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[Kagus]

Hope you guys enjoy the incineration of irreplaceable relics of human and natural history because 20 million artefacts just caught fire in Brazil's national museum

Shit, that's awful... Hopefully there were at least a few things that survived the fire, and at least nobody died, but still... Damn.

[Teneb]

Hope you guys enjoy the incineration of irreplaceable relics of human and natural history because 20 million artefacts just caught fire in Brazil's national museum

Shit, that's awful... Hopefully there were at least a few things that survived the fire, and at least nobody died, but still... Damn.

A very few things did. The biggest was the meteorite by virtue of being a meteorite and thus not flammable.

The reason it burned down was because there was no water. There was no water because the government froze investments in education and costs needed to be cut and obviously they were going to cut there and not their absurd salaries.

And of course the reactionaries are coming out of the woodwork to show their prejudice by claiming this happened because the Ministry giving money to artists they don't approve of, like ones from favelas or drag queens. Also they w.r.i.t.e l.1.k.e t.h.i.s as if it is going to protect them from criticism or being hit with a ban, which is as adorable as it is stupid.

[scriver]

...For reals? As some kind of... anti-ban-bot thing, or what?

[Loud Whispers]

Prof Paulo Buckup, an expert in fish science at the museum, arrived at 19:30 (22:30 GMT) local time to find parts of the building where animal specimens were kept still intact.
"It's unfortunate but the firefighters were not in a position to do anything, to fight anything," he told BBC Brasil's Julia Carneiro.
"They had no water, no ladders, no equipment.
"So we took the initiative to get in to try and save what we could. We had to break down doors. The soldiers helped us carry things."
Prof Buckup rushed into the burning building to save as much of its extensive collection of molluscs as he could, rescuing "a few thousand" specimens, a "tiny" part of the collection.
"I don't know how many tens of thousands of insects and crustaceans were lost," he says.
"I feel very sorry for my colleagues, some of whom have worked here for 30 or 40 years. Now all evidence of their work is lost, their lives have lost meaning, too."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45398084

Entire generations worth of work lost in one night, millions of years of history gone. It's a miracle the emergency response teams managed to salvage anything at all

One issue appears to be the lack of a sprinkler system. Mr Dias Duarte told Globo TV that a $5.3m (£4.1m) modernisation plan agreed in June would have included the installation of modern fire prevention equipment, but only after October's elections.

That they were so close to installing fire prevention systems hurts even more. I think this may be the largest museum fire in recorded human history, at least since Alexandrian or Mongolian times

[redwallzyl]

A great lose for humanity.

[smjjames]

Wtf? The firefighters themselves didn't have water or any equipment at all? What do they use for firefighting in the area then? Bucket teams? The sheer dumbness of not even funding first responders like firefighters is astounding.

A great lose for humanity.

Hopefully a good deal of it was documented or digitized in some form, so, the loss is mitigated, but still.....

Prof Paulo Buckup, an expert in fish science at the museum, arrived at 19:30 (22:30 GMT) local time to find parts of the building where animal specimens were kept still intact.
"It's unfortunate but the firefighters were not in a position to do anything, to fight anything," he told BBC Brasil's Julia Carneiro.
"They had no water, no ladders, no equipment.
"So we took the initiative to get in to try and save what we could. We had to break down doors. The soldiers helped us carry things."
Prof Buckup rushed into the burning building to save as much of its extensive collection of molluscs as he could, rescuing "a few thousand" specimens, a "tiny" part of the collection.
"I don't know how many tens of thousands of insects and crustaceans were lost," he says.
"I feel very sorry for my colleagues, some of whom have worked here for 30 or 40 years. Now all evidence of their work is lost, their lives have lost meaning, too."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45398084

Entire generations worth of work lost in one night, millions of years of history gone. It's a miracle the emergency response teams managed to salvage anything at all

One issue appears to be the lack of a sprinkler system. Mr Dias Duarte told Globo TV that a $5.3m (£4.1m) modernisation plan agreed in June would have included the installation of modern fire prevention equipment, but only after October's elections.

That they were so close to installing fire prevention systems hurts even more. I think this may be the largest museum fire in recorded human history, at least since Alexandrian or Mongolian times

Not sure what you're referring to by 'Mongolian times'?

[ChairmanPoo]

"Millions of years" of history?

[Kagus]

Not sure what you're referring to by 'Mongolian times'?

Isn't that the newspaper that's delivered via horseback and catapult?

"Millions of years" of history?

Important fossils, presumably.

[Loud Whispers]

Not sure what you're referring to by 'Mongolian times'?

Mongolian conquests & the attendant burning of libraries / destruction of artefacts

"Millions of years" of history?

The museum had a paleontology department which stored items of natural history. Bones & fossils of plants, dinos amongst other things

[Egan_BW]

Damn, that's really bad.

[Teneb]

Wtf? The firefighters themselves didn't have water or any equipment at all? What do they use for firefighting in the area then? Bucket teams? The sheer dumbness of not even funding first responders like firefighters is astounding.

The state government is bankrupt and the museum was barely getting by. So the firefighters were unprepared AND the museum had no water. The former because previous governors (Sérgio Cabral in particular) were so corrupt it makes regular corrupt officials look honest, and the latter because funding was frozen for education because budget cuts had to be made and obviously it wasn't going to come out of congressfolk's paychecks. Obviously.

[Kagus]

budget cuts had to be made and obviously it wasn't going to come out of congressfolk's paychecks. Obviously.

Well somebody has to be indignant about all this! Hopes and prayers don't just hopefully pray for themselves!

[Teneb]

Breaking news, kids.

Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro has just been stabbed by a random man while on campaign. Thing is, I've seen pictures of him receiving first aid immediatiely after and... for someone who has been stabbed in the belly, his shirt is suprisingly intact and has no blood on it at all. Same goes to his body and immediate area.

This reminds me of Carlos Lacerda, a journalist from before the Military Coup. During the democratic government of president Getúlio Vargas (who also headed a dictatorship just before and during WW2), he attacked the government over every single issue he could because he wanted to be president and couldn't. Fed up with this, the president's bodyguard independently (really, Vargas actually didn't know 'til it was too late) decided to silence Lacerda... except he botched up the job and killed Lacerda's own bodyguard instead. Lacerda escaped to a hospital, where a gunshot was heard and later he left said hospital with a cast on his foot saying he got shot as well. Despite, you know, casts not being used on gunshot wounds.

[Kagus]

Well, it is also possible that the wound is just small and difficult to see, and that the primary bleeding is internal. It happens. Abdominal cavity has a fair amount of cavity to be abdominal bled into, and the skin surrounding it isn't necessarily that big of a bleeder by itself, all depending.

As for casts on a gunshot wound, I'm not sure if standard practice is to cover (treated, obviously) open wounds right away or if you're supposed to specifically wait until they've healed over somewhat and been verified as uninfected before putting on a cast, but bullets can certainly break bones. And broken bones tend to enjoy casts, from what I understand.

[Loud Whispers]

Generally you don't false flag an assassination on yourself if you're winning, but the lack of blood is an intriguing detail.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What is the likelihood of the assassin's knife being bloodless after stabbing Bolsonaro? If it was a genuine attack, who sent him?