100,000 tons of mass doesn't "bump" anything

I’ve been thinking about the bridge collapse in Baltimore that happened a couple days ago. I didn’t say anything before because I thought it was well covered in the news. However, there are a couple things about it that have caught my interest. First, when the ship lost power and steering they told people on shore immediately. That gave police enough time to stop traffic, but alas not enough time to warn the repair crew on the bridge. That’s why there are six dead and not dozens to hundreds. I wouldn’t want to be in the cars on the bridge approach, stopped by police, then feel the shudder and watch the bridge I’m waiting to cross suddenly disappear. There would be a mix of emotions of annoyance that I’d now have to take the long way home along with extreme thankfulness that the police car blocked my way. The second thing of interest is the collapse. I watched the video and that bridge went down in ten seconds. That video is, I’m sure, available online. There are now lots of photos of the ship with bridge wreckage across its nose (as in the photo at the top of this post). I realized the ship didn’t bump the bridge support, it destroyed it. There is no bridge support in the photo. That’s why the roadway collapsed. RustyRobot of the Daily Kos community revels in big ships like the Dali that crashed into the bridge. There is a previous photo of the Dali at the top of his post with a lot fewer shipping containers than it has now. This post includes a lot of stats on the ship and a description of the engine, which is a huge thing. Emily LeCoz and Trevor Hughes of USA Today reported on tugboats used to get the big ships into port. Well, not so much anymore because many big ones have their own maneuvering engines. In this case the tugs pulled away before the ship lost power and could have prevented the collapse. The article also talks about the huge size of these ships. The earliest container ships, the ones from the 1980s, could hold 4,300 containers. Modern ones can hold five times that, the largest holding 24,346 containers. The Dali, as loaded now, is estimated to weigh 100,000 tons. That amount of mass hitting a bridge support is going to destroy that support. The ship is now likely snagged on the underwater remains of the support. Today’s news said that two more of the bridge repair crew were recovered from the water. They were inside their truck. Four are still missing and authorities believe they and their vehicle is tangled in the bridge wreckage and can’t be recovered until the wreckage can be pulled up. The next step is to get a crane on a barge beside the Dali and begin to unload it. One is to arrive tonight. Some of the containers contain hazardous materials. That first link above (repeated here) is to a pundit roundup for Kos by Chitown Kev. He adds the closure of the Baltimore harbor to other world wide shipping hassles – low water in the Panama Canal, reducing throughput, and Houthis attacking ships heading for the Suez Canal. Then Kev quoted an article about the conspiracy theories popping up around the bridge collapse and the long list of culprits conspiracists are trying to blame. Then on to... Charles Blow of the New York Times discussed the continued attack on black women even after the departure of President Gay. The attacks are led by Christopher Rufo, “a right-wing provocateur and instigator.” Blow wrote:

This is, after all, part of Rufo’s plan, having announced, “Game on,” after helping to push out Gay. The veracity of the complaints doesn’t matter; the reputational harm — to the accused and to the idea of inclusion — is the goal. The narrative here is about innate and pervasive inferiority, ineptitude and fraudulence by women and minorities, specifically Black women in this case. And it must be understood that the subtext, the inverse, of minority inferiority is therefore white supremacy.

Kev also quoted Ken Chitwood writing for Sojourner’s reporting that evangelicals are looking for their pastors to preach sermons on the politics of immigration. There are a lot of verses about being kind to the foreigner and the traveler. There are sites that have gathered those appropriate verses together (Kev has a link to list for the King James Bible). Anton Troianovski and Milana Mazaeva of the NYT wrote that Putin has another problem on his hands after the concert hall attack. Though Putin blames Ukraine (without evidence) the attackers were from the predominantly Muslim Central Asian country of Tajikistan. That is stoking lots of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric online.

For Mr. Putin, the problem is magnified by the competing priorities of his war in Ukraine. Members of Muslim minority groups make up a significant share of the Russian soldiers fighting and dying. Migrants from Central Asia are providing much of the labor that keeps Russia’s economy running and its military supply chain humming. But many of the most fervent supporters of Mr. Putin’s invasion are Russian nationalists whose popular, pro-war blogs on the Telegram messaging app have brimmed with xenophobia in the days since the attack.

On to the cartoons in the comments. Clay Jones shows two elephants in a car falling from a broken bridge. One says, “If anyone asks... We voted for the infrastructure bill.” A cartoon from John Buss suggests a companion to the gold sneakers and nasty guy Bible is a nasty guy gold plated crucifix, which has his image instead of Jesus. One can supposedly find it at Trumpcrucifixation.com. One posted by Swankie Frankie shows the nasty guy in a prison yard with the caption “The wall that will ‘Make America Safe Again.’ ” I had written that I didn’t care who Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chose for his vice presidential candidate. I still don’t, though there are a couple things related to the choice that are worth mentioning. The first is by Mark Sumner of Kos. It seems Kennedy’s biggest criteria for his partner is that Nicole Shanahan is rich, as in billions rich. That’s important because a candidate can donate as much as they want from their personal funds, where other donors have limits. On the downside, she’s only 38 and she has no experience in government. Also, her billions, if she donates that much, won’t turn Kennedy into a winning candidate. He can only be a spoiler. The other thing was reported by Marisa Lagos of NPR. She played a clip from one of Shanahan’s speeches. One sentence sounds pretty good and has implied references to the tobacco industry and Big Oil’s reports on climate change.

We have to rid science of the corporate bias that contaminates it today.

Except the “corporate bias” she wants to eliminate is that vaccines are good. And...

LAGOS: “But by playing on people's doubts about institutions, she is sending a clear signal to those who already believe those conspiracies, says Yotam Ophir, a professor at the University at Buffalo who studies misinformation.” ... OPHIR: Conspiracy theorists always use a grain of truth, a kernel of truth, to kind of support their claims. That's what makes those stories so compelling. LAGOS: He says it's all part of a populist playbook in which people who already have power present themselves as outsiders who can fix things in order to gain more power.

Lagos also talked to Mike Madrid, who is a Republican Political Consultant (so keep some skepticism). Madrid said the national division isn’t so much right against left, but...

We have to start talking about establishment versus populism, outsiders versus insiders, people who are looking to just kind of break down institutions and use institutions as a target to say, this is what ails us.

And a populist could attract enough votes in swing states to swing the election. A while back, during a cold snap, I lamented my forsythia would not bloom. But the cold ended and today was sunny and pleasant – high about 50F (10C). And the forsythia has done all right. Not every one of the little blooms opened, but enough did that they look pretty decent. Here are a couple photos, first from my biggest shrub.

And from the shrub that I thought least likely to bloom this year.

Good enough! I now have my annual clouds of yellow out of most of my side and back windows. A few years ago I wrote (and I’m not digging up the post) that we should work hard to lessen the effects of climate change for the sake of chocolate. This half-minute report was on NPR this morning:

Good morning. I'm Debbie Elliott. Cocoa prices have hit all-time highs. Producers say poor crop yields in the face of climate change in West Africa, where 70% of the world's cocoa supply is grown, is to blame. Some chocolate makers are raising prices, while others are shrinking their candies. Even Easter can have a Grinch. It's MORNING EDITION.