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[misko27]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/13/523704631/first-african-american-female-judge-on-new-yorks-top-court-found-dead

That is a incredibly suspicious event.

We're literally discussing this on this very page.

A very prominent black Muslim woman, who has been an extremely prominent liberal voice on the state's highest cout, had died under very mysterious circumstances. With the current social and media environment, suspicions that she was murdered to silence minority voices could very easily spread like wildfire if the investigation team isn't very careful.

Ok, and?

I mean race riots don't just happen out of nowhere. There's no indication this is foul play or something, and if it was, rioting wouldn't exactly help now, would it? I'm just surprised at how easily there is an expectation of violence. Race relations may not be great, but they're not so much on a knife edge that just the death of a minority judge on somewhat suspicious circumstances leads to violence. I mean even if it was murder, who did it? If the police or government were somehow involved rioting would be likely, but a white surpremacist would, at most, lead to peaceful protests standing in solidarity. At most. But like, why even protest? Probably not even a protest, maybe a march of some sort. At most.

I mean we had a white supremacist travel up here very recently and kill a black man. He was arrested and life moved on. I don't think the city is so conspiratorially minded as to be concerned about every death unless police brutality is involved. For all we know it's a mafia thing. Or nothing at all.

[Sergarr]

U.S. drops "mother of all bombs" in Afghanistan, marking weapon's first use.

When did USA planned to exit Afghanistan, again?

[sluissa]

U.S. drops "mother of all bombs" in Afghanistan, marking weapon's first use.

When did USA planned to exit Afghanistan, again?

I dunno, did they name this one "Operation Mic Drop"?

[Amperzand]

Oh boy howdy. That is not a good sign. The MOAB has a higher explosive yield than some nukes, if they start throwing this thing around it's going to get interesting.

[Sheb]

Apparently they had to collapse a cave network. Is there any picture of the blast? Also, the yield is "only" 11 tonnes of TNT, hardly comparable to nukes.

[Amperzand]

W-54 tacnuke had a theoretical minimum yield of 10 tonnes. :V The thing stayed around in some places until the 80s.

[Frumple]

If by hardly comparable you mean exactly inside the range of a Davy Crockett, which explode for something in the region of 10-20 tons of TNT... think that was ninja'd, anyway. Suffice it that it's a explosive power that's very much comparable to low end nukes.

Interestingly (?) some GOP politicians stumped with using tac nukes (i.e. as small as possible) on certain national actors, such as Iran. Similarly, Trump questioned publicly why nukes were effectively off the table, and iirc Putin has expressed willingness to go that far (if perhaps not further into full power nukes) as well.

... won't lie, now that y'all bring that up and I start think about it, the use of a MOAB suddenly seems potentially rather more ominous. Because if this is a prelude towards desensitizing the population regarding very heavy ordinance as a build up to using nuclear for limited military engagements...

[Strife26]

W-54 tacnuke had a theoretical minimum yield of 10 tonnes. :V The thing stayed around in some places until the 80s.

So, y'know, pretty tiny on the scale of cold war era explosives.

[Amperzand]

Oh, certainly. But this really is the next worst thing to tactical nuclear weapons, or WMDs in general, I suppose.

[Strife26]

It's worse than hitting the cave system with thermobaric weapons? Or spending a bunch of Afghani lives to clear it out with blood?

[Frumple]

*nudges the apocalypse clock a little closer to midnight* I ain't sayin' it is, but we might not be able to rule out a maybe.

[TempAcc]

ITT: weapons that go boom are a thing and are ocasionaly used for things.

[Amperzand]

As far as I know, MOAB is thermobaric.

[Baffler]

If they had collapsed these caves with a dozen smaller bombs it's unlikely anyone outside dedicated peoples who follow the war blow-by-blow would've even noticed it. There's no material difference between using one bomb and several to collapse the cave, not to mention that the ISIS garbage inside for sure had it coming. If anything this is preferable since we got it done in one sortie instead of several, and saved the trouble and lives that would've been required to clear them out from the ground.

[martinuzz]

I don't think it's the first time the US used the MOAB. If I recall correctly it was used in either the first or second Iraq war as well, multiple times even.

Still, this really is not good. If Trump starts making a habit of using extremely heavy weapons at unexpected targets, in countries they're formally not even present anymore, it will make a lot of foreign heads of state nervous. Let's hope no one gets nervous enough to try a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US.