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@beforeliteracytherewasdeez
Therapy is a trip. Today I examined specific reactions and ended up meeting baby me. I have dealt with teen me and child me but this one is new. Very deep, early wound. I can't even talk to baby me, I have to soothe myself because I'm barely even crawling.
Literally just a baby on the floor all swaddled.
Friendly reminder that we knew not to build on sandy soil SINCE THE FUCKING BIBLE
Matthew 7: 26-27
"But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Seeing Haaland makes me understand why that one Old English king got murdered by a viking who hid in his latrine
The British are not returning the Venezuelan gold, they can't even be trusted to return a fucking statue to a state-of-the-art Greek museum
(and I'm happy that they're not returning the gold. Not to Delcy. Please, not to Delcy)
many people ask 'how do i know my art is good enough to start a comic'. this is a very common mistake. you do not make a comic to make good art you make comics because its fun and looked yummy
Yeah, just do it ugly and it'll fix itself over time
"he would not fucking say that" but about injuries. he would not fucking recover that quickly. those scars would not fucking heal like that. he would not be fucking able bodied after that. he would not be fully lucid after that.
WHEN HE FALLS FROM A WHAT INTO THE WHAt
?????????
?????
WHAT IS GOING ON IN ACE ATTORNEY???
Nothing good.
... I had to find the clip
See, he does this because he's an action hero. If he were a drama hero, he'd step in a Lego and get into a coma
Okay, so, the son of Nicolás Maduro, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, decided it was a great idea to go to La Guaira, where many homes fell on people and became utterly unusable, and give away free kitchens in a manner reminiscent of what Chávez used to do.
Great. Beautiful. The kitchens will look deliciously amazing while sat next to the tents on the side of the road thar these people are currently living in. There are still living people trapped under the rubble, and instead of the heavy duty tools and the military help that their families are begging for, he brings kitchens.
So this Norwegian TV show (because of course they were covering this story, it was so tone-deaf that they needed to show the world about it), captured the moment in which a woman yelled at Nicolasito and his crew "I didn't lose a kitchen, I lost a daughter! All of you need to go to prison!"
Later, Nicolasito tells the newscasters "I can't imagine the pain she's going through" and, when asked about the buildings that were built by the government, he says "In this urbanization, yes (they were built by the government) but many other buildings in this state have fallen, and those were built by everyone"
(Everyone who was allied with the government and paid a large sum to obtain permissions to build in that area, ya know, as money laundering)
When the newscaster asks "why weren't the constructions good enough?" he says "I don't know, I'm not an architect" which is what I wish the people who commanded these buildings had actually said
I am pretty sure the regime changed the name of Vargas state because they didn't want it to be associated with the 1999 Vargas tragedy.
... Only for another, worse tragedy to befall the newly named La Guaira state.
The thing is, rumours about the buildings in La Guaira being brittle, and the soil not being able to hold up, had been a thing for years, even if it hadn't been published by the press. I remember visiting La Guaira when I still lived in the country, and my dad pointing at the buildings to go "when the slightest earthquake happens, these are all falling down"
I guess I didn't take it seriously. I mean, it was the middle of the crisis, and, as an adult, I had learned that my dad sometimes likes being absolutely certain about things he has no idea about, so I tuned him out.
But he tends to be right about the future. And I should have paid attention.
Edit: and why were these buildings brittle?? Because many of them were built poorly, without following rules and regulations despite being endorsed and approved by the State.
Al antojo de Hugo Chávez se lo tragó la tierra https://share.google/Y959rr0QA1cOnm2zK
Welp... If you only speak English, you can automatically translate the page.
This article is about the severe structural flaws present in one of the Misión Vivienda housing complexes: Urbanismo Hugo Chávez. Made by the Turkish company Summa and commissioned by Chávez himself, these buildings sank into the soft sandy ground before the earthquake even ended, blocking the only entrance many of them had. Windows were not particularly good, and the structures themselves were made of plexiglass, highly flammable foam rubber, and cage-like metal structures that were nearly impossible to escape. The article calls them "mice traps".
A couple of them actually caught on fire that very night, by the way.
I am now more than certain about the 2017 4.5 Caracas Earthquake (27 August) having been a double earthquake.
At first, I was not going to pay it any mind. It felt very faint, and I could hear the window rattling, but it did not seem super bad. And then it started shaking a lot more. I don't know if I would have been able to run in the 2026 earthquake the way I did in the 2017 one, because, while I don't get seasick very easily, I don't think I would have been prepared for the sudden circular motions that the second earthquake had.
In any case, I felt a twin earthquake in 2017.
Lately, I look at the people I work with, which is big, strong guys who can lift a full keg of beer no problem, and I think "I wish they were in Venezuela so we could all help with the rubble"
As a child, one of my traumas was that my family would tell me not to wander off. They'd be like "someone can steal you, and you have pretty eyes so they'd take them"
Turns out that, during the Vargas tragedy (which happened when I was a child), loads of children were misplaced, and ended up in human trafficking. So now I get it. I get why my parents were so stressed.
The issue is that it's happening again as a result of the earthquake, and worse. Children are being stolen, plucked out of the rubble alive or taken from refuges into a fate worse than death. Be on the lookout, and donate to Hogar Bambi and other ONGs.
People are now saying 80% of the buildings that fell down in Venezuela were made by private companies.
Okay.
Those companies are linked to Alex Saab, who was very much a friend of Chávez, and is directly responsible by several unfinished housing projects that are now peppered throughout the country.
There's also Constructora Summa, of Turkish origin. That one built Urbanismo Hugo Chávez, AKA, where most of the towers fell.
There's also a couple of issues to take into consideration:
1) The whole state has been a historical stronghold of the chavista regime. They voted Chávez every election. In a country and a government where you can get a motorcycle license by just paying a big enough sum, it makes sense that a Chávez-aligned company went to a Chávez-aligned state and built an expensive hotel in whatever place they wanted, because they could simply pay to waive permits. Then, they could just cut costs on construction, maintenance and repair of the buildings, selling the material, and pocket the money. Some of that material was... Well, the steel used to keep the buildings from crumbling.
2) The area in question is, visually, an excellent place to place a building. It has beautiful, scenic views of both the tropical mountains and the Caribbean beach... Beautiful place to die, really, because: the soil is sandy and soft, so buildings can't remain erect. When it rains too much, the water floods that entire place. And, oh, well... There's the VERY VIOLENT GEOLOGICAL FAULT UNDERNEATH IT. Ahem. Placing a building there is like selling poisoned candy. It's the kid's problem if they chose to eat it, right?
So then you ask, what about buildings that were older? Well.
I can give you the example of Conjunto Residencial Caribe, AKA, Residencias Caribe, AKA, a Z-shaped complex, consisting of four sections and two cylindrical stairwells that are now the only thing standing. You can easily recognize it in an aerial view of Caraballeda, at the entrance of Tanaguarena. My grandmother bought an apartment there, I think, in the 1980s. I'm not sure because she died of dementia last year and, based on what I remember from the times I visited as a child, the whole construction was very 1980s in how it was built.
(I'm also a little iffy about 1980s Venezuela because 1) we had our first dollar devaluation so we were kinda losing the oil bonanza momentum of the 1970s, and 2) the two main presidents of this period, Luis Herrera Campins and Jaime Lusinchi, were not very good, so some shortcuts may have been taken in the construction of Residencias Caribe. But not as many as during Chávez.)
During the Vargas tragedy (the 1999 tragedy, ya know, big flooding that killed many), the building sustained a lot of damage that was not properly repaired, specially the underground parking lots. Many people sold their apartments for cheap... These were meant to be holiday flats, after all. And nobody wanted to spend a holiday in an area that, they knew, would flood again. Grandma kept hers... I think her mind was already going during the 2000s (that proud, sharp woman hid her symptoms until it was too late), and she was running out of steam, so... there were other things to worry about. Then again, maybe she just wanted the family to still enjoy the apartment... And we did. Sometimes my uncle borrowed it, sometimes my parents and I... It was nice, even if it was always very dusty.
In any case, there were new floodings in 2008. Many new people bought the apartments for cheap, and Chávez gave them money to finish paying this or that place, including Residencias Caribe. The last time I was there, the pool was no longer usable, and neither was the elevator, because there simply was no money to repair any of it... Same with the parking lots. This kind of thing has to either come from the owner of the building or by the neighbors' association, but if the neighbors have no money, then... Where was the building owner? And where were government officials forcing the owner and the neighbors to repair this?
So, bottom line, the building was... Well, very damaged.
My family is happy that we never sold the apartment. I am happy that we also didn't rent it out, and that it was completely empty at the time it crumbled down. Seeing the families who are now digging through the rubble to retrieve dead bodies, I am happy that we didn't contribute to the death toll.
But even then, you can tell Residencias Caribe was better built than any of the buildings over at Urbanismo Hugo Chávez. Even if towers B and C fell down, Towers A and D are still almost walkable (meaning that people can, and have, walked down to the basements to search for victims), and the stairs, which is where most people ran towards, were left intact... I'm pretty sure that saved a few lives.
The buildings at Complejo Hugo Chávez crumbled down before anybody had a chance to understand what was happening. The entire structure broke down, and you can't understand what the building looked like before... People are having to guess which floor they're digging based on little pieces of the tiles. Other, newer buildings crumbled down almost as if they had fainted. Rescuers have described these buildings as "pancaked". OPP 26 was originally left standing, but its structural damage was so severe that it trapped several people inside, so rescuers had to wait until it crumbled down to finally do something. I saw video of a woman in the street begging for her family to be rescued, as the screams of those inside could still be heard.
Do you understand the difference?
People are now saying 80% of the buildings that fell down in Venezuela were made by private companies.
Okay.
Those companies are linked to Alex Saab, who was very much a friend of Chávez, and is directly responsible by several unfinished housing projects that are now peppered throughout the country.
There's also Constructora Summa, of Turkish origin. That one built Urbanismo Hugo Chávez, AKA, where most of the towers fell.
There's also a couple of issues to take into consideration:
1) The whole state has been a historical stronghold of the chavista regime. They voted Chávez every election. In a country and a government where you can get a motorcycle license by just paying a big enough sum, it makes sense that a Chávez-aligned company went to a Chávez-aligned state and built an expensive hotel in whatever place they wanted, because they could simply pay to waive permits. Then, they could just cut costs on construction, maintenance and repair of the buildings, selling the material, and pocket the money. Some of that material was... Well, the steel used to keep the buildings from crumbling.
2) The area in question is, visually, an excellent place to place a building. It has beautiful, scenic views of both the tropical mountains and the Caribbean beach... Beautiful place to die, really, because: the soil is sandy and soft, so buildings can't remain erect. When it rains too much, the water floods that entire place. And, oh, well... There's the VERY VIOLENT GEOLOGICAL FAULT UNDERNEATH IT. Ahem. Placing a building there is like selling poisoned candy. It's the kid's problem if they chose to eat it, right?
Edit: sorry, I got confused. Urbanismo Hugo Chávez is specifically the tiny blue houses. The towers are part of Misión Vivienda, but they were each their own thing with their own names. I must admit the overwhelming scale of this mess has left me a little bit in a haze.
Chronology of what my parents did on the day of the earthquake:
1) they wanted to go to a shopping mall downtown, but then decided to go home. This ended up being wise because they would have gotten their car stuck in the underground parking lot, while everyone desperately tried to leave
2) while in their apartment, the Google alert starts ringing, but they can't find their phones so they have no idea what it is. I scolded them for that when they told me.
3) the earthquake begins and they hid under the doorframe, hugging. They would have been double dead if the building had given in.
4) after it finished, they ran out to an open parking lot nearby, just in case the buildings collapsed. Wise, preventative.
5) While refusing to sleep in their building that night (which makes sense) , they slept at my grandma's house for a couple of days. I don't know how wise that is, because it's an older building and it is in need of some repair, but... Well, they did that.
Gustav Adolf Mossa (1883–1971), “The Satiated Siren”
oil on canvas, 1905 — source
