Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Plainly Difficult"
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Good to hear you made a full recovery man!
I've heard the news about this, but didn't know the full details... it's like yeesh, a crash on maiden voyage.
Sounds like one of those cases where several people involved got too up on their noses about the thing being safe, broke all sorts of rules with a cost down or fast launch in mind, and made others pay the price for their mistakes.
The issue being not so much that we didn't know better, but that we got too lax on well known safety practices... on the older historical videos we can understand the safety standards didn't exist yet, growing pains, lack of tech for support, etc.
This one is more on the corruption side. It's pretty weird that not only it crashed on maiden voyage, the company ignored all sorts of safety measures, and even... it's like no one was monitoring the situation with a bit of anxiety?
Perhaps it's the speed of society these days, but I'd kinda expect for a maiden voyage (well, not entirely, just a segment of the route I guess) to happen during day time with good visibility and emergency services at the ready for any eventuality... or that at the very least someone would've gone through the most dangerous portion of the new track with the pilot and engineer thoroughly.
Anyways, good report as always!
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Do not worry about pronunciation, ignore the trolls, we understand!
Also, lots of thanks for bringing up the subject, memory and thoughts on these disasters... we unfortunately get very little international exposure despite accidents much like these being very frequent in Brazil.
Unfortunately, it's far from being the last ones, and they'll just keep happening.
The core issue in Brazil is just plain corruption. Governmental and private big business corruption. The richest and biggest company in the entire country, which is Vale, is a primary resources exploiter that destroys the environment, uses the most shoddy methods for it, but unfortunately is also a huge employer that several regions in Brazil can't live without. In a country that never got away from it's status of primary resources exporter, it's a cycle of despair.
With a bureaucratic, morose and unbalanced justice system, the multiple victims of these disasters spend decades in courts awaiting for help that never comes, and even when these cases are solved with a penalty against the companies, not only they mostly get a slap on the wrist, victims and family of victims are the last ones to see any compensation... it mostly just ends up at the hands of lawyers, organizations and governmenf that uses the money to fund equally corrupt and incompetent corporations just ready to create the next source of disaster.
Mariana and Brumadinho are only a couple of shoddy work examples of tens if not hundreds of similar places - in the very same brazilian state. I do mean similar... similarly owned by Vale and other huge mining companies, similarly using the same type of barrier, similarly having several previous warnings during heavy rains and floods, similarly ready to fail and take entire cities with then, further adding to pollution and destruction of the region, further taking lives and livelihoods.
The history of the state has always been one of exploitation of mineral resources with some of the poorest methods available. It's actually right in the name of the state - "Minas Gerais" translates directly to General Mines. The names comes from portuguese colony times, and it tells how the land was seen as purely means for exploitation.
The history of exploitation continues despite Brazil not being a colony anymore... titles change, realities remains the same. We're still mostly a banana republic, natural resouces exploited to be sold worldwide, while the local population keeps the worst of it at inflated prices because the global market said so. And you have to take criticism coming from developed nation leaders with your head down... the exact same countries that funded and are still funding the exploitation of our land.
With climate change rearing it's ugly head more and more, and corruption staying the same or becoming even worse in recent years, with a cast of politicians that openly and unabashedly destroy what little regulations we have, persecute ngos, and favor industries and big agribusinesses over citizen safety and support, you can bet these "accidents" will keep happening, because workers are expendable, and the violations of humans rights are out of sight out of mind for the clientele.
Anyways, sorry for the rant... it just gets to my nerves how a country like Brazil, that have by comparison few natural disasters and a climate lots of people wish they had year round, has to be reduced to the state it currently is because of greed and corruption. And again, thanks for sharing the story... more people need to hear about it worldwide, the victims are still suffering to this day, and the businesses responsible for it still haven't paid their dues, nor changed their ways. You do have the fines and penalties, but like in many other cases that the channel already put out, it is far from enough, it didn't get to the hands of those who really need it, and it wasn't enough for the corporation to change it's practices.
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The inheritance of hell from this guy and many others lives on, because I remember quite clearly that the scandal of using non medical grade silicone for breast implants is a recurring theme that pops up in news every few years, at least here in Brazil (nice Mariana link btw... :D That's some good piece of investigation there!).
Sometimes it's about producers and distributors, sometimes it's clandestine plastic surgery clinics, but it always comes back at some point.
The thing is, the cosmetic surgery industry in several countries in the world have become so entrenched and their advertisement so predatory that there are several people who are treated less like patients or costumers, and more like a part of some cult. There is a large part of the cosmetic surgery industry that operates much like alternative medicine scams.
Costumers, or indoctrinated, will do anything and everything towards a cosmetic surgery blindly believing it'll solve all of their problems, and it's a sad sight to see.
Vice made a piece just recently about a mother in Japan submitting her young daughter to an eye lid cosmetic procedure that was completely unnecessary... hearing her speak on how this was going to change her daughters' life somehow was just heart breaking. It was obvious that she was convinced that if her daughter didn't do that at a young age, she would amount to nothing as an adult.
Behind closed doors some of these so called doctors will promise the world to them, boost their self confidence, serve basically as cult leaders telling how a surgery here and there will boost their images and open doors in all places, preaching how image is everything in today's world, and how there is no risk in any procedure they make.
It operates in varying levels of scam, but people will always be able to find at any price unscrupulous "doctors" that are willing to take the money.
Of course, there are legit reasons for cosmetic and plastic surgery... and in a way, the science has advanced a lot because of people who don't really need it throwing insane amounts of money in it. But man, I've seen so many sad cases of people getting into cosmetic surgeries they didn't need, either dying because of it or spending the rest of their lives with health problems because of those.
Rule of thumb for me? If it isn't a procedure a competent and trustworthy doctor is recommending, I'm out. I can live pretty well with being ugly and having imperfect whatever... nose, hairline, cheeks, eye lids, belly, etc. It's just flesh and meat. I don't wanna get into a relationship with anyone who can only judge me on those factors anyway.
Women are way worse off due to the pressures of the beauty industry and the general sexism that still permeates all levels of societies all around the world, but if I'm asked for an opinion, I'll always say don't do it. If it isn't a strictly necessary surgery needed for health related reasons, don't do it. If a doctor you are not too sure about is telling you to do it, ask for a second and third opinion, don't go into it blindly. And another thing I should mention - no, the time it takes to do it, the expected recovery time, the fact that it can be done without a full surgery center, the fact that the place looks more like a dentist's office... none of those things diminish the fact that an invasive procedure is a serious thing that can cripple you for life it not outright kill you.
The cosmetic surgery industry has worked hard over the years to mask it as a less scary thing than regular surgery, but it's still a serious procedure that can carry all sorts of potentially scary consequences in the long run, it doesn't matter how doctors and offices are trying to make it look trivial.
I don't wanna offend or incense people too much on this topic, so I'll just stop. This is only my personal opinion anyways, anyone is free to disagree. But modern societies should be making a better job of celebrating diversity and the uniqueness of each of us, not trying to box everyone into specific standards.
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Side connection, and horrific too - this totally also happens to humans, with an extremely similar story, and it was well known and well studied back in the 60s and 70s - the case of Kuru, a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy caused by transmission of abnormally folded proteins (prions) in the Fore people of Papua New Guinea, because they had a culture of funerary cannibalism.
Yes, they ate their dead, specifically the brain of the dead, where the prions would be found in abundance.
It almost seems like an evolutionary mechanism to stop cannibalism.
The kuru case is where a lot of scientific and medical knowledge around prion disease comes from. It's also why repeated assurances that British meat is safe to eat from British politics is even more scandalous than it sounds... scientific community was keenly aware of the dangers there, because kuru was a disease that could go unnoticed and asymptomatic for decades until it started it's awful progress. Mad cow disease could also be like that among cows, and who knows how it'd manifest if it crossed the species barrier into humans?
I was a bit older than John when this happen but still a kid, but I still kinda remember the news of it despite not being from Britain... probably because the image of a mad cow sounded funny for kid me. :P Like some cartoon or something, but even young me could tell this was serious and horrible sh*t back then.
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Great intro... this is something I always try to explain to people who keeps using racism, jingoism and general ignorance when they talk about "the jerbs they stolen" and whatnot whenever people start talking about industrial complexes operating in countries like China, India and other Asian nations. Plus when it comes about defining the industrial revolution era.
The ugly truth about globalization and "modern" times is just what John talked about in the intro - the horrible work conditions in factory floors of the industrial revolution era never truly ended - it just got offshored, so that consumers get to enjoy a degree of separation from it. Plus cheap labor and zero regulations of course.
It all got neatly packaged and sent to countries like China and India, and now that China is becoming a modern nation, it's being further offshored to countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, perhaps some African nations, a lot is going to Mexico, Brazil, and so on.
So the reality is that whilst the industrial revolution era and it's complete lack of worker rights, child and slave labor, horribly dangerous factory conditions, industrial toxic pollution, and all sorts of bad things are rare in developed nations these days, it never truly ended, because it only got offshored to poorer nations. People should try keeping this in mind when they complain about product quality coming from these nations. Or when people complain about these countries "stealing tech" from the big brands who treated workers like cheap industrial revolution era labor.
I often hear the response that, well, at least they have work, yadda yadda. I'll tell you - that's the exact type of mentality that justifies abuse in every level. I bring food to the table, so I can beat my wife all I want, because without me she would be miserable. I can give whatever education I want to my kids, including no education at all. If it wasn't for me opening a factory in this poor nation, they'd be all working in the fields and going hungry.
Understand the problem with those? Privileged people don't get to set the rules and standards, that's what human rights are for. People don't need you throwing poisoned food on the table just because you are in the status quo, just because of your goddamned money or privilege - people need basic human rights and dignity. You don't get to play the white knight while trying to profit from human misery.
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Yeah... funny enough, this is one of those cases where the automation system should be safer than the alternative as a general statistic, but only if it's designed, executed and maintained properly. The rule for all automated systems is garbage in garbage out.
This also affects autonomous cars, and even all the way up to stuff like nuclear power plants.
And it also could be argued that even with accidents, they still are safer and better than alternatives, but optics will always make them look worse. Because every single accident will be scrutinized to death, as the blame for switching to such a system lays squarely at the company's hands - you can't just brush it off as a human failure, or something like that.
Thing is, whether you are putting human drivers or operators behind, or you are using an automated system - which was built by humans too -, everything is still prone to failure. It's just that automated systems tends to be more consistent than humans - be it for doing the right thing, or doing the wrong thing... so you better get it right, or else this could mean chain catastrophic failures.
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