Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


Concerns about the rise of dummies when it comes to cheap deals - Page 2
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Concerns about the rise of dummies when it comes to cheap deals

2»

Comments

  • emghemgh Member

    @davide said:

    @emgh said:
    Last one is unreslistic

    ”Seems fair”

    He’s most likely posting a 700-word thread about the lack of respect shown by xyz host

    You win a candy for that. Dingleberries or Schmutz & Mint?

    Ahlgrens Bilar

    Thanked by 1davide
  • @yoursunny said:
    A sinking ship?
    Titanic taught us that every ship will eventually sink.

    Wut? No, it literally sunk on its maiden voyage. There's a dozen more lessons learned from the Titanic (bad assumptions, bad engineering, etc), but that certainly wasn't one (in the context of "eventually", which should use an example over a long period of time).

  • pacopaco Member

    @TimboJones said:

    @yoursunny said:
    A sinking ship?
    Titanic taught us that every ship will eventually sink.

    Wut? No, it literally sunk on its maiden voyage. There's a dozen more lessons learned from the Titanic (bad assumptions, bad engineering, etc), but that certainly wasn't one (in the context of "eventually", which should use an example over a long period of time).

    Actually, eventually ships get broken up and scrapped for the raw material and any other salvageable parts worth money, which can be quite substantial. This has been true for literally centuries and continues til today. Some time ago UNESCO estimated that there were 3 million shipwreck sites total, in the world, period, from ancient to modern times. This is a big number until you realize that humans have been sailing since before writing was a thing and this accounted for the the entire world's worth of shipwrecks, most with very few casualties if any, and did not differentiate wartime or peacetime. Naval warfare contributed heavily to that number of course. The reason why we even remember the Titanic at all to the point where they could make a movie out of it is because it's such an aberration, not because it's some apotheosis of the fate of ships, the model shipwreck, and would likely suffer the same fate as the other ships sunk during the same period, which would be "largely forgotten".

    Even during wartime, including the era of unrestricted submarine warfare during WWI and prior to the common implementation of convoys and other counter-submarine measures, only a quarter of total tonnage of shipping was sunk over the course of a month, and this really was only during a few months in 1916. If 75% of shipping tonnage wasn't sunk at the height of unrestricted submarine warfare, you can probably extrapolate that without torpedos wizzing at poop decks, the number of truly notable shipwrecks is pretty small. The Titanic was the outlier of outliers in that it happened during peacetime and the number of deaths was both significant and well-documented. Peacetime shipwrecks that result in over 1000 deaths are really uncommon. Hell, the lore and gossip that kept the story alive for so long is actually a testament to how many individuals survived to tell their stories. Compare that to the sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland 2 years later (May 1914), which killed just over 1000 out of the close to 1500 passengers and crew. It happened in the St. Lawrence River, the ship hit a smaller ship and because it happened during the middle of the night and the ship sunk in 14 minutes, an overwhelming number of the survivors were crew members (something like only 4 children survived the sinking, while 50% of the crew survived, Captain included). The inquest afterwards was thorough but featured few passenger accounts, possibly because 80% of passengers perished.

    But since the Titanic resulted in a protracted sinking, 500 more deaths, and obvious negligence on many many levels, it was really the epitome of a peacetime maritime disaster. If I didn't have family in Quebec who were involved in the shipping business, I certainly wouldn't have heard about it. It's also in a place that's shallow enough for people to dive to and if they feel like it, pick up some human remains to carry home as a souvenir (this is no longer legal, don't do this). Oh, and in more modern times (mostly post WWII), even ships that sunk are frequently refloated and put back into service. So the eventual fate is almost certainly the ship breakers, like how state and federal governments buy a bunch of servers and almost inevitably auction them off in pallets via the GSA and other contractors. Just imagine the dead as the hard drives. You can't sell the husk of the ship with the dead inside without cleaning it out, just as you can't sell government server equipment with the old hard drive in the state of last use, but what's the real difference between hiring a new crew and buying some (hopefully working) drives in bulk off Newegg or something anyway?

    Thanked by 1yoursunny
Sign In or Register to comment.