Beirut Port Explosion

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Orionblamblam said:
GTX said:
This horrible accident has killed at least 145 people and injured 5,000 by the last count I saw. Can we please stop treating it as a source of amusement and joking.
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No.

All of life is misery and pain, crushing hopelessness topped off by either an instant snuffing out or months of illness-plagued agony, finally ending in oblivion. Find amusement where and when you can in the grim gap between darkness and darkness.

It took about ten milliseconds before people started coming up with jokes about the Corona virus, and that has perhaps killed dozens of millions (some sketchy evidence of China shoveling 20 million or so dead under the rug). Humor is how humans get by.

Besides: the humor here isn't "ha ha stooopid dead people" or "ha ha I'm glad this happened" humor.
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I usually try to stay away from side discussions that could flair up, but I have to side with Scott on this. With the health and other issues I've been dealing with these last few years, I've been under a lot of stress. The coverage of this event has only added to that stress but I do not want to ignore it. Therefore, I limit the sources I look to in keeping up with the developments and I've included this group as a source because the discussion has been level headed. Having said that. The joking between Scott and trose213 gave me some welcome relief from that tension. Thanks to both of you. Having said that, I hope the jokes and ensuing debate do not grow to take our attention away from this tragic event.

Edit added: Scott quoted me just as I caught my error in my original comment. As you can see here, I have corrected that error.
 
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stealthflanker said:
That's kind of poor storage there... those black things..probably years worth of dust.
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And being in a port, that dust could be anything. Not just "dirt," but "fine grain dust," because, huh, looky there, nearby grain silos. Good thing *that* stuff never catches fire. Or perhaps soot.

And not only are the bags of AN near windows, they're near open and busted windows. Dunno what those bags are made of, but most forms of thin plastic like that don't take kindly to years of sun exposure. Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of those bags had simply crumbled to dust and flakes.
 
The Artist said:
The joking between Scott and GTX gave me some welcome relief from that tension. Thanks to both of you. Having said that, I hope the jokes and ensuing debate do not grow to take our attention away from this tragic event.
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Agreed. Seems to me that "non mean spirited" black humor should be acceptable... in reasonable quantities. Especially now that "Beirut just exploded" is less the Biggest News Of The Day and more "another symptom of, yup, it's 2020."
 
Here's the ship that got booted up onto the shore (from HERE):

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I'm no shipologist, but I suspect it might not be recoverable.
 
Given that the entire topic is off-topic, I guess that you can't really go off-topic on this, but given a number of people were offended by the black humour earlier, lets try to stick to the facts about explosion and its aftermath.
 
It's actually a number higher than one, but only one posted publicly.
 
GTX said:
overscan (PaulMM) said:
To feel insulted by "Yes, only a complete 'effing moron might suggest this was a deliberate attack" implied you believe this was a deliberate attack, and hence GTX is calling you a moron. So either that is what you are saying, or it isn't. If it isn't then GTX's comment doesn't apply to you, and noone is calling you a moron. Perhaps you could clearly explain what you did mean?

I broadly agree with Greg's post, though I wouldn't have been as blunt - the chance of this being a deliberate attack is close to zero, and suggesting that it was is only a relatively short leap from the braindead conspiracy loons yelling "ITS A MUSHROOM CLOUD OMG NUKEZ #PIZZAGATE #QANON".
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Just to be clear, my comment was not directed at anyone on this forum but rather someone else who suggested it was an attack.
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Ummm...

Lebanon president: Beirut explosion either due to negligence or missile, bomb
 
The poor Lebanese have enough to deal with. I hope we swiftly and efficiently moderate any posts calling President Aoun a "complete effing moron" or "braindead conspiracy loon". Sounds anti-Semitic.
 
I'm very sorry for the Lebanese people but their president's primary motive is covering his own ass. He's already explained how it wasn't his fault.

The people in Beirut are pretty angry at their government right now.
 
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I thought we were all seeing who could pretend to be most offended on behalf of others. I just wanted to keep up.
 
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Twenty years ago a fireworks depot exploded in the Dutch town of Enschede, killing 23, injuring over 1000. Relatively small compared to the Beirut explosion. In twenty years I haven't heard a single joke about that event, although I guess, in private conversations, jokes were made.

This is not a private conversation.

This could be a cultural thing, but I am going to write it anyway. Anybody caught joking in the media in the days following that explosion would have been drawn and quartered if that punishment had survived in the Dutch penal code. For being tone deaf.
 
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Perhaps it is MY perception of what happens here but my belief is that we do have a private conversation here. A bunch of people with similar interests but differing points of view. Having worked in military and civil health fields I can attest to the fact that black humour is sometimes what keeps us sane and able to function. It is a tragedy that people are killed in this and other similar events but we are different in our manner of dealing with it and need to understand that.

Humour is a very human thing so we should not lose it for fear of offending others, perhaps we just need to be less sensitive to 'stuff' that happens.
 
Arjen said:
Anybody caught joking in the media in the days following that explosion would have been drawn and quartered if that punishment had survived in the Dutch penal code.
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In some seriousness... every day is in "the days following" some disaster or other. When are people to be allowed to laugh when every day is filled with a world full of tragedies? Keep in mind, here we're not laughing at the tragedy or making light of it in any way... but we're being threatened, albeit faintly, with a death sentence for having a bit of a laugh about some buildings needing a new coat of paint and a ᛋᚺᛁᛏload of screen doors (that there is a cultural reference, ya Philistines).
 
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Again, tone deaf
 
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