1. All hail the superiority of ultra liberal gun ownership (via a radiologist) in the land of the free and home of the brave. In my 7 years as a doctor I've seen probably only single digit number cases of gunshot trauma. Let alone mass shootings; none ever.
“I have seen a handful of AR-15 injuries in my career. I saw one from a man shot in the back by a SWAT team years ago. The injury along the path of the bullet from an AR-15 is vastly different from a low-velocity handgun injury. The bullet from an AR-15 passes through the body like a cigarette boat travelling at maximum speed through a tiny canal. The tissue next to the bullet is elastic—moving away from the bullet like waves of water displaced by the boat—and then returns and settles back. This process is called cavitation; it leaves the displaced tissue damaged or killed. The high-velocity bullet causes a swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding. Exit wounds can be the size of an orange.”
2. You thought you had it bad in your life... Until you see child labor working to make that smartphone battery that you want to sue Apple for having a finite life.
“At one cobalt mine, children toiled in the drenching rain carrying huge sacks of the mineral.
Dorsen, eight, had no shoes and told us he hadn’t made enough money to eat for the past two days - despite working for about 12 hours a day.
His friend Richard, 11, talked about how his whole body ached every day from the tough physical work.
The mine tunnels are dug by hand by miners who have no protective equipment. The tunnels have no supports and are prone to collapse, especially in the rain.
At one mine we travelled to, workers had downed tools in support of a fellow miner who had died after one such collapse.”
(both via Daring Fireball)