Olympian1010

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! What a day! What a performance from the Orangers! Two large heat wins, one MR, and a second place to finish it out! We retain our lead in the overall standings. The 5m Relay is always one of my favorite events.

Rio is my favorite ceremony (though I’d definitely give it a tie with London for that title), but I know there are a lot of people who dislike it for various reasons. One of the few differences of opinion @Vojthas and myself have had was one where we’d rank Rio among of ceremonies.

A small victory for the ISA, but a rather inconclusive ruling from CAS.

4 years ago to the day, Brazil opened wide to the world, with warm embrace, to welcome world’s biggest festival of human athleticism. Brazil showed the world it’s beauty, it’s faults, and it’s aspirations. So began the Games of the XXXI Olympiad...

Gronevegen‘s behavior wasn’t egregious or abnormal, until he gave that final little elbow. That’s what really pisses me off. That contact was purposefully malicious. It would be one thing if he moved over to block the other and it ended there, but forcing the other rider to the barrier and then finishing him off with the elbow is completely unacceptable.

So the UCI punishing the rider who caused the accident is an overreaction, but being outraged the TV Director showed the accident isn’t? I’m not trying to defend anyone, but let’s not attack the TV Director for doing their job. I’m certain he (or she) knew just about as much as we did about the condition of the riders involved. Also, these crashes at the finish are somewhat commonplace in cycling, and this on par with the coverage I’ve seen of similar incidents. I’m actually thankful they showed the crash from a couple of angles, because I can actually understand the circumstances of the crash.

A nice throwback for all of us who watched the OBS feeds 4 years ago.

One hospital as been completely decommissioned by the blast, and ABC is reporting that people are driving to cities 50 miles away from Beirut in order to seek treatment, since hospitals in Beirut have reached capacity. I’ve seen media outlets reporting as many as 4000 (or more than that because numbers still aren’t fully known) people injured. It’s a complete catastrophe

For context, the Oklahoma City bomber used 2 tons of ammonium nitrate to carry out his terrorist attack. The store of the same material that exploded in Beirut today was somewhere around 1,300 times larger.

The Lebanese government is fucked. Apparently a store of (confiscated?, discarded?) ammonium nitrate is responsible for the explosion. It’s also being reported that this store of ammonium nitrate has been left unchecked for 6 years. 6 years!

If you need an underdog to cheer for in Tokyo next...

Lebanon was already dealing with an economic collapse, massive political upheaval, and a serious Syrian refugee crisis. I don’t know if they can comeback from this. It could honestly take a few days just to understand the scale of the damage Edit: It should also be mentioned that hospitals were reported to be complaining about a lack of capacity due to Covid-19 earlier this week.

Israel and Hezbollah have both denied responsibility.

I’m worried about the firefighters currently on scene too. We could have a Chernobyl/9-11 type situation where dangerous chemicals are in play and they haven’t been warned. Lebanese Red Cross is reporting over 1,000 injured. Again, I haven’t seen that number vetted, so don’t take it as fact immediately.

Plus that cloud looked much more like a sonic shockwave.

That was my immediate thought as well. Lebanon isn’t known to have any nuclear bombs though. Plus, the damage, while bad, would be much worse if that were a nuclear bomb. I’ve seen the explosion blamed on fireworks which seems plausible given what the area looked like pre-blast. If I had to guess, I would guess some chemicals that should never be mixed, got mixed.

Massive explosion in Beirut. The video I’ve seen is horrific, but I haven’t be able to find any verification of its authenticity. From the authentic reports I’ve seen, there is widespread damage throughout the city.

I don’t know, I’d thought the subtle rip-off of DRC’s flag was nice too

I’m assuming the state legislature said that had to be on flag. No motto should ever be on a flag, especially one that reads “In God We Trust” when religious freedom is guaranteed in said country. The best troll flags were the one written in all Arabic, and the once that included the hammer & sickle

Here’s the submissions for Mississippi’s new state flag. There’s some really nice ones, and some “interesting” ones.

This is a little last minute, but would anyone be interested in watching the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremony together to celebrate the 4 year anniversary of the Games?