A shocking development considering they took a submersible with a viewport rated for 1,300 meters to the Titanic which is at 4,000 meters. 🤔
The critiques from Mr. Lochridge and the experts who signed the 2018 letter to Mr. Rush were focused in part on what they characterized as Mr. Rush’s refusal to have the Titan inspected and certified by one of the leading agencies that do such work.
Mr. Lochridge reported in court records that he had urged the company to do so, but that he had been told that OceanGate was “unwilling to pay” for such an assessment.
Well, it's a tragic example on how capitalism really ruins things for everyone. The OceanGate drama should have been the wake up call. But it wasn't and these people are dead. And they get infinietly more media coverage than hundreds of souls lost in Pylos.
Must we do the comparisons? The sub story was simply more interesting. It's not some media conspiracy, unless the media is already controlling the upvotes on kbin lol
The main difference is that the Pylos tragedy forces us to confront heavy issues that are politically fraught. Oceangate doesn't have the same context. Even though most of us are more likely to be closer to the people on that ship than the billionaires on the sub, it's easier to digest the Oceangate story. Maybe because of the distance, it seems like more of a plot of a film, whereas the boat incident is a humanitarian disaster.
Yeah, this comparison is getting really strained. As the Joker once said:
Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
A sunken ship filled with hundreds of migrants in the Mediterranean is, horrifyingly, a routine thing. It's "part of the plan." But a billionaire in a minisub possibly stranded on the Titanic? That's newsworthy. Yes, it sucks, but it's human nature and some battles are just impossible to win under the current circumstances.
How is the story of five idiots choosing to do something incredibly dangerous – and predictably dying – more interesting than hundreds of desperate souls perishing at sea because of racist policies? That latter should be absorbing almost as much interest and attention as climate change, considering how closely they're connected.
And it is a media conspiracy. The news doesn't happen by accident, it happens by several people coming together and deciding what to report on.
Conspiracy, from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition (emphasis added):
A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design.
A combination of persons for an evil purpose; an agreement between two or more persons to commit in concert something reprehensible, injurious, or illegal; particularly, a combination to commit treason, or excite sedition or insurrection; a plot; concerted treason.
In this instance the media decided to report overwhelmingly on the bunch of idiots rather than the plight of and the conditions leading to the death of hundreds of tragic deaths. This comes as no surprise because to media barons and many media consumers, apparently, the life of refugees is seldom as interesting even as a politician caught with their pants down. The result is that nothing will improve for refugees but the safety rules for keeping other billionaire idiots alive might be reformed. If that's not sinister, reprehensible, or injurious, I don't know what is.
I’ve got no love for billionaires, and obviously this story overshadowing the migrant boat sinking in Greece is infuriating, but I’m really not a fan of the glee so many people on social media are expressing at the deaths of these five people.
Also, on another note, I seriously cannot get over the fact that the late CEO of the company, Stockton Rush, has the absolute perfect team name for a minor league football team from central California.
I think worrying about people making fun of some rich ass billionaires dying for doing something stupid, is the last hill you should choose to die on. These people made their riches and wealth by exploiting normal people like you and me.
You don't have to actively root for their deaths, but I'm certainly not shedding any tears for them experiencing the consequences of their own actions.
You don't have to actively root for their deaths, but I'm certainly not shedding any tears for them experiencing the consequences of their own actions.
That's... What he said? Lol
"I've got no love for billionaires... but the glee people have for their deaths..."
Let's leave the "if you have any scrutiny whatsoever it must mean you're on the opposite side of everything I stand for" bullshit on reddit where it belongs and actually read what people are saying.
I agree, a lot of people in threads in the fediverse are taking way too much pleasure in 5 people dying. I get not being a fan of billionaires - no one should be - but not everyone aboard was a billionaire, and even if they were it's just so incredibly callous to take joy in people dying in an accident. Have a base level of empathy for crying out loud.
Part of the reason I loved moving to Lemmy from reddit was getting away from reddit's toxicity, I hope we don't bring it with us.
Complaining about non-existing things is a new phenomenon on the internet I guess. I haven’t seen a single person cheering about the billionaires’ death but I’ve seen dozens of people complaining about people cheering about their deaths.
It’s like those upvoted comments in reddit threads where people say “number of comments in this thread about XX is disgusting” and you look for those comments and cannot find any.
That's just one from this thread. In other news threads the top two comments were people saying "good riddance" or something similar. I'd screenshot those for you as well but I now can't find the threads in my feed because the feed updated and they got pushed down to god knows where.
I mean if you specifically look for it you can of course find them, you can find people cheering for dead puppies and kittens too, there are maniacs everywhere. Thing is it’s far from being an overall attitude, it’s really really minority.
There is a certain amount of empathy I want to have about the situation. Because at the end of the day, someone lost a loved one.
But there is also a bit of poetic justice when someone visits the wreck of a ship that played a large role in making sure ships were safer in case of catastrophic failure.
Only to ignore those procedures and end up right next to it.
I read the company skipped a load of safety and redundancy checks. Thats crazy...if it's true. Cutting corners to save a few bucks .
I'm not surprised due the greed that exists in the world but this should require the same level of regulation as a plane or a rocket . Not some metal cylinder with a $30 controller duct taped inside it.
Sure, it's sad for the families, but I find that my empathy is better off being spent elsewhere.
Even if some employee got caught in this CEO's whims, that employee already sold his life away upon embarking on a sub made by a company whose head thinks "safety just is pure waste."
What's a waste is this CEO not surviving to regret his very words.
It's actually astounding that this company seemingly gave zero fucks and was just allowed to go through with this. Like, I assume there was some permitting/process that needed to be obtained to go dive to the Titanic. I have to write overblown safety memos at work when just dealing with simple pressurized inert gas cylinders. How did this happen? Lol I wouldn't even use a logitech wireless controller to game on my PC.
They operated in international waters, so no regulation applies really. This is exactly what the less government people want - you choose of your own free will to contract with this company knowing the risks. I imagine it's similar to lots of dangerous recreation out there like the sub orbital flights. That said, I would have noped out of it based on the one article describeing the legal processes and forms you had to sign.
you choose of your own free will to contract with this company knowing the risks.
But that’s just the problem with free market/small government, isn’t it? You can’t know the risks because there is no oversight to prove people aren’t cutting corners and selling bullshit.
As long as it is more profitable for people to deceive and cut corners, they’re gonna do it.
They operate in international waters but the company is based in the US and I'm sure the trip was contracted in the US as well. I'm no lawyer but I imagine that might give the government some leverage.
I was messing around with this like sub warfare simulator game a while back and I blew up a whale with a torpedo because it showed up on my sonobuoy network as an unidentified contact 😅
Command modern operations, you can get it on steam. They put it on sale for a reasonable price once in a while.
It is hella cool if you are a very specific type of nerd, extremely detailed too nations actually contract with matrix games to use a professional version for training
Similar things have happened in other underwater rescue situations and it almost always turns out to be equipment involved in the search. The sonar bouys dropped by the planes are extremely sensitive pieces of equipment.
If I had to guess, every 30 minutes or so a boat running a grid search pattern would get close enough to one of the bouys that it was able to pick up sounds from the boat. As the grid pattern took the boat further away from the bouy it wasn't able to continue to pick up the noise, and the "knocking" stopped after about 4 hours and wasn't heard again until a few days later. Then the search pattern changed, and boats started getting close to the bouys again.
It was a fish knocking on the window and saying, 'here, billy, billy, billy, billionaire'.
It was intermittent because an orca kept swimming past and saying, 'don't do that, it's bad for them, but if you like the sound of that you're better off knocking on the bottom of the big ones up top'.
From what I heard they had two bottles for urine and a bag to deficate in. It would have been freezing and extremely humid inside after even a day as well.
A implosion would be way better than days cramped together suffocating and starving in a inescapable freezing stench filled coffin.
But isn’t the asphyxiation here on the levels of, you end up falling asleep and don’t wake up again. It’s not to the degree of you’re choking to death and can’t do anything about it.
The peaceful death you are talking about is from lack of oxygen, but when you’re in an enclosed space, there is CO2 buildup, and when you get too much CO2 it makes your blood slightly more acidic, which makes you feel an intense urge to breathe and you’ll die before running out of oxygen. That’s a terrible way to die.
I don’t think so. You’d feel the carbon dioxide building up in your muscles over time, it would be awful. That and the mind-destroying existential terror. I’d take the sudden crush depth exposure, thanks.
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