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boomer-mythology-destroyer

doona-baes

#mood today

led-lite

The convergence

archaeologistproblems

What the gold rush means to most people: Prospectors! Dusty mine cars on tracks in the wild west! Gold nuggets!

What the gold rush means to an archaeologist: Hmm, where on this 100-acre plot of land covered in contaminated mine tailings do I think these clowns might have buried barrels full of literal cyanide?

archaeologistproblems

How dare you leave this nugget hiding in the notes!

garden-eel-draws

Why were they burying barrels of cyanide? How and why would you even compile enough cyanide to fill multiple barrels???

archaeologistproblems

My friend let me introduce you to the terrifying process of cyanidation, wherein finely crushed ore containing traces of gold is made into a slurry by adding water, then transferred into vats known as “slime separators,” where potassium cyanide is then added to leach the gold into a liquid. Slaked lime is used to prevent the cyanide from going into full Murder Mode as hydrogen cyanide. The gold is then separated from the cyanide through one of a series of processes that I’m not really qualified to explain, but I think there are a few websites that talk about them if you want to google them.

But the key point here: from what I can tell, cyanide has been the main method of getting gold out of the ground for the last 120 years. (Yes, this process is still used today.) Before this technology came along, instead a thin coating of mercury was spread onto a copper plate, and the ore was allowed to wash over it. The gold stuck to the mercury, creating an amalgam, and then the amalgam was scraped off the plate and the mercury was boiled off (urk) to leave the gold behind.

And when processing mills shut down historically, why bother to dispose of your leftover deadly chemicals properly, when you can just bury them in your local tailings pile, which is already contaminated with mercury and arsenic? The known case of this happening in my local area was revealed through a bloom of “Prussian Blue” (ferro cyanide) on the surface of the tailings. Luckily, this is a fairly stable form of cyanide. Unluckily, geologists are crazier than archaeologists and they went ahead and dug a sample test unit right next to it, even knowing what it was, because science.

When I said to myself, “I’ll be an industrial archaeologist. It’ll be cool,” I did not foresee the terrifying knowledge it would unleash upon me.

garden-eel-draws

I’m from Goldrush Country and I didn’t know this. All the gold-mining-related historical attractions around here are about good old-fashioned panning and pick-axes. Now I’m incredibly glad I’ve never had any urge to go explore the suspiciously colorful hills left in the wake of various mining operations.

archaeologistproblems

Eek! Please don’t play in tailings piles and outflows folks, they are Bad News. “Oh but it’s lovely sand we want to take our ATVs out on it and let our kids build sandcastles” NO. DO NOT.

garden-eel-draws

Reblogging because some desert-dwellers might not know this. Yes, those pretty hills are probably within ATV driving distance of Amargosa, Ocotillo, Buttercup, Superstition or whatever other recreational area you might be camped out at, but rainbow-colored dirt is usually rainbow-colored for toxic reasons!

archaeologistproblems

Absolutely! And bear in mind too, not all tailings are brightly coloured - the ones in my area are just light grey. “Sand in spots where sand isn’t common” is sometimes the only warning sign.

archaeologistproblems

I’m reviving this post because I’m doing up a Health & Safety protocol for digging near a mining site and folks. I did the math based on some recent soil tests. The tailings near my test site contain enough arsenic that ½ teaspoon of soil (tailings) easily contains a fatal dose of arsenic for an adult. Please stay safe and wash your hands thoroughly before eating/drinking/smoking if you aren’t 100% certain what the dirt is like where you’re digging.

thatdisasterauthor

And this is why we found a whole quart of mercury in my grandparent’s basement! Old timey prospectors would really just do shit.

archaeologistproblems

@krokodile there’s no need to tag this as USA. I’m a Canadian archaeologist, all of my field experience is in Canada, and gold rushes happened and created dangerous mine waste in many countries all over the world. It’s very much not a unique US experience.

pixiecaps

big fan of whatever the youth is doing to torment scientology buildings

pixiecaps

they couldnt take the heat

doctordotdj

notkatniss

they look like they run a ceramics studio like the navy

notkatniss

stovetop00-deactivated20230907

We’re winning.

lilnasxvevo

I found his bio on societyofpresidentialdescendants.org and it was so delightful I had to copy paste the whole thing:

“Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave it to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale (BA, 1977), and was trained to be a museum curator in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (MA, 1980). A decorative arts curator at the Newark Museum for thirty-seven years before he retired, Ulysses has never stopped writing for the sheer pleasure of it. Aside from books on Victorian furniture, art pottery, studio ceramics, jewelry, and the White House, Ulysses created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel, appeared in 2012. His most recent novel, Cliffhanger, was released by JMS Books in December 2020.

“Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of 45 years. They have two grown children, adopted in 1996.

“Ulysses is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant. His late mother, Julia, was the President’s last living great-grandchild; youngest daughter of Ulysses S. Grant III, and granddaughter of the president’s eldest son, Frederick. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City. He is also on the board of the U.S. Grant Presidential Library and Museum at Mississippi State University.”

wakingfromthewater

And frankly, the novels sound like they slap:

Desmond was nominated for a Lambda Award.

doctorscienceknowsfandom

“With his husband of 45 years.” You kids don’t know ... they got together before AIDS, at the peak of the Gay Glam Life. They stayed together as their generation died around them, and made through it to the point where they could marry and have a legal family. He looks like a chipper preppie who never had a serious thought or care in the world, but it took *incredible* determination, commitment, and also luck to get here.

oidheadh-con-culainn

having now read the first of this man's vampire books, you can absolutely tell that he cares a lot about historical furniture because oh my god he really wanted to tell us about all the historical furniture in this vampire's house. material culture as foreplay. seduction via theses about chairs

betasunkern

t4nku-deactivated20181226

don’t leave out the best part

dramaticspoon-deactivated202207

I’ve never seen the second photo before.

ampervadasz

bigwordsandsharpedges

When I was a kid, I thought those pillars went down to the sea floor.

In reality, they usually go down to some large submerged floats.

kasaron

I dislike this.

isensmith

apas-95

Pillars and floats like that are pretty stable, compared to regular boats, so there’s even a research vessel, called FLIP, that purposefully capsizes itself to be more steady when conducting research.

mossdealer

YEA IT FUCKIN IS (id embedded in image)

catchymemes

you-need-not-apply

Bro I just nearly fucking died

you-need-not-apply

My throats fucked but I like inhaled toothpaste and my throat seized up and I couldn’t breathe worst part is I spat toothpaste everywhere trying to get it out of my mouth and my throat is like fuzzy now?? Water did not help honey tea might

you-need-not-apply