John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Jun 20 14 tweets 11 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
What's happening at the #Titanic site will likely be a tragedy.

@OceanGate's page on why they didn't seek certifications / classing for the Titan submersible & that design safety regulations are slow & constrain innovation... reads differently now.

oceangate.com/news-and-media… ImageImageImage
Imagine if a car manufacturer told you: this car isn't crash certified because it won't prevent people from driving the car badly. Image
"No other submersible currently utilizes real-time monitoring...we want to know why"

Hubris from @OceanGate even as they dismiss the existing standards derived from many tragedies that came before. Image
There's a nuanced, necessary risk balancing whenever you push at edges.

Innovation is hard if you over-constrain yourself to old rules... but scrap them all & you should expect to experience some irreversible lessons.

Nowhere more so than in the sea's unforgiving depths.
Exploration & adventure have unavoidable risks.

This is fine.

But I sincerely hope that the souls on that submersible truly understood them, and that @OceanGate objectively explained them *without* being colored by the kind of rhetoric found on their website.
"if you are lost so are we"

Comms failed & the #OceanGate submersible was lost for several hours on an earlier #Titanic dive.
The dark irony of what is unfolding is not lost on maritime historians
Those familiar w/marine environments will find the consumer grade electronics beyond puzzling.

Salt water, condensation, humidity, etc. are kryptonite to electronics.

And exactly the kinds of things you'd find in a submersible diving into cold places. ImageImageImageImage
Thinking on @mercoglianos' point that the #Titanic is what got us the first convention on Safety of Life at Sea aka #SOLAS.

It continues to save uncountable lives.

101 years later & an outcome we can hope for is a fresh focus on safety regs for subsurface adventure tourism. ImageImageImageImage
While the game controller (CEO said they had spares) is something we can all understand...

I think it's important to think of it as a indicator of the overall risk management & minimum-viable-submersible philosophy that seems to have been at work all over.

Pics: ballast. Image
"#OceanGate offers you the the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity ...[of] SAFELY diving to the Titanic wreckage site"

The breathless 2023 #Titanic dive promotional video puts safety in the first sentence.

UPDATE: an #OceanGate employee was allegedly fired for refusing to greenlight manned tests over safety concerns.

The details look quite ominous.

By @DanielStrauss4 h/t @ThatVDOVault
newrepublic.com/post/173802/mi… ImageImageImageImage
"the current 'experimental' approach... could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry"

Unanimous letter of concern from @MTSociety to the #OceanGate CEO.

Via @nytimes
int.nyt.com/data/documentt… Image
Correction: these are drop weights.

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More from @jsrailton

May 30
Remember Tara Reade?

The one-time Biden accuser who became a Putin apologist...

She's live on 🇷🇺Russian State TV announcing that she's defected.

Sitting with Maria Butina whom she refers to as a friend.

h/t @OzKaterji ImageImage
Tara Reade just spent much of her 🇷🇺on camera time pushing right wing talking points about the 2024 US election.

Oh, and how wonderful things are in Russia. Image
Reade is just another American that has discovered the formula:

Go to 🇷🇺Russia & echo gov propaganda... and the government will make sure you get all the flattery you can eat. Image
Read 6 tweets
May 29
Life in prison for gay sex in Uganda.

American evangelical extremists got the ear of Uganda's dictator & helped this happen

They have the same goals for 🇺🇸America.

By @Lattif
nytimes.com/2023/05/29/wor… Image
The "groomer" panic was the Evangelical playbook in #Uganda.

So was the ex-gay narrative.

@CalebOkereke
foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/19/afr… Image
Notice how fast alleged medical concern for Trans youth became... smash rainbow displays at Target?

This is a playbook, and it must be forcefully resisted.
Read 4 tweets
May 28
Actually, there is a proven way to stop an autocrat.

Don't be a spoiler candidate like this guy. Image
Everything you need to know. Image
Letting Steve Bannon flatter you into a vanity campaign is the opposite of moral courage.
Read 4 tweets
May 28
🇸🇳#Senegal: only peaceful transfers of power since independence!

Rich & rare tradition of #democracy in W. #Africa.

Sadly, past 2 presidents toyed with 3rd terms.

Wade tried in 2012 & triggered violence.

Now Pres. Macky Sall @Macky_Sall flirts with same destructive idea. ImageImageImageImage
I was working from #Senegal in 2012 & saw how far then-President Wade had gone astray from initial high hopes.

Like bringing in North Koreans to erect a pricey monument, then demanding a 35% cut of ticket prices because he felt the idea was his intellectual property. Image
When Pres. Wade tried to extend his term in 2012, #Senegal's people backed him down.

One opposition figure seen in the streets?

Now-president @Macky_Sall

11 years later, he's considering the same play.

You'd think he would remember the forces his predecessor unleashed. Image
Read 5 tweets
May 26
Been seeing these replies everywhere?

It's happening because Musk can't stop bots.

Let me break it down what's going on with this spam. 1./ Image
2/ Reply spammers fight a cat & mouse games with platforms like #Twitter.

One way they get spotted is by the platforms examining links.

If spammers hammer a platform by sending the same link in a thousands replies to the same scam site, it's not hard to spot & scale blocking. Image
3/ Remember spam emails w/misspellings, weird names, blocks of garbage text, mixtures of words & numbers etc?

These were all tactics to avoid spam filtering done by looking at each of these things for patterns.

Each new filtering strategy = new workarounds. ImageImageImage
Read 12 tweets
May 26
Dissidents must continue to live in fear of #Pegasus #spyware thanks to @CreditSuisse.

Which helped them survive US Government blacklisting.

@ajsaeedy @dnvolz
wsj.com/articles/israe… The lenders have been worki...
2/ And don't forget, Happy Gilmore's producer actually co-controls #NSO Group's shell company.

3/ Fraudsters, people doing #HumanTrafficking, torturers, drug traffickers, fraudsters & more.

Add #spyware companies to the list.

If you aren't up to speed on @CreditSuisse doing bad people's banking, start here.

theguardian.com/news/2022/feb/… ImageImageImage
Read 4 tweets

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