mercurialsmile - Tumblr blog

[mercurialsmile]

you came back wrong and i am racked with guilt because i cannot bear to see you like this and i should have let you rest. i loved you so much that i defied death itself but i do not think either of us are happy

[mercurialsmile]

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

[mercurialsmile]

there's a reason taylor swift called her new album the tortured poets department because it would literally torture any poet that listens to it

[mercurialsmile]

Tumblr caught onto me and now I can no longer send these awful ads to the shadow realm :(

Did I just banish a t-swift ad as being offensive? Why yes I did. Because she IS offensive to me.

Get the homophobic white woman off my dash please and thank you.

[mercurialsmile]

jUsT DoN’t LiSTen to tAYlOR swIfT iF yOu dOn’T liKe hEr

My brother in Satan I would ignore her existence completely if I wasn’t forced to see these godawful ads and listen to her terrible music at random stores

[mercurialsmile]

https://x.com/PobBase/status/1782432257132691492

Have you seen this? The one clout I approve of. LOL

[mercurialsmile]

Source smoothdunk on twitter

[mercurialsmile]

Anyways I’m in my ✨💚Green Day Era💚✨

[mercurialsmile]

Reblog if you didn’t write My Immortal

We’re going to find the author by process of elimination.

[mercurialsmile]

Please be normal

[mercurialsmile]

“Smart Cars” + Capitalism = a very dystopian future

Ford’s patent ranges from having a “self driving” car return itself to the dealership if you miss a payment, to having the car abruptly disable itself, to “minor inconveniences” like having the air conditioner or heater stop working until you voluntarily return the car.

Don’t think for one second that all carmakers aren’t thinking about doing the same things. Especially Tesla Motors.

Carmakers are already trying to monetize even the most basic features, like charging monthly fees for the ability to use your car’s seat warmers.

Anyway, nobody does more to radicalize people against capitalism more than greedy capitalists.

[mercurialsmile]

new oc just dropped who dis be

[mercurialsmile]

pro-AI in the sense of "they taught a bread scanning computer to recognize cancer cells" etc etc

against AI in the sense of "we stole artwork from hundreds to thousands of artists, didn't credit them and didn't financially compensate them"

[mercurialsmile]

I SAW ONE

In the WILD

a cYBERTRUCK

[mercurialsmile]

not so friendly reminder with diwali coming up that the swastika (swuhs-theek-ahh) is of vedic origin, and it's a symbol of well-being, auspiciousness, and prosperity in hinduism, jainism, and buddhism. it's still common in nepal, mongolia, china, japan, and, most famously, india.

it's been around since 500 BC, and germany appropriated it, making it a symbol of hate.

the symbol on the right? THIS is not offensive. it's stolen culture. please be fully informed before you make any accusations this upcoming holiday season.

[mercurialsmile]

One time my rabbi told us, “imagine you had a box with a little bit of god in it. What would you do with the box?”

So we were like ?? “We’d protect it and keep it nice and clean and polished” and he was like “your body’s that box. Stop eating markers”

[mercurialsmile]

My queers, we really need to put the "no men" thing away. Men are not inherently bad. There are queer men. There are questioning men. There's men that are just plain cool. Denying these men a space at our table is not helping - except the TERFs. I just came off the back of reading a transphobe gleeful rant about the need to have pride without men - They of course mean me. This kind of stuff is damaging to me and I really need us all to take a step back and maybe kill this "men dni, men not allowed" stuff. What you mean is "no men who are going to do mean stuff to me." And frankly those men won't give a shit about that kind of boundary.

But I promise you there's a fleet of good honest men who will see that and be sad they're not allowed in your version of queer spaces.

PATRIARCHY is what you hate. Dni Patriarchs.