Sorry this is my third post about this today. I hope that some truly awful things happen with these models and I will be a changed person on the day that they do.
A powerful earthquake that struck the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela resulted in numerous casualties and widespread destruction. However,
On June 24, two powerful earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.2–7.5 struck Venezuela, killing more than 5,200 people, injuring over 11,000, and leaving around 43,000 citizens missing. According to satellite data from NASA and United Nations estimates, more than 58,000 buildings were either completely destroyed or damaged. Severe destruction was reported in the capital district of Caracas, La Guaira, and Aragua state. The earthquake became the strongest in the country in the past 126 years.
However, the residential complex Ciudad Tiuna on the outskirts of Caracas, built by specialists from the Belarusian company OJSC Belzarubezhstroy, was practically unaffected. Residential neighbourhoods constructed by the Belarusian company OJSC MAPID in La Guaira and Aragua also survived intact.
The Ciudad Tiuna residential complex was launched in 2011 as part of Venezuela’s social housing programme, the “Great Mission Housing Venezuela”, initiated by President Hugo Chávez. The initiative was prompted by catastrophic floods that left hundreds of thousands of residents of impoverished neighbourhoods homeless (notably, the presidential palace of Miraflores was even used as temporary shelter for some of those affected).
At the same time, a 174-hectare plot of land was allocated for construction on the territory of one of the country’s largest military bases — Fort Tiuna. The construction was carried out by companies from China, Russia, and Belarus.
The project was financed 80% by the state, primarily through Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), as well as through investments from China, Russia, Iran, Uruguay, Belarus, the savings fund of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), and other sources.
The first residents of Ciudad Tiuna were people affected by the floods and members of the National Guard. Apartments were purchased through long-term instalment plans, with housing costs calculated based on actual construction expenses rather than market prices and profit margins. The properties were transferred to families as private ownership, but with certain restrictions: if an apartment was sold within 30 years, the state had the preferential right to purchase it.
Apartments built for former slum residents met high social standards: many featured two bathrooms, while the average living area was around 68 square metres.
At the same time, schools, sports facilities, the Tiuna El Fuerte Cultural Park, as well as a cultural and arts education centre for children and adults, were opened. [...]
In July 2014, during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Venezuela, Ciudad Tiuna became one of the prominent examples of successful cooperation between the Bolivarian Republic and China, Russia, and Belarus.
From 2011 to 2017 alone, the company Belzarubezhstroy built around 20,000 facilities in Venezuela. In addition to housing, Belarusian specialists constructed a brick factory, a workshop for assembling MAZ vehicles, a Belarus tractor manufacturing plant, and facilities for producing AMKODOR construction machinery.
The new buildings in Ciudad Tiuna are high-rise structures. For example, residential tower A-13 of the Ciudad Tiuna complex has 15 floors. Yet it was precisely these high-rise buildings that withstood the earthquake. What is the secret behind their strength?
The first to report that the Belarusian-built houses had not suffered even a single crack was Elena, a Russian-speaking guide in Caracas. She also published a video showing the buildings, which was quickly picked up and widely discussed by users online.
Some commenters wrote: “So it’s not only Belarusian products that are high quality?”, “It is all thanks to the fact that the Belarusian engineering school preserved old Soviet SNiP and GOST standards,” and “Belarusian builders have a conscience.” Others expressed scepticism, pointing out that not only the buildings constructed by Belarusians had survived, but also other structures in the area. In their view, the reason was that the earthquake’s epicentre was not located in this district but closer to the coastline.
However, many high-rise buildings in Caracas itself were damaged during the earthquake. In many cases, buildings in the city are constructed using unreinforced brick masonry, while in private residential areas houses are often built from adobe. Belarusian designers and construction specialists had taken the region’s high seismic activity into account in advance. At the same time, in Belarus itself — a country not prone to strong earthquakes — additional measures to reinforce structures are generally applied only when constructing buildings taller than 75 metres and at the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant.
In Venezuela, Belarusian builders, meanwhile, constructed facilities exclusively using reinforced monolithic concrete technology. In particular, for high-rise buildings in Caracas, pile foundations were installed to depths of up to 20 metres, followed by the pouring of a monolithic slab and the construction of a monolithic building frame. The thickness of the reinforcement, the spacing of the rebar grid, the concrete grade, and other parameters were calculated with an increased safety margin.
Chinese giant salamander (娃娃鱼) a.k.a ‘baby fish’ due to the sound they make that sounds like a baby crying.
The Chinese giant salamander is one of the largest salamanders and one of the largest amphibians in the world. It is fully aquatic and is endemic to rocky mountain streams and lakes in the Yangtze river basin of central China.
The Chinese giant salamander is considered to be a "living fossil". Although protected under Chinese laws, its population has faced severe declined over the last 70 years and is currently (2022) listed as threatened. There are evidence indicating that the Chinese giant salamander may be composed of at least five cryptic species, further compounding each individual species' endangerment.
Here is a video of a 200-year-old Chinese giant salamander that was found in a cave.
Things that I knew about: that the mass incarceration of people in the USA , particularly black men, has direct ties to/is an extension of slavery.
Things I did not know: this specific shit about Louisiana HOLY FUCK this is evil.
I’m from Mississippi and it’s like this in my home town. Enslaved prisoners clean roadways, pick cotton, everything they’ve done since before slavery was supposedly ended. What they teach in schools is nothing but propaganda.
bad ending: the farmer sells out to Joja
good ending: the farmer restores the community center and Pierre beats up Morris
bad ending++: Morris goes to law school and comes back 4 years later as a Monsanto goon and hits the farmer with a killer lawsuit
good ending++: same as above but the farmer teams up w/ Marlon and Pierre to disappear him in the mines
true ending: the farmer must enter the water purifier even though it’s been established that abigail is immune to radiation
Okay for those of you living in pitiful ignorance, take a raw ear of corn with the husk on and cut all the way around the base (as pictured: above the point where the husk meets the cob, so that the entire husk is severed but still wrapped around the corn. Do not cut through the cob.) Then, with the husk still on, microwave it for 5-7 minutes. It'll basically steam it inside the husk. Remove from microwave --it will be hot, so use a mitt or a towel--and firmly pull the top of the husk/silk, which should come off easily in one piece, unsheathing a flawless corn on the cob. If it doesn't, you probably need to cut a little higher around the base, so all the leaves are severed. No picking off silk!
Internet socialists always talk about the things they think they should get for free, they never talk about the labor they themselves will provide for free.
On the rare occasion they do, it's always hobby-related, like "yoga teacher" or "commune muralist." Which implies a lot of confidence in the belief that someone else's passion job will be "lithium miner" or "sewage plant worker."
One of my undergraduate design projects that I really liked was novel extraction of lithium from diverse mineral brines and I did a stint doing wastewater culvert inspections a few years back which made me feel like a good and active ratman.
I loved those projects I just wished I could have the time and money to do that more.
amandla
