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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
For those who don't know, Oroville Dam is the tallest dam in the US (Switzerland's Grande Dixence concrete dam is even higher) and was built in the 60-70s by the state of California as a multipurpose dam on the Feather River. The town of Oroville lies downstream as does a fish hatchrry, the dam is too tall for a proper fish ladder.
This winter has brought far more precipitation than expected and caused the reservoir to fill until operators opened the main spillway a few days ago.
Things went haywire as a huge hole formed in the spillway channel. It's not known why but based on what happened at Glen Canyon I bet on cavitation. With the high water below the normal outlets (the turbines) don't work. To prevent further damage the operators decided to operate the spillway at low capacity and prepare the emergency spillway. Humans were not considered in danger yet but the baby fish in the hatchery were evacuated by truck as the disintegrating spillway renders the water silty and dangerous to fish, which normally at this time are put into the Feather River and migrate to the ocean.
Somewhere between Saturday and Sunday, the reservoir reached the crest of the emergency spillway and started overflowing. All went well until Sunday evening, when the emergency spillway started eroding as well. Now the city of Oroville - 160000 inhabitants or so - is being evacuated as officials fear a large breaching in the dam.
Nota bene, I've put this together from the local news. I don't live there.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanSince the EO travel ban debacle it is entirely possible that Pence or Bannon will slip a poorly written EO for Trump to sign without reading and undermine the same sex marriage protections anyway.
Or maybe Trump ends up reading the next one but it is full of long works he doesn't understand and Bannon and Pence give him a botched explanation and have him sign it anyway.
Apparently no one gives a dam.
edited 13th Feb '17 4:23:40 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent legesSo apparently companies may not have to report the ratio of CEO pay to median employee pay after all
Not sure how serious this might end up being should the SEC decide to remove the rule...but anything that might lower the accountability and transparency of big business execs is probably not good.
edited 13th Feb '17 6:31:02 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedFrank Ancona, a KKK Imperial Wizard, has been found dead on the bank of the Big River
.
Trump is not good at finding context
.
- The President saw a single line of an article on a television show.
- He tweeted that single line with apparently no idea who the author was or what the publication was, and indeed without reading the rest of the article.
- Nobody in the White House vetted the tweet to discover the readily apparent fact that the article in question sharply criticized the President and supported the decision about which he was angrily complaining.
- Nobody warned the President that the article was written by an author who had written numerous other articles ungraced by pleasant words about him—indeed, an author who has been calling him a threat to national security for nearly a year.
- Nobody warned the President that the site he was about to praise has had a great deal of such writing by other writers as well.
One person who must bear responsibility for the awful rollout of the EO is White House Counsel Donald Mc Gahn. The White House Counsel is charged with (among other things) ensuring proper inter-agency coordination on important legal policies and with protecting the President from legal fallout. Mc Gahn should have anticipated and corrected in advance the many foreseeable problems with the manner in which the EO was rolled out. And he should have advised the President after his first anti-Robart tweet, and after the other more aggressive ones, that the tweets were hurting the President’s legal cause.
If Mc Gahn did not do these things, he is incompetent, and perhaps we can attribute impulsive incompetence to the President. But if Mc Gahn did do these things—if he tried to put the brakes on the EO, and if he warned his client about the adverse impact of his tweets—then he has shockingly little influence with the President and within the White House (i.e. he is ineffectual).
They've had one since long before it was a concept in Trump's head. To quote Cristela Alonzo:
"Doesn't he know we use tunnels now? Build it as high as you want; we're underground, stupid!"
Even ignoring that, I've been pointing out since the moment Trump announced his stupid wall that the U.S.-Mexico border is not landlocked. What stops Mexicans from simply swimming around the f*cking thing?
And that's not even getting into the fact that the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants are from overstayed Visas.
The wall is a stupid idea from a stupid man too proud to recognize where he's gone wrong.
"But my Emails, tho.
-H"
I want to start selling shirts with the slogan, "Still With Her".
edited 13th Feb '17 7:23:41 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
Donald "Too Long; Didn't Read" Trump strikes again.
On Frank Ancona, aside from misreading his name as Anaconda, I am trying to think what a tragedy that is but all I am getting is what tragedy?.
The wall doesn't stop people from overstaying their visas either.
edited 13th Feb '17 7:24:09 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent legesI would like to feel bad for Frank Ancona, but I have only a finite number of tears to shed and they're presently reserved for all the innocent men, women, and children who have suffered or been outright murdered under the violent racial tension the KKK have worked diligently to develop.
edited 13th Feb '17 7:26:55 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub....
What does that even mean?
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Re: the dead klansman: My thoughts.
Seismic detectors, but good luck having enough covering the whole border or in areas with heavy traffic being able to detect stuff though.
The only good thing this wall could do is to make people more interested in Pink Floyd.
Inter arma enim silent legesI could at least see an argument for stupid vanity projects like the wall creating job opportunities if not for the fact that Trump's probably going to be using cheap labor from undocumented workers and imported Chinese steel.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Idaho dairy owners bringing immigrant labor plight to GOP lawmakers
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article132366959.html
Knowing Idaho is a Red State, there's a part of me that's going through that "Well what were you expecting?" that I think came up with an earlier, similar article.
Also:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-white-house-staff-234949
Trump may be contemplating a shake up of advisors and aides. One thing that stuck out to me suggests Trump might almost be putting serious thought into this.
edited 13th Feb '17 8:06:07 AM by sgamer82
What I find interesting about Trump's response to the EO is the point about the legal team. I don't feel like Trump is recognizing that he actually made any mistakes with the EO, but I also don't feel like he's that invested in it either. Instead, to him, this is about winning and losing.
He feels like he's losing. He blames his aides for giving him a loser EO to sign and he blames the absence of a legal team for why he's losing. I don't think he actually cares that much about getting the thing passed; as has been the case with many things about his Presidential campaign, he just wants to win for the sake of winning.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

The issue with the main spillway isn't new either. In 1983, Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona also had its spillways damaged when they were used. Cavitation was the reason.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman