~boing-boing-bbs-lat | Bookmarks (2767)

bbc.com Explosion at Iran coal mine kills at least 51 people At least 51 people are reported to have been killed after a gas leak sparked a blast in eastern Iran.

As long as the ship ends up somewhere where the ammonium nitrate is used to make fertiliser and not explosives… So not back to Kola. The market volume of ammonium nitrate for 2024 is expected to be just under 50,000,000 metric tons. There are lots of ships, trains and lorries en route with the stuff at any given time. It’s been produced and used...

Purplecat: This demonstrates nothing apart from some people in London having far too much money It reminded me of nothing as much as Robin William’s line about cocaine being god’s way of telling you you have too much money.

Note that the guns in Finland are almost entirely hunting weapons. Most of them are bolt-action rifles, .30 caliber for hunting moose (and other big game, including wild boars, bears and deer) or .22 caliber for small game. The rest are mostly shotguns for shooting hares, waterfowl and other gamebirds. There are some semi-automatic rifles and similar around, but they aren’t common. And handguns...

Mein Kampf was, after Hitler came to power, described as a book that everyone owned and nobody read. It’s infamous for being really badly written.

For decades, Midwestern farmers have devoted tens of millions of acres to just two crops, leaving the ground largely unprotected from wind and rain between harvest and planting. As a result, the loamy trove of topsoil that settlers found there has been pillaged. Using satellite imagery, a team of University of Massachusetts researchers has calculated that a third of the land in the present-day...

Mindysan33: and how while the middle and upper classes saw Springsteen as the authentic voice of the working man

I was quite struck last week by (linked in that article) what a rogue’s gallery of mass murder and genocide supporters found the paper too toxic to write for now: the Guardian – 15 Sep 24 Columnists quit Jewish Chronicle over Gaza stories based on ‘fabrications’ David Baddiel and Jonathan Freedland among those to resign over articles by former IDF soldier Elon Perry It’s...

Elon Musk fought the law. The law appears to have won the Guardian – 21 Sep 24 Elon Musk backs down in his fight with Brazilian judges to restore X The platform agrees to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, pays fines and takes down user accounts that the court had ordered removed this case will hopefully show others that its possible to stand...

technothrasher: poorly supported rambling nonsense. So that’s why TFG likes it so much. He could have written it himself. /s

Shuck: Life on Mars The ending to that series was so deeply unsatisfying to me, which was a shame because I really enjoyed that show in its short run. But, at least it was a definitive way to end the show.

boingboing: Is it worth it to buy an espresso that costs this much? Hoffman believes that this is a personal decision. Filling in the gaps that he is being too “polite” to express – no

Welp… the Guardian – 21 Sep 24 Keir Starmer now less popular than Rishi Sunak, poll suggests Opinium poll for the Observer finds a 45-point drop in the prime minister’s approval rating since he won the election

the Guardian – 21 Sep 24 A school banned Indigenous students from using their language. A century... A precursor to Duke University once stripped students of their culture. Cherokee teachers are leading the change

the Guardian – 21 Sep 24 ‘Absolutely hideous’: new London sculpture of Oscar Wilde condemned by his... Gloomy segmented head of famed playwright fails to convey his wit and brilliance, says Merlin Holland Ulp There are many fairly pedestrian sculptures of Wilde, by trying (too hard?) to get beyond the anodyne both of these do less than justice to the man – this is...

Brainspore: Aren’t they supposed to be running companies and writing policy and doing whatever it is that theoretically earns them all those billions of dollars? Perhaps he believes that the future of his companies and the attainment of his personal vision are tied to whoever ends up in the WH. His actions have proven that he despises environmental, labor, and safety regulations – “trivialities”...

gatto: and annapurna Although it seems like they were always a subsidiary of Annapurna (film), rather than there being any consolidation. gatto: aka, ai. Yeah, but not limited to generative AI (though there’s been a lot of talk about that lately). There is room for automation of various time intensive development tasks, with smarter tools. The generative AI stuff seems like a total dead...

the Guardian – 21 Sep 24 Ukraine strikes two Russian munition depots, says military Overnight attacks apparently show growing capability to strike targets deep inside Russia