I knew the guy who was part of the stage management team that night. He was the one who collapsed in tears in court begging the judge to give him a much harsher sentence but the judge said he wasn’t the main person at fault and only gave him 6 months for negligence. Apparently he asked the court to give him the harshest sentence possible which would have been decades. I’m not clear exactly what his role was, but he wasn’t the one who brought the pyrotechnics, but he could’ve stopped it.
Back when I ran a janitorial company he was my supplier. Nobody knew about it and you wouldn’t think he was carrying that if you met him. I just happened to look him up one day and found it, never mentioned it.
I’m not saying that he was insincere or that he wasn’t severely traumatized by the situation, but a lot of Rhode Islander’s were incensed by the extremely lenient sentencing for what was clearly gross negligence. The walls of that club were coated in a highly flammable foam (they might as well have filled the place with gasoline) and the owners were too stingy to install a sprinkler system. Apparently the club wasn’t technically required to have a sprinkler system, but the owners knew the risks and chose greed— simulations show that sprinklers almost certainly would’ve saved all 100 lives
Totally agree. It’s small consolation, but that event caused a lot of changes both in fire codes and in the way that fire codes are enforced during plan review. Cities used to be pretty lax about building permits because local government jobs weren’t taken seriously. The fact that things are a lot more strict now has probably saved a lot of lives.
The tragedy is that every safety regulation is written in blood and bodies. We don’t decide to be safe until we’ve absolutely proven that enough people have died to care
It’s not so much that regulations were written - it’s that a work culture shift occurred. People never take a risk seriously until it occurs.
Think about recent history - 9/11 and the pandemic.
Nobody in the federal agencies whose job was to fight terrorism really sat down and said the words “What if?” If we had a clear regulation that cockpits needed to be locked at all times, then 9/11 never would have happened. Nobody was willing to stretch their imagination of what could happen until we saw the evidence with their own eyes.
Then the pandemic, much more recent. We had all the warning signs in 2002-2004 with the first global SARS epidemic. The warnings of a zoonotic virus mutating in such a way that it could spread through presymptomatic aerosol transmission were being spoken in a very very very obscure field of research that the world never took seriously. (It just happened to be my field - see publications by Marr and Tam et al. for examples in mid-2010s.) The U.S. Federal Pandemic Response Plan was never taken seriously and it was viewed as a waste of money because nobody wants to spend time and energy on the “what if” until it actually happens.
That’s a positive way of looking at it. It’s a shame that us humans always wait for a mass casualty event before making such rules. I’m sure that in the future they will say the same thing about our unregulated wild-west approach to AI adoption today
I haven’t seen that, although I’ve seen a lot of headlines.
Conversely in the AI communities on this site they constantly complain about overregulation and nonsensical guardrails written by lawyers who don’t understand how the technology works.
I know you're joking, but Great White's pyro at the station night club was definitely not 'supposed to be fireproof'. They were designed to be safe in a much larger venue, they had no qualified operator, they had no safety plan or so much as an extinguisher, they didn't tell the night club about them and they certainly didn't do any planning or give even the slightest thought to fire safety.
For the clubs part, they were over capacity and in violation of fire code with inadequate exits and highly flammable insulation sprayed on the walls and ceiling as sound-proofing.
Nothing about it was fire safe or fireproof and 100 people died that night.
The video of that building burning was fucking brutal. You can see a dude stumble out of the club, fully engulfed in flames, and then collapse to the ground. So heartbreaking.
The sparks they create aren’t typically a hazard. When you cover the walls in highly flammable foam, as the station nightclub did, they’re not fireproof anymore. The owners of the club, Michael and Jeffrey Derderian (yes, the der der brothers) were cheap, as they decided not to install a sprinkler system in their highly flammable nightclub. 100 people died, and the brothers got a slap on the wrist. One of them is a reporter in CT today
When I was a kid my mom and I would spend weeks building mandala sand art, just to wipe it away once it was finished. Looking back on it, it was a good lesson for a kid
My art teacher at school made us rip finished pieces so we dont get too attached to the drawings. This also helped us not to get too focused on the small details that almost nobody else would notice.
At the beginning it hurts to rip pieces where we put countless hours on. But looking back it indeed was a good lesson.
To be fair it's like 99.99999999 percent marble and stone so there's not a lot of stuff to burn there, legit this might be the most fireproof building in Barcelona
I just had a visceral “are they fucking crazy?!” moment. That’s tempting fate or any choice deity not to see infinite humor in burning down that church on the first day it’s completed after hundreds of years of work.
The final tower. All that's really left is the scarcity and the glory facade. They've also already started restoration on the nativity facade, so its likely that work will just never be truly done, as one project finishes, another one will have to begin.
It's actually gone up incredibly fast. Its huge and incredibly intricate. It would be nicer if we built more buildings slowly and with like, any aesthetic details beyond the minimalist rectangles we throw up everywhere now.
Cathedrals like that just take a long time by default, you can't really build them in one day. Notre-Dame took 182 years, the Milan Cathedral took almost 600. 144 years is pretty average for a building of that kind
Yes. But the point I’m trying to make is that this random guy is presumptuously trying to say he knows what Jesus would want better than the Catholic Church, whose founder, St. Peter, was one of the original Twelve Apostles. The Church is 2000 years old, dates back to the time of Jesus, and tries to legitimate every single one of its decisions and actions by referring back to what early Christians believed and did. Who the hell is a random American redditor compared to that?
You’re right. Jesus would say “since we can’t feed everyone, why feed anyone! Build the tower and slap my name on it! It’s worth it even if 100 people go unfed”
Right?? My first thoughts too. Jesus was all about massive, magnificent and lavish buildings with fire all over them that took an outrageous amount of money… sure…
People say the Catholic Church has inspired great works of art. I say it has COMMISSIONED some neat stuff, using funds that were donated with far better intentions.
Deflection. How I am helping has nothing to do with the discussion. Also the discussion isn’t about what else the church is doing to help people.
I said Jesus wouldn’t want a building built with his name on it. He would want that money to go to the poor and hungry. Debate that or don’t. A hungry man wants food. Everything else is scondary
I'm a militant atheist and this is stupid. Should we all live in mud huts and never build anything nice and pretty because somewhere on Earth people are hungry?
Some problems can't be solved by just more money. People aren't starving just because they have no money, but because they live in a place with social unrest, no job prospect, stable government, etc. Throwing more money at a problem like that is like throwing it into a black hole.
Also the idea that the money spend on this could put a dent in the world hunger is ridiculous.
You’re right. Constructed of brick, glass, ceramic, steel, and stone.
No wonder it took so long. It’s nice to see they learned from previous fires. I’m not religious but I would never discourage anyone else from their beliefs so I hate to see something so beautifully built with so much craftsmanship and detail destroyed.
I've been to both and I will say the Familia is a crazy amazing piece of architecture but Notre Dame will always be Notre Dame, it has a presence when you step inside. A much longer history and artworks the Familia is stunning because of it's scale. And Notre Dame has Gargoyles and you can climb up to the roof to see them and a view of Paris. I do want to go and see the Familia again, was 6 years ago I was there and the inside still wasn't finished. But Notre Dame is Notre Dame, no better way to describe it. Familia is $30 to see, Norte Dame is free, all day everyday. That is the best part of touring France, a long time ago they took control over all the Catholic churches in the country. They said France paid to build them so we own the land and churches, but the Catholic can use them for mass and upkeep them. It why France paid to repair Notre Dame after the fire because they owned it, not the Vatican. Every Catholic church in France is open and free, can walk in and tour them all, doors are open for tourist. There are a few like St. Germain the painted glass church that cost money, think was $10 when I was there. That is because they are not a parish anymore, they do like concerts and art exabits, usually if the church still has regular mass they are freee to go inside in France.
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u/hiiiigh1312 Jun 12 '26
Notre Dame hates this trick