Any French lip readers are invited to tell us what they were saying.

Jumping cholla to the left boob. Ouch.

This is the home of the ghost chile. It takes fire in the belly to pull heavy vehicles.

Good presentation of the big problem with wind and solar for electricity -- they're not predictable over time. For anything close to 100% renewables this has to be addressed. They're right in saying Li-ion is not going to cut it for a number of reasons. Will the solution proposed actually do the job? No idea here.

It's not clear to me what this says about our Nuclear Weapon Stockpile. What was in that inert dummy nosecone, and how did it do?

I found it on Earth 1.0, although it took longer than you might think.

Reminds me of this:

Assembler (for TI DSPs, embedded, no OS)
Scheme (a lisp)
C
Awk
would like to learn a logic programming language (eg Prolog), but have yet to get over starting inertia
will do some Fortran shortly for access to numerical libraries

*promote the memory of Toots Hibbert.

A little ambiguity can be enticing.

Luck, shmuck. I have an issue with the snatoms; how do you make a double or triple bond? It was simple with the old fashioned ball and spring things.

thanks,

Once you throw in Puerto Rico, you have to do Guam, and the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. I probably missed one; is Kwajalein a territory or just a 99 year lease?

Ammonimum nitrate does require a sensitizer in order to be explosive, however this stuff was intended for blasting, so it presumably already had something mixed in with it. The other requirement is a low explosive detonator, eg blasting caps. In this case it was probably a random accident, so not as efficient as a deliberate blasting setup.

The large, windowless square structure is grain storage. It blocked some of the blast but represents a large fraction of Lebanon's grain supply.

More details from https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/08/beirut-blast-wrap-up.html#more

-------------------------%<--------------------------------%<------------------------------ RFERL spoke with the captain of the ship that had unintentionally brought the ammonium nitrate to Lebanon. He confirms the ship's arrest. It also reports the cause of the incident:

Lebanon's LBCI-TV reported on August 5 that, according to preliminary information, the fire that set off the explosion was started accidentally by welders who were closing off a gap that allowed unauthorized entry into the warehouse.

LBCI said sparks from a welder's torch are thought to have ignited fireworks stored in a warehouse, which in turn detonated the nearby cargo of ammonium nitrate that had been unloaded from the MV Rhosus years earlier.

Independent experts say orange clouds that followed the massive blast on August 4 were likely from toxic nitrogen dioxide gas that is released after an explosion involving nitrates.

There is a short video of firefighters at the initial fire. Reportedly none survived when the fireworks fire set off the ammonium nitrate. Another video shows the initial fire caused by welding. It burns a while and then sets off fireworks in a first explosion. This takes the roof off the warehouse. A few minutes later the fireworks cause the huge explosion of the ammonium nitrate.

Reuters provides another detail:

The source said a fire had started at port warehouse 9 on Tuesday and spread to warehouse 12, where the ammonium nitrate was stored.

That the ammonium nitrate was stored for seven years was not the responsibility of the port management but was caused by some judicial quarrel:

The head of Beirut port and the head of customs both said on Wednesday that several letters were sent to the judiciary asking for the dangerous material be removed, but no action was taken.

Port General Manager Hassan Koraytem told OTV the material had been put in a warehouse on a court order, adding that they knew then the material was dangerous but “not to this degree”.

“We requested that it be re-exported but that did not happen. We leave it to the experts and those concerned to determine why,” Badri Daher, director general of Lebanese Customs, told broadcaster LBCI.

Two documents seen by Reuters showed Lebanese Customs had asked the judiciary in 2016 and 2017 to request that the “concerned maritime agency” re-export or approve the sale of the ammonium nitrate, which had been removed from cargo vessel Rhosus and deposited in warehouse 12, to ensure port safety.