marius_mich:
"RWE's strategy: quickly dig away areas that can be used by activists"
The village of Luetzerath is to be demolished to expand the Garzweiler lignite coal mine:
Activists threw fireworks, bottles and stones at police [...] Protesters previously had set up a burning barricade, and one glued his hand to the access road. Activists have been living in houses abandoned by former residents.
Bucket-wheel excavators always look like some sort of Empire mega-weapon from a Star Wars film.
Took non-trivial amount of time for me to realize this was a bucket excavator and not a seriously enormous rotary tunnel digger surfacing.
Me too! I can't find more info on that photo, IE, the full context of that specific excavator.
Well I linked to the person who took the photo, so that's all you're gonna get.
Oh, I missed that. It didn't help further, but reverse image search on Google did, sort-of: it produced copious Twitter and Reddit links that all don't actually go to the image, but instead dump you in unrelated conversations, /all pages, or some other cesspool (in my day a url was a url!) So it went all over social media over the past day but I still can't figure out if the photo is real or synthetic (either way, those excavators are obscenely large)
The photo can pretty likely be real. E.g. if you look at the video at the bottom of https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/luetzerath-letzte-generation-polizisten-101.html starting around 1:10 the proportions are similar.
The excavator operating in Garzweiler is "Bagger 288“, so I feel obliged to point to this memorable classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azEvfD4C6ow
Thanks. The newer one, Bagger 293: "The bucket-wheel itself is over 21.3 metres (69.9 feet) in diameter with 18 buckets, each of which can hold over 15 cubic metres (529.7 cubic feet) of material."
Still having trouble convincing myself that photo was real, in terms of the relative size of the... uh... enforcers and the wheel. I guess it's just forced perspective.
Well, calling these machines "huge" would be an understatement. The Wikipedia article on Bagger 288 has a photo on the top right where you can see a loader next, which gives a bit of perspective.
Also take a look at the first "previously" in the post, which shows a photo of Bagger 288 being moved in 2001 (Wikipedia linked to more pictures).
Nice article.
Would've loved to see this in action:
Also fun: walking draglines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4PuhywXm8
Howl's Moving Capitalism
Given these pictures on twitter it actually is pretty close:
https://twitter.com/DanniPilger/status/1611055734279573504
My favorite part is where they protested an increase in carbon emissions by ... starting a fire
Don't make me tap the sign.
Wasn't trying to own anyone, just thought it was darkly funny. Consider me chastened.
You'd think the Bagger 288 would be capable of protecting itself.
Tanks require infantry and air support to be fully effective.
Here's a clearer photo of the thing:
Wow! That is an absolutely massive amount of digging!
Have to admire the German straight lines and flat bottom.
Not many results contain straight.
Search only for german model "straight" lines flat bottom?
Another: