ForestBoard

Well, geopolitics has been somewhat spicy recently. First, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico survived being shot on the 15th, which doesn't happen every day. I know nothing about Slovakian politics, but I'm going to assume that this is not a valid way to become Prime Minister, and rather an assassination attempt. Probably good that it failed, for regional stability, even if Fico's Wikipedia page makes me not like him very much. As bad as being a reactionary nationalist isolationist is, I'd argue it shouldn't carry a death sentence.

Then just yesterday, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, along with other officials including foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, died in a helicopter crash on the Iranian-Azerbaijani border. Given how new this is, and the surrounding circumstances, I'm curious to hear other's opinions on the issue. Azerbaijan-Iran relationships have been strained recently, to put things lightly, with Iran's alleged backing of Armenia in their recent conflict with Azerbaijan, Iran holding military drills on the border, and Azerbaijan's alleged cooperation with Israel, among other things, leading to a tense diplomatic atmosphere and downright hostility from citizens of either countries. Most notably, a lone gunman recently attacked the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran, killing the head of security, which indicates a certain level of animosity, and certainly doesn't help reduce tensions.

On the face of it, a nation's president dying in a crash while returning from a meeting in a geopolitically opposed nation, at a time of heightened tension, taking into account the precedent of assassinations perpetrated by an ally (Israel) of the opposed nation, sure makes it sound like this was an assassination. However, this was a helicopter flying through mountainous terrain in heavy fog, and the Iranian Air Force is known for being a bit dodgy in terms of maintenance and modernization, so unless evidence to the contrary is presented, I'm thinking that this was a legitimate accident, where pilots were either overly confident or placed under intense pressure, leading them to attempt a very dangerous flight. Maybe I'm just a hater when it comes to helicopters, but this would fit with my opinion that they're accidents waiting to happen.

Being European I had never even heard of Fico.....somehow Slovakia is one of those nations that you know exist but beyond some generalities you know nothing of. Like Albania, Chad, Jordan, Malaysia, Paraguay and Uzbekistan. Like that kid in highschool that you share chemistry with but all you know of him are his name and that he rides a dirt bike or that nephew that moved away when you were a teen and seen twice since then.

The Fico-situation seems a "lone-wolf" situation by a far-right "intellectual". It is funny that you do not like him much (politically I assume) but him being shot by someone whose ideas most of us seem to like even less should gives us a clue about what is going on in Europe to an extent. I guess the coming elections will give us a slightly clearer picture although depending on the turn-out I fear the "Identity and Democracy Party" will double if not triple in size. Europe as we know it is done.....and with it it's dominant role on the world stage....

@Jutsa you forgot the /s

What stats effect the "Work" deathrate?

Hope everyone in the midwest is staying safe. Sorry about posting about this kind of thing often; this really has been a strong year for tornadoes (and frankly derechos)... in fact if wikipedia's fancy chart on frequency is anything to go by, this is the second most we've had this time of year this century. (Though still nowhere close to good ol 2011). Dare I say top 10% in terms of activity ever if I'm reading it right, but don't quote me on that. Either way, rough year. Keeping an eye out for some other friends too. Stay safe out there. o7

I'm also keeping my eyes peeled for an active hurricane season.

Edit. Sincere condolences to the folks in Greenfield, today. You all got hit by a blender tornado made of tornadoes made of tornadoes. Wishing you all wellness. Absolutely horrifying.

Got a video of the beast here if anyone is interested; a marvel of nature, and a reminder to be humbled by it. Nevermind Reed's constant shouting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_ZDVYzIhgc
Edit 2: Slightly tamer sounding drone footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEFGKMWYD-E

One of the greatest tragedies of our time. Even more of a tragedy is that there were no cards of any of them so as to save their deliciousness for posterity's sake. 😔

Esterild wrote:

Naive question time: How come the blades on the turbines were barely moving? Was the wind just not in the right direction? Or too many directions at once?

From what I've heard from explanations during one of the storm coverer's livestreams (Ryan Hall Y'all in particular, tho I also watch Max Velocity), wind turbines have breaks that kick on to prevent them from blowing too fast, particularly in severe weather, in order to prevent them from catching fire. Thing is, some wind turbines did still catch fire. One of the proposed hypotheses (though I don't think anything has or even can be totally confirmed) is that the winds were so strong that they overpowered (essentially wore out) the breaks, causing the turbines to not only rotate faster than the breaks would let them but essentially cause them to fail, resulting in them catching fire before or as they were being snapped in half. Crazy, to be sure.

Funny thing about the turbine in that drone footage is I don't even think the tornado was fully responsible for the turbine snapping. Like, yeah, probably at least partly; I do believe winds extend well beyond the main funnel. But I think it was a mix of both being near the tornado and just being pummeled by extreme straight-line winds.

As much fear and awe as a whirlwind can instill (they are definitely scary and I'm glad I live in Maine), they are like precision lasers, causing things to be rapidly warped in a relatively small area (in EF0/EFU cases, barely even noticibly; in some wedge tornado cases, over up to 2 miles in length); derechos (shoutout to the "mesoscale convective vortex"), downbursts, and even just strong low pressure systems in general can cause often similar-in-strength winds, just in one direction - and usually over a larger area. Houston took a pretty bad beating from a derecho just a week odd ago. And flooding - yeah floods are probably much worse than even a strong tornado.

Esterild wrote:

Wow. I never knew that tornados could team up like the Avengers.

Naive assessment based solely on wikipedia is that all tornadoes may have some kind of subvorticies that are simply too weak and small to be seen. But practically speaking, if you see a big tornado with very big and very noticeable subvortices inside of them (especially when they start wrapping around horizontally), then it's a sign the tornado is very strong as-is, with the subvortices adding even more strength (apparently as much as an extra 100km/h) to the main tornado (since it's a very strong wind relative to a very strong wind). Not all super strong tornadoes need be multi-vortexed or heck even very large; Canada's had an F5 (which had a higher estimated wind speed than modern EF5s mind you ;p) the size of a dust devil, and there've been mile-wide wedges that cause only at most cat2 hurricane force winds ;P (Most tornadoes don't exceed that and last like maybe a minute at most)

Worth noting those are also different from satellite tornadoes, which move around the base tornado, rather than being part of it. They're not particularly common, but they do occur (even with landspouts/waterspouts which are a fun distinct thing of their own, shoutout to Alaska's first recorded whirlwind in almost 20 years), sometimes being stronger than the "parent" tornado (which I think is just the one that came down first ;p). I believe one EF5 had a satellite, died, and then the satellite became an EF5 with its own satellite. There was also a crazy EF3 that had like five or more around them (one being an EF4) at the same time which is just bonkers to me. Must be freaky seeing all them legs coming out of the sky at once. The kind of stuff my ye ol' tornado dreams were made of. ;P

Kannap wrote:

Also super excited to take on the role of Librarian and get the Forest library up and running again. I'll be sure to post here in the RMB as work on that progresses.

First update: I'm aiming to get the library dispatch up and running in the next week or so. But the most important thing (maybe not) to be determined is building a wall before me: a name.

The previous iteration of the library was called the Tree of Knowledge. As the library is being reborn, I want to open the floor to residents of Forest to propose a new name for a new library. If, by some happenstance I get no suggestions, I'll just keep the Tree of Knowledge. But I hope to see some name proposals!

You can reply here or TG me with your name proposals.

As one of your partners in crime with this project (keep me updated and let me know where I'm needed to help!), I think you've hit the nail on the head with 'Tree Of Knowledge'.

Is it just me or has the "challenges"-database lost about half a year of data?

also New United Common-lands thanks for the update. Is it a common practice to update new embassy ambassadors after each election?

Ownzone wrote:

Is it just me or has the "challenges"-database lost about half a year of data?

also Knuckle thanks for the update. Is it a common practice to update new embassy ambassadors after each election?

I don't think it was just you - I lost ~5,000 points and ~100 ranks.
Hopefully they bring things back up, like they did with polls.