They lost everything from the oldest fossil remains of a human discovered in the Americas, to its vast mineral collections, to the rare books and manuscripts collections, to giant meteorites .. and the 200 year old palace itself. Austerity has slashed budgets and apparently even the fire trucks had no meaningful access to water. It held 20 million items, which is apparently 2.5 times as many as the British Museum (8 million).
I’m hearing from Brazilian friends that the government (a super-austerity businessman gov’t that wants to abolish the ministry of culture entirely), had cut the National Museum’s budget to USD $130,000 per year — PER YEAR! and even that was in arrears. Holy shit! The national museum? That’s it.
““Folks, there’s nothing left from the Linguistics division. We lost all the indigenous languages collection: the recordings since 1958, the chants in all the languages for which there are no native speakers alive anymore, the Curt Niemuendaju archives: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethnic-historic-linguistic map localizing all the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we had from 1945. The ethnological and archeological references of all ethnic groups in Brazil since the 16th century… An irreparable loss of our historic memory. It just hurts so much to see all in ashes.”
—-Cinda Gonda, translated by Diogo Almeida, about the fire at Brazil’s National Museum.
Camestros Felapton 
8 responses to “Sunday Beer: @NomadsBrewing Supersonic Finger Lime DIPA”
Brazil’s National Museum burned in a massive fire today. 20 million items lost. Everthing is gone.
https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2018/09/02/incendio-atinge-a-quinta-da-boa-vista-rio.ghtml
https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2018/09/02/museu-nacional-guarda-acervo-de-mais-de-20-milhoes-de-itens.ghtml
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Shit – that’s terrible
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They lost everything from the oldest fossil remains of a human discovered in the Americas, to its vast mineral collections, to the rare books and manuscripts collections, to giant meteorites .. and the 200 year old palace itself. Austerity has slashed budgets and apparently even the fire trucks had no meaningful access to water. It held 20 million items, which is apparently 2.5 times as many as the British Museum (8 million).
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I was just watching a report on the news – it’s a devestating loss
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I’m hearing from Brazilian friends that the government (a super-austerity businessman gov’t that wants to abolish the ministry of culture entirely), had cut the National Museum’s budget to USD $130,000 per year — PER YEAR! and even that was in arrears. Holy shit! The national museum? That’s it.
Some few things were saved, and there is an effort to get everyone who’s ever visited to send photos so they can reconstruct a virtual record of it. 😦
http://remezcla.com/lists/culture/devastating-museu-nacional-fire-everything-we-know/
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This is so, so sad.
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““Folks, there’s nothing left from the Linguistics division. We lost all the indigenous languages collection: the recordings since 1958, the chants in all the languages for which there are no native speakers alive anymore, the Curt Niemuendaju archives: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethnic-historic-linguistic map localizing all the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we had from 1945. The ethnological and archeological references of all ethnic groups in Brazil since the 16th century… An irreparable loss of our historic memory. It just hurts so much to see all in ashes.”
—-Cinda Gonda, translated by Diogo Almeida, about the fire at Brazil’s National Museum.
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Oh, that is horrible!
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