Monday, July 3, 2023

Notes on Titan

This was originally going to be part of an earlier Thursday Tweets, but that post was written and scheduled on Wednesday and the fate or the Titan was still in question, and I didn't want the it to go out on the same day that some bad news was breaking including some potential scenarios that were even worse than what appears to have happened. 

It is important that we show an appropriate level of respect for what was the equivalent in terms of human life of a bad two-car crash, at the same time, it is also important to have some perspective. Even in terms of aquatic disasters, this one was dwarfed by recent events. Furthermore, it's bigger importance lies not in the tragedy itself but in the familiar story behind it. 

I've got another post or two coming on this, but the tl;dr version is another comes-from-money Elon wannabe buys into the VC/Silicon Valley/radical libertarian tales of Randian supermen held back from greatness by timid, nanny-state regulators and envious, short-sighted regulators.  As was spelled out by Ben Taub in his excellent New Yorker piece, the result was a craft with so many critical flaws that the question wasn't if it would catastrophically fail, but when.

First, though, a reminder that the fate of the Titan was far from the most horrifying thing that happened on the oceans that week.

 

With that bit of context in mind,  here was some of the real-time commentary on Twitter.






 


 

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