• 2 Posts
  • 21 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Many containers will just sink along with the boat, either because of tie downs or they’re just too dense to float.

    Others however can and will float, generally very low in the water which can cause pretty major hazards to navigation. For this reason, many containers will be fitted with salt plugs that will eventually dissolve and allow water to fill the container which will usually be enough to sink it.

    However, if the container was sufficiently full of buoyant material, or the salt plug fails, they can float around for a very long time. Sometimes these containers will be salvaged, left to float, or sometimes militarys will use them as target practice with the stated aim of trying to sink them.

    As for Lifeboats, generally you want an empty lifeboat to go down with the ship as a bunch of empty lifeboats floating around could draw resources away from the ones with people in them. Plus, most survival craft are pretty securely tied down so that they don’t accidentally release during normal passage or storms.

    Most ships are still fitted with self-release life rafts which are fitted with hydrostatic lines that, if the boat was to sink, the raft would be able to break free, inflate, and rocket to the surface if the ship sinks below a certain depth. These are very common on pleasure craft where the boat can sink quickly and may sink before the crew has a change to prepare the raft.







  • Not likely in the near future, probably not feasible in the long term either. It’s not just about recognising an object. You could write a program that recognises a screw but you’d need far more complicated sensors and algorithms to identify the dimensions, specific characteristics, material composition, design specifications, etc, then apply that to every screw, bolt, washer, small component and assembly, tubes, threaded rods, tyres, pistons, brake pads, resistors, capacitors, diodes, seals, consumables, etc.

    For a long time, I think that kind of thing would be wildly inaccurate, hugely expensive, massively complicated, and much less efficient than asking a human to kindly go over there and check all those things manually.


  • I mean it’s pretty surface level and shallow if you ask me and doesn’t really go beyond a very basic “phones are bad” narrative.

    It’s pretty melodramatic too. Phones and the internet in general can and do have a negative effect on society but they can also have a massive positive effect too.

    I get that to have a narrative you need to exaggerate a little but scenes like the one where people are all taking photos of their dinner don’t happen outside of the world of Instagram.

    Other things like the scene of hundred of people just scrolling while on the train, sure, that happens, but it’s not like people didn’t do exactly the same thing with newspapers, and books, and novellas, and so on. It’s not indicative of social media addiction.

    0:30 aswell, drunken, abusive, insensitive and obnoxious people aren’t a product of social media. I don’t think there’s even a rise because of it. It’s also not as if people being distracted by their phones or apathetic as a result is an effect of social media either. I guarantee this has been going on for millions of years prior.

    And 0:48 where the guy literally kicks a puppy is just absurd and has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter. I’m pretty sure kicking a puppy is literally the oldest and laziest trick in the book to get an audience to side against the villain. It’s just cheap.

    Then there’s the police brutality scene at 0:13. I take some issue with this scene in particular. I get that the message is that “too many people just stand by and watch and film for social media” but for a start, it’s incredibly important to document social injustice and shout it from the rooftops when oppressive systems are being used for violent ends. Granted, its another exaggeration from the storyteller but still not perhaps a fair one in my mind.

    There are scenes I do like though, and I think they’re fairly poignant. For example 1:12 of the woman being filmed dancing which presumably goes viral and results in her being ostracised. Going internet famous without concent, willing, or participation is terrible and giving the general public a way to just force that on someone without their permission is terrible and I wish/hope there is something we can do to combat this.

    Another is the rubbish dump scene at 0:55. I like that one because it is something that I think the average consumer doesn’t consider as an effect of social media and media consumption in general as well as the sheer amount of WEEE waste that’s generated by a chronically online society.

    The thing I take issue with really is that the film takes aim at the most basic and surface level issues, as well as several non-issues. While not a problem in itself, there’s a lot you can say about these issues which isn’t being said. The author seems more to lay the blame at the feet of the general public and not the massive media corporations and data farms for not only building the framework, but tuning the system for maximum engagement, maximum profits, and maximum retention at the cost of anything else.

    On that note, a very obvious and serious issue that wasn’t touched upon is radicalisation through social media. Maybe it’s my syndical side firing here but that to me sounds like the writer going for the easy and safe issues to take aim at and deciding not to pick at that particular thread incase It causes a flame war. Ironically mirroring the people I mentioned in the restaurant scene who were so focused on their meal they didn’t even notice a slaughter truck going straight past.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s very well made, it’s clear the animator put in a lot of effort to make it look nice and flow well, and while the message isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s also not especially deep or impactful and leaves a lot unsaid.