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In world first, Russian chess player poisons rival's board with mercury (arstechnica.com)
22 points by notamy 43 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 10 comments



So, did the board survive? No mention of it in the article.

Got to wonder about headlines like this, seems the standard these days is get as close to a clickbait title as you can without crossing the line. The inclusion of "Russian" especially has weird implications, is this something that is actually very common in other nationalities which Russia had stood strong against up until now? I find the headline far more interesting than the article which really does not add much in the way of information or clear up all the ambiguities implied by the headline.


I'm struggling to understand your objections to the title. The headline says that it is the first time in chess an opponent was attacked with mercury, and that the perpetrator was Russian. I'm not clear what your interpretation is.

If we are to believe the article, poisoning an opponent has not happened before, so "In world first" is justified.

Mentioning the nationality is common in news reporting. Maybe look up the "Florida Man" meme and don't be sore anymore.


I made no objection, I just find it interesting and curious, which is what this site is about and the posting guidelines being anything which gratifies intellectual curiosity. I find usage very interesting.


> I'm not clear what your interpretation is.

Some people think "Russian bad".

Some other people think "some people think Russian bad and so whenever anyone who mentions that a person is Russian they must be trying to trigger negative associations".


Love the subtitle: "At least it wasn't Novichok."


It seems like this was an attempt to hurt him cognitively and make him worse at chess. He was lucky it wasn't organic mercury.


You know, it becomes obvious you never read the article given that it's about womens chess and two women players.


And it's not quite as obvious as setting up the chessboard on a windowsill...


I had a lot of mercury as a kid and played with it a lot without realizing it was poisonous. I'm sure I breathed in a lot of mercury fumes. I can't recall having any symptoms of anything.


Russia sure excels at making friends /s




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