure, the whole thing. Since Morabito found "major structural damage" to the concrete structural slab it is logical that if the concrete structural slab buckled or caved all at once that the whole think would uniformly pancake. But it didn't. The wing to the video viewer's left remained intact. How would that be? And Morabito confined themselves to the pool deck and driving entrance, they didn't say the entire concrete structural slab had "major structural damage." And,
How do you explain that from a concrete structural slab pov? The collapse occurs as far away from the pool as it can be.
Finally, and most importantly: Any inspector who found that a building was unsafe for human occupancy has to report that out as well as notify the authorities so that residents can be evacuated and the building condemned. The report didn't give any indication that the structure was at risk of collapse.
8:52 a.m.
Engineer Warned of ‘Major Structural Damage’ at Florida Condo Complex
Residents present in Champlain Towers South describe what they heard and felt as an "earthquake," a "missile," a "bomb." And then you look at the surveillance footage again and again and again and it looks like one of those controlled demolitions, minus the explosive flashes. I mean, the building just goes right down, "pancakes." Obviously we know what a missile and a bomb demolishing a building looks like, we saw the flying bombs hit the Twin Towers on 9/11. Get that. And we have seen footage of earthquakes collapsing buildings. There was a World Series in the '80's in the Bay Area. Freeways collapsed. We know what that looks like: the structure, whatever it is, wobbles, and then boom. We don't see anything like any of those in the Surfside collapse. For a fraction of a second the structure is still as a building, and then the center portion begins to--not wobble--just collapse straight down. Lights start going off as electrical wires are severed and from the video angle the thing just goes straight down like you see in controlled demolitions (IT WAS NOT A CONTROLLED DEMOLITION). I understand from reading that the buildings collapsed west, but you don't see that. Then as the center collapses more and more you see it pull on the other building; it wobbles toward the pull in the center. Then the lights begin to go out in it and within two seconds it too collapses, again straight down, its collapse was not pulled toward the center.
Obviously, it is full 100 puzzling to an Idiot Blogger like me, I have never seen anything like it. But it is also full 100 baffling to engineers, architects--the experts--who watch the same video in gape-jawed amazement. One expert said what was additionally incomprehensible to him was that the building on the other side of the center was not pulled down, too. Why would that be? The--I guess the term is "wing"--why would the center wing pancake and drag the (viewer's) right wing down and not the left wing? It is the damnedest thing.
Friday, June 25, 2021
POJO set a goal of July 4 for 70% of adults to be at least partially vaccinated, right? Right. We're at 66% now, coming up on July 4. It's been known for some time he's going to fall short but do you know when NYT estimates he will hit 70%? December 14! Lol. Four and a half months behind schedule! Holy mackeral.
I don't know that it's cause and effect but ever since the New York Times did away with the name, not the concept, of an "Op Ed" page I have the sense that I have read more interesting "Guest Essays" as the product of non-staff opinion writers is now called. I have a vague recollection of reading an outstanding Guest Essay before last week, but I may be wrong. I know that I just read one, I Created ‘The X-Files.’ Here’s Why I’m Skeptical of the New U.F.O. Report.; and I thought I had just read another, Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling, which is the single best--by far--article I have ever read on the subject (It is long as hell, will take you half an hour to read; the length itself is a hallmark of "outside" (Quasi's columnists are on a word count.)). But, it turns out that Zeynep Tufekci, whose contributions I am unaware of having read previously, "is a contributing Opinion writer." Whatever the hell that means.
When Kathleen Kingsbury announced the retirement of Op Ed she assured readers that,
Times Opinion insists on a set of principles. We enforce rules for grammar and style. We demand certain standards of cogent argument, logical thought and compelling rhetoric. We require transparency about the identities of writers and their motives.
The other essay I read that I am sure was guest, was the abortion on aerobics last weekend, which flagrantly violated Kingsbury's "cogent argument" and "logical thought" criteria.
So maybe I am wrong. Maybe dispatching the nomenclature did not improve the Opinion page; the current hits and misses ledger reads 1-1-1 which my vague recollection would render 2-1-1 by any other name is still only "better than average."
Thursday, June 24, 2021
N.Y. State Court Suspends Giuliani From Practicing Law Over 2020 Vote Fraud Claims
In a 33-page decision released Thursday, a New York state appellate court said there was "uncontroverted evidence" that Giuliani "communicated demonstrably false and misleading statement to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump's failed effort at reelection in 2020.
"We conclude that respondent's conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law, pending further proceedings."
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...Giuliani has been suspended on an interim basis. He will be afforded an opportunity for a post-suspension hearing to challenge the decision.
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Giuliani is also facing legal peril in an unrelated matter. He's under federal investigation over potential violations of foreign lobbying laws related to his work tied to Ukraine. FBI agents searched his Manhattan apartment and office in April and seized his computers and cellphones as part of that investigation.
Miami Condos Collapse*#
~12:10 p.m.
In the last hour or two I have heard a stream of sirens and then my son sent me a video tweeted on twitter of collapsing buildings "1 hr ago." I believe that this is that. I don't think this is the partial collapse at 1:30 a.m. today.
*I see no new reports in the last couple of hours of additional collapsing, so this may be from 1:30 a.m. But the skies look partially lit. (?) Maybe surveillance cam lighting. The 1:30 a.m. event was universally described as a "partial collapse" or, as AP had it the collapse of "A Wing" of a condo. In this video, two buildings fall. It looks like the Twin Towers on 9/11, so I don't know.
11:54 a.m.
In the last hour or two I have heard a stream of sirens and then my son sent me a video tweeted on twitter of collapsing buildings "1 hr ago." I believe that this is that. I don't think this is the partial collapse at 1:30 a.m. today.
Condo Collapse Miami
"It looks like something in one of these Third World countries that just literally collapsed," said an eyewitness.
Yes, very similar.
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
The Little Hedge Fund Taking Down Big Oil
An activist investment firm won a shocking victory at Exxon Mobil.
Charlie Penner, architect of the campaign.
Michigan Republicans Debunk Voter Fraud Claims in Unsparing Report
A committee led by Michigan Republicans on Wednesday published an extraordinary debunking of voter fraud claims in the state, delivering a comprehensive rebuke to a litany of accusations about improprieties in the 2020 election and its aftermath.
The 55-page report, produced by a Michigan State Senate committee of three Republicans and one Democrat, is a systematic rebuttal to an array of false claims about the election from supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. The authors focus overwhelmingly on Michigan, but they also expose lies perpetuated about the vote-counting process in Georgia.
The report is unsparing in its criticism of those who have promoted false theories about the election. It debunks claims from Trump allies including Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow; Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former president’s lawyer; and Mr. Trump himself.
What is this ranked-voting crap? Yesterday, my new favorite Quasi, Gail Collins said in her weekly chat with Bret Stevens, "I'm not sure I can determine who the third best Comptroller would be." Stevens: "I'm not sure I know what a Comptroller does." 😂 If they had ranked voting in Miami Beach the close-to-the-ground, blue-haired ladies would take an hour to cast their ballot.
Democratic Socialist Upsets Incumbent Democratic Mayor of Buffalo
India Walton is her name, and this was her first political game. Uncannily similar to what AOC did when she won her seat in Congress. In her victory speech Ms. Walton said "It is the first of many. If you are in an elected office right now, you are being put on notice. We are coming."
Byron Brown had been mayor for four terms and was once head of the state Democratic party. “Mommy, I won. Mommy, I’m the mayor of Buffalo. Well, not until January, but, yeah," said India in a call. She will be, in January yeah, the first Socialist to lead a major American city since 1960.
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Pistonians Get Top Pick; Borelando Two in Top Eight
Detroit had three picks in the 2020 draft, I still haven't heard of any of them, but two were in the mid and upper teens. Hard to get a real good player picking there. The Magicians however got the fifth and eighth picks in this year's draft on July 29. The draft this year is supposed to be four deep, which is deep depth. Orlando gonna get two real goo ballplayers this year. OKC has three picks but the highest is fifth, and Cows have three, real good 'un at two but then the 23rd and 24th. Orlando won the draft lottery, imo.
On Russia
There is a Russian photographic style. There is the common contrast technique, beauty amid ruin, innocence and brutalism. In the Russian case, what else are they going to do? Their women are beautiful and their landscape harsh and ugly. Here are some examples of that:
Life goes on. Leningrad, 1947. Gotta do the laundry.
“Hey man, how’s tricks?” Jesus. Leningrad, 1978.
A rocket shell children’s playground slide. Grim.
Contrasts: black-and-white background, color foreground, brutal war-gay, airy lightness. Chechnya, 1978.
'The Repose of Venus,' Domenichino, 17th century. There are dozens of near identical Western art historical paintings where the exhibitionist theme is as explicit as here, and as it is in the 2012 Nurhatim.
Here is another excellent example of the Classical influence on Russian erotica.
It's indecipherable to me.
And that symbolism, whatever it connotes, had legs. Gawd, did it have legs. A different, unknown, photographer uses it here--the same, or nearly the same, wall mural. Given the common mural and the other artifacts in the background--I believe the doilies are intended as vaginal symbols--I think this is Russian..
This trick is a persistent theme of contemporary Russian erotica. As will be shown presently, there is always something on, or appearing to be on, the female head. I do not know what this is about. The next four photos are all by the same Russian photographer.
Adding a frowning man’s face in a tree and a vulture. The man-tree looks sad as the old husband does in the wittol-themed painting.
Dilating on pornographer's intent and effect on consumers, the question immediately arises, and for its immediate rise suggests an answer, "Is this serious?" The pornographer intentionally chose the sex act to occur before a portrait of Vladimir Putin. In the third photograph the male looks directly at the Putin portrait. Is it conceivable that either pornographer or his consumers would find the Putin portrait enhancing erotic appeal? No, that is not conceivable. So is it camp? Political satire? Whimsy? I don't know.
It's de riguer in modern porn for there be the "money shot," and ejaculate the male does in Russian fuckography, but he ejaculates with all the emotion of getting his shoes shined. It is uncanny. Is the money shot faked? It very well could be. His erection is not fake but could be chemically induced by vitamin V. Both of those are possible, but the universe of possibilities necessarily includes that Russian porn performers, maybe real Russian couples having sex, go through the motions. It is my sense, only that, that there is a deliberate withholding of emotion in sex between many Russians, that to have passionate, sweaty sex and an epileptic-like spasm on ejaculation is not acceptable. Rather, their thing is to be cold and business-like.
Ah! Are you kidding me? My favorite. Could there be a more bleak tableau? Softened by three feminine figures. Stunning photograph.
Oh! Party of Lenin. Leningrad, 1980
Sometimes the contrast is in the people themselves, rather than person-background. Moscow, 1947. Russian women can be cold-looking, man. Cold women, cold background. Dancing is supposed to be like "fun," are you guys having fun? "No, we're just surviving." Ah, carry on.
The women are often cold in contemporary Russian porn also.
Hey baby, you wanna...
This and the next are recent, 2014 abouts.
Beauty and dystopia. Recent photo.
Leningrad, 1978. Not much different-looking from Leningrad 1947!
They make greater use of background objects, either as props or symbols. Contemporary Russian erotic art, painting and photography, has a more direct lineage to Western art history than does contemporary Western erotic photography.
Elvis-on-velvet talent but a classic motif. Bikulov Nurhatim. 'Nymph', circa 2012
'The Brunette Odalisque,' Boucher, 1743
‘Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros’ Greece circa 100 B.C.
Incomprehensibly, this sculpture was interpreted by some as Aphrodite fighting off a rape by Pan. Did people not see the coquettish smile on Aphrodite’s face, the full smile on Eros’, the playful way Aphrodite holds her sandal?
This suggestive, mildly erotic Russian photo from ~2000 is precisely the same body language.
Dense backgrounds, charged with erotic symbolism, were common in Western painting from the Renaissance forward. Those meanings were not revealed contemporaneously and many have been lost. It is clear as day that there is erotic symbolism in historical Western paintings but what precisely the artist intended, and what his patron understood, is often the subject of, at best, informed speculation now. Often times the background objects serve as visual puns, or there is a clearly intentional duet going on between the background and primary objects.
'Ulysses and Penelope' Primaticcio.
Background handjob 'Ulysses and Penelope' Primaticcio
What's suggestive in that one?
1) She's barefoot. And you did not do that.
2) Her torch is a heart.
Her heart's on fire.
Not a dense background but a dramatic background. I believe Russian.
Russian. Dense background. Yeah, the Cross as a window pane but look at the next one.
Russian. This is an extraordinary set. An apparent contrapuntal painting duet. I looked closely. The woman in the painting is not painting but opening a door lock. Appearances are everything in art though. It works, it's brilliant. And that's just one level.
She does not approve.
And then a third voyeur enters the picture. SENSATIONAL photography.
Russian. I have no idea what these portraits are doing here.
None of the following are Russian. They are Western paintings the themes and tropes of which were appropriated by contemporary Russian photographers and pornographers.
This painting is an elaborate tableau. In the foreground, a Bedouin has “harvested the steppe” (which is an actual "Greater Russia" historical occurrence, more on that below) and brought to his tent a blonde captive. In the background, the cherub and the pup dog disapprove.Multiple meanings. Irony.
Internal mockery occurs occasionally in Russian porn photography.
Cruel.
Now, what is going on here?
The fur thing that each woman holds is a humongous vulva.
As is this husband's sleeve.
There is yet more going on in this painting. Like the old man's wife is nude. Like the new young lover is in the scene already feeling up the wife's tits. Most importantly the young wife is handing a pair of eyeglasses to her old husband. "You can watch, dear". The old man makes a circle with his right hand fingers and points with his left forefinger. "When I married her her pussy small and tight. Now it hang like wizard sleeve."
Eye glasses, looking glasses, and mirrors were common tropes in classical Western painting.
And in porn, Russian and non.
Russian.
You see that Jewish guy’s painting in all of this pornographer’s work. I have no idea what that’s about, but it is deliberate. The women do not have to be photographed with the old Jew leering on.
Non-Russian.
Van Eyck pointing out that the Arnolfini couple got it backwards: marriage then pregnancy.
This is Russian, Nikolay Bakharev, circa 2014. I don't know for sure what is intended by the stag symbolism, Diana The Huntress and the Stag? "Stag" films? In the English-speaking world antlers are often code for cuckoldry, but it does not appear to be here. Whatever meaning Bakharev intended it, he deliberately posed the models in front of the mural.
Here, the photographer immediately above has the model’s head posed like she has antlers.
That’s an angry bull moose mounted head.
Yet, against the same background three different models are posed to wear that bull’s horns.
Pan as female. Do not know provenance.
Antlers, antlers everywhere. I don't think any Russian.
Now abstracting away from antlers but with same intent. All Russian:
Look at that! Spectacular.
That is excellent. The model's hair color matches that of the branches. Very creative.
I do not believe that this is Russian....No, I take that back, I do believe it's Russian. This is the same photographer who has models pose beneath the leering Jew painting.
'Red Star Over Blonde'? It could be Russian, I can't make an informed guess, but again, the point is it's deliberate on the photographer's part.
That's a painting or lithograph or something. It's lovely.
This is bizarre and I'm very sure that it is not Russian.
I am very sure that these are Russian.
Can you believe that?
She looks into it.
I have not seen Putin porn previously. However, there is something else going on in the Putin porn that is a recurring theme of some Russian porn, the uninvolvement of the performers. They don't look at each other.
It's like they're not there. There used to be a website, "Grim Russian Porn," or something very close. That was descriptively accurate of the genre. The models, male and female, were unattractive, some totally unsightly, and this was the distinctive characteristic: the male and female didn't look at each other during the sex act. They were stoic, cold, like the people dancing in the Moscow 1947 photograph; like the performers in the Putin porn. It completely failed as erotica because the viewer was distracted by the actors' disinterestedness. Even in the rare case of two highly attractive fucking, as the two in Putin porn are young and attractive, you were still looking in distractedly at their faces, or at fucking Putin's portrait! I have never seen anything like it. Okay, so you're fucking a repulsive person, you're still fucking! You want to do something else? How come your dick's hard then? Why's her pussy take you without discomfort?
An Anglo couple demonstrating the proper way to fuck.
But what about the consumer of this Russian pornography? Presumably the pornographer wants to make rubles off his work, the more rubles the better. Dollars would be nice. Maybe Russian porn consumers eat this stuff up. Writing as one Westerner, and I believe this sentiment is shared, rather than lighting my fire, I'm blogging about how strange and grim and unerotic this is. With all that in mind, look at these actors below.
They were, in my opinion, and that of their world, the most beautiful race of women ever to walk the earth. And the Russians raped, disemboweled, and exterminated them in the Circassian Genocide of 1763-1864.
Since this is a post on Russia of course it has to end in the most unimaginably barbaric way.
Being raped is not cheating on your sig-oth: All in favor. Aye.
Sure, that's rape, kidnapping and rape.
Every summer in the 18th and 19th centuries the Ottoman empire raided Ukraine and Russia in an operation they called "harvesting the steppe." They kidnapped the most beautiful children, boys and girls, and rode away with them into captivity to the imperial harem in Constantinople.Those not chosen for the harem were sold at auction to other Muslim Turks. White slave auctions were still occurring in Constantinople into the early 20th century. (It was the only time in known history where boys had a higher value than girls.)
The girls most desired in these raids were ethnic Circassian. For decades into the 20th century Circassian beauty creams were popular in the West, including the United States. The Circassian beauty ideal was composed of: 1) porcelain white skin 2) dark hair 3) light eyes 4) symmetrical facial structure 5) elancee figures 6) long, elegant fingers, 7) "regular-formed" feet, i.e. high insteps and descending toe length 8) elegant carriage and 9) "high spiritedness".
