So my autistic ass was OBSESSED with The Titanic as a kid and one thing I keep thinking about with this whole lost submarine incident is the “name curse”.
White Star Line, the company that produced the Titanic, made three Olympic class ocean liners: The Olympic, The Titanic, and The Britannic.
(Seen in order top to bottom. Picture stolen from reddit. X )
The Olympic is the only of those three that did not sink.
Now, the “name curse” that comes in to play here is related to greek mytholoical races from which each ship has supposedly taken its name: The Olympic Gods (also just called Olympians), The Titans, and The Giants. The giants are involved due to a claim that The Britannic was originally called The Gigantic, based on an unofficial poster featuring the ship with the supposed name above it, as well as a contemporary newspaper stating that the company announced a ship with said name three years before The Britannic was launched.
Both The Giants and The Titans were races that were vanquished by The Olympic Gods in what are called the
Titanomachy
and Gigantomachy, with the latter event being less well know.
Another race of gigantic beings seen in greek mythology is The Cyclopes. The Cyclops were never vanquished by The Olympic Gods as they were never
at odds with the gods, even crafting artifacts for the gods themselves,
namely: Zeus’s thunderbolts, Poseidon’s trident, and Hades’s helmet of
invisibility.
The submarine that went missing is part of the Cyclops class submarine line produced by OceanGate Inc., probably called such due to the design. Two vessels of the class have been produced with two more planned following a naming scheme of Cyclops I, Cyclops II, and so on. Cyclops II however was renamed to Titan specifically for its use in touristic viewing expeditions of The Titanic.
Now, more about the submarine itself;
Cyclops I performed well for its intended depth, Titan however has not, with OceanGate having lost track of it before. This is due to the vessel lacking a tracking beacon, as well as navigation controls and communication devices, relying on a support ship to text Titan’s captain its directions, as revealed by Journalist David Progue, who also said that they “turned off the ship’s internet to prevent tweeting.” Also, due to the lack of these features, Titan was denied official certification by ship classification societies for not meeting safety standards of ANY society. Problems started long before this, though.
During the testing of Titan’s design, OceanGate claimed that the dimensions and structure were partly designed and tested by NASA, Boeing (the plane company) and The University of Washington. All three of which have denied this. In fact, when Titan was first built, it was handed over to the company’s operations department with no testing whatsoever as well as an insufficient monitoring system. The Director of Operations, however, saw this and submitted a negative quality report, for which he was promptly fired. When they DID finally test it over a year later, the vessel resurfaced with signs of cyclic fatigue, which is the near microscopic bending of metal that happens before cracks appear. Instead of changing the design to prevent this from happening in future expeditions, the company simply replaced the damaged parts and called it good.
All in all, its just so funny to me that OceanGate used the same supposedly cursed naming pattern for its ONE safety violation riddled submarine only to send it to a lethal depth its not equipped to handle AND SOMEHOW not expect it to eventually crush like a soda can under a semi.
This fish is clearly in distress. The fish is stationary, also known as the “freeze” response, indicating an enormous feeling of panic within the animal. The water is far too shallow for a fish of this size, and keeping a fish in a bathtub is unsanitary, both for you and the fish. This is not a healthy environment for a fish to be in, both physically and mentally, as the shock of the unfit living condition can severely lower a fish’s life expectancy - it is not cute, it is not trendy, and it is not worth the aesthetically pleasing instagram shots. Please stop treating animals like toys.
[Image ID: a photo of a corndog in a bathtub. End ID.]
i don’t know if i can do this blue sky app anymore
Dril, on twitter a couple of months ago, said that he would block every single user with a blue checkmark. people on bluesky, a website that is not twitter, have said that this is bad because content creators and sex workers sometimes buy blue checks on twitter to advertise their content. that’s literally the entire thing leading up to these posts
For real though port Jackson sharks are HUGE babies.
There’s a place near me where you can get into a pool with a bunch of these and some assorted rays and the port Jackson’s are so affectionate and gentle.
They give you little tongs that you can grab food (shrimp, pieces of fish etc) with to feed them and there’s one particularly elderly port Jackson named George who’s mostly blind and he likes you to crush the shrimp up for him.
The port Jackson’s there also really like butts. You go in that pool and they’ll forever be bumping their snoots up against your ass so the point that the staff members warn you that the sharks will touch your butt when you go in the pool with them.
