Linky Friday: Blood and Guts
There’s a lot of blood, sweat, and guts between dreams and success. – Paul Bryant
Linky Friday: Blood and Guts
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz5Mx3a8kRw&w=560&h=315]
Blood:
[Bl1] The horrific “Ghost Ship” warehouse fire in Oakland that claimed the lives of 36 people might finally be getting some closure, as the two men responsible go to sentencing after pleading guilty.
[Bl2] A new variety of Asian blood-sucking tic has arrived and is doing exactly what it did there, spread disease and worry.
[Bl3] The death toll in the Lombak earthquake in Indonesia is up to 347, and expected to rise as aid is hard to deliever to some areas.
[Bl4] 66 shot, 12 killed, zero arrests in Chicago. That’s just last weekend.
[Bl5] Well, I guess it’s better than cookies. Red Cross offers Amazon gift cards for blood donations.
[Bl6] Like a Fitbit, but for your wrist and monitors your blood pressure.
[Bl7] This is how you write a headline, folks: “Think these movies are too gory? The Greek myths they’re based on are worse.”
[Bl8] The name is perhaps more well known for the long serving aircraft carrier named for it, but the Battle of Oriskany was one of the bloodiest of the American Revolution, in no small part to native forces that broke treaty and began fighting amongst themselves during it.
[Bl9] If you aren’t familiar with military tactics, specifically how good US joint operations have become at coordinating air-ground forces, this is a great play-by-play of what happened when Syrian troops and Russian mercenaries decided to test US forces in Syria. Spoiler alert: They got their ass handed to them.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLvIZmcH4Ps&w=560&h=315]
Guts
[Gu1] Heart health and gut health may be linked. A new study finds that people with better cardiovascular fitness have more of a certain type of bacteria in their gut.
[Gu2] More of this, please: LA County DA honors citizens for bravery in taking action while crimes where being committed.
[Gu3] The 36 minutes it took for a kitchen fire to consume the Grenfell Tower, kill 72, and raise all kinds of questions about housing, immigration, safety, and UK government involvement in all three also contain extraordinary tales of bravery.
[Gu4] 9 Aussies that participated in the Thai cave rescue are awarded bravery medals.
[Gu5] The London Bridge stabbing attack had it’s share of heroes, including 3 police officers and 5 civilians.
[Gu6] Inside the “guts” of a shredded star 2k lightyears away, and the rare molecule scientist think they may have found there.
[Gu7] The guts of leech bacteria, more specifically their ability to become almost instantly resistance to drugs, and what that might mean.
[Gu8] The brave Danish resistance fighter who saved Jews from the Nazis in WW2.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSQrGAQZM5Y&w=560&h=315]
Inside Out
[In1] What is the inside of a “Tier 3 Data Center” like? Something like this.
[In2] This is fascinating: “Tiny tunnels inside garnets appear to be the result of boring microorganisms”
[In3] Inside the Paul Manafort trial. Needless to say, security is pretty tight.
[In4] Tiny spider drone robots that one day might perform surgery inside the body.
[In5] More bad news from inside Tesla, as it’s NY solar facility is now coming under scrutiny.
[In6] Even after becoming public knowledge and a tourist attraction since 1992, the former Congressional Fall-out bunker under The Greenbriar Hotel still has it’s secrets. I’ve been there several times and it’s an amazing piece of history.
[In7] Another WV place, if you ever go inside the “quiet zone” around the Green Bank Observatory where there is no cell, radio, or WiFi signals. Which is ironic since WiFi was developed by radio astronomers.
[In8] Inside active shooter training in a rural elementary school.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViM34tafM44&w=560&h=315]
Recovery
[Re1] Analytics comes to behavioral science and recovery services, and it is needed in a field where the human toll isn’t just on the patients.
[Re2] Getting hit by lightening, but surviving it with a month in a coma and six months in hospital recovering.
[Re3] Celebrating 40 years of recovery on the Fond du Lac reservation.
[Re4] The long, slow recovery from Maria in Puerto Rico has brought the bright spot of small farms driving the agricultural recovery.
[Re5] Demi Lovato is recovering from an overdose, and it was paramedics with Narcan that saved her life, a story that has played out thousands of times for others.
Bl7: I always have to laugh when someone starts lamenting the gore of modern entertainment. It’s like they haven’t read The Illiad or The Odyssey. I mean there’s descriptions of one of the Greeks (Achilles, I think) spearing Trojans and flinging them to the ground like fisherman would do to fish. Or how Odysseus slaughters his wife’s suitors and the servants have to sweep the blood and limbs away.Report
Also who thought Avengers: Infinity War was gory? It wasn’t even particularly brutal by PG-13 standards.
Also also, why did they go to Greek mythology and Prometheus when it’s not like Loki wound up being bound by entrails with venom dripping into his eyes….Report
Yuuuuuuuuuup. The violence in the MCU is relatively sanitized.Report
CGI has really made the violence of the Marvel movies and others more like “cartoon violence” than realistic. It is so over the top that it loses any “gory” type of effect.Report
I once showed a friend of mine the Fritz Lang movie M. This friend is a slasher movie fan. His reaction to M was “Damn it Lee, this movie is real scary not fake scary.” Most audiences really don’t want real fear and real gore in their movies. They want something tamer, that won’t keep them up at night.Report
The movie From Dusk Till Dawn attempted some kind of commentary, I guess, by having Quentin Tarantino direct the first half and Robert Rodriguez direct the second half.
The first half involved (among other things) a hostage situation and, moments later, the hostage ends up getting killed (off camera) in a way that was pretty messed up. The entire first half of the movie seemed designed to make you feel queasy that you were watching this sort of thing for entertainment.
The second half was a pretty damn good vampire/splat movie, though.Report
I distinctly recall watching that movie in high school with a friend who hadn’t seen it. Her reaction to the first appearance of vampires was both confused and hilarious. Like ‘Wait is this serious? All the plot and tension lead up to vampires?!’Report
In other words, Tarantino’s half was typical Tarantino, and RR’s half was typical RR. And I love that movie.Report
In1: One time I was sent to an address in Las Vegas to pick up an empty trailer. Turns out it was a data center, at least partially still under construction. Contra this article the place was built like a fortress. Twenty foot high walls topped with razor wire, massive power lines feeding into its own substation, and serious security. I pulled up to the gate, the wrong one as it turned out but that was the address I was given, and announced myself at the callbox. Told the guy why I was there and he’s all like, you can’t just come in here and look around.
Okay??
Next thing I know a couple guys show up in a black Humvee, they’re all dressed in black and carrying sidearms, and proceed to give me the serious stink-eye, demanding ID and questioning what the hell I think I’m doing there.
Finally gets sorted out and they escort me to the back construction entrance. Another round of ID and sign in and the whole time I’ve got an escort dressed in black with a sidearm while I find the trailer, hook up, and finally leave.
I’ve made deliveries to prisons and military bases and the security was never like that.Report
There are a couple “data centers” like that in and around Vegas…Report
BL9: I am always impressed by how effective command & control links are at force multiplication. I am also always impressed by how much ammunition and ordinance a battle will consume before it ends. Between the ammo, the fuel, and the wear & tear on vehicles and equipment, that battle probably literally set on fire tens of millions of dollars.Report
You are right on both counts. The “burn rate” on expendables is incredible during a running fight like that. The Combat Controllers referenced in the article don’t get the press other special forces do, but they are among the most valuable. They will be getting more attention in two weeks when Chapman gets his posthumous and long overdue Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony on the 22nd.
I’d love to write up the whole Deir al-Zour thing but others more able have done so elsewhere. We told them over and over again, “Stay on the west bank of the Euphrates.” Wagner Group finally talked someone in the Russian chain of command to test that line, and you see what happened. You wont see that again, at least for a while. Russia is trying to project power and demo their weapons systems for sale, having their proxy troops get their clock cleaned is bad a bad look for both.Report
There is a series of SciFi books out there by Marko Kloos where the main character is a combat controller. It’s a lot more interesting than that sounds.Report
I’ll have to check that out.Report
Yeah, I read the first one of those and it was *very* good. Looking forward to the rest eventually.Report
B7: Freddie De Boer had a similar reaction to the limitations of superhero movies. He pointed out that the need to get a PG-13 rating keeps them from really exploring adult themes like sex to any degree. My argument is that most people don’t want Grimdark superhero movies. Its why most DC movies get lambasted. What people want is Late Silver/Early Bronze age movies. Serious but not too serious.Report
For the popcorn fare, sure. But Jessica Jones, Punisher, etc, those get pretty gory and dark.Report
GU6: A somewhat common theme in SciFi is how there are very interesting molecules and isotopes inside some of the more energetic stars out there, or among their remnants, or how the energy of a star can be used to create such things on demand (I recall a short story where one way the 1% gambled their money was by placing bets on the products and amounts created when a company exposed things to a given star).Report
Since spilling blood is a topic… there are a number of ongoing emergency blood shortages in various parts of the US. If you have ever considered donating, but been putting it off, now would be an excellent time to make the effort.Report
There are indeed, lots of stories on blood shortages looking at the links for this week. I was trying to find an overarching one about the constant blood shortages but did not find one, so if anyone has please do share. I regularly give blood myself and encourage everyone who can to do the same.Report
In4: I can tell Linky Friday is under new management. A few months ago, this article would have been tagged “superhero origin story” or “this will end badly”.Report
Hey now, we cannot take all of @trumwill’s ideas…Report
[Bl4] “shooters opened fire into a crowded street party, police said. Of the wounded who reported an age, the oldest was 62 and the youngest 13, police records show.”
A sad commentary on the news media that some mass shooting get more coverage than others.Report