Iiii wanted to make it looonger but I'm dyingg.... and it suddenly cut... I don't like it...
@somerandomdudelmao this last chapter was like a treat for me... it just was... all moving in my head... god it has such a good flow and movement... why I can't take it out from my head and show it... ;-;

Bruh HOW!???

• drink water
• wipe your ass
• be nice to the person who scans your groceries at the grocery store
• inconvenience the government

SURVEY QUESTION: what is your personal favorite cold sandwich to make at home. alternatively, what is the fanciest sandwich you make

on the topic of sandwiches i like a lot of things but i think if you want sandwich info you can't get better than sandwichtribunal.com. a theoretically infinite list of exant sandwiches and detailed descriptions and explorations and new research of their history, development, preperation method, and flavor. really delightful passion project by mostly one guy who just really, really likes sandwiches, with a couple of guest pieces by fellow sandwich enthusiasts

a great place to start is this article on the history of the club sandwich, an article that took the author months of independent research through tons of old cookbooks and magazines and newspapers. he ends up making basically every example he can find, moving through time on a sandwich train. it's a really fun read!!!!

tumblr user grubloved i respect you so much

i put the sandwiches in the notes in a spreadsheet. it is here

alright. in my tepidly professional opinion* here are the actual major red flags with the titanic submersible

first, stuff that people are clowning on that isn't actually a red flag at all

using starlink satcoms for their overall [surface] communications

• i know it's fun to clown on elon musk but starlinks are like. Fine. they work fine as satcoms. this is not the issue. none of these problems would have been solved if they'd been using KVH or somebody else instead
• also these have fuck all to do with the tiny sub, since radio waves physically do not penetrate water enough to be useful for communications lol

the stupid game controller to steer

• it's actually super common to use COTS (commercial off the shelf) parts like that instead of some bespoke steering system.
• they're easily replaceable if they break, they're designed to be integrated into larger systems, and you don't have to do a huge amount of design work before you can even steer your thing
• here's one example of this. but it's pretty common

that being said. here is the fucked up design stuff that i notice

Where The Fuck Are The Chairs

• if you don't have seats inside your vessel, you don't actually have a way of securing passengers during rough movement. i suspect that this makes it very dangerous or difficult to ascend quickly in an emergency.

they have had known issues with communication

ALT

[source: the independent]

• i will grant that underwater communications is not an easy problem to solve unless you're physically running telephone wires
• but this is fucking unacceptable lol

ALT

[source: the independent]

• ignore the video game controller thing
• i presume that they mean "messages in the form of text, sent via an acoustic signal", not "they are literally using cell phones to text each other" because obvs cell phones (and most radio) would not work
• it's actually extremely unclear to me what system the sub and the mothership are using to communicate. idk if this is a "technology reporting hard" issue or if these people are being deliberately cagey. anyway they're probably using some form of underwater acoustic communications, but what specific form it takes idk
• regardless, the fact that they've had problems with this system in the past is a red flag
• and the fact that their sub has apparently no internal navigation system is also a red flag. "not having GPS" isn't really, since GPS doesn't really work underwater (you need radio 😔), but they should have some kind of internal navigation-- at the very least "here is my speed and heading and based on that my expected position is here on a map"

in a power failure situation, they would have been SOL

ALT

[source: the independent]

• "everything is done with computers" = "nothing works in the event of a power failure"
• it seems like AT THE VERY LEAST in the event of a power failure, you need to be able to drop your ballast and ascend quickly.
• it is not clear that they had the capability to do that

something weird going on with their pressure hull

ALT

[source: nbc]

while it is "normal" for structures that are exposed to regular massive changes in pressure to have fatigue (imagine bending a piece of metal in and out over and over, eventually it will break-- you want to catch and replace that before it happens), it's weird to me that

• the vessel's depth rating was downgraded
• without any public statement about what repairs were done, it nevertheless went back to the 4000ft depth less than a year later (in 2021)

they obviously have no "black box" system or any way to locate a missing vessel

• most boats are required to have this! because most boats are required to be registered with and inspected by various authorities!
• these guys deliberately skirted that rule by launching off a boat rather than from a port and therefore avoiding the need to get registered or inspected. lmao!

ALT

[source: nyt]

Company Culture Is The Killer

complete disregard for safety is really what killed these people

ALT

[source: the independent]

obviously if this is your CEO your company culture is totally fucked. beyond saving. you do not have a regard for human life.

for reasons unknown they didn't flag the authorities that the vessel was missing for hours and hours

ALT

[source: the independent]

not that it likely would have helped to save these people if they had been alerted earlier, but it shows a desire to cover up mistakes

and like. obviously. you should get your shit inspected. nobody taking paying passengers anywhere should be allowed to be their own safety inspection authority.

the original sinking of the titanic was what led to SOLAS (safety of life at sea) rules being instituted. they've been updated several times since then, but they don't yet cover submersibles like this, since they are relatively new. it's likely that this incident will cause a new interest in updating the rules. as they say: every regulation is written in blood

*i'm a mechanical engineer who works in the maritime industry, but not like, a particularly related section of the industry-- i do shit with cargo containers mainly. no further info on my credentials will be given since i have no desire to doxx myself on tumblr dot edu. i've tried not to say anything too wrong or out of my depth in this post but my opinion is "guy with an engineering degree who reads news articles" level of informed. so take your maximum grains of salt

i think one of the funniest things ever is how many rock and metal bands are just four or five identical white dudes with long brown hair parted in the middle. like they’ve gotta be cranking these dudes out in a factory at this point. they don’t even have to be in the same genre, you can find them anywhere. they’re like some kind of metal fungus.

these are all different bands

i would love to argue with this but you will never fucking believe what i look like

When someone changes their URL and I don't recognize it anymore but they still post the same stuff it's like my friend mysteriously disappeared the day before I met my new friend who looks suspiciously like my old friend wearing Groucho Marx glasses

imagine playing pokemon so good in 2014 that now your rat is the poster child for the pokemon vgc scene forever

Listen if you can apply the “strong pokemon weak pokemon” quote to the highest level of play your rat deserves to be the poster child