Well There's Your Problem | Episode 18: Texas City Disaster

Today @oldmananders0n, @aliceavizandum, and @donoteat01 test the limits of what we can say about fertilizer-derived explosives on the internet.
here is the patreon: / wtyppod
vast majority of the info and images from the original report: www.local1259iaff.org/report.htm
other images:
john w. brown
By Project Liberty Ship, Attribution, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
ammonium nitrate
By Teravolt at en.wikipedia - Own work, Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
wilson b. keene
By digital.lib.uh.edu/u?/p15195co..., Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
burned-out cars
By University of Houston Digital Library - University of Houston Digital Library, Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
oil refinery on fire
By Chemical safety and hazards investigation board - www.csb.gov/assets/news/image/..., Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...

[@DiodeMilliampere]

My unsolicited advice is that this podcast would be a thousand times better if it was a thousand times less flippant. If you all just want to giggle and crack wise Why not pick a subject matter that doesn't require any amount of solemnity to give respectful coverage

[@MousseCakePie]

"Why podcast people not straight face 18 episodes in"

[@SofaKingShit]

This guy might disagree: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gHa7enikmtR0aJI

[@DiodeMilliampere]

@@MousseCakePie there are a million things to make a flippant podcast about why disasters where there was massive amount of casualties and tragedy.

[@Lmndrsn]

18 episodes in. Again, are you new here? Go read the wiki page if you want, we don't care.

[@DiodeMilliampere]

@@Lmndrsn excuse me for being interested in the premise of a podcast about engineering disasters but not the childish execution of this one. Is giggling about people losing their life supposed to be edgy or something? Seems like what sociopaths would do

[@masonturner0]

Bukkake Fire Brigade: We Came As Fast As We Could

[@s-e-e-k-i-n-g]

poor alice saying lalalala to protect herself was actually hastening her doom, as the swat team on its way definitely heard it as allah allah allah

[@jellosapiens7261]

No, you see, they thought it was a zaghrouta and that she was celebrating the death of America

[@oldmanramblingatclouds]

The SWAT team was made of Austrians?

[@jamiekamihachi3135]

Poor Alice, a British transgender Muslim socialist, she’s probably just on 30 watch lists by default.

[@The5lacker]

@@jamiekamihachi3135 The trick is to get on so many watchlists you trigger an integer overflow and suddenly disappear from all of them, because every agency assumes another has it covered.

[@xmlthegreat]

@@The5lacker those are some leet jacking tipz br0

[@philippthiel7740]

Chemist OCD, I'm really sorry: Alfred Nobel did not try to make fertilizer, he tried to make mining and other uses of explosives more safe. He had lost his brother in an accident with nitroglycerin. Also dynamite and ammonium nitrate are inherently pretty different chemicals, the former being organic, the latter being inorganic. Edit: Also Benzol is the German name for Benzene. And the thing Alice is talking about around 47 minutes was a case of dimethyl mercury poisoning.

[@allgodsnomasters2822]

thank you! this is super cool

[@bluejohnnyd]

If y'all wanted to do a chemistry episode: lab safety. The reason Karen Wetterhahn died of dimethylmercury poisoning was at least in part because the safety rules simply didn't take into account that dimethylmercury simply dissolved right through the recommended gloves in a matter of seconds. She was wearing the "appropriate" gloves, according to recommendations, so thought the minor spill was not urgent and waited a couple minutes to deglove and clean up. Part of a long history of lab safety being, uh, pretty haphazard.

[@HamiltonMechanical]

Chubbyemu did a REALLY great video on that, if anyone is interested.

[@michaelmartini3884]

T She probably meant Fritz Haber, who both invented the Haber Process, lead the Chemical Weapons Programs of the WW1 Kaiserreich, and was also involved in the development of Zyklon B and tried to pay Germanys World War 1 reparations by collecting gold from seawater, so a wild ride of a person.

[@Freecell82]

"And the thing Alice is talking about around 47 minutes was a case of dimethyl mercury poisoning." There was at lest one case of this happening with HF though.

[@daltonkraft4241]

Glad ammonium nitrate would never again cause a massive explosion in a port like say, just randomly off the top of my head, Beirut.

[@Ultrawup]

And Tianjin in 2015.

[@johannageisel5390]

Listening to this after the Beirut explosion and hearing them talking about a grain elevator being fine is a bit surreal.

[@bossbeartherock6034]

Halifax ?

[@Madhouse_Media]

@@bossbeartherock6034 That was before this.

[@bossbeartherock6034]

@@Madhouse_Media I know

[@seankaiser2505]

Alice/Liam: “Good thing ______ didn’t happen” Roz: “Well we’ll get to that”

[@wastedproductions45]

Roz must have amazing bedside manner

[@CommieGIR]

Its worth mentioning: We use Bunker Oil for Diesel Ships now, we just heat the stuff up being it gets pressurized and injected into the motor. Its also why modern diesel ship engines are an environmental disaster: bunker oil is nasty shit.

[@MonMalthias]

I think Wartsila makes marine diesels up to 100MW at the shaft, which kinda boggles the mind once you think about the displacement of the pistons and the forces at the gudgeon pins. The crankshaft is literally the size of a house and the pistons the size of a car. kzbin.info/www/bejne/oYPZc2Sufpqrqtk It's a pity that nuclear marine propulsion never took off outside of navies. Shipping wouldn't be emitting as much as a developed small country today if the merchant marine had nuclearised.

[@MonMalthias]

@@Soken50 The real problem that I see with that is that none of the major commercial shipyards have nuclear experience. I don't see Hyundai or Maersk bothering with that any time soon when they can rake in big profits with relatively cheap container ships that don't need to run 24 hour crews or have a nuclear qualified engineer on board. It really will take state power and state investment to force it into being. And with Russia being quite content with just running icebreakers across the Arctic Circle instead of breaking into the busy commercial routes I don't see that changing any time soon. But yes, you are right, the technology is absolutely there. If anything it would be superior because diesel ships travel slowly to reduce drag and conserve fuel. With a nuclear reactor you don't care about saving fuel so you can run full throttle all the way. So in theory the money spent on extra crew and nuclear training could be recuperated in faster freight. But someone will have to run the numbers. I suspect that no-one will do it unless a state owned enterprise does it first.

[@MonMalthias]

@@Soken50 I do think that the past 20-25 years has amply demonstrated the limits of green market liberalism. Carbon taxes, carbon credits (Catholic indulgences for captains of industry), cap and trade (look what the Germans did to the EU ETS) have all failed. Kyoto failed, as has every single Council of Parties since. For 25 years the genteel have gathered in some globalised city of glass and steel and for 25 years they have failed from Paris to Copenhagen. A goal is declared and nothing is done. This is, if anything, a demonstration of the limits of Westphalian internationalism in the face of global capitalism. Here I would follow Dr James Hansen's line of argument in that if we try to count on international decrees and international markets to save us, we will be boiling in our own pots. Action will have to be unilateral and it will have to be some form of state planning that is fully divorced from market forces. Because the market really cannot see beyond the next quarter. As it is currently set up it cannot even value the next day, what with derivatives and futures trading. Everyone wants their profit now and investment later. Really the only sectors left where you do still see significant private R&D and strategic investment is in microprocessors. The only reason we see any broad based advancement in other industries is because the state has taken an active role in developing technologies then privatising them on the cheap to industry giants. Universities these days are basically spinoff machines that transform public money into private commodified technologies. If there is a country that might do nuclear shipping it would be China. They have the incentive to avoid reliance on bunker fuel from the coast of Aden, and transforming the world's merchant marine to both neuter US hegemony over fossil fuel exporting countries as well as protect their own overseas logistics networks would be a long term goal that I don't doubt that Xi Jinping will have in the back of his mind. Just as soon as he gains a foothold into Europe with One Belt One Road.

[@MonMalthias]

@@Soken50 Well yes, there is that in that the current market conditions the lack of investment.

[@MonMalthias]

@@Soken50 So basically the current market structure disincentivises investment in the future. Most companies are run on the principle of shareholder primacy. Which is to say that maximising profit for the shareholders year on year and quarter after quarter is the name of the game. It has gotten to the point that even privately held companies, often taking management staff from publically traded companies, also do the same thing. And it is not for lack of capital that there is lack of investment, either. There are literal trillions sloshing around in government bonds pumped into the markets from quantitative easing, from state owned sovereign wealth funds, from hedge funds, from giants like Blackrock Capital. These conglomerations are holding trillions of dollars worth in assets and equity and yet...they aren't investing. Because earning profits for shareholders, using stock buybacks to pump up share prices takes primacy over long term sustainable growth. Companies are going into debt to buy shares back. Liquidating hard earned cash that should normally be held back in a war chest for a rainy day so as to post better results for maybe a few quarters. So I really don't see the private sector investing in anything that the state does not lead them in any time soon. And it's not like the state isn't trying to incentivise companies to invest. Corporate tax breaks, generous subsidies, protective tariffs, market shaping measures, infrastructure deployment, public private partnerships - these are all held out as carrots and almost no one is biting. So at the moment there is a very deep crisis of dynamism that has been very difficult to shake. And what dynamism there is, is actually state intervention. You know with things like Uber, WeWork, Oyo, AirBnB? They're all propped up by Saudi oil money. The fracking revolution? Driven by oodles of cheap US Government debt. Energiewende in Germany? Government subsidies by the billions. The Hong Kong and Japanese real estate "market"? Literally government racketeering. Market liberalism and competition in the classical sense _is_ dying. Something else far less democratically accountable is taking its place. Coronavirus is stripping away the skin and revealing the grinning skull beneath.

[@davidhoran7116]

You’d hope we’d stop leaving thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate just lying around places.

[@Frommerman]

"We finally found the kind of tankies that we are: mine clearance!" Absolute gold!

[@2sudonim]

Point of fact: the whole of the US basically did burn down, just not from this. Between the New York fire in the 1860s and the 1920s, every major US metropolitan area burned to the ground, at least once. Firestorms were a genuine hazard and fear of one breaking out is why the country transistion from private to public fire departments.

[@kommo1]

Its as if the US wants to compensate for never getting firebombed during a war.

[@CreeperOnYourHouse]

What about Boston?

[@2sudonim]

@@CreeperOnYourHouse Boston is literally the exception that proofs the rule. They had a powerful, influential, and innovative fire marshal who got building codes put in place that limited the ability of fires to spread and new techniques of fire fighting that allowed a deflagration to be put out. A large fire did actually break out in Boston but, for the first time in history, they actually managed to bring a major fire under control and stop it spreading. The other exception is Philly. In Philly they just built out of brick and had a bunch of lead and slate roofs. So fires had a harder time spreading in the first place.

[@2sudonim]

@@kommo1 The same thing happened in Europe, just 50-100 years earlier. London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Seville... They all burned. But there the canals built during the first industrial revolution allowed water relatively deep into the cities especially around areas fires could proliferate which helped ameliorate the fires by making more primitive fire responses easier. (Think bucket brigades.)

[@leasinclaire]

@@2sudonim tokyo as well. for the first 100 years or so the entire city would burn down around every 20 years. whole place was made of wood and paper

[@francistheodorecatte]

I own a 130 year old house, and whenever I find another weirdass fuckup someone did 80 years ago (like cutting a floor joist to install an hvac duct and not reinforcing anything to compensate so the wall above the cut joist won't sag) I immediately just jump to blaming tetra-ethyl-lead.

[@Summer-it3wh]

Other fun T34 fact. The track pins that held the treads together were prone to wiggling their way out under use, which is bad cos if they fall out the treads fall apart. So they welded a lump of metal to the hull of the tank so that when the tracks were running the pins would hit the metal and it would whack them back into the track links.

[@arthurhill8185]

very soviet solution: if part is falling out, just push it back in.

[@MrJohndoakes]

It's more of a plate, but yeah, that was their bone-simple solution. One of the few tanks Nicholas "the Chieftain" Moran could not bail out of easily after announcing "Oh my God, the tank is on fire." Because he's 6 foot something and the Soviet tanker is supposed to be 5 foot something.

[@Marc83Aus]

@@arthurhill8185 Yeah because actually folding the pins over so they hold themself in is a waste of time. Its a decent solution anyway since folded pins can become unfolded, thats more maintenance.

[@eagletanker]

When you only need a tank to last of about 6 months or 72 hours in combat, how your tracks hold together doesn’t really matter.

[@TheSpecialJ11]

A much cheaper solution than rivets.

[@XanderTuron]

Everybody is asking when is Franklin, but does anybody wonder, "how is Franklin?"

[@StatiicDreams]

Franklin's alright, spoke to him yesterday.

[@dylanchouinard6141]

I have family in Franklin, they seem to be doing ok. Pretty low covid rates, thank goodness

[@ExperimentIV]

Stratford upon Texas is so funny and it isn’t even 5 minutes into the episode. You’ve all really found your footing as an ensemble and the jokes really hit so well because of it. You should definitely do an episode on United Airlines Flight 232. It’s pretty interesting, because it was definitely a disaster, but it has an almost surreal chain of events, and doesn’t even end in total tragedy (it ends partially in tragedy but what happens in the end is actually incredible, because every time other pilots tried to replicate the landing in the simulator, nobody could get it like the real cabin crew did, and everyone probably would have died). Unlike the MAX 8 episode, the mechanisms that led to the failure that led to the incident are incredibly easy to understand, so it’s probably interesting to a lot of audiences. I feel like it’s not been overdone with regards to coverage outside of plane enthusiasts, so it would probably be a really interesting episode. Regardless of whether or not you choose that as a subject, keep doing what you do. I love the balance you strike between having sympathy for the people who suffered because of the more tragic events and the jokes. (also before someone says im simping im not my fucking adhd medication just kicked in and now i can’t seem to remember the concept of brevity and my last youtube comment on an entirely different channel was embarrassingly long too and i KNOW im gonna cringe at this later) (she/her)

[@ExperimentIV]

also holy shit are you all gonna do one on the king’s cross fire? that shit scares the hell out of me but want to hear your discussion

[@plushifoxed]

UA232 would be interesting, yeah! id love to see them do JAL 123 as well (mentioning the similarly-caused CA 611), and maybe an episode about the Parker Hannifin power control unit failures that caused various crashes in the 90s ...Well There's Your Plane Crash

[@ExperimentIV]

yeah, JAL123 would be interesting too. much more sad, though. i mean i wish that horrible plane crashes didnt happen, but i’m always interested in learning why they happen, what led to the point of failure, which is very much in the spirit of this podcast

[@plushifoxed]

@@ExperimentIV yeah, well said

[@ParabolicBox]

Nickolas Means did a really good talk on UA Flight 232, called "How to crash an airplane". I highly recommend it for anyone who hasn't seen it.

[@colonelgraff9198]

The last time I was this early the Tacoma Narrows bridge was still up

[@pmcgee003]

Hahahahahaha

[@GelidGanef]

Anyone who has access to the original Tacoma Narrows vid needs to post a mirror of it up, stat. Don't let the Bloomberg-funded mass-flagging campaign keep this vital info from the people!!!

[@scarylion1roar]

@@GelidGanef I don't understand how they're supposed to mirror The Next Episode.

[@SaberTail]

Re-listening to this after the recent ammonium nitrate disaster in Beirut

[@CAPDude44]

That explosion makes me think they were wrong about fuel oil being needed for an explosion

[@EmyrDerfel]

​@@CAPDude44in Beirut there was also fireworks and metal workers.

[@daltonkraft4241]

Oil under the podcast? Sounds like the podcast needs DEMOCRACY!

[@ilovecoffeev]

Especially with their talk of... Socialism. *Dum dum dummmmmm*

[@briar9997]

All right liberate the podcast on the double

[@ArabicNameGuy]

"We need you to come in. We're very short-handed here. No, seriously, we no longer have hands. I had to dial this phone with my nose."

[@sunyavadin]

*glances at the news from Lebanon today* Well, there's their problem, authorities in Beirut don't follow this podcast.

[@radicalrazel9156]

Justin's deadpan "yes" is so fucking iconic, I love it

[@nortonxvii]

low-key appreciate how often you make people who grew up in kck suburbs, like me, have to pause the podcast and go walk off a 'why does nobody ever know anything about this place haha oh man' no irony, full sincerity, my only note is that you're pronouncing 'kansas' too correctly

[@zuthalsoraniz6764]

I know of one bad John Brown, John Ronald Brown, a surgeon who in the last third of the 20th century specialised in male-to-female sex change surgeries, and was absolutely not qualified at all to be doing those. There's a Behind the Bastards episode about him.

[@afs6853]

I knew there was this one bad John Brown, but I couldn't recall!

[@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot]

I mean, he was a little confused. But he had the spirit. Can't blame a guy for trying! -except when it's gross potentially lethal medical malpractice, in which case yes you definitely CAN blame a guy for trying-

[@Zephyrbal]

Ah, a fellow Behind the Bastards fan I see.

[@vandelayofficial492]

thats a yikes and a half.

[@PedroBentoIT]

This video has been randomly selected for review by the NSA

[@MonMalthias]

"I'm Johnny Knoxville, and I'm about to take a swim in ANFO while smoking a Marlboro, the smoothest there is."

[@LostBeaver]

I saw the title and immediately asked "which one?"

[@thomaszinser8714]

The real Texas City disaster is the existence of Texas City.

[@titanicww2345]

The older and more destructive one. The US version of the Halifax explosion basically.

[@LostBeaver]

@@titanicww2345 I know, it was a joke

[@ZackMarrs556NAT0]

@@titanicww2345 so... The existence of Texas city?

[@Octane.on.pawz.]

Yah same deepwater horizon that other plant explosion the other other one like which one Texas city is weird and crazy af

[@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot]

Henry Ford: the real life CEO of Racism I am here to speak with him.

[@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot]

Well oops this kinda just happened again.

[@nemseivideos]

Finally found someone with my ideology

[@Saito232005]

I live in Philadelphia, RIGHT ACROSS THE WATER from the Sunoco refinery and was woken up by the explosion. Craziness

[@diidelphiis]

I respect the Cajuns for trying to pronounce their French place names properly, unlike Michigan.

[@chaosof99]

Are Liberty Chips the british equivalent of Freedom Fries?

[@scrungly]

fuck I thought I was original

[@jessmcilwain7861]

3:14 alice ‘relatable lgbt content’ caldwell-kelly

[@allgodsnomasters2822]

hah

[@JHashcroft]

The sheriff from I Shot the Sheriff was a bad John Brown, for obvious reasons

[@greenorion6501]

Speaking of Galveston, y'all should do an episode on the emergency management disaster that was the 1900 Hurricane and the s e a w a l l

[@jthornquist]

Erik Larson wrote a great book about that.

[@midgetwthahacksaw]

@@jthornquist I love Eric Larson's work!

[@averylargebear]

For that matter, Hurricane Andrew obliterating Homestead & forcing Florida to do a government would be a *fantastic* episode--there's global warming, corruption, Florida, shitty building codes & the destruction of the NHC!

[@bossbeartherock6034]

That hurricane in of itself is a disaster , just literally wiped towns off the face of the planet and is still tied for the most damage along side Katrina and the 1928 great flood , just a great deal more deadly .

[@htcdesirexkunert]

Bad John Brown: John Brown is an American politician, entrepreneur, and businessman from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He served as the 55th governor of Kentucky from 1979 to 1983, although he may be best known for building Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) into a multimillion-dollar restaurant chain.

[@allgodsnomasters2822]

there are 2 bad john browns

[@leeam7050]

But but I like chicken

[@thief9001]

I think something that I really enjoy about this, is that a lot of the content is things I'm familar with. It touches on a lot of the stuff from the show Mike Row used to host, "The Most" where they went over the biggest/smallest records of things. I'm really looking forward to the Bhopal chemical disaster, I hope it's the bonus episode following The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster next episode! Also, I wanted to say I appreciated earlier on in the series the call out the the USCSB, I love their videos and it's great to see them get some recogonition. Thanks also, for being so chill and kind with the LGBTQ+, and the pronouns things. I used to be one of the "Hurr durr attack helicopter" people when I was in my "I need to be edgy or I won't fit in!" douchy, small-town-highschool phase, and now that I've grown out of it, I appreciate the solidility and ease with which you acknolwedge that maybe treating people with the barest level of respect isn't that outrageous an idea. Thanks for many hours of essentially free entertainment, and thanks to your patrons as well!

[@centurion1945]

Is it bad that I have no idea which specific Texas City disaster you are referring to in your title. You got to narrow it down, unless of course the disaster is simply the existence of Texas City itself, which is a fair point.

[@_oe_o_e_]

I am all for driving a tank through robert moses roadways

[@nathaniellindner313]

Problem: MTA City bus is about 10' high (with express buses reaching up to 11'-5" nom.; note that the GM 510X buses used by MTA through the 1950s were smaller at 9'-5" nom.) whereas an M1 Abrams is 8'-0", so there's no guarantee that the tank will actually help. But either way it makes for a fun weekend if nothing else.

[@francistheodorecatte]

@@nathaniellindner313 I'm sure enough ordinance could be procured to solve that issue.

[@nathaniellindner313]

@@francistheodorecatte That kind of feels like cheating unless you have the ordnance already, in which case that's totally legit and I have no objections whatsoever

[@ZoneofA]

Texas City Disaster? Isn't that kinda redundant? Just call it Texas City. Hell, just call it Texas. Also I see your product placement deal with M$ has lapsed. On more serious note you should do a video about Port Chicago disaster if you wont some really good conspiracy theories.

[@noahmorse2282]

where is activate windows???

[@nsytr06]

F

[@scarylion1roar]

That was a load bearing watermark, now the podcast is going to collapse :(

[@ebolapie]

they acknowledged its existence and it disappeared

[@towjam37]

I'm in West Texas...it's most definitely landlocked.

[@chaxfox]

"Okay, well, yes. But that also caused some other problems that we'll talk about later". Might as well be the motto of this podcast.

[@averylargebear]

This remains my favorite episode, probably because it's so insane that so much ammonium nitrate could be in close proximity to that much benzene

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Why store huge amounts of _one_ explosive with insufficient deluge firefighting gear when you can store _two?_

[@wingbull2009]

46:10 Benzol/Benzole would be mostly benzene-toluene and perhaps some naphtha. Seeing that it's in a Styrene factory, I'd assume it's mostly benzene.

[@nithingr4359]

Yeah I was sitting here thinking; is that some kind of weird Yankee name for Phenol? But nope, the classic case of Chemists in general( and Industrial Chemists in specific) being damned daft at naming things. Turns out it's called Benzol because that's what we used to call Benzene - and we called pure Benzene Benzol, because we derived it from Benzoic Acid (but had no fucking clue what it was). Then we figured out that even though Benzene can act a bit like an alcohol - It's not an alcohol - and so just kept the older established name for industrial quality crude Benzene.

[@mushmushmush]

@@nithingr4359 it's still called Benzol in german for some weird reason

[@nithingr4359]

@@mushmushmush Yeah what's with that? That and calling Petroleum, Benzene - Ich verstehe nicht

[@devinfaux6987]

New Patreon goal: buy the podcast a Liberty Ship.

[@oinksnork]

I calculated that all the liberty ships and the victory ships combined would be able to transport less than a fleet of 170 modern mega containerships (assuming same speed and turnaround time) That would be 120 ish ships when flooring it the whole time and taking in account the turnaround times of modern container ships, less than a hundred would suffice. It is wild to think that about 3000 ships could be replaced with about 100, just wild.

[@ilovecoffeev]

At the time, there was also a factor of safety in numbers. Splitting 100 large tagets into 3000 smaller targets ensures a higher percentage of cargo reaches port, even with a higher number of losses.

[@guypradel8874]

Oh, yeah, fill the void of my soul with this delicious lefty podcast with slides !

[@dongiovanni4331]

You're thinking of Fritz Haber, set out to make nitrate explosives, also created artificial fertilizer.

[@thegenericguy8309]

I'm using this as a primary source for a physics presentation on engineering disasters and you can't stop me

[@ericjamieson]

lmao @ 14:00 my dad's Scottish, and, as teenagers, he and his older brother made money after WWII buying surplus RAF bombsights, dismantling them, and selling the lenses. I mean they didn't get wealthy, but they made some decent scratch. Also you gotta love these people that were trying to get a burning ship out into the harbor and got blown up when they could have just run away.

[@whoever6458]

I can't even express how thrilled I was when I took physics and my teacher would say that some numbers were so small in an equation that we could just consider that they were zero unless we needed extremely precise calculations for something. The year of physics that I took was when I finally started to actually understand math, although chemistry helped me to understand it a bit more. My physics teacher got his degree at Berkeley and he would write tests that you could only ever hope to pass if you solved the problem using the relationships between the variables without doing the actual math because it was multiple choice and, if you understood the relationship between the numbers in the equations you needed to use, the answer would be obvious in a short amount of time but actually doing the math would take you so long that you couldn't complete the test. I was really happy about this because, despite both my parents being math professors, I start making mistakes when numbers are involved. Physics also taught me that if I substituted all the numbers for letters, solved for the variable I needed to know, and then put the numbers back in to actually calculate it, I basically eliminated all of the problems I thought I had with math. It's weird.

[@fuzzydunlop7928]

Numbers are another language to me - like, I see an equation and it might as well be hieroglyphics so I really appreciate you sharing the method about substituting numbers with letters to avoid confusion.

[@Udontsay948]

You seriously ought to do a TED talk snd/or develop an app.

[@andrewkowalczyk1156]

So, uh, anyone else here after Beruit port explosion?

[@pkunkbwok]

a cargo of 2,200 tons of ammonium nitrate, and these ships run on fuel oil... yeah, I can see where this story is going

[@vaynomblenner]

Well, I guess this was the right video for the algorithm to recommend on the day of the Beirut explosion.

[@danielled8665]

“If you’re in a podcasting boom, sell microphones” This became so true in 2020 and 2021. Microphones and cameras because everyone wants to start a podcast or KZbin channel. Also a good time to sell editing software

[@youtubeisawebsite7484]

ALICE'S MIC IS AMAZING??

[@whoever6458]

I have a friend who was setting up the sound system one year for the Rose Parade and he had just finished smoking a joint before he got off the freeway to his job. He said they gave him a placard to put in his window but he didn't know what it was for. There was a big line of cars going to the parade and he got stuck in the traffic just when he was finishing the joint he had been smoking. A motorcycle cop suddenly pulled up next to him and said, "Follow me." From how he describes it, it seems like he felt like an airplane getting a fighter jet escort to God knows where but he followed the cop. It turned out that the cop escorted him to a location where the general public couldn't drive their cars because he was the sound guy and had all the equipment with him. Apparently the placard in his window was there to get the cops to escort to the sound area he was working. Mind you, my buddy is an old hippie dude (which is why we ended up playing music together because I play a lot of stuff from the 60s and 70s) and this incident also happen before Cannabis was legal here (at least so far as the state is concerned and basically everyone grows it in their backyard here). Obviously the other reason this guy plays the bass with me is because we're both massive stoners.

[@fuzzydunlop7928]

That cop had to have known the entire time he was escorting him that he’d just poked smot, prolly didn’t feel like rocking the boat by detaining the sound guy. The antidote for cops is convenient placards.

[@biercom]

"Looks like Beirut..." Literally and also from "Keeping Up Appearances" 😉

[@davidhoran7116]

You’d think we stop leaving thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate just straight vibing in warehouses

[@deeznoots6241]

@@davidhoran7116 we gotta put it somewhere, might as well leave it in the middle of a major city

[@fuzzydunlop7928]

@@deeznoots6241 Gotta diversify the stockpile by spreading it evenly throughout the city, preferably around major buildings and population centers. They had the right idea in Game of Thrones. Many little explosions > One big boom

[@brynmurrell5475]

I see we're back here again

[@bynrdskynrd]

Flat tire, flat circle.

[@1stPCFerret]

Ammonium Nitrate is explosive all on its own. It does not require any additions such as fuel oil to make one hell of a bang. Adding FO to the mix does increase the "kick" of the charge.

[@1stPCFerret]

@Joe Average How nice! 😁😂🤣💀

[@lucidarchon]

1:08:47 Carson Marathon Refinery just exploded less than 24 hours after you posted this.

[@weaselman24]

Modern cathedral engines still burn fuel oil in a 2 stroke cycle. it is possible Alice!

[@2sudonim]

Anywhere in rural America, you can buy 1000lbs of ammonia nitrate, pay in cash, show no ID, and no questions will be asked. You can also buy fuel oil in bulk. They're standard materials for farming. No one bats an eye at it.

[@tibbygaycat]

@Joe Average we did have OKC but yes it is amazing.

[@2sudonim]

@@tibbygaycat Fun fact, my school was about two miles from the explosion that day.

[@ebolapie]

funny this comes back into my recommended feed as texas freezes into a solid chunk of ice because of deregulation of utilities and a stubborn drive to "do it our own way"

[@nsytr06]

When did this become a morning show lol

[@spacer7205]

hmm today i will listen to problems on purpose

[@cyclopentadien2221]

The mercury compound was Dimethyl Mercury. Benzene isn't really all that bad, just don't spill too much or inhale its fumes.

[@Robert0Pirie]

Hooray for Longism! Every man a king, no man wears a crown!

[@dylanchouinard6141]

*Nervous Kaiserreich fan sweating*

[@ColonelTacki]

Is Franklin Episode 11 coming "soon" soon or "Jesus" soon?

[@Secretlyalittleworm]

Oddly enough this just happened again in Beirut

[@michaelimbesi2314]

23:26 “Knocking and banging and grinding and shit”: you are clearly unfamiliar with marine diesels

[@sweetpepino1907]

Strange listening to this one after Beirut. Kinda puts it in a little more context. Especially about how strong grain elevators are, goodness.

[@PMickeyDee]

Dear God, this was not the Texas City disaster I expected to hear about when I clicked this video. On a totally unrelated note, I have officially added Texas City to my list of places to take the long way around.

[@deadviny]

this got more relevant

[@slaughterround643]

as a patreon who has used the L85, I am torn between being excited and scared for the next ep

[@schnoodle3]

My wife now brings me a can of beer so I can open it at the same time as Justin

[@AnonyDave]

This really is one of those disasters where the best contingency plan you could have is a good pair of running shoes

[@Raw774]

I googled 'The Texas-Israeli War' and the plot summary sounds like the funniest shit ever but I'm worried if I buy it I'm gonna get some very suspect targeted advertisements.

[@whoever6458]

Am I the only one who had the 1812 Overture come to mind with the talk about the lesser explosions throughout the night?

[@RadioPsychicAstrologyByPepper]

Not at all.

[@firefox5926]

9:09 its like cutting the head off a hydra .. you cut one head off and to more pop up ...

[@thomasgray4188]

When I imagine Moon Congress it not the Congress of a new moon colony it's just Congress re-located to the moon because.

[@GoodLordBagel]

Missouri City is only about an hour away from Texas City. It was named that to try and lure St. Louis people to Texas.

[@ellieskunkz5044]

My favorite one yet. Y'all seem to have really hit your stride. Keep em coming.

[@kellyderg7294]

The audio quality is so much clearer, thank you whatever you did.

[@scottskidmore8976]

texas Israeli war 1999? 😄 glad to see somebody else read that book.

[@ewetoo]

A linux joke in a disaster podcast, magnifique!

[@jsteirer8368]

If you do more ship content, I'd love to hear you all do an episode on the SS Morro Castle's 1934 fire.

[@AccOriginal]

uh, audio quality soooo gooood. stay with discord. definetly better

[@truegopnik6591]

You can’t outrun the Long Dong of the law

[@TrogdorBurnin8or]

At this point, if you end up with any kind of problem on a ship carrying tons of ammonium nitrate, I feel like "Open the bilges and just let it fucking sink" is firstline treatment.

[@superyerfdog]

Between the ammonium nitrate and the grain elevator this episode was about to become very relevant

[@colonelgraff9198]

Wait is this the prequel to Beirut?

[@whoever6458]

You know maybe cats run from vacuums for the very reason of a lion getting stuck in your vacuum cleaner. lol

[@memelord1337]

Hey if y'all do a mining/drilling accident episode like you've mentioned in previous episodes, you should bring on a tankie economic geologist or mining engineer to make it special.

[@bobthenecromancer2339]

History is a circle

[@bynrdskynrd]

A flat circle, that doesn't repeat but it rhymes.... *snap* Its a broken record!*

[@_TehTJ_]

So, what engineering disaster is DNE going to incorporate in Franklin?

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

meteor strike.

[@Chaz31358]

"Texas Israeli War 1999" Holy shit, my parents had that book when I was a kid, hadn't thought about it in years. I remember reading part of it when I was 13 or so and it was some of the most batshit paperback fiction ever.

[@darthbob88]

In defense of Kaiser Permanente, it was actually a spinoff of Kaiser Shipbuilding, because workers at the shipyards needed healthcare. It then grew from there into the modern HMO it is now.

[@EmyrDerfel]

See also GE Capital and GM Financial.

[@ChelloveckCog]

Fucking cheers to Liam and the Cajun comment. I'm not Cajun, but I lived in New Orleans and have a solid 5 minute rant for anyone that conflates Cajuns and Creoles.

[@EvelynnEleonore]

10/10 a very normal podcast

[@caphalor08]

Well this just became more relevant.

[@DaNinjaWalrus]

Michigan City, Indiana is entirely in Indiana but is only a 30 mins drive from Michigan. The US is full of these.