My brother used a WWII parachute he found in our grandparents’ garage.
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Mike S and I tried the garbage bag thing into our swimming pool off the roof of the house.
We were quite adept at jumping off the roof into the pool, I might add, much to our parents’ chagrin.
Mary Poppins and Looney Toons: Multiple Decades of Inspiring Children’s Injuries
My brother was the daredevil, not I. My mother never knew all the things he did.
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I’m fairly certain my mother wishes she didn’t know half of the foolish things we did growing up.
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I am a classic Gen Xer, in that from a very early age I was left to my own devices by my working parents. I had to work in the family business at weekends, but the wages I earned were mine and I was at liberty to use the money as I saw fit.
Work commitments aside, I was out of the house from dawn until whenever. As I got into my middle teens, it wouldn’t be unusual for me to stay out overnight - crashing at whichever home I ended up at. Sometimes I’d even call to let my parents know, but typically not. As long as I made it to school/work, it was all good.
I don’t know if my parents were interested in what I got up to. I was the youngest of four, so my older siblings had already put them through the wringer. They appeared indifferent to me, which was fine because I wasn’t going to tell them half the shit I did. They seemed happy with a proof of life every once in a while, and the rest was on a don’t ask/don’t tell basis.
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I told my mom it’s a wonder we weren’t in the emergency room once a week.
Uh, okay…
I hope three versions of Capt. Picard are working on this.
When two supermassive black holes merge together, the colossal forces involved create fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime known as gravitational waves.
Sure, but what are the tachyon levels?
This is absolutely nuts.
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This is an interesting - to me at least - investigation into the liability fight that will no doubt erupt around the the loss of the Titanic.
For me, there are no sympathetic parties here, save the poor lad who only went along to please his father. You have a company designed in a lab to duck any and all legal/regulatory authorities who built a death trap and sold seats on it to rich people, telling them it was safe while having them sign waivers of liability that described in excruciating detail the myriad ways in which this venture was likely to kill them.
However, the legal wrangling will be fascinating. The waiver requires any litigation to be under Bahamian law, but it occurred in international waters and involved people from different nations transported to the site of the accident on a boat out of Canada owned by a company based in Everett, WA. A metric shit ton of overlapping jurisdictions and laws - including Death on the High Seas (not an Hercule Poirot mystery) - will mean this will keep a fleet of lawyers busy for a decade.
As to the event itself, it is widely described as being “instantaneous” and thus no suffering was had by those aboard. I should clarify that this refers to physical suffering, as they may have had a few seconds or minutes of abject terror if the craft was showing signs of the impending failure.
But what do they mean by “instantaneous”?
- Time for a human brain to register pain: 100 milliseconds
- Time for a human brain to register input from the eyes: 13 milliseconds
- Time for a sub at 8,000m depth to go from round to flat: 1 millisecond
The end happened faster than a human brain can register. Which my human brain still cannot get its head around.
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There’s a transcript of questionable provenance that would indicate they were descending too quickly. Rush seemed oblivious and the support vessel questioned him about it meekly. If it’s true that they descended too quickly and had difficulty ascending then water ingress is a likely cause. The “crackling” is fracture failure and water will get in and add significant weight.
The more I’ve investigated the engineering and manufacture of this thing the more red flags pop up. Beyond the highly questionable decision to use carbon fiber, they didn’t autoclave the hull (unbelievable for a safety component), they didn’t apply the adhesive with vacuum degassing, again critical for a safety component. No accommodation for the differential thermal expansion of the carbon fiber vs the titanium. The window was absurdly rated for only 1/3 the depth. Controls dependent on Bluetooth. Fucking ridiculous.
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This is part of what is explored from a legal perspective in the video clip above. Yes, the passengers were told of the risks, but were they really told of the risks, because no one would imagine that anyone would build a deep sea submersible out of a Reliant Robin sealed with Flex Tape.
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The only known counter measure:
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A couple of points of interest here:
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space.com is a commercial site that makes its $$ by clicks. Just like weather.com
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the basis of their article is a model output, not a forecast. Just like when “weather” sites choose one model output and start bleating “blizzard” or “devastating hurricane” potential on their sites.
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The actual NOAA SWPC forecast is pretty benign. The forecast includes model output of many types, observations from countless sensors and experienced forecaster inputs.
As with anything, you always have to consider your source and the biases and influences that motivate those sources.
One really interesting development in the community from this week is this, though: Geoelectric Field Model predictions for space weather impacts on the electrical grid are now online for the entire CONUS for the first time. Really excellent intergovernmental coordination between the US and Canada to produce an excellent and useful operational tool.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/geoelectric-field-models-1-minute
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Thanks, Das.
You can type this shit, George. But you sure can’t say it.
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