If birds had language as nuanced and complex as people do, urban birds would definitely have arguments about baby strollers. They’d look at people going around with them and think “huh damn, they’ve got nests that they can just move around. Wouldn’t that be so convenient” and then some other one would go “yeah sure but they walk everywhere, how would you make a nest you could fly with?” and then keep arguing.
Someone is pretty sure that since the wheely-pushed portable nests only ever have human hatchlings in them, then surely they carry eggs some other way. Probably in those backpacks. The other birds agree that this is a stupid idea. They all disagree on why it can’t be like that, but they all agree that humans don’t carry eggs around.
well if they see heavily pregnant person and then next week they see the same person but now with a stroller and a baby in it, they might assume that we carry eggs inside our clothes, for warmth
Oh right that’s true! You’d make a smarter bird than I would.
so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.
and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.
…which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.
see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.
while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.
especially if the president of the united states is on board.
yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.
and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like “move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you.”
but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.
…and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.
not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.
yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.
but yeah, so thats my new measure for “how much did i really fuck up?” and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire
@electricpentacle hi how does it feel to be the funniest person on this goddamn site
Okay but if we’re talking supreme fuckups in maritime history I gotta butt in because that’s my special interest. The Evergiven is a no brainer. Queen of the North was a passenger ship that somehow managed to run into an island because the crew was vibing too hard to the music on the bridge (allegedly).
My favorite is the Pasha Bulker though. Let me explain.
Imagine you’re a fhjdnormous coal carrier off the coast of Australia. You wanna go to Newcastle to load coal, as you do. Unfortunately the queuing system at Newcastle is dogshit so boats are just anchoring all over the place. That’s not great. But luckily, your crew has The Australian Pilot on board, which gives detailed information about this part of the world and how to navigate it.
A storm is coming in. But fear not! The anchors will hold in the predicted wind speeds. Unrelated, did you know that single gusts can be up to 40% stronger than average wind speed? This is also described in the Australian Pilot. Take a guess if anyone on the Pasha Bulker read this very helpful little book.
(And to be fair, it was a strong storm - there’s reports of entire sofas being blown along a street.)
Alright, you’re dragging your anchor and the coast authorities asked if the ship needs help. What do you respond?
> Yes, oh God idk what I’m doing here.
> Ugh, no I got this.
If you chose the latter option, you did the same thing as the Pasha Bulker’s master (sorta like but not the same as a Captain).
He did this SEVERAL TIMES, while the continent of Australia was coming closer. And closer. And closer. At this point, people were gathering at the shore because they knew the ship was going to run aground and that’s not something you see every day.
The master was in denial until the Pasha Bulker ran aground on a reef just in front of the shoreline. I saw the pictures first in high school and thought they were fake, it looks insane. (Ocean-going coal carriers are fuckin HUGE.)
Hate it when you have An Appointment in a few days and you’re like well now I have no time to do anything at all because there is An Appointment in my future
ALT
ALT
