4 ms·

The usual sorry tale of rickety ships, dubious owners, shady ports of registry (I didn't even know Moldova had a harbour for seagoing ships, but turns out that

by rob74 6y ago

The usual sorry tale of rickety ships, dubious owners, shady ports of registry (I didn't even know Moldova had a harbour for seagoing ships, but turns out that they have, since 2006, after a territorial exchange with Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Giurgiule%C8%99ti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Giurgiule%C8%99ti), crews stranded aboard for months because the owner doesn't care etc. Be that as it may, the blame for storing 2750 tons of a dangerous chemical in a warehouse without proper safety measures in a port located at the heart of Beirut for six years still rests firmly with the Lebanese authorities...

vmception 6y ago
Freeports are pretty wild You can do a lot with them and there are huge lacks in oversight Try not to contribute to a Beirut
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  I really enjoyed the adventure game Disco Elysium. It is set in a weird-fiction alternate-universe shipping port. The cosmic horror and sci-fi stuff are window dressing to a plot that is mainly focused on the legal and illegal business, politics, privateering, exploitation, espionage and criminality that goes on in an international dockyard. It’s really really good with lots of story telling and the right amount of gaming challenges. (I’ve not come across the term freeport before, but I am guessing this overlaps with what you meant.)
  - limomium 6y ago
    You're using the term 'adventure' quite liberally. Disco Elysium is, at best, a really drunken, long-winded and exposition-heavy stroll in a pretty mundane harbor area the size of a single city block. It's not really even that weird of a fiction. Everything is extremely based on reality, with a mere facade of "look we changed the names of everyday things! they are now strange!"
    - vmception 6y ago
      Sounds like something I could be in the mood for.
    - polytely 6y ago
      >Everything is extremely based on reality Very much disagree on that one. SPOILER WARNING: There are enough weird things in there, it's possible to miss them, but discovering really changes your whole outlook on the world. Things like: the Pale, the Insulindian Phasmid & the Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy in the shipping container. Some skills are also kinda magical if you invest enough points, Interfacing & Inland Empire could be explained by your imagination, but it's hard to argue that Esprit De Corps (cutaway to what is happening to Precinct 41) & Shivers (Have conversations with the city of Revachol itself) aren't a bit supernatural.
      - maest 6y ago
        I mostly agree, with one caveat: The Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy is partially an easter egg and, iirc, doesn't really affect the world in any way. At most, it's a commentary on wealth inequality. The Phasmid and the Pale are fairly core to the world and story, though.
      - gorgoiler 6y ago
        The game is like an episode of Breaking Bad set in New Crobuzon. The concept of the Pale is utterly horrifying. It pretty much has no involvement with the game at all and I think that’s a brilliant thing. The concept is there, lurking in the background of various plot lines, but it’s never actually part of a mission. You are left to your own imagination as to, at first, how seemingly horrific it is. To later learn that the pale is expanding — at an unknown rate you are led to believe is like a rising tide — and will eventually destroy the world and no one really seems to care or talk about it as an issue that much puts all the other noir detective and soap opera plots and subplots in a fascinating light. The citizens of Revechol are a little insane, we get to guess a bit about why and can also deduce they are in denial. Someone on gamepedia has pieced together this description from expository dialogue in the game: What does the pale look like? It's acromatic, odourless, featureless. The pale is the enemy of matter and life. It is not like any other — or any thing in the world. It is the transition state of being into nothingness. Where matter borders the pale, the resulting border is an uproar of matter, rising into the pale. Rolling. Evaporating even, a great vision. The area of transition between the world and the pale is called porch collapse: A grey coronal mist, cold vapour, marked by spores of an opportunistic microorganism. Pale is difficult to describe and measure, as it's something whose fundamental property is the suspension of properties: physical, epistemological, linguistic. The further into pale you travel, the steeper the degree of suspension. Right down to the mathematical — numbers stop working. No one has yet passed the number barrier since the discovery of the pale and it may be impossible. In fact, one of the few measurable effects of the pale is that it is expanding at an unknown rate.
  - vmception 6y ago
    Freeports are often shipyards/dockyards but can also be zoned off storage areas There are alot of financial games you can play with them
MattGaiser 6y ago
> the blame for storing 2750 tons of a dangerous chemical in a warehouse without proper safety measures in a port located at the heart of Beirut for six years still rests firmly with the Lebanese authorities... The problem is, which ones?
- mjevans 6y ago
  Any of the ones that cared but lacked authority may as well not exist, and any of the ones that have the authority but didn't use it correctly are proven inept by this; so _all of them_.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  From wikipedia: By order of the judge, the cargo was brought ashore in 2014 and placed in Warehouse 12 at the port,[32] where it remained for the next six years.[16][17][23][33] The MV Rhosus sank in the harbour in February 2018.[34] Customs officials had sent letters to judges requesting a resolution to the issue of the confiscated cargo, proposing that the ammonium nitrate be either exported, given to the army, or sold to the private Lebanese Explosives Company.[b][17] Letters had been sent on 27 June and 5 December 2014, 6 May 2015, 20 May and 13 October 2016, and 27 October 2017.[17][36] One of the letters sent in 2016 noted that judges had not replied to previous requests, and "pleaded":[17] In view of the serious danger of keeping these goods in the hangar in unsuitable climatic conditions, we reaffirm our request to please request the marine agency to re-export these goods immediately to preserve the safety of the port and those working in it, or to look into agreeing to sell this amount ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion So the customs office did their jobs.
- rebuilder 6y ago
  At this point, that will be determined by the amount of pressure the Lebanese people put on their government over this issue.

by rob74 6y ago

vmception 6y ago

Freeports are pretty wild You can do a lot with them and there are huge lacks in oversight Try not to contribute to a Beirut

gorgoiler 6y ago
I really enjoyed the adventure game Disco Elysium. It is set in a weird-fiction alternate-universe shipping port. The cosmic horror and sci-fi stuff are window dressing to a plot that is mainly focused on the legal and illegal business, politics, privateering, exploitation, espionage and criminality that goes on in an international dockyard. It’s really really good with lots of story telling and the right amount of gaming challenges. (I’ve not come across the term freeport before, but I am guessing this overlaps with what you meant.)
- limomium 6y ago
  You're using the term 'adventure' quite liberally. Disco Elysium is, at best, a really drunken, long-winded and exposition-heavy stroll in a pretty mundane harbor area the size of a single city block. It's not really even that weird of a fiction. Everything is extremely based on reality, with a mere facade of "look we changed the names of everyday things! they are now strange!"
  - vmception 6y ago
    Sounds like something I could be in the mood for.
  - polytely 6y ago
    >Everything is extremely based on reality Very much disagree on that one. SPOILER WARNING: There are enough weird things in there, it's possible to miss them, but discovering really changes your whole outlook on the world. Things like: the Pale, the Insulindian Phasmid & the Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy in the shipping container. Some skills are also kinda magical if you invest enough points, Interfacing & Inland Empire could be explained by your imagination, but it's hard to argue that Esprit De Corps (cutaway to what is happening to Precinct 41) & Shivers (Have conversations with the city of Revachol itself) aren't a bit supernatural.
    - maest 6y ago
      I mostly agree, with one caveat: The Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy is partially an easter egg and, iirc, doesn't really affect the world in any way. At most, it's a commentary on wealth inequality. The Phasmid and the Pale are fairly core to the world and story, though.
    - gorgoiler 6y ago
      The game is like an episode of Breaking Bad set in New Crobuzon. The concept of the Pale is utterly horrifying. It pretty much has no involvement with the game at all and I think that’s a brilliant thing. The concept is there, lurking in the background of various plot lines, but it’s never actually part of a mission. You are left to your own imagination as to, at first, how seemingly horrific it is. To later learn that the pale is expanding — at an unknown rate you are led to believe is like a rising tide — and will eventually destroy the world and no one really seems to care or talk about it as an issue that much puts all the other noir detective and soap opera plots and subplots in a fascinating light. The citizens of Revechol are a little insane, we get to guess a bit about why and can also deduce they are in denial. Someone on gamepedia has pieced together this description from expository dialogue in the game: What does the pale look like? It's acromatic, odourless, featureless. The pale is the enemy of matter and life. It is not like any other — or any thing in the world. It is the transition state of being into nothingness. Where matter borders the pale, the resulting border is an uproar of matter, rising into the pale. Rolling. Evaporating even, a great vision. The area of transition between the world and the pale is called porch collapse: A grey coronal mist, cold vapour, marked by spores of an opportunistic microorganism. Pale is difficult to describe and measure, as it's something whose fundamental property is the suspension of properties: physical, epistemological, linguistic. The further into pale you travel, the steeper the degree of suspension. Right down to the mathematical — numbers stop working. No one has yet passed the number barrier since the discovery of the pale and it may be impossible. In fact, one of the few measurable effects of the pale is that it is expanding at an unknown rate.
- vmception 6y ago
  Freeports are often shipyards/dockyards but can also be zoned off storage areas There are alot of financial games you can play with them

MattGaiser 6y ago

> the blame for storing 2750 tons of a dangerous chemical in a warehouse without proper safety measures in a port located at the heart of Beirut for six years still rests firmly with the Lebanese authorities... The problem is, which ones?

mjevans 6y ago
Any of the ones that cared but lacked authority may as well not exist, and any of the ones that have the authority but didn't use it correctly are proven inept by this; so _all of them_.
LatteLazy 6y ago
From wikipedia: By order of the judge, the cargo was brought ashore in 2014 and placed in Warehouse 12 at the port,[32] where it remained for the next six years.[16][17][23][33] The MV Rhosus sank in the harbour in February 2018.[34] Customs officials had sent letters to judges requesting a resolution to the issue of the confiscated cargo, proposing that the ammonium nitrate be either exported, given to the army, or sold to the private Lebanese Explosives Company.[b][17] Letters had been sent on 27 June and 5 December 2014, 6 May 2015, 20 May and 13 October 2016, and 27 October 2017.[17][36] One of the letters sent in 2016 noted that judges had not replied to previous requests, and "pleaded":[17] In view of the serious danger of keeping these goods in the hangar in unsuitable climatic conditions, we reaffirm our request to please request the marine agency to re-export these goods immediately to preserve the safety of the port and those working in it, or to look into agreeing to sell this amount ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion So the customs office did their jobs.
rebuilder 6y ago
At this point, that will be determined by the amount of pressure the Lebanese people put on their government over this issue.