Everything made in America from the 50’s still works! No “planned obsolescence” with engineering in those days. I’m being facetious, but just barely.

Smoking! My dad’s side, sans-smoking, my mom’s side, chimneys. And my maternal grandparents didn’t go outside to smoke, so the house smelled horrible. Egad! I still remember the awful stench of the smoker’s home. Growing up, I had a couple friends whose houses were also infused with their parents’ smoking.

Another sign of progress, smoking has greatly diminished, and those that do smoke, go outside nowadays (either by law or general politeness).

First, if Russia says that pig breeding farms were hit, I seriously doubt that they were pig farms. Maybe once upon a time, but not now.

Second, you may have missed that in the last nine days, Russians have destroyed 180,000 metric tons of grain in Ukraine (today, Reuters).

Sure it works. All the key parts are replaceable. I had this one sitting near my desk, and use it to light the fireplace.
There is a whole box of different ones, including a couple from different bomb tests.

I had not really given it much thought, but in 1954, pretty much everyone was constantly smoking, and a lighter was a critical piece of kit. Like phones have become. I don’t know how people not addicted to nicotine were able to stand it.

That’s a cool lighter…thanks for sharing. Figures it was a gift at a time when pretty much everyone smoked. Does it still work?

Which I hope I posted correctly.

Okay, I don’t know about his death. But I do know he is one of the most important writers I have read, and I respect his work tremendously.

It’s a matter of dispute whether Levi committed suicide as there was no note and he might have fallen down the stairs. Check out the dispute on Google.

Well, there was a war on. The incidental deaths from military nuclear activities from Trinity up to the present amount to a tiny fraction of a rounding error in the total deaths in the Second World War. It seems selfish and narcissistic for someone to argue that the leukaemia or thyroid cancer she got later in life, that might have been due to Trinity, deserves compensation when the kid next door to her who got drafted and came home from Okinawa covered in third-degree burns makes do with a modest veteran’s pension. Never mind the civilians killed in bombing raids and slave-labour camps who got lost everything and got nothing at all.

The Trinity team did actually consider the most seaward of the California Channel Islands but at 160 km from downtown Los Angeles and at least one closer island being populated, they went for a remote site the Army already controlled that had road access from Los Alamos for the complex logistics needed for the test.

… I suppose that should have been in Oppenheimer too, and maybe Bikini atoll and the Marshall Islands as well, if I follow the NYT – as if an injustice was done by excluding all the damage to human life done by all nuclear activities from the film Oppenheimer.