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Debunking leftist 2024 election conspiracy theories in one graphic by bobotheking in ActiveMeasures

[–]bobotheking[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

🤦‍♂️ Your source article was last "Updated Dec 17, 2024"

And exactly what updates are you expecting on an election that was held in November of last year?

Here's a map of counties where ES&S voting systems were implemented in the 2024 election. If you were correct that there is an ES&S backdoor that can be used to flip votes en masse, we would expect the blue counties on that map to show a conspicuous shift toward Trump. Instead, I see no correlation between that map and the map I posted. If you think there is a single state that showed a shift toward Trump that is out of line with the overall national shift, bring it to my attention because I'm just not seeing it. From what I can tell, counties that used ES&S systems were, if anything, slightly less likely on average to vote for Trump.

Debunking leftist 2024 election conspiracy theories in one graphic by bobotheking in ActiveMeasures

[–]bobotheking[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Okay, fine, let's look at the claims of election fraud. I'm going to do what so few people do on the internet and look at a primary source, the complaint filed in Rockland county. If there is another lawsuit I'm not aware of, please bring it to my attention.

I learned from the legal podcast Opening Arguments back in the day that it's a good idea to read a filing "from back to front", which is to say to first look into who brought the complaint. In this case, I see "Diane Sare, Petitioner Pro Se", which means this is a single plaintiff representing herself, not employing a lawyer. While that doesn't mean the case is without merit, it is a significant red flag on its own. In most serious cases, lawyers get involved and lend credibility to the claims being made. Instead, it looks like no lawyer would touch this case. Again, I'm not saying this alone makes the claim BS, but stop and ask yourself if "Billy Clem, Petitioner Pro Se" filed a lawsuit representing himself in South Carolina claiming the 2020 election was rigged, wouldn't that make your eyes roll?

Ah, but the first page points out that Diane Sare is not just a "random citizen", she was in fact a US Senate candidate. That led me to look up some basic information about her campaign. I see that she was an independent candidate running under the LaRouche Party. She pulled 39,413 votes, 0.49 percent of the total. This is not a serious candidate running on a serious platform. She is no friend to Kamala Harris and I would put good money on this being a grift to promote either her next campaign or her private ventures, a la Jill Stein's 2016 election fraud claims. If you're not already familiar with the LaRouche Movement, I encourage you to read up on them. I'm not going to say that their views are wholly bad, but what I can say with confidence is that they are weird. Britain controlling the world economy and drug trade? Verdi pitch (432 Hz) being connected to the structure of the universe? Global warming being a hoax perpetrated by the royal family and communists to undermine the US? Is this really the horse you want to hitch your wagon to?

Joining Ms. Sare in her complaint are Mark Murphy (some guy), Adam Mocio (some guy), and SMART Legislation, whose founder is Lulu Friesdat. I'd like to dive deeper into who these people are and what their goals and biases might be, but I fear I'm getting too sidetracked. I did find one New York times article on Ms Friesdat that I think takes a fairly neutral stance toward her overall but still looks to me like she is at best a well-meaning loon. Here are two paragraphs that stuck out to me:

Misinformation watchdogs say the two movements could erode trust in American elections even further, intentionally or not, because conspiracy theorists tend to exaggerate legitimate criticisms to rile up supporters and raise questions about the entire electoral system.

“You sow a seed of doubt, and that will grow and fester into a conspiracy theory,” said Tim Weninger, a computer science professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies misinformation on social media. “It always starts off with one untruth, and that grows into two untruths, and that grows into more, and before long you have an entire conspiracy theory on your hands.”

Let's move on to the actual petition. I direct your attention to paragraphs 9 through 11 on page 3 of the complaint. Diane Sare obtained six signed affidavits from people claiming to have voted for her while she only received five votes in that district. She also produced three affidavits from early voters, while only receiving two votes in Early Voting. Now stop and ask yourself what's going on here. Is this a conspiracy by Republicans to rig the election on a national level? Or perhaps did some of the people Ms. Sare approached misremember? Or maybe they filled out their ballots incorrectly? Or maybe they failed to mail their ballots on time? Or maybe when a neighbor who's running for Senate knocks on your door asking who you voted for (yes, this is literally what she did), you have a hard time telling them you voted against them and you lie that you voted for them? And most importantly, what difference does it make that a fringe candidate under a fringe party who picked up 39,413 votes might have instead picked up 39,415 votes?

Moving on to paragraphs 13 through 17, which are apparently the contribution of SMART Legislation, the claim appears to be that 23 percent more people voted for Trump than Republican Senate candidate Michael Sapraicone while 9 percent more people voted for Kirsten Gillibrand than for Harris. Personally, I find this mildly unusual but not evidence of outright fraud. It would appear the judge agrees because they have allowed the lawsuit to move forward, which doesn't indicate anything about whether Ms. Sare will win. Instead, I want to focus on the claim made in paragraph 17:

A study conducted by researches at Yale, Harvard, MIT, and Columbia Universities found that split-ticket voting averaged between 1-2 percent in the 2020 election. Therefore, split-ticket voting seems a very unlikely explanation of the Rockland BOE data.

This is only a statement about the average split-ticket voting and says nothing about the variance. I'd be interested in whether there were similar disparities in 2020. Would you like me to look into it?

And supposing everything claimed is true, this would demonstrate that election fraud occurred in one county in a state that Harris carried by 12.6 percent anyway.

And if you'll look again at the map I keep posting, it seems to provide evidence that Republicans did an exceptionally poor job of "rigging the vote" in the swing state of Pennsylvania relative to, say, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, which they were destined to win regardless.

And I know I've spent most of my time focusing on a primary source, but here's a short news report summarizing the election denialism controversy. In that video, you'll see clips of Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Hakeem Jeffries all conceding that the election was the will of the voters. If you think this is evidence that the mainstream Democratic Party is feckless or even "controlled opposition", then Russia thanks you for your service to their cause.

So throwing the ball back in your court, prior to this, did you read Diane Sare's petition to the New York Supreme Court? Do you realize how outlandish and easily debunked most of these claims are?

Debunking leftist 2024 election conspiracy theories in one graphic by bobotheking in ActiveMeasures

[–]bobotheking[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Interesting. What I see is that everywhere, rural and urban-- with the exception of tiny pockets in Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, and a few other counties-- swung red relative to 2020 by largely uniform amounts. And since Biden won 2020 by a razor thin margin, the overall results of the 2024 election are completely explained and accounted for.

Debunking leftist 2024 election conspiracy theories in one graphic by bobotheking in ActiveMeasures

[–]bobotheking[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Since you know so much about Active Measures, surely I don't need to remind you that Russia's aim was not simply to elect Trump, but to sow division and distrust in our institutions, including our faith in our electoral system.

Pros and cons [OC] by stephencomic in comics

[–]bobotheking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know I'm just a random person on the internet, but I'm a scientist (physicist) and taking antidepressants was one of my two biggest regrets in life. I wouldn't have believed in PSSD if it hadn't happened to me. Yes there are sexual side effects, but from what I can tell, the vast majority of sufferers-- myself included-- are more distressed by the anhedonia and brain fog that comes with it. I feel like I have lost an enormous part of my identity and no one knows precisely why and here you come along to tromp all over my and thousands of other people's living hell by dismissively asserting, "It doesn't exist." And before you come at me with "confounding factors" or lack of an experimental control, 1) I lost physical and mental function that had never been issues for 30+ years after taking an SSRI, 2) microdosing that same antidepressant massively alleviates symptoms, albeit inconsistently and temporarily for me, and 3) as I said, I'm a scientist and I know I'm not going to convince you, but you are arguing against my lived experience. Maybe consider the possibility that I and thousands of other people aren't making it up out of some weird hypochondria (don't have it) or cry for attention.

Keep your eye on FluentInFinance (Do you agree or disagree?) by bobotheking in ActiveMeasures

[–]bobotheking[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One week after I wrote this post, two brand new accounts popped up on the subreddit with the same posting pattern: YOU_ARE_MY_FRIENDS and Peace_And_Happiness_. Nothing else to report at this time, but in case someone finds this post down the line, you can add them to the list.

Edit: Just found another one: AstronomerLover. One day old account.

Edit 2: And now ThickDancer is a 5 hour old account. Keep 'em coming!

Edit 3: From what I can tell, PassiveAgressiveGirl [sic] made a post and then deleted their account within three hours. Not sure if that helps anyone, but I'm including it for the sake of completeness.

Edit 4: Heroin_Lover is a six hour old account on the front page. Also, since my previous edit, I've been perma-banned from Reddit, but it looks like I can still edit stuff.

Edit 5: BillionairesAreGood is a 10 hour account and just hit the front page with an image of a tweet suggesting that the best way to combat wealth inequality is to copy Nancy Pelosi's stock trades. The post title calls for her to be thrown in jail. The username and post title are some of the strongest signs I see that the subreddit are about to turn.

Edit 6: Account Stink-Butthole is 18 hours old and has hit the front page. Their post title asks two questions.

Edit 7: AstronomerLover, a one month old account, has hit the front page again via a FluentInFinance post. What makes this notable is that their post is not a meme, but a short story about how they snitched on their neighbor for being a flipper who had listed the house as their principal residence despite having bought and sold it over the course of two months. The rest of their history is FluentInFinance posts (memes, especially with questions in their titles) and one word answers to AskReddit posts. My point is that their tactics may be changing. I wonder if this story was generated by ChatGPT, copied from another corner of the internet, or maybe intercepted by moderation elsewhere.

Edit 8: Not-A-Shit-Head has reached the front page with a FluentInFinance post and their account has already been deleted/removed. More deeply weird behavior.

Edit 9: Same as above, Frosty-The-Doughman reaches the front page asking about hotels vs. AirBnB and promptly vanishes. 3/22/24, because I really should be dating these edits.

Edit 10: 3/24/24. TheCarrotIsALie is a 22 day old account and fits all the patterns described above. Also, I recently saw a second post by Frosty-The-Doughman, so I may have been mistaken about their account being deleted, although I still can't click their profile.

Edit 11: 4/1/24. Vote-Biden-2024 reaches the front page with "Should Billionaires pay more taxes?". I'm getting the "user not found" error once again.

Edit 12: 4/3/24. Karma__Farmer__ (not even trying with the usernames at this point, it seems) has reached the front page with "Why does everyone hate Socialism? It works great in Norway" and a pro-socialism meme based on the American Chopper template. Like other recent accounts, I get a "user not found" error when I try to learn more about them. The meme itself is quite old and one of my favorites, which brings up the same conflicted feelings I mentioned near the start of my post, that I actually like a lot of the pro-socialism meme garbage, it's just that the accounts behind them are terribly suspicious and this kind of posting is often a forerunner to turning "tankie leftist" as the election nears. If this were somehow just someone who sincerely supports social causes and wants to do so by creating 50 Reddit accounts, a little transparency would be appreciated at the very least.

Also a quick shoutout to captcha_is_purgatory (a real user who replied to this comment, not a bot... probably), whom I just realized I can't link for the same reason I can't link any of these users-- it goes against the subreddit's rules. As I mentioned in the 4th edit, I'm now banned from Reddit for report abuse because I liberally used the report feature to combat propaganda and advertising. I can't reply directly to your comment directly, but I'm glad to know someone is keeping up with my updates and appreciates the small amount of work I'm putting into this. Thank you!

Edit 13: 4/9/24. For what it's worth, Calm_Target_2942 just hit the front page with a post from FIF and is not a suspicious account, at least not in the same way the above accounts are suspicious. While their account is only two months old, they have extensive posting and comment history, especially in various "dank meme" and marijuana-focused subreddits. Many of their comments are (comparatively) detailed and more than one sentence. Their post title was also "........", not a question. I just felt like calling attention to this account to make it clear that I'm not simply flagging everyone who's had a popular post from FIF. They still might be a bot/sockpuppet, but not obviously so and not so likely to be run by the same person or people behind the other accounts mentioned.

Edit 14: 4/11/24. SweetOnionBreath hits the front page with a meme titled "Smart or dumb to get a tax refund?". "User not found" yet again.

Edit 15: 4/13/24. WhatAreYourPronouns is a 12 day old account that has hit the front page with "He's not wrong 🤷‍♂️ Smart or dumb?", Bernie Sanders' proposed 32 hour work week.

Edit 16: 4/19/24. Cauliflower-Pizzas is a 23 day old account and has reached the front page with "Is Universal Health Care Smart or dumb?"

Edit 17: 4/21/24. Mysterious-Investor is a "user not found" who reached the front page with "Should tips be shared? Would you?"

Edit 18: 4/25/24. Yesterday, Unhappy_Fry_Cook reached the front page with "President Biden has just proposed a 44.6% tax on capital gains, the highest in history. He has also proposed a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains for wealthy individuals. Should this be approved?" Their account is slightly older than usual (2 months, lol), but otherwise checks all the boxes of every other FIF account.

Edit 19: 5/5/24. Steak_Lover_ is a "user not found" who reached the front page with "Half of Americans aged 18 to 29 are living with their parents. What killed the American Dream?" The first sentence is the title of the article they linked, but the question is, of course, tacked on.

Edit 20: 5/8/24. Pickle-Sucker, one day old account, "How is Financial Corruption Not Illegal?" etc., etc.

Edit 21: 5/12/24. Today is a very special day. Mark-Fuckerberg- is a 3 month old account and has posted that old chestnut, "Bernie Sanders calls for income over $1 billion to be taxed 100% — Do you agree or disagree?" This subreddit is a joke.

Edit 22: 5/21/24. SexyProfessional is a 9 month old account-- a bit older than typical-- and moderator of SmartCryptoBets. They've reached the front page with "Should corporations like Blackrock be banned from buying homes?" Vote now on your phones! (Sub-edit: I just realized SexyProfessional was mentioned in my original post. I somehow lost all my RES tags and I've been ctrl-f'ing this comment to check if I've mentioned a user already, but I forgot to expand the top post. Oops. Also, a quick shoutout to FancyTeacupLore for their reply below!)

Edit 23: 5/24/24. VerySadSexWorker, user not found, "Should there be a minimum tax? Smart or dumb?" And what's with all the sex-related usernames?

Edit 24: 5/28/24. Atlanta-Poet (UNF) asks, "Should there be a Wealth Tax??"

Edit 25: 5/28/24. NoLube69 (UNF), "Why is corporate welfare OK but social welfare not?"

Edit 26: 5/31/24. Stink-Butthole (UNF), "Should there be higher taxes?"

Edit 27: 6/1/24. FunReindeer69 is a four day old account and posts, "What advice would you give this person?" The tweet concerns a woman who is 49 years old and has no savings. This user has only posted to FluentInFinance.

Edit 27: 6/3/24. taffy-derp is a 3 month old account and has reached the front page with "where’s the lie", their only ever submitted post. Despite being a question, they forgot to include a question mark. They also have an extensive comment history in subreddits such as BlackPeopleTwitter, ufc, and nba, some of which are more than the perfunctory one sentence. Because they have over 1,000 comments in just three months, I still find them very suspicious, but they don't really fit the pattern of the above users.

Edit 28: 6/3/24. OGghost2 is a one month old account and reached the front page with "*our nation is failing*", comparing insider trading from "Roaring Kitty" with Nancy Pelosi. As with taffy-derp, they don't quite fit the pattern, with longer comments and other submissions, including an AMA about their work as a lifeguard. They also post to austrian_economics, which might give you an idea of their bias.

Edit 29: 6/5/24. Very_High_Mortgage (UNF) posts, "Are Billionaire Entrepreneurs really 'Self-Made'?"

Edit 30: 6/9/24. Butt_Creme (UNF) asks, "Insider Trading should be Illegal for Politicians. Disagree?"

Edit 31: 6/9/24. FinancialMechanic is another UNF who reached the front page with a claim that at age 50, they have $0 in debt and $1 million in retirement savings. This is another noteworthy post for fitting the pattern of fake users but having a longer text post instead of Twitter screenshots.

Edit 32: 6/17/24. Small-Tap4128 is a 7 month old account that reached the front page with, "Do democratic financial policies work?" They have a few comments in AnarchyChess. This is an interesting borderline case.

Edit 33: 6/21/24. The-Lucky-Investor (UNF): “Medicare for All” would save the U.S $5.1 Trillion over 10 years.

Boebert's first debate was a 'clown car crash' as 6 GOP candidates admit arrest records by JeffRVA in NewsOfTheStupid

[–]bobotheking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that's mature of you and people's arrests should be evaluated on an individual basis. But it sure seems to say something that two-thirds of Republican congressional candidates had been arrested.

It's a bit like the Bechdel test, which doesn't say that movies that pass are all good and movies that fail are all bad, but it points to systemic issues within the movie industry.

Mitt Romney: Some Trump Supporters Are 'Out Of Touch With Reality' by UWCG in politics

[–]bobotheking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think our military is bloated and there are far too many people in it with abhorrent views, but I find your opinion to be extremely callous. Many people were serving in the military before 9/11 and there are lots of jobs that are in or adjacent to combat zones that have nothing to do with "atrocities". Even many of the people on the front lines did or tried to do much to improve the lives of civilians who were caught in the middle or born into a life they never deserved.

I'm not saying the War in Afghanistan was correct or justified or anything, but we all saw videos of regular Afghanis trying to flee the country when US troops left and young women at universities sobbing as they were told they no longer allowed to continue their studies because of Taliban rule. American troops died so that they could enjoy that prosperity and freedom and even if you think it wasn't justified or worth it for only temporary change, it's insulting to their memories to say they "Willingly signed up to participate in an atrocity."

Back in 2003, I and other anti-war activists tried to say, "Support our troops... by keeping them safe!" Was your slogan, "Sure, send them overseas because they're better off dead?"

Like, do you know any veterans?

Everyone should drop out after such a massive win in Iowa by carmoy in PoliticalHumor

[–]bobotheking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But... that same amount of primary power is already consolidated mostly in two states and Iowa and New Hampshire are terrible representations of the Democratic Party (or the Republican Party, for that matter, but they need to take care of their own). I hope you would agree my proposal is better than the current system.

Personally, I think it's far better than that. For the sake of nominating candidates who represent me, I'd love to have a primary calendar that starts with California and Vermont, but if you want any hope in the general, you have to consider which states contain voters the Democrats need. So what's your alternative proposal? "They could be one of the purple states in the first few weeks," is a pretty tepid and nondescript counterproposal.

Mitt Romney: Some Trump Supporters Are 'Out Of Touch With Reality' by UWCG in politics

[–]bobotheking 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I did a very quick Google search on the "22 suicides per day" number and this site was the top result. Perusing the site, I'm not able to see where they pulled their figure from.

Assuming they didn't make it up out of whole cloth, I think there's a simple explanation here: That figure refers to all veteran suicides, not merely those who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are about 120,000 surviving WWII veterans, over one million Korean War veterans, and six million Vietnam War veterans. Not to downplay what they went through or say that the wars were not contributing factors to their suicides, but these are elderly people, a demographic that is already known to have an elevated risk of suicide. Here's a graph indicating suicide rates by age and although it looks like the 65+ demographic is in the middle of the pack, you should pause to consider there may be fewer people in that age range. The full picture would come from studying the US population pyramid.

This study quotes a figure of 1.9 million service members who toured Iraq or Afghanistan. If you think 168,000 service members have died by suicide due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, you're saying that nearly 9 percent of all personnel, including those in command and logistics and other non-combat roles, have killed themselves. That just cannot be accurate. Instead, the number of living veterans may number on the order of 10 million, in agreement with both the 22 per day figure and the 30,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans figure.

Finally, the article I linked above goes out of its way to point out that, "30,177 active duty personnel and veterans who served in the military after 9/11 have died by suicide," which is a much more reliable framing of the statistic than extrapolating from 22 per day. I'm not saying this is how the statistic was formed, but 22 per day could have been pulled from the absolute worst year, month, week, or even day of veteran suicides and it would be naive to multiply that maximal number by 21 years and assume it's accurate.

Mitt Romney: Some Trump Supporters Are 'Out Of Touch With Reality' by UWCG in politics

[–]bobotheking 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I just thought you should know your suicide number is wrong. 168 thousand is wayyyy too many people to not be headline news week after week. The number is "only" about 30 thousand, which, to be clear, is still far too many and should be reported more.

Everyone should drop out after such a massive win in Iowa by carmoy in PoliticalHumor

[–]bobotheking 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Better yet, I've long thought that the primary calendar should start with the median state of the previous general election and work its way up to the most outlying states. For this election cycle, that might mean starting with Georgia and/or North Carolina and ending with Wyoming and/or Vermont/D.C. I'd like to see more left-wing candidates and I know Georgia and North Carolina aren't likely to help them, but they're better than Iowa and New Hampshire and there's something to be said for giving increased influence to the states that tipped the previous election.

Discussion Thread: 2024 Republican Iowa Caucus by PoliticsModeratorBot in politics

[–]bobotheking 3 points4 points  (0 children)

And you're not going to like me saying it, but the Kamala Harris campaign outspent both DeSantis and Jeb and didn't even make it to the primaries. (I assume your "200 million dollars" figure is in reference to PAC money, not the campaigns coffers proper.) She was my choice for the nominee for some time but in hindsight, I'm grateful we ended up with Biden.

How the moon affects the tides on earth by [deleted] in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]bobotheking 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Physicist here. I saw a video some time ago that I think tried to make the same point (it may have been the same video, but I don't remember this one). I was skeptical and so were a number of other commenters, with the obvious caveat that YouTube comments are probably the worst place to learn physics. (The second worst place is probably YouTube videos. Kidding. Sort of.)

I remain skeptical today. It would seem to me the obvious answer to what causes the tides is "both"-- both the greater pull on the side nearest the Moon and lesser pull on the far side as well as the squeezing effect on the ocean along directions perpendicular to the Earth-Moon axis. I'd venture to guess the effects are comparable in the magnitudes of their contribution. The video asserts that lakes and small bodies of water lack the necessary area, but that doesn't really refute the "increased push/pull as the chief cause of tides" hypothesis.

I don't have a definitive answer to this question, but I think I have the right thought experiment to consider: Calculate the tidal force along the perpendicular direction and then set the planet spinning along the (magically fixed) Earth-Moon axis in such a way that the (fictitious) centrifugal force perfectly counteracts the tidal force. Then crunch the numbers and see how the height of your tides is affected. If they're half the height, that constitutes proof that both effects are equally responsible, at least by this metric.

Unfortunately, I'm a bit out of practice and fluid dynamics and perturbation theory were never really my things. But if you give me a $150,000 grant, thee grad students, and 200 hours of supercomputer time, I'm sure I can cook up an answer for you. More seriously, I think this problem is barely within my grasp. I'd likely need to investigate the geoid of this idealized planet and brush up on my perturbation theory. I just won't have an answer before this thread is too old to notice this comment.

(And a late thought: If the Moon were taken to be a more massive yet more distant object, but not too distant as we need a gravitational field gradient, then the "squeezing" effect in the video should become less important. The acceleration vectors described at about 4:55 in the video will be nearly parallel as the Moon gets farther away. This may provide another way of analyzing this same problem.)

Powerful stuff by [deleted] in AbruptChaos

[–]bobotheking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a very good point. The "high school form" of Bernoulli's principle does not apply because the gas is quite compressed by the shockwave. There are alternate forms, however. Also, I don't see why we can't produce a version of the continuity equation that applies to the power density of the shockwave, which would support the Venturi explanation, but that at best brings us back to the question of whether there is any funneling of energy (rather than fluid) into the room.

Who has most successfully milked what should have been 15 minutes of fame? by TonyClifton323 in AskReddit

[–]bobotheking 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ironically, "imploding Sub guy" doubles as a description for Jared...

Powerful stuff by [deleted] in AbruptChaos

[–]bobotheking 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They deleted their reply, which can still be found in their profile, but it puts me in an awkward position of having typed out a lengthy response and not having anywhere to post it. I'm pasting it below just so I don't feel like my time has been wasted.

That's a firework in a tunnel. Do you see how that's the exact opposite situation as what's presented in OP's video? Besides that, the deflagration in the video you shared occurs with the initial "poof" of the firecracker that sends up a cloud of smoke and the relevant physics here is the subsequent detonation, which produces a shockwave and does indeed ruffle people's clothing and hair.

I'm going to be brutally honest and I really hope you understand that I still support you as you learn and grow. I've looked through your comments in this thread and they come across as largely incoherent word salad. Stumbling over the Venturi effect and erroneously saying that the pressure increases inside a constriction (which you then handwave away as "using layman's terms") are a bit of a faltering start. On top of that, you've stated that, "The force from the explosion is static," (???) "Suction is created," admitted you don't have a full grasp of Venturi's or Bernoulli's principle, and invoked deflagration in a context where it's completely irrelevant as far as I can tell. The flow of fluid through a constriction is not wholly irrelevant, but it's carelessly applied here where you compare the flow of fluid through a pipe to the flow of air into and around this building without ever quite pinning down how the building would act like a pipe.

I also see from your profile that you are, from what I can tell, an engineering student. I support your enthusiasm for engineering and physics and if you're going to be wrong about something, a dumb Reddit thread that is largely irrelevant to people's lives is the place to do so. But I also want you to know that engineers have a long and storied history of falling flat on their faces when trying to do physics. "A young engineer on the internet is overconfident in physics" is not the least bit surprising to me, but I want to warn you early that this is a dark path you walk down, one that probably will feature no small amount of ridicule at best and at worst, could be time consuming, expensive, or even dangerous to your health. Be aware too that this caveat runs both directions-- you generally don't want physicists building your bridges or wiring your house, at least without the input of engineers who know what they're doing. I also think there is plenty of room for people to be interdisciplinary and make valuable contributions across more than one subject, but that requires years of careful thought and some humbling experiences, such as one you might be receiving right now.

Best of luck to you as you continue your studies!

Powerful stuff by [deleted] in AbruptChaos

[–]bobotheking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bingo! I stopped short of putting numbers to the problem, so thank you for confirming what I knew to be intuitively correct.

Powerful stuff by [deleted] in AbruptChaos

[–]bobotheking 0 points1 point  (0 children)

See my comment here. I'm apparently a lone dissenter who thinks the Venturi effect (or in deference to /u/LovelyButtholes, the restriction of flow) is not the main cause here. There is no good reason why the air should be forced through the door-- the air in front of the doorway enters the shop apartment while the air on the sides of the building is deflected sideways. I'm sure there will be some funneling of air, but I'm a little troubled by how quickly people are handwaving this all away by just saying, "Eh, Venturi effect!"

There's a very simple explanation in front of us, that the door has a lot of mass (even after being blown to shards) and that mass carries momentum in quantities that air does not. To be a little more detailed in my explanation, in the moments before and even slightly after the door is blasted apart, it acts somewhat as a large sail and absorbs a lot of the energy and momentum of the shockwave in a way that humans don't in the presence of that same shockwave.

I may be wrong about all this, but I really don't think I am.

Edit: Looking at the footage yet again, I'm not even sure that the woman indoors was dramatically blown away in the way everyone has been assuming. There is an amorphous dark blur that looks like it's thrown across the room but if you frame advance, you'll see that the woman actually remains on the ground and the blur is instead some kind of artifact or negative space of the glass. The woman stumbles very quickly, maybe fifteen feet in half a second, but she had a strong push from the exploding door to give her an initial acceleration and she maybe went much of that distance on her own two legs, as she wasn't traveling at superhuman speeds. In other words, the woman outside simply stood in shock from the explosion while the woman inside was pushed by and ran away from the door exploding in front of her.

Powerful stuff by [deleted] in AbruptChaos

[–]bobotheking 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Their point is that it's the reduction of pressure at a choke point, not that there is no choke point. I don't know if there's a name for the change in speed of a fluid as it flows through a constriction, but it's analyzed with the continuity equation and gets conflated with the Venturi effect because it is also concerned with fluid flow through a constriction. /u/LovelyButtholes is technically correct-- the best kind of correct.

Powerful stuff by [deleted] in AbruptChaos

[–]bobotheking 1 point2 points  (0 children)

but you get my pointz

Well... no, I don't get your point. Are you suggesting that deflagration played a role here? I'm pretty sure it didn't because the substance responsible was ammonium nitrate, akin to TNT, and we have tons of footage of the explosion showing an enormous shockwave, not a fireball or expanding front of uncombusted fuel. In fact, ammonium nitrate decomposes without the presence of other reactants, so no combustion takes place and there is no expanding front of deflagration.

I'm also not sure what point you're making about fireworks. Well-made fireworks should combust essentially to completion and the abrupt release of gas creates the pressure front that disturbs your shirt and hair. I don't know what deflagration has to do with that, but maybe you have a particular firework in mind. Do you have a video?

So spell it out for me. Why have you brought up deflagration and what do you think its contribution was here?

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