Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage
reuters.com
reuters.com
Just a strange coincidence.
Speaking from experience as being the intern responsible for pushing through most projects in Toronto during the summer of 2016.
>Ninety-minute power cuts were implemented on Monday and Tuesday to manage demand. An investigation into the outage was being conducted by the energy ministry.
This is the extent of the "outage". It's more of a capacity reduction than a grid failure.
This isn't cost efficient but it's the right thing to do. Wouldn't it be nice if we could call it the humane thing to do? In general, "humane" seems to stop with human lives, despite the fact that we like to style ourselves caretakers of this planet.
[0] https://www.bbcearth.com/shows/mammals
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5ZpLHZzWv93X70kvP2...
Depends on the ratio you put on human vs animal lives. Money is fungible, the more you spend on walkways the less you spend on road signage or MRI machines.
A lack of redundancy caused an islandwide outage.
> Sunday's disruption also affected the island's only 900 MW coal fired power plant, causing it to operate in safe mode, the CEB said. "All efforts are being made to restore the grid to full capacity but power cuts will be implemented to manage peak demand hours in the night," the CEB statement added.
Digging a bit deeper, they appear to be running with very little margin, if any. Meaning redundancy and protection against cascading failures is limited.
Fixing the real cause is expensive, so it's often easier to just blame the trigger—though admittedly in this case it makes for a great headline. :)
It's not like the monkey deployed special monkey skills beyond "occupy space while being electrically conductive".
Sri Lanka has about as many people as Florida and lower per-person energy usage. Their country’s power grid is smaller than that of many US states.
A good reminder that efficiency is often at odds with reliability.
Having lived on a 8-mile by 5-mile island, power grid USED to be fed with a single transformer before the state funded a power company to take over and properly re-grid it.
Silly as it may sound, outage was easily triggered by a wildlife (beavers by flooding, hawk-arial-nest, chipmunk tunnels, male-deers pushes it, badgers weaken foundation, even bees and ants) by disrupting poles that support the grid.
They'll trip the breakers at the transformers.
Even leak PCB oil from within a transformer to a point of melting the copper winding coil inside the transformer, but that was a manufacturing flaw, not nature intervention.
So yeah, it seems harder to do and less frequent without monkey, but non-monkey-disruptor has been known to happen.
That is a whole lot smaller than Sri Lanka which is 268 miles by 139 miles and has a population of about 22m. Size similar to Ireland, population about 80% that of Australia.
https://bmkltsly13vb.compat.objectstorage.ap-singapore-1.ora...
Going way out on a limb here, but perhaps the monkey who disrupted equipment carrying enough power to mess up the entire country was most likely charred into an unrecognizable state. But hey, maybe it got lucky!
I was also thinking about the monkey. Sadly we don't know.
Also: if a monkey can cause this much drama, I'm not sure if the monkey is to blame (as per the title). This is gov't pushing the blame to the monkey imho.
Folks, doesn’t matter if it’s physical or digital. Test your systems for resiliency
"Sri Lanka will become next Bali as long as it gets fiber."
Outside of the few main hotspots, people don't hassle you in Bali. They are an incredibly friendly and polite people in spite of the tourism.
Of course, Bali isn't completely hassle free. But you can just walk down the street there, at least outside of the main hotspots. Taxi drivers will hail you, it's a bit annoying, but they're polite and will drive on when you say no thanks.
That wasn't my experience when I traveled there 3 years ago, and I walked around quite a bit.
My biggest complaint was the lack of good local restaurants, even in big cities. The juice bars were pretty great though. Still miss wood apple.
Another issue was the insanely reckless driving and incessant honking. Even with the plentiful metal bars and hand straps, trying to stand on a crowded bus while they fly around mountain curves is a total body workout.
But I get what you’re saying.
The ups and downs of tourism during the civil war illustrated it clearly. So did the impact of the Ukraine war (there used to be a lot of Russian tourists).
I was shocked by how cheap hotels had once again become when I last went back to Sri Lanka (2023)
Having a beach is not enough. You can find beaches everywhere. Bali beaches aren't even that good.
This disruption would be one of the more successful operations.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/felicia-ferret-particl...
https://pucsl-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/chinthakal_pu...
This wikipedia article was marked for deletion, so just in case https://archive.ph/wip/7fvmI
Other forums are mentioning conspiracy theories about political oponents sabotaging the current (new) government.
No skin in that game
Hacker “Olds” amirite
Of course it was all the monkeys fault, for being part of a geographic location, with poor energy planning, poor infrastructure support, in a third world country, all the things intervening primates need to shovel disinformation.
"The nationwide blackouts were attributed to a massive disruption caused by a monkey which had apparently intervened to trigger an irreparable damage which made it unable to restore the electricity in most parts of Sri Lanka immediately after the incident had unfolded." ( This from the Wikipedia article is not Artificial Intelligence, its shocked monkeys forced to type randomly type ).
Damn that damn monkey, and his triggering intervention of irreparable damage. Just what do they think AI will do with all this world salad? Was it written by AI or was it written by the monkey as a suicide note? or the place went to sh*t-hole Level 5 when Arthur C Clarke died?
Inquiring minds what to know, why third world problems require primate interventions?
This could have happened anywhere? Puerto Rico? New York in 1977? London 2003? Was it all the work of intervening primates?
When your premise is utterly absurd, you can drive the point anywhere: Shock the Monkey.
> The animal had come into contact with the transformer at the station, disrupting supply to the entire country
Bro was cooked
Nature is brutal. I distinctly remember a hike where I stumbled on a mother bear (RIP) tearing apart a still-alive baby elk for her cubs. Human civilisation has done a lot of damage. But we might also be able to spare a lot of sentient suffering, bringing care to the biosphere and taking station as nature’s ethical guardians. Food for thought if you find yourself going full misanthrope.
Have you ever visited a museum exhibit on torture? The engineering creativity that has gone into exploiting physiology and psychology to cause unendurable, unimaginable pain is astonishing. You'll want to look away. You'll want to forget, to believe once again that cats are worse... but cats are to a first order approximation indifferent to suffering, in contrast to humans hellbent on maximizing it.
JumpCrisscross is taking a techno-optimist's perspective, but while I personally believe that humans should voluntarily seek to serve as "ethical guardians" and to minimize "sentient suffering", I don't trust them to do it. Not as individuals, since empathy is a weak force compared with first-person pain. Not as cogs within societies where inflicting pain is often a means to gaining and maintaining power.
The extremes contribute the most in the ledger of agonies, but I don't think they are the most relevant — rather I fault human nature for tending to produce extremes. Is it Vladimir Putin who is personally responsible for all the suffering inflicted by the Russian state, or can we say that the environment from which Putin emerged played a role?
Thanks to their reasoning abilities, humans have enormous capability to inflict violence and suffering, which is not matched by a commensurate empathy which would dissuade violence.
If you care about sums, you must also acknowledge positive within the Russian state as well? On a given day, it also has lovers meeting, mothers nursing children, friendships.
Surely, humanity doesn't have enough empathy to dissuade violence, but that is an argument about purity, not aggregates. The typical person spends an exceedingly small amount of time engaged in violence, and this is a testament to both our empathy, intelligence, and the social systems we have built.
It only takes a moment for you or your loved ones to receive death or grievous injury, but not to worry because they’re “spending an exceedingly small amount of time engaged in violence”. Rape might be over in minutes! And besides, it only affects… how much of the population?
Those who are most confident about human righteousness are the least qualified to minimize “sentient suffering”. It is often said that one’s foes “only understand violence”, and the essential truth in that assertion is that indirect empathy is utterly insufficient compared with direct, personal pain as a motivator for changing behavior.
Sometimes it helps to make the context personal? How much violence would you endure for a year of kindness and love?
With regards to the weight of violence: Have you considered that "10 minutes of violent murder" may mean only 10 minutes of acute agony for the deceased but years of suffering for the deceased's surviving loved ones?
The only possible answer to your thought experiment is "I don't need s1artibartfast sitting in judgment about whether my life is appropriately balanced between violence and happiness".
To be clear, I'm not judging your life, but challenging your claim about the forces driving human behavior, and the aggregate vale of the species.
I disagree with the idea that just because empathy doesn't prevent all violence, it is weak, or less meaningful. A bird can fly, but that doesn't mean gravity is weak.
Violence is real, and important to understand, but Empathy and good intentions are real too, and a huge part of human psychology. I would argue they are a greater driver of the two.
I imagine, for example, that government officials involved in managing California water rights[1], have "good intentions" — just as good as the intentions of those in this thread offering monstrous philosophical propositions about bartering violence that trivialize its enduring damage, or the intentions of those who contemplate becoming "nature's ethical guardians" and reducing "sentient suffering".
To the extent that human social systems have evolved to reduce "sentient suffering", it has been by applying forcible restraints on such individuals, confronting them with how the consequences of their actions affect others, even when the natural human inclination is to downplay and dismiss suffering when it clashes with self-interest or "good intentions".
The monkey was probably dead before it felt anything.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-d...
https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/story/on-sri-lankas-fert...
“In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farmi...
I'd addressed many of the usual specious claims made on this in a thread from 2022, here:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419111>
In particular, the situation was, as I'd put it there, "the driver was not 'let's de-grow the economy', but 'we can't afford what we had'".
(The larger context of that particular thread was degrowth, on which I'd addressed some other points separately here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32419768>.)
Though he was fighting for Tamils, paradoxically, Prabhakaran also became the big killer of Tamils. He annihilated all competing Tamil militant groups ...
... it all led to [Prabhakaran's] last apocalyptic decision to fight to the last day — and the last Tamil. Through Kumaran Pathmanathan, KP, the LTTE ‘foreign minister’, we offered to bring out all the combatants and civilians from the war zone. When KP went to finalise the deal, Prabhakaran refused. The rest is history.
Unfortunate for the Tamils how it all played out, with little intervention or pressure from other regional powers. The past violence and pogroms were already indicative of the State's intent; they didn't need a second invitation.
Why isn't this better known? The way the Tamils were treated is so pure a representation of evil that I can barely get through the Wikipedia page. This was the work of Buddhists, too! I've been taught that Buddhists were peaceful and non-violent by creed, but clearly not if the only Buddhist majority nation is capable of such abomination.
Westerners rarely associate Buddhism with extremism or violence, but Buddhist movements in Asia have often raised few qualms about the use of force. Buddhist authorities have, at times, justified violence against the faith’s enemies and supported authoritarian regimes.
* https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/myanmar-s-extr...
These links are just Myanmar.
We are still people.
I'm always shocked when Europeans or Americans single out Christianity as some uniquely malevolent force.
People are like this. We have always been like this. Being atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, heathen, etc -- it doesn't make you superhuman. We're all capable of this and the sooner everyone realizes this the sooner we can work to prevent tragedy.
I don't think there is clear cause and effect when it comes to religion and irrational behavior.
Having visited over a hundred churches (for thousands of services), they are the only place I've consistently seen people teach and accept things that what everyone can plainly see is false. Children are taught that fallacies are better than critical thinking, wherever it serves their belief system.
I’ve visited many, many churches, likely hundreds. I love their architecture. I have never been to a service and am an atheist.
Note that strictly speaking, atheism is just rejecting the existence of any god. That doesn't necessarily make magic out of the equation. Though certainly atheism is generally associated to the rejection of any superstitious belief.
But just believing that ZFC make a sound mathematical foundation doesn't make you an advanced flawless logician. People stay mere humans, whatever they believe might be the most relevant foundation to use their more or less weak reasoning ability.
IDK what ZFC is, so perhaps you can enlighten me?
Mathematics is seen a formally grown, logical system, that has features that are "discovered" rather than invented .. "Given some {X}, {Y} follows without question".
However it rests(?) on Axiomatic foundations ..
Most famously: https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm
It is understood that one can tweak an axiom, the fifth posulate for example, and get a different logical ediface - a non Euclidean hyperbolic geometry in that case.
The ZFC "Axiom of Choice" has bearing on infinities and other things, including many proofs that depend on reduction by absurdity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_t...
History's arc is much longer than communism, and religion is tied to some pretty horrific events.
You can agree with their take on religion or not, but their motivation remains the same.
Even historically religious motives for "bad behaviours" were rare.
> Even historically religious motives for "bad behaviours" were rare.
Doubt. Still, even if that's accurate, my point was that raising people to be easily manipulated sheep doesn't produce a robust society. It just makes them easier to exploit. MLMs are common in predominantly Mormon communities for a reason.
You misunderstand what I said. I was refuting the idea that religion caused genocides, rather than claiming lack of religion caused genocides.
I think religion per se is too generic and varied to correlate with anything. Sometimes the lack of a particular religion or variant of a particular religion may either cause or oppose genocide - there is a reason, for example, that the Nazis wanted to replace Christianity with new religions, (Positive Christianity and new-paganism - both very different from the originals they drew on/pretended to be), consistent with their ideology.
This is the heart of the matter: any ill by an atheist is determined to be caused by something other than atheism. Meanwhile any motivation of an evil doer who professes a religion is pinned on that religion.
Who is "we" and why do they hear that?
Eg: Australia was colonised to take land possession ahead of the Dutch and the French, for finnancial gain, and to utilise the prisoners piling up in hulks on the river flats once the thirteen colonies in North America stopped taking them.
The thirteen US colonies were largely established as hard nosed business ventures with substantial private investments that looked for an eventual return.
The South and Central American colonies were pretty much all established to support plantations for sugar and other goods.
In these examples religion came along for the ride and provided a carrotof comfort in contrast to the sticks and guns of the military who also rode in.
Doesn't make it true though.
> Whereas actions of atheists are unable to be used against atheism
Why not, aside from the obvious observation that "atheists" are not as homogenuous in their belief as, say, "Catholics".
In general the actions of, say, Nazis, can be used against them (ie Nazis) but not against humans globally or atheists in Australia, that's nonsensical.
Only if people are doing something because they are Catholics.
Atheist polemicists often treat the actions of any (supposed, in many cases) Christian as an objection to Christianity in general, which is just as nonsensical. That is what is objectionable in their argument.
I'm sure some do .. I'll even grant that most online that engage in such arguments likely do.
I'd suggest the bulk of atheists don't spend much time pointlessly going around and around in such circles.
The "common tactics" of "Atheist polemicists" presented here so far are just daft - they're more the hallmark of obsessives that engage in oline forum textfests.
> Only if people are doing something because they are Catholics.
The statement I made was that "atheists" are not as homogeneous in their belief as, say, "Catholics".
I stand by it.
I would also suggest that Mormons are more homogeneous as a group than "atheists", the Greek Orthodox are more homogeneous as a group than "atheists", etc.
If people engage in activities under the organisational overwatch of the Catholic Church, eg: the Christian Brothers in Bindoon, then the Catholic Church bears responsibility for allowing those actions to proceed unchecked.
Its pretty common to do so.
For example, blaming the Spanish inquisition (an arm of the Spanish monarchy) on the Catholic Church, or people claiming that Hitler was a Catholic (without adding the important "as a child" qualifier).
> would also suggest that Mormons are more homogeneous as a group than "atheists", the Greek Orthodox are more homogeneous as a group than "atheists", etc.
Going back to what I said earlier, the original point was religion vs lack of religion - and I would argue that religious people (Christians, Hindus, pagans, ....) are a less homogenous group than atheists.
Of course, atheist compatible doctrines too can can be taken as reason to go kill those who dare to believe otherwise. But they can't pretend they have a book directly inspired by some super being that justify their actions. That is, one can also adulate Marx and kill random dudes because that's fair within their interpretation of das Kapital.
https://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/10768/death-penalt...
The external affair minister of India, Mr Jaishankar, recently excoriated a European politician over Indians handling of Ukraine. He said 'Europe needs to get past the mentality that Europe's problems are the world's problems, while the world's problems are not Europes problems '.
And this is where that attitude comes from
India has dealt with genocides at its borders in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and yet most Europeans and Americans have no idea. The United States of America criticized India for helping Bangladesh during it's Pakistan sponsored genocide, and actually understood military action against India to protect Pakistan's ability to slaughter Bangladeshis.
Again, in Sri Lanka, no one cared
Yet the moment India undertakes it's strategic interests regarding cheap Russian oil, suddenly the whole world starts pointing fingers
There's a lot that goes on in Asia that is simply not reported. If you read American media it's almost like that part of the world doesn't exist
Mind you, I’m not saying deaths anywhere are good of course - but the reporting is terribly biased in a way that many may not even realize, especially if you live in one of those “western” countries and primarily consume English media/news. Heck, just look at what is commonly considered “core countries” [2]?
1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/4buox6/tragic_world_... 2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_countries
Like I get why people find it difficult to understand Mandarin. But this is English news we're talking about ...
There are a couple of Buddhist majority countries; Cambodia, Thailand, Mongolia, Laos and more. Also, judging a religion from its adherents worst atrocities is a mistake - for example, look at history. It is hard to rank them given the high level of sickening background brutality but if we're just commenting on religions not living up to their values the crusades (particularly #4) are difficult to top.
If you want to read a good non-fiction on the Sri Lankan civil war, check out "The Divided Island" by Samanth Subramaniam.
It was also made possible by the populations fear of the other side who were extremely nasty ethnonationalists, "ethnically cleansed" areas under their control, and were the inventors and most prolific users of the modern suicide bomb (the type the west associates with Islamic terrorists). A common response to criticism of the killing of civilians during the war were things like "we are fighting fascists".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eel...
Here's my understanding on the conflict.
1. The Sinhalese majority were given mandate by the British.
2. They used this mandate to apply incredibly discriminatory practices towards the Tamils.
3. Constant rabble-rousing by Sinhalese politicians intermittently led to race riots, in which Sinhalese mobs carried out pogroms and murders against Tamils.
4. Due to almost laughably blatant policies targeting Tamils, such as an affirmative action policy designed to reduce the number of Tamil students at universities, a group of Tamil students formed a league to protest the matter. These students would become the forerunners of the tamil militant groups.
5. Further barbarism from the Sinhalese majority, such as the destruction of culturally important Tamil heritage (for instance, the destruction of an important library), seeding racial tensions.
6. A rebel group carries out an ambush against the Sri Lankan army, seemingly as retaliation for the assassination of one of their commanders. The result of this was a week of rioting where innocent Tamil civilians were murdered, raped and tortured by Sinhalese mobs. This event is known as Black July. To readers: do not view the wikipedia page for this event if you're sensitive. The first image depicts a Tamil man being stripped and beaten before being murdered by grinning Sinhalese youths.
7. War starts, and the rest is history.
I don't blame the "other side" for being extremely nasty ethnonationalists. In fact, I'm very surprised they didn't become violent militants earlier by how badly they were treated. Whilst I can't condone the ethnic cleansing they carried out, I can on a human level understand why they'd carry out such crimes when they'd been so viciously treated by their victims in the past. The sexual violence that seemingly became routine for Tamils is some of the most sickening that I've ever read. I had to take a break and go for a walk after reading some of the accounts.
My job requires me to have some level of awareness to the subtleties of conflict. Having studied the aspects of international relations that pertain to war, I've learned how complex a lot of these internal struggles can be. As such, I try to be fair in my assessments of ethnic conflicts. It's usually not straightforward to charactise one side as villainous and one side as victorious. Having pored over accounts from government affiliated sources, the only consistent perspective that Sri Lankan commentators seem to provide in their support for the killing of civilians is their strong belief that Sri Lanka must be a Buddhist nation and that Buddhism has a special place in the state constitution. That's literally the only thing that they have to support themselves without circular reasoning (and is ironically a key feature of fascist polity). Otherwise, it's "We treated the Tamils like subhumans, actively discriminated them into poverty and kept murdering them and rioting in their areas. Now they're fighting back, so we're justified in committing genocide". How on Earth do you justify that without having a revisionist stance, or claiming that the clearly documented discrimination against Tamils didn't happen?
What happened to the Sri Lankan Tamils is a travesty beyond reckoning. The fact that it has been forgotten and that the Sri Lankan government that stirred this conflict is still at large is a miscarriage of justice so severe that it calls into question any legitimacy of international law and human rights.
No. They were a simple majority so took control through elections. They felt discriminated against, and that the British favoured Tamils and Christians..
> 2. They used this mandate to apply incredibly discriminatory practices towards the Tamils.
True. mostly over language. Minorities in general were disadvantaged.
> 3. Constant rabble-rousing by Sinhalese politicians intermittently led to race riots, in which Sinhalese mobs carried out pogroms and murders against Tamils.
True, but this was on a small scale until after the war actually started. Other groups (such as Muslims and Christians) were also targetted.
if you read the article about the "progrom" it was preceded by the LTTE murdering a Tamil policeman, and intimidating others.
> 4. Due to almost laughably blatant policies targeting Tamils, such as an affirmative action policy designed to reduce the number of Tamil students at universities, a group of Tamil students formed a league to protest the matter. These students would become the forerunners of the tamil militant group
True to an extent, but the affirmative action was also targetted at helping poor and rural students vs affluent ones. The core of the system was basically giving extra points to those from schools and areas that did not historically get students into university. For the language based part, how is this different from race based affirmative action in the US? The idea was to boost numbers of historically underrepresented groups.
> 5. Further barbarism from the Sinhalese majority, such as the destruction of culturally important Tamil heritage (for instance, the destruction of an important library), seeding racial tensions.
Mostly the burning of Jaffna Library. Horrible, but not an excuse for atrocities.
> 6. A rebel group carries out an ambush against the Sri Lankan army, seemingly as retaliation for the assassination of one of their commanders.
That is roughly right. The race riots were horrible. I know a lot of people who were affected and traumatised by it. That does not justify doing the same back.
The LTTE was also utterly ruthless to Tamils who failed to support it. They completely wiped out other Tamil militant groups to consolidate their hold on power, they raised money from abroad by threatening people's families in Sri Lanka, they targetted Tamils in the armed forces.
Most ethnonationalism is a reaction to some real or perceived wrong. You will end up justifying everything on those grounds.
> The only consistent perspective that Sri Lankan commentators seem to provide in their support for the killing of civilians is their strong belief that Sri Lanka must be a Buddhist nation and that Buddhism has a special place in the state constitution
You are only reading bigots then. Most people who do defend it will tell you killing civilians was an inevitable result of war - collateral damage.
I know very few Sri Lankans from ethnic or religious minorities who support the LTTE or even feel that their actions were even remotely justified. I am mixed race (entirely minority, Tamil on my mother's side ) and Christian (as are most of my family). I have worked in a Tamil suburb of the capital city and many people there felt that they were oppressed by both the Sinhalese and the LTTE. I know people from all the major ethnic groups and religions and everyone opposes the LTTE.
You also need to take into account that the motive for the LTTE's violence was also racial oppression with Tamil people - the low castes by the high castes. I think this is why Tamils (both Hindu and Christian) turned to violence, while Christians from other ethnic groups did not (apart from the 1962 coup attempt) and Muslims (apart from the Easter bombings which were an exception there was the odd riot) rarely did. That opinion comes from talking to people who know Jaffna well (including my father who used to run the civil service in the peninsula).
> The sexual violence that seemingly became routine for Tamil
What makes you think it was routine? There is no evidence that it was encouraged as policy or a weapon or war (as say happened with Bangladesh broke from Pakistan, among other instances).
> We treated the Tamils like subhumans, actively discriminated them into poverty and kept murdering them and rioting in their areas. Now they're fighting back, so we're justified in committing genocide
That is a gross exaggeration. My mother would have laughed at the idea that she was treated as subhuman, as would my relatives on that side of the family, or my Tamil friends.
Discrimination is no excuse for terrorism or ethnic cleansing. Would black Americans be justified in bombing white majority areas, driving white people out of black areas etc? it is far more true to say they were historically treated as subhuman than that Sri Lankan Tamils were!
Truly, a classic