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Albert Pinto Profile picture
@70sBachchan
Jul 16, 2020 • 17 tweets • 11 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
75th anniversary of the Trinity atomic bomb test! Some wondeful stories about how the Manhattan Project influenced science & culture.
insidescience.org/manhattan-proj… Image
What would have happened had Trinity test failed? Bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Soviet declaration of war & invasion of Manchuria, US rejection of the conditional surrender offer, an abortive coup by Japanese officers all took place in the same week!
blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2020/07/16/wha… Image
Hasegawa's "Racing the Enemy" (based on US, Soviet & Japanese archives) was eyeopening. Stalin accelerated plans to invade Japan as soon as Truman told him about Trinity test in Postdam. Both atomic bomb & Soviet invasion about securing terms of surrender.
books.google.com/books?id=iPju1… ImageImage
FANTASTIC thread. Lots of these stories are part of physics lore. "Last night Fermi took bets on whether the bomb will ignite the atmosphere and roast the entire Earth to a crisp...the guards don’t realise Fermi is joking...
HILARIOUS, FERMI"
The Atomic Age that started 75 years ago wasn't just a rip in time. It changed the very atoms of our atmosphere permanently. It changed geopolitical world-order. It changed biology & physical space too. Thread.
Postwar civilian use of nuclear transformed biology & geosciences more than electricity. Consider
Photosynthesis: trace "hot" C-14 tagged CO2 through plants to crack defining feature of life on earth
Cracking Genetic code w "hot" phosphorus
Carbon dating
insidescience.org/manhattan-proj… Image
Ecology itself is product of Atomic Age. Physicists, biologists & chemists use of radio-isotopes in 1950s made new view of Nature as series of networks described by flow of energy & materials. Bioaccumulation up food-chain key msg of Carson/Commoner. newyorker.com/magazine/1962/… ImageImage
8/ Bomb led to ppl seeing physics as queen of Cold War Science. 21stC Global Warming will lead to reevaluation & a new origin story. Biology, Ecology, Geosciences & Climate Science all have their birth in the Trinity atomic bomb test. #GeopoliticsOfGHGs
9/ Without Trinity, radio-isotopes & fallout from insane number of atmospheric nuclear testing, there'd be no scientific understanding of Global Warming or Ecology or modern envtl movement. Its a strange irony.

Nuclear test animation by Isao Hashimoto
10/ Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is remembered for pesticides,but its her Strontium-90 that sparked envtl mvmt. Baby Tooth Survey showed most US children by late 50s had that isotope that came from fallout-> grass -> cows ->milk, in their teeth. It replaced Calcium in food chain ImageImage
11/ 'Disturbing the Universe' has more tales of how Atomic Age & Ecology are intertwined. Imagine Freeman Dyson sits you down and goes "Listen. Let me tell you what went down in the 20th Century". Highly recommend this interview manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories…
75 years ago, this very moment in August changed the world forever. Much to consider in these Bulletin of Atomic Scientists articles as we navigate, once again, a dangerous period of the Atomic Age as arms-control treaties are ripped up ht @BulletinAtomic thebulletin.org/collections/hi…
Hershey on 6 survivors. #Hiroshima75 #NeverAgain
newyorker.com/magazine/1946/…
Image
"One of the lessons I take from Hiroshima is that while you & your culture are made up of the deeds of the past, where you go from that is up to the living. We can't ignore or deny the past—but we have choices in how we mobilize it towards a better future"
#Hiroshima75 commemorations in America are more critical than yrs past. They "place the use of atomic weapons within the larger history of US violence & white supremacy" and dismiss the now hoary claim that bomb “saved American lives” ht @ColdWarScience neverjustscience.substack.com/p/remembering-… Image
Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy is a riveting book that integrates US/Japan/Soviet archives. Such a fog of war that Japan's physicists took 2 days to verify that Hiroshima was an atomic bomb! Truman too had been kept in dark by US military.Thread on highlights Image
Thread on Nagasaki atrocity. "The decision to drop the 2nd bomb... was not made by Truman, Stimson, or even Groves — it was made on the island of Tinian, by lower-level people. It was not part of a grand strategy, contrary to popular opinion" #NeverAgain

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More from @70sBachchan

Albert Pinto Profile picture
Mar 30
1/ "What's happening in Guyana isn't just happening there. All over the globe, oil companies are racing to tap as many of the remaining fossil fuel reserves as they can"
@jeffgoodell :

Nice @WeAreDrilled @amywestervelt
rollingstone.com/politics/polit…
stitcher.com/show/drilled

Image
2/ This is not a a story of Guyana’s PM lecturing western liberals over hypocrisy climate, oil & Amazonian forests.

But a geopolitical story of developing country elites working with western firms (Exxon) to sell to western markets (oil goes to europe)
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/offsh…
3/ "Guyana is now producing nearly as much oil as Venezuela -1 of the largest oil exporters since the 1920s & founder of OPEC

This amazing article on Exxon shows that the logic of imperial exploitation of natural resources is alive & kicking"-@GaraviniG
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/offsh…
Image
Read 7 tweets
Albert Pinto Profile picture
Oct 21, 2023
White House request to Congress for $106 billion in emergency funding for foreign aid.

A budget tells you more than words about actual priorities. Full breakdown in this PDF incl military aid to Ukraine, Israel, intl development (World bank) etc Thread whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…
Image
2/ UKRAINE: US so far has sent more than $75 billion to Ukraine. Of new $106B, Biden asks $61B for Ukraine.

~$50B military aid, loans for military gear, DOD stocks of weapons etc (Pg 4-27_
~$11.75B economic (pg 42)

New aid is opposed by GOP in House
whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…

Image
Image
3/Reminder why Biden's request for emergency funding looks the way it does-$106B for ukraine,israel,border, humanitarian. US congressional politics when governed by Dem president+Dem senate+Republican house makes funding requests look like a dogs breakfast
Read 4 tweets
Albert Pinto Profile picture
Aug 16, 2023
“opposite responses of China and the U.S. have revealed that the two countries appear weak only because their strengths are asymmetric”

Key point from @BuddyYakov: US and China can mobilize their fiscal and productive capacity in a way that EU cannot.
noemamag.com/the-american-f…
deja vu Policy debates in US-EU-China

US, 2021:
Do more fiscal spending into the pockets of most vulnerable households and businesses!

EU, 2022:
Do more fiscal spending ....!

China, 2023:
Do more fiscal spending into the pocket of most vulnerable households and businesses
Thread on EU’s own goal
Read 6 tweets
Albert Pinto Profile picture
Aug 11, 2023
Three guesses:
1 Energy transition is from fossil fuels to metal-based economy
2 Revenues from metals is tiny compared to selling fossils => No current petrostate turns into electrostate.
3 Hi Capital requirments =>Majority of extraction will take place in Global North not South Image
if 2 is true, then the future has no electrostates. None. Not Indonesia, Australia, certainly not Canada.

Revenues that a state will earn from digging metals & processing it will be too tiny to support an entire population with welfare or dividends. ft.com/content/0d2fba…
sure, very metal specific. cobalt, nickel, copper etc will continue to be in global south countries

to clarify, by majority I meant more than half, not less than half. in most ppls minds, global south is going to do all of it

Ppl forget Australia+Canada+US have capital & metals Image
Read 6 tweets
Albert Pinto Profile picture
Aug 3, 2023
The deranged idea—as @GhoshAmitav describes—that we are safe, that things are under control, that bad things only happen to people who are far away, persists.

Anticipating future ruin, we fail to act in the here & now.
New @polycrisis @kmac & I: phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…
Image
This July has been the hottest in our recorded history and, most likely, over the last 120,000 years

On stocks and flows, action and inaction in the planetary impasse: phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…
Image
Amid the climate crises, other records have been smashed too: the most air travel passengers in a single day in the US; the highest-ever profits for European carriers IAG and Air France-KLM; record oil consumption and record coal production.
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…
Read 36 tweets
Albert Pinto Profile picture
Jun 15, 2023
What do ppl mean when they say the existing ramshackle global financial architecture heaps pain upon the weakest & poorest shoulders?

@kmac & I wrote about negotiations between North & South at next week's Paris Summit @polycrisis. Figure ht @CSEINDIA
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa… Image
Former US National Security advisor Fiona Hill acknowledged that the “Rest” were rebelling against the West. She cited an Indian interlocutor asking, “Where are you when things go wrong for us?”

We contrast Mia Mottley in Paris with Modi in DC
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa… @kmac Image
Climate needs investments. But there is global Austerity. Countries make terrible choices between debt payments & food, energy, social services. And they almost always choose to make debt payments to not risk further downgrades.
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…
Read 10 tweets

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