Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
April Fools Day (April 1) is one week away. To that end, I just want it known now, well before the day, that this blog will NOT be posting any jump scares, fake announcements, freak-out posts, fake hackings, fake emergencies, fake news, and “gotcha!” stuff on April Fools Day. We’re staying safe and chill around here.
I’m honestly not into April Fools Day, really, unless the jokes are obvious and silly–like Rickrolls and Dad Jokes. Rickrolls and Dad Jokes are just traditional.
this is the official navajo covid relief fund, please donate, it’ll go towards desperately needed medical supplies, as well as daily necessities for the community like canned food, drinkable water, disinfectants, and baby formula
person who will lose their job: the guy who had to try and steer a massive cargo ship with no power in a sandstorm
person who should lose their job: the guy who decided to build a cargo ship longer than the suez canal is wide without considering the obvious corner case (or more likely, the guy who dismissed the possible corner case as unlikely and the profits worth the risk)
my favourite new arrival today to the Suez Canal party is this incredibly conspicuous Russian warship labelled as an oil tanker that’s just anchored amongst the stranded cargo ships. chillin.
realized what the map screenshot is reminding me of glgkdkkdkfjdksj
“russian warship 545 is unhappy”
“well life isn’t fucking fair is it russian warship 545”
Okay this just got INTERESTING
So I went back to check on my pal Russian Warship 545 (registration name KOLA), and being unable to find the red dot in the area, thought it had moved on. Curious as to when and where to, I ran a search on Vesselfinder for the name “Russian Warship 545”.
No results found.
“Okay, that’s fair. Maybe you can’t search for naval vessels by name. National security and all.” I said to myself. Then I remembered that I’d screenshotted the ID number (see above), so I ran a search for that instead.
This is when shit got weird.
So I mentioned just now that while the vessel showed up earlier today under the AIS tracking title “Russian Vessel 545”, the legal registration name listed at the bottom of its details page was “KOLA”. This isn’t that weird in and of itself — I was poking around home on the map earlier today, and found Canadian naval vessels with tracking titles like “Canadian Warship 707” and then the actual vessel name (HMCS FancyName or what have ye) listed as the registration name along with the flag country.
I mentioned also that I couldn’t find Russian Warship 545’s distinctive red dot (red is the colour for search and rescue, coast guard, and naval vessels in Vessel Finder) in the Red Sea anchorage field outside the canal when I went to check up on it.
So imagine my surprise when I type the ID number for “Russian Warship 545” into the search, and am told IT IS STILL LOCATED IN THE RED SEA ANCHORAGE.
Huh???
But not ONLY that.
It has now been switched to an ORANGE tanker vessel dot, and is showing up with “KOLA” as its AIS tracking name, looking for all intents and purposes like a regular oil tanker:
Except for the fact that when you open the details page on Vessel Finder, the image attached is VERY MUCH STILL A RUSSIAN WARSHIP:
And the specs and details are all the same as earlier, including being owned by what is still listed (due to the 1967 manufacturing date) as, I shit you not, “Soviet Navy”:
However!!!
On further investigation via Marine Tracker, I’ve found what seems to be a much less “stripped from Wikipedia”, and much less impressive, image of our friend Russian Warship 545 (which is still listed as the AIS name on Marine Tracker):
This page on Baltic Shipping also associates similar pictures with the same ID numbers, further corroborating this and giving a bit more extra backstory about the builder etc. “Kola” is listed as an Altay-class Russian military tanker with a matching 1967 build date on this List of Active Russian Military Vessels, and was actively doing stuff for the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean within the last two years (x) (x).
So.
My best guess at an explanation for all this weirdness?
Creaky old Soviet-built oil tanker KOLA, owned by Russian military, was doing regular oil-getting business in the area.
Said oil tanker is listed on some AIS records in the same manner as most military-owned vessels, “[nationality] warship [hull #]”, and with a red military ID dot.
Somebody working for Vessel Finder is really lazy about attaching a database image to the profile for KOLA. (Interestingly enough, reverse image search turned up no other instances of the warship image used on the listing).
Then, this week, Ever Given does the world’s worst parallel parking job and blocks up the Suez canal.
KOLA, gone to go get oil and bring it back to the fleet, is now stranded with many other oil tankers in the middle of the Red Sea, unable to pass back up through to the Black Sea or wherever the hell she was going.
At some point, perhaps somebody involved in the control/management of KOLA had the thought, possibly while sitting around at anchor for two days twiddling thumbs and playing cards, “hey, you don’t think our AIS designation would make us look like we’re up to some really sketchy shit out here, do you? given that hundreds if not thousands of random people are looking at vessel tracking sites right now?”
“Hm. Shit.”
(Alternatively, somebody onboard is killing time on their phone looking at the shipping carnage and notices their bright red tracking dot and alarming name).
Phone calls are made/things are updated and Creaky old Soviet-built military-owned oil tanker KOLA hastily has its AIS display name updated to read as its registration name instead of “Russian Warship 545”, now with an orange oil tanker classification marker.
This change has the unintended result of making them look EXPONENTIALLY sketchier than they did before.
ALTERNATIVELY: Less funny version, it may just be a glitch in Vessel Finder’s software that gets triggered by the two different names and the conflicting classifications. When I went to look at it again just a minute ago, we were back to a red indicator and “Russian Warship 545”:
Bottom line: do I think that anything freaky or untoward is ACTUALLY happening with this vessel? Not really.
Do I find this all EXTREMELY entertaining? You bet your ass I do.
Highly recommend just fucking around on vessel tracking sites for a few hours. Gosh what a fun time to be had.
unfortunately in my fact check I spent so long researching this tough and dependable 54-year-old Soviet naval refuelling vessel that I’ve accidentally become weirdly fond of it. she’s a sturdy old girl. I wish her well
This is about Sci-Hub. yeah we get it.. gatekeep knowledge and protect the interests of capital…
Listen, this is serious.
Do not use the website called Sci-Hub!
It lets people access scientific articles for free. This is dangerous. It helps the free flow of knowledge and reduces the competitive edge of all the people who worked really hard to have been born into a wealth.
Like, it’s literally a website where you can type in the DOI of an article and read it, without ever having to pay the publisher who exploited the author.
So, again, do not, under any circumstance, use Sci-Hub. I mean, can you imagine a world where knowledge is free and easily accessible to everyone? Even, y'know, poor people?
Libgen also has many books online, including textbooks, searchable by name, author, and ISBN. Can you imagine textbook companies not getting their hard-earned income from poor college students? Here is the link just so you make sure that you never accidentally stumble across this horrible, unethical website.
Oh, and while we’re talking about books, if you’ve managed to stay clear from Libgen, definitely don’t go to zlibrary, where you can also find a lot of textbooks, but unfortunately they’re completely free.
Oh I forgot please remember that Jessica Walter was Jewish and Jewish people do not use the term Rest In Peace. So please don’t use it for her. May her memory be a blessing.
I just learned that some websites use cookies to adjust prices. That is, if you visit a certain website a lot the price will increase.
You can tell if that’s the case by checking the same web page on a different browser if you have a different number of stored cookies for that site. I checked something on Chegg and it was $14.95 on Chrome, $19.95 on Firefox, and $16.95 on Safari.
The fix? Clear your cookies for that website.
Reblog, save a wallet.
Plane tickets almost always do this!
PLANE TICKETS DO THIS ALL THE DAMN TIME
When you’re looking for plane tickets and waiting for prices to drop, ALWAYS clear your cookies beforehand and switch between browsers. A friend of mine was looking for a flight and getting prices that were the CHEAPEST at $800-1000, I sent her a link for a round trip that was like $495, and it read as $900 on her computer because she had been hounding the airline site.
alternatively: avoid all this headache by using incognito when shopping for plane tickets, text books, etc
Hotel rooms are notorious for this, as well. Just like, go on incognito mode to look at these sites, saves u a lot of time & hassle.
1) As a former sailor here’s my hot take on the stuck boat in the Suez. I’m actually in admiration of the skill of whoever did this. They managed a crash in one of the busiest water ways and all they damaged was a wall. No lives lost. No other boat involved, no damaged cargo. A+
2) Lemme tell you about pilots. Pilots are tug boats or crew who lead you through challenging passages. Usually harbours or narrow water ways. The Suez requires you to hand over control of your boat to a government endorsed pilot crew. Some pilots are great. Suez Pilots are not
3) they don’t protecc. They don’t atacc. Mainly they sleep and snacc. Yep. The Suez takes roughly 13 hours for a big ship to navigate. I have yet to hear of a diligent Seuz pilot who actually stayed at the helm even half that time. And pilots are not free. We pay extra for them
a small private boat pays $500-1000 US. The #EVERGIVEN this would be over $10,000 US for the pilot crew alone on top of the $100,000 to use the canal. And the pilot crew are mandatory. Considering how much shipping goes through the suez, how are their bad pilots still not known?
So #EVERGIVEN got stuck in a sand storm with 40kt gusts&no visiblity. This is totally enough to blow them off course&disorient them, they’d be working off radar and sonar. Factor in possible confusion of who was responsible for driving, the pilot of the officer of the watch?
The #EVERGIVEN officer’s concerns went like this
-my crew
-my ship
-other ships
-my cargo
definitely not holding up global shipping traffic. And probably not that wall they hit with the part of the hill that’s reinforced. The fact that they ran aground without damaging cargo?
A+ #EVERGIVEN Officer & #Evergreen crew. I am truly amazed at your soft landing. I’m sorry no one is talking about the low quality Suez pilot crew who was supposed to be driving (I’m sorry to the good Suez pilots, I know you’re out there somewhere not napping & working hard)
Considering 10% of the world’s shipping traffic goes through the Suez, the fact that government endorsed mandatory suez pilots are negligent& harsss female crew in one of the world’s busiest canals should be known outside the boating world. Good luck #EVERGIVEN, you can do it!
All right, guys, the rest of tonight is (possibly) going to be spent tracking the progress on the Ever Given, a 400-meter-long container ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal and is currently struck.
Okay, based on this new information, this very obvious dick+balls carefully carved out in the water for anyone with GPS access to see:
1. This is not an accident.
2.
The “unexpected winds turned a 205 bafuckjillion metric ton container ship into a sailboat” cover story has now been blown to shit.
3. Somebody is making a statement.
4. Dude(s) possibly grounded the ship on purpose then fucked off.
5. Direct action?
6. Soft terrorism?
7. SOMEbody sure had a plan.
Regardless of whether we ever learn the truth, even if they unstick the ship immediately while I’m typing this? It’s gonna fuck up about two dozen international economies. This is only slightly less oh shit than the ending of Fight Club (1999).
We’ll be seeing ripple effects for a year. At least.
Y’ALL THE WAIT TO FIX THE SUEZ CANAL IS SO LONG THAT EVERYONE IS JUST GOING THE FUCK AROUND THE ENTIRE CONTINENT OF AFRICA AGAIN
A ton of people in Cape Town are about to get unexpectedly rich
OH MY GOD THEY DID IT IT HAPPENED WE’RE BACK TO 1700′S SHIPPING ROUTES FOLKS
🎶You’d wish to God you’d ne’er been born🎵
Sorry folks, but that’s regular traffic. Ships haven’t started to make u-turns yet, and if they had, they wouldn’t be anywhere near the Cape at this point:
[ID: Commodity analysts Kpler said in a statement Thursday: “As delays continue, shippers will have to broach the unpalatable decision of whether to make a u-turn and head for the Cape of Good Hope or wait it out in the Red Sea and Mediterranean.“Currently, taking such a route is “unlikely,” Kpler said, given the extensive delays that would cause. Giving a sample route, the company said: “Suez to Amsterdam at 12 knots is just over 13 days via the canal, or 41 days via the Cape.” /ID]
Ahh, thank you for the good solid facts! Ships fandom is a wise and well-informed fandom.
