Dr. Gonzo

Who's made it political?

I don't think there's anything wrong with using controllers, because like you say - controllers are used by the military for a lot of countries. Even the US Navy's advanced submarines have Xbox controllers in use for things like periscopes and shit like that. But the controller being used as the only way of navigating... and the only backups being... other controllers? That's shit planning, tbh. But this was one of those operations where safety wasn't really a big concern.

3 of the people onboard were billionaires, so £250k a person probably wasn't all that much to them (bizarre statement to make, because that's a huge sum of money... but life is different for the ultra-wealthy). But I wouldn't pay any amount of money to get into something that just seems so unsafe... and with a CEO that talked about safety regulations like they don't even matter. The other 2 people onboard were that French Titanic expert, who'd been down to the Titanic 35 times before - including previous trips on this submarine... and that CEO Stockton Rush. I think Stockton Rush's legacy make him synonymous with arrogance and stupidity. He died, and took 4 others with him, while going to see the Titanic. The Titanic is basically a symbol of what happens when humans overestimate themselves and underestimate the ocean... and he died in a fittingly similar way. He overestimated his "innovation" and underestimated taking safety precautions while doing something very dangerous. It honestly blows my mind though - how do you spend a life of studying the Titanic and not learn the biggest lessons from that crash?

Not by the CEO of the company who thought safety regulations just got in the way of "regulation" - but for me that window being rated for just 1/3 of the depth the sub was meant to go... that's probably what ended up killing them. What I don't understand is... if you're that rich, why not just spend more to go on a submarine that doesn't seem like such a giant piece of shit?

They've found debris near the Titanic. If this is the sub, looks like it was the best possible death for these people - nearly instant death in an implosion.

Tbf that elite also includes the Saudi government who have an enormous amount of sway over the US government.

Well slavery's alive in US prisons and the US prison population's 1.2m so that list is probably not up to date. But again... does the US government own any football teams? Cos the Saudi government has a public fund that owns Newcastle.

Considering we know more about space than the bottom of the ocean, I think it’s particularly mental they’d go on a submarine that’s just got a ps2 knockoff controller for controls with no backup plan if the controller fails.

For sure. But I think part of the reason is the possibility of these 5 rich people finding their watery grave is it’s a particularly horrifying potential way to die (assuming the window that’s only been tested for 1/3 the depth they’re going didn’t break and the sub didn’t just implode on them)… Imagine being trapped in a tiny tube, in the bottom of the ocean. It’s basically pitch black. There’s a toilet bucket with a curtain but who knows if they even can/could see it. It’s freezing and they’re all running out of breathable air. And it’s absolutely fucking freezing in that tube. Sounds like a total nightmare. Having that metal tube implode on you is also probably not a pleasant way to die. But at least it’d be quicker. A lot of very rich people are cunts, but these people didn’t deserve to die… maybe the CEO who thought safety regulations just got in the way of “progress” to the point they didn’t even put a beacon on the sub. The company almost certainly used “the CEO goes down to the wreckage with you” as a way of demonstrating how safe the submarine actually was. That guy shouldn’t have brought his 19 year old kid with him - that’s particularly cruel. He had his whole life ahead of him. He was a billionaire, his odds of having a good life were higher than most people get a chance of having a good life. Maybe the watery grave of 1503 people should be left alone instead of being a tourist attraction for the wealthy.

This submarine going missing by the Titanic is a bit of a mental story to me. It seems kind of crazy to me that we have such a hard time getting down to the depths of the ocean.

I agree with you, I just call MSNBC left-leaning corporate news because that's the market they're targeting with their infotainment - and it's done with a pretty strategic goal of getting the closest thing there is to a left-wing in America to just be a light version of the US right wing.

And at the end of the day, the big 3 of the US news sources are just 3 flavours of the same kind of bullshit. There's right-leaning corporate bootlicking with Fox, left-leaning corporate bootlicking with MSNBC, and middle of the road corporate bootlicking with CNN. At the end the day, they all report on the same stories and dominate the political landscape of America by getting people to focus on smaller issues rather than big picture things that will actually improve lives for most people. They push the partisan divide because focusing on common ground issues doesn't help them get more money. Chaos in US politics is also profitable for them - MSNBC and CNN probably loved Trump more than Fox ever did tbh. So they feed the culture wars, they push little issues, they try to make politics more dramatic than substance and love people that are just political jesters rather than anyone pushing substantive policy. And by getting people to view politics the same as being the equivalent of a fan of say... a football team... they push that partisan divide more and more and fuel the political chaos of the US. And it's spread to the UK now tbh, the only thing that might save my homeland is the utter ineptitude of the last string of Tories... although it's not like I've got a great deal of faith in Labour to demonstrate competence over the last decade, nor do I have any faith in Lib Dems, the Tory-lite party. I'm sure @Spike will agree the same shit has taken off big time in Australia (cheers Mr. Murdoch) - and I'm pretty sure you've said politics in Canada is getting more and more like the US. Idk what the real solution to this problem is. Because at the end of the day, it's class warfare being waged in silence with those with seemingly endless money getting to determine the political landscape. But if you want breaking news, you're better off going to AP rather than any of these sites. If you want investigative journalism, you've got to look hard into your sources because corporate media generally doesn't want journalists investigating things too hard. All media is going to have bias, so if you want to be well informed you need to be aware of that and look into sources that minimise bias... and try to keep an eye on what particular journalists/sources are going to have a bias towards. But if you want political theatre... then the infotainment you get from TV news is the way to go. But everyone should know it's dogshit journalism and it should be viewed as entertainment more than news.

I live in Southern California, so yes - constantly.

I've looked at a few of the recent articles (she's all over the news right now because of claiming to be rid of cancer, good for her) and I haven't seen a single mention of trans athlete issues. So I think as usual with the culture war, much ado about nothing and is generally ignored by most people. Pretty sure CNN just got bought out by some big right wing guy, so they'll be making more right wing pivots. I actually disagree with the idea that they're left of centre - they're the flagbearers of corporate media worldwide, they're about as centrist as you can get in mass media. MSNBC is centre-left. Forbes is just a hollowed out shell of what it used to be (which tbh, it's "peak" was before I ever came to this country or cared about it's media sources... so for all of my time caring about American news, it's just been a joke publication). In any case, I'd advocate reading your news from stuff like AP rather than getting it from these types of sources. YouTube and TV news aren't real news and just biased infotainment just designed to piss people off because outrage generates engagement. Engagement generates repeated clicks/views. Repeated clicks/views = more ad revenue. The DHS judiciary hearing thing doesn't even appear to be recent - here's their schedule: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings - the last hearing re: the DHS in front of the Senate Judiciary committee was March 28th. It's all public, so if that's all just being reported on now... it's not really timely news. I'm not going to watch it because it's 4 fucking hours long - there's no transcript online yet (the most recent DHS transcript though is from March 2... but it's about their budget). In the highlight reels I've looked at, I don't see anything re: "more interest in starting wars than helping the interests of people" - 1.) DHS has fuck all to do with wars other than protecting the US against cyberattacks (and they mentioned the increased number of cyber attacks coming from China, Iran, Russia)... and cyberattacks aren't really considered war or warfare; 2.) they talk about how the agency's been cracking down on human trafficking and fentanyl from Mexico with... record human trafficking arrests and fentanyl seizures (which is in the interest of Americans); 3.) talking about the rise in domestic threats - this is probably where they've been most lax in their duties tbh. 4.) they talk about their role in disaster relief with regard to tornados somewhere in the south of the US... and tbh, I don't know what the fuck disaster relief has to do with their fucking duties so I thought that was bizarre. You've got to remember, these are all very long hearings and a lot of what gets reported on for TV is just when politicians start talking about irrelevant bullshit that's got nothing to do with the hearing - it's all just theatre for their constituencies, it's very seldom got anything to actually do with the real meat of the hearings. In any case, I don't think it's a good thing to get caught up in the US's culture wars. Especially if you don't live in the US - but honestly... even if you do live in the US. It's just background noise meant to get people to focus on issues that aren't really important - there's a reason corporate media pushes these culture wars. They don't want people looking into actual problems in society that benefit those at the top of US society. And you've always got to remember, anything that can be monetized by media... is going to be monetized by media - and outrage sells better than reporting on the news accurately. YouTube is no different.

The only thing I’ve seen Martina Navratilova in the news for recently is her cancer lol Just out of curiosity where are you getting your news about what’s going on in the US from?

Is it? Plenty of people were ready to ditch Liverpool and Man Utd when the super league news broke - it's part of the reason English clubs caved on that idea as quickly as they did. The Super League is distasteful, but not as distasteful as doing your best to ignore serial human rights abuses while a regime is using you in its sportwashing efforts.

Tbh for me it’s a bit personal, I could never support a club that’s basically just an advert for an evil family that thinks half of my family are subhuman.

I’d ditch the club if Saudis bought them

They fund ISIS because they fund wahhabi terror groups - which are very different from the terror groups Iran funds, because they're a completely different sect of Islam. Wahhabis are Sunni extremists believe that Shias (most of Iran's population) are all heretics that deserve to die, so ISIS is an interesting group in that they're an enemy to the west... as well as an enemy to Iran. Iran funds Shia extremists because they're... Shia extremists. I think you've got Al Qaeda also confused with the Mujahideen of Afghanistan. Now Al Qaeda's still backed by the Saudis and gets some assistance from the US/UK/EU with the Saudis war on the Houthis in Yemen. Anyways to answer your question, even though you've got... all the facts wrong... is they fund these extremists to reduce Shia influence over Syria (because while Syria's mostly Sunni, Assad's got closer ties to Iran and Russia than to the rest of the Islamic world) and to reimpose their puppet government over Yemen (which the Houthis challenge with their civil war). In any case, the Saudis are just as guilty of what you've accused the US of doing (and which the US does do all the time)... prime difference being there's no football team in the UK owned by the public fund of the US government, whereas there is a football team owned by the public fund of Saudi Arabia. My respect for Newcastle United fans would be so much higher if the fanbase at large wasn't willing to twerk for this government just because Mike Ashley was a cunt. A large chunk of the fanbase is just saying human rights abuses don't matter to them as long as the football club is good. It's disgraceful.

Nah, although PIF does own a minority share in the company that's majority shareholder of Chelsea (which is weirdly somehow not a conflict of interest in the eyes of the league). But the same country that thinks it's alright to dismember critical journalists while they're still alive is strangely one of the biggest backers of those two groups that are intent on selling holy war and creating geopolitical destabilization.

If you think that's bad, wait til you learn who's the biggest financial backer of... Al Qaeda and ISIS!

Germany's population is more than double Saudi Arabia's, yet you still compared them to the US.

Maybe protest being owned by a public fund of a fucked up dictatorship in the stands… even if it ends up being half as much effort as it was when fans were protesting Ashley being a cheap fuck.

And some people say sportswashing doesn’t work

Why read the article when you can just defend the indefensible because your football club wins more matches now?