Writers are infamously messy, and I suppose I am too. My Google Drive, desktop and other repositories hold various half-baked drafts of this and that. From time to time I try to clear them out, but I hang on to some of them. One in my blog drafts folder has a headline — The indifferent sea. — and is an unkind look at something one of my husband’s former colleagues, who was college friends with none other than Stockton Rush, wrote about his dead classmate. Alan asked me to maybe consider not publishing it, if for no other reason than it would make future collegial gatherings maybe a bit awkward. I agreed.
Rush is, of course, the man responsible for his own death, and four others’, when his jerry-built submarine imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic. The U.S. Coast Guard has published its own report on the disaster, and it is…not kind:
At the time of the Titan’s final dive, Mr. Rush possessed a credential issued by the U.S. Coast Guard that permitted him to operate vessels of a certain volume on inland waters.
That credential was based on falsified information, the report said: In 2020, OceanGate exaggerated the volume of the Titan in a letter to the National Maritime Center so that it would appear as though Mr. Rush had the requisite time at sea needed to earn the credential.
…In an interview with the board, the OceanGate director of operations described a dive in which an earlier OceanGate submersible, the Cyclops 1, became stuck beneath the bow of the Andrea Doria shipwreck near Nantucket, Mass., with Mr. Rush at the controls. In response, Mr. Rush had a “meltdown,” the director of operations said, adding that when he asked Mr. Rush to relinquish the controls Mr. Rush threw the controller at him.
All of which made me dig up the original column, and hoo-boy, talk about aging like milk:
From test pilot Chuck Yeager to Mount Everest explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, risk-takers are a special breed. OceanGate CEO Tock was one of them. Unlike the astronauts and explorers who lived to reach the summit of mountains and outer space, however, Tock was fascinated by going to the bottom of the ocean.
…Ask anyone in my Princeton University Class of 1984 which one of us would be brave enough to dare such a mission, and Tock would be at the top of the list.
…When we were 19 years old, he became the world’s youngest commercial airline pilot, commanding Saudi Airlines planes during our college summers.
The part about Saudi Airlines was my first whoa moment. You’re telling me a commercial airline allows college students to fly its planes? Not quite. A little Googling reveals he worked as a first officer, i.e. co-pilot, on DC-8s operated by Overseas National Airways, which was under subcontract to Saudi Airlines to do charters, so kinda true, but not really.
But for the deepest and most unselfconscious look at ol’ Tock, you really have to go to the Princeton alumni publication:
Seemingly round-the-clock news coverage of the missing submersible has led to some unfavorable characterizations of Rush as a risk-taker whose adventures trended toward recklessness. Deep-sea explorers, oceanographers, and other industry leaders were reported to have expressed concerns about OceanGate’s safety precautions in recent years. For example, the Titan was built of both titanium and carbon fiber, which is used in the aerospace industry but considered experimental for deep-sea pressure.
“I mean if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed, don’t get in your car, don’t do anything,” Rush told CBS Sunday Morning last year. “At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”
Rush’s friends said that quote has been used to misrepresent his “joie de vivre” outlook on life, and that the message of his quote was likely more along the lines of encouraging people to live their lives and not be afraid.
“History shows us that exploration and innovation are inherently risky and dangerous,” a group of alumni wrote in a statement to PAW, signing it “Proud and Grieving Friends of Tock.” “We’re disappointed, if not entirely surprised, at the outpouring of armchair quarterbacking about the science behind his work.”
Was Tock a rich kid? Of course he was:
He kept a private plane at the Princeton airport, and friends recounted adventures they took with Rush at the wheel.
…(A) friend who flew with Rush on his private plane during college remembered the feelings of trust and safety she felt on board. “He cared for people deeply and he wouldn’t want to put me in a position where I was unsafe.”
Bad things never happen to rich kids, as we all know. Ah, well. Now we know, but we always knew. Meanwhile, speaking of rich kids, Croaky has effectively pulled the plug on publicly funded mRNA vaccine research. If bird flu goes big, let me say it now, while I’m healthy: It was nice knowin’ ya:
Mr. Kennedy has been sharply critical of the technology. In a video posted on social media on Tuesday, he claimed incorrectly that mRNA vaccines do not protect against respiratory illnesses like Covid and the flu, that they drive viruses to evolve and that a single mutation in a virus renders the vaccine ineffective.
“As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract,” he says in the video.
“By issuing this wildly incorrect statement, the secretary is demonstrating his commitment to his long-held goal of sowing doubts about all vaccines,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.
What else is new?
So that’s Wednesday’s stop on the Farewell to American Greatness tour. How’s your week going?
Suzanne said on August 6, 2025 at 12:20 pm
“ …mRNA vaccines…drive viruses to evolve and that a single mutation in a virus renders the vaccine ineffective.”
OMG, how stupid is Wormbrain Kennedy?? Viruses evolve and mutate all on their own without help! That is what viruses do!
We are all going to die from ignorance.
Sadly, I know way too many people here in beet red Indiana who believe the garbage that Wormbrain and his ilk are selling and will be cheering this on.
And then there is this headline: AMA and other medical associations are kicked out of CDC vaccine workgroups. Because, you know, those groups have a bias.
https://apnews.com/article/vaccine-committee-cdc-cfbdcab84b2a919a6131d471959c3431
686 chars
Dexter Friend said on August 6, 2025 at 1:44 pm
5 shot at Fort Stewart, Georgia, no fatalities reported yet. Shooter captured 30 minutes after last shot fired.
Trump was seen short time ago, maybe on Monday, wandering atop The White House roof, saying to the multitudes he was walking for his health, then he said something about visually surveying where the new ballroom was going to be built.
There is a new doc on Prime about Tom Brady’s ownership foray into British football. So far, all I have heard and read about is ridicule for TB12.
The second place Red Sox are maintaining a short lead in the standings over the goddam fucking Yankees. This is good, even as Toronto is running away with the division.
Since the first officer is just as much the pilot of an aircraft as the pilot, only subservient to the pilot, having a 19 year old kid in the right seat in the cockpit is fucking just not right in my mind.
Here in Ohio, around Columbus anyway, Ramaswamy is throwing his money around at events as he campaigns for Ohio Governor. This creep MAGA bastard with the voice of a cartoon penguin makes me sick.
1071 chars
Sherri said on August 6, 2025 at 3:14 pm
On the last thread, I posted that the way to know that the US is not serious about going to Mars is because the Trump administration is destroying academic science. The scientists who would solve the hard problems of putting humans on Mars aren’t going to be there because Elon Musk and Donald Trump gutted universities.
Maybe Musk truly believes that AI will solve everything, but his ketamine-addled brain is not to be trusted.
435 chars
Jeff Borden said on August 6, 2025 at 3:26 pm
How many preventable deaths will Brain Worm Bobby cause by this action? I’d say thousands, but that might be low. We’re in the Age of Dumb and I wonder if we’ll ever come put of it?
181 chars
jim said on August 6, 2025 at 4:13 pm
On Trump on the WH roof from reddit:
“Diddler on the Roof”
“All the Libs are saying, “Trump is too much of a pussy to jump off the WH roof!” Please, Sir, with tears in my eyes, prove all those sissy Libs wrong and jump off that roof head first and show them what a REAL CONSERVATIVE MAN can do! Maybe right into that freshly paved Rose garden patio? THAT’D SHOW THEM!”
376 chars
David C said on August 6, 2025 at 5:06 pm
If he took head first dive onto his stupid fucking patio, all would be forgiven. Even Jackie Kennedy would say, “yeah, fair trade”.
131 chars
Deborah said on August 6, 2025 at 5:19 pm
I am so fucking furious right now I could scream. Excuse my French but this is so maddening, my husband and I both have covid again right now. Me for the 3rd time, LB has been house/dog sitting so away but has had contact with us some during the time we would be contagious. We had plenty of tests but no masks. LB got us some masks that turned out to be horrible fitting, not her fault, they were the best CVS had.
My husband has to fly back to Chicago on Sunday which we have calculated to be day 7 or 8, so he should be noncontagious according to the 5 day theory but he should be wearing a mask still for a while.
We both thought it was allergies, grasses are doing their thing this time of year in northern NM, and grasses are everywhere. He was out at the cabin, came back yesterday with what he thought was a sinus infection that he often gets with bad allergies. this morning I encouraged him to take a test and sure enough he was positive.
I too have it. It’s mild as the other 2 times I’ve had it, I felt a little light headed Monday morning but I thought it was because of dehydration, I drank lots of water and a couple of Advil and felt fine except for a runny nose, nothing out of the ordinary when I have allergies. I feel really bad because I took the bus on Monday since my husband had the car in Abiquiu. An elderly woman with a walker who was somewhat overweight sat next to me and I feel like I have exposed her. I wish there was a way I could alert her, but I have no idea how to do that.
I hate that probably with someone like Kennedy Jr in charge this is going to be with us forever and given how quickley viruses evolve and mutate what is going to happen next?
1698 chars
Mark P said on August 6, 2025 at 6:26 pm
I commented on the previous thread about Musk and AI. Medicare plans to use AI to pre-authorize some Medicare procedures in six states as a trial. I expect pre-authorization to spread throughout Medicare as they try to force everyone into Medicare Advantage plans.
I wondered in my previous comment what in the hell the goal of all of this is. I think I know: kill as many of us as possible, and make the rest of us technoserfs.
431 chars
Brandon said on August 6, 2025 at 7:17 pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_Rush
Not only rich but the descendant of Founding Fathers. Had Rush survived, one could imagine his starring in a movie of his life.
174 chars
susan said on August 7, 2025 at 12:08 am
Brandon, that wiki link led me to this one, an on-going/ “dynamic” list of inventors killed by their own invention.
226 chars
Jeff Gill said on August 7, 2025 at 10:23 am
[Insert here 3,000 words on writing for alumni magazines, deleted because I might still do so & they pay better than any other freelance outlet I know of…]
Also, here in Newark, Ohio I could add Reinhard Scheidler, 1834-1903, who legend has it stood atop one of his steam engines on the safety valve calling for more pressure, until the crown sheet blew, killing Scheidler and seriously injuring a few other employees.
425 chars
Little Bird said on August 7, 2025 at 10:46 am
Thus far I remain symptom free. If I do pop positive it will be the fourth time for me. And I get the shots. I guess it’s back to masking up everywhere and toting hand sanitizer every day. Just so we’re clear, I blame Trump for this still being a problem. His initial response was to do nothing and then he allowed his base to go maskless too soon. If he had just said “wear a mask, it’s for everyone’s safety” we probably wouldn’t have ever been allowed to stop wearing them. My conspiracy theories currently are that the republicans want old people and poor people to die off from preventable illnesses. That way they can use Social Security money and not have to fund Medicaid or Medicare. That and doing away with public education means they can keep the population uneducated and therefore easier to control.
838 chars
Mark P said on August 7, 2025 at 11:16 am
Little Bird, I think you are right about the Republicans’ plans. They really do want to kill off the elderly (but not the wealthy elderly, because too many of them are that), and the poor. They see them as taking resources without contributing. I think that’s why they are going to push standard Medicare towards private insurance companies, which can make money and withhold care, thereby killing two birds with one stone. They will also cripple healthcare in general. I think this is literally true, not hyperbole.
520 chars
Deborah said on August 7, 2025 at 3:43 pm
Having covid is sooooo boring. I’ve read the entire internet, and tried reading my current book for the book club which is highly disturbing,(Empire of AI by Karen Hao). I feel better, after I feel like I peaked out this covid process at 2am. I felt really bad then but after going back to sleep and waking up after 10am, I’m feeling better, hopefully it doesn’t come in waves of feeling bad and then better over and over again. I must say the other two times I had it, I never felt that bad. It’s hard to describe how it felt at 2am, I have nothing to compare it to.
567 chars
Heather said on August 7, 2025 at 3:51 pm
Sorry to hear about the Covid. I spent all day Saturday with a friend who thought she had a cold, including driving in a car for hours, and of course it was Covid. I should have bowed out of going with her since she had been on a plane recently, but I have gotten a bit complacent. I was very upset since I have a family reunion this weekend and didn’t want to miss it, but I’m still negative on day 5 after exposure. I don’t want to jinx myself but I’m still a Novid as far as I know–I read somewhere that regular antihistamine use may help, and I’ve been taking one every day for more than a decade.
Anyway, waiting here in IL to see if the FBI is actually going to try to arrest the TX Democratic lawmakers. It feels like our Fort Sumter moment maybe?
756 chars
Julie Robinson said on August 7, 2025 at 5:25 pm
Daily antihistamine use didn’t prevent me from three Covid infections, but I have high hopes for everyone else. Anecdotally I’ve heard it’s up around here again. Audiobooks got me through.
Has Brainworm Bobby also stopped new versions of Covid and flu immunizations? Usually at this time of year we’re hearing about the updates available, and getting them in September. I haven’t seen anything so far, has anyone else? Asking because I’m only reading headlines right now for self-care.
489 chars
Icarus said on August 7, 2025 at 5:31 pm
Rather than think about the state of the union today, I’d rather talk about the last thread and going to Mars. Tajalli brought up Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy. I read the wiki page on it.
For a series started in 1994*, it sounds intriguing. Musk wants to do the same thing: detonate nukes deep in the subsurface permafrost to release water. I’ve read some papers on why that won’t work, but what do I know?
There are numerous challenges associated with space travel, let alone colonization. The two biggest are escaping Earth’s gravity well, which we have figured out, clumsily, how to do.
The second is just how far apart everything is in space. The Empire Strikes Back, among other sci-fi movies, does an injustice to just how far about asteroids are from one another.
Unless we come up with a technology that lets us move through space faster than we can today, it’s a long time between launches and landings. And a sub-problem of that is the human body can only take so many G-forces for so long. Star trek solves this with inertia dampners and other sci-fi completely ignores this problem.
Looks like you can download the Mars Trilogy pdfs for free. I might do so to take my mind off things.
1340 chars
Jeff Gill said on August 7, 2025 at 6:36 pm
Basset – your mayor seems on top of this one, but what else do you hear locally? Sounds like a bad idea for Nashville from this:
https://tennesseelookout.com/2025/08/06/nashville-mayor-queries-boring-company-about-tunnel-plan/
229 chars
Dorothy said on August 7, 2025 at 8:19 pm
If I were to rank all the weeks of my life with the worst week being at the top, this one would possibly be first. My husband’s been speaking raspier and raspier for the last 2-3 months. He was able to schedule an appointment with an ENT doctor and that appointment was this past Tuesday. A scope down his throat in the examination room showed he has a grape sized growth on his left vocal cord. He’s been whispering for a couple of weeks now. This is not at all what we wanted to hear, but of course it’s better to know than NOT know.
He’s having the growth removed on the 18th. That will be a diagnostic operation the doc said. It will take another 8-12 days for the pathology report. I have no idea how either of us is going to sleep for those days. He is a former smoker but he quit 25 years ago. He had his thyroid out in 2018 and a grapefruit sized hematoma formed in his throat in about 18 hours after the thyroid came out. He was intubated for two days and then taken off the machines. The doctor apologized for nicking his vocal cords during the emergency surgery. I’m fantasizing that this growth is a result of that 2018 emergency. But who knows?
For now we’re trying to stay positive. I only Googled one time about this, and scared the sh** out of myself so I’m not doing that again. I’ve known many of you for a very long time and I know many of us have suffered our share of crises. I will appreciate all of the positive vibes you can send his way. Anyone who uses the phrase “thoughts and prayers”, though, will be taken out and shot!
XOXO
1580 chars
Suzanne said on August 7, 2025 at 9:33 pm
Sending you peaceful thoughts, Dorothy. The waiting for test results is so very difficult. Our minds race to the worst even though we try to tell ourselves not to go there.
Deep breaths and hang in there.
206 chars
Deborah said on August 7, 2025 at 9:43 pm
Positive vibes coming your way Dorothy. Thinking of you and your family.
72 chars
tajalli said on August 7, 2025 at 10:20 pm
Dorothy, I think of these waiting periods as Schrodinger’s Cat situations in which the universe has not yet arrived at opening the box. My approach is to stay as much as possible in the be-here-now and totally relax into not-knowing, just knowing that at this very moment everything is fine. I’ve gotten through some potentially really hairy circumstances using this approach.
One can even lay right down on the floor, feel where the body is tense or hurts, really feel it and just sink down into the earth.
Those are thoughts going to you. No bullets back please, have been dodging too many lately myself. 🙂
617 chars
David C said on August 8, 2025 at 5:37 am
Julie, I had my annual at the doctor’s a couple of weeks ago. I got updated on my tetanus and Covid vaccines. I don’t know if the vaccine for Covid is for the currently circulating variants, but some protection is better than none. I asked about a flu vaccine. She shrugged and said they hadn’t heard anything yet. That’s pretty scary.
335 chars
Julie Robinson said on August 8, 2025 at 8:34 am
David, I did a little research and it seems like there will be updates, but nothing is for sure anymore, is it? I need to go talk with the pharmacist anyway; hopefully she will know. D and his sister are traveling for almost a month starting mid-September, and we’d definitely like to get them before that. Considering he just had heart surgery, it seems double important.
Dorothy, I’m so sorry about Mike, especially as you’ve been in such a golden retirement, with the grandkids and so much sewing time, and Mike getting bees again. I can’t tell if you want prayers or not, but you’ve got mine.
600 chars
Jeff Gill said on August 8, 2025 at 8:36 am
Grace & peace, Dorothy; the good news is they’ve gotten better & better over the last decade with the scopes & procedures & treatment regimens for throat stuff. I’m blessed (?) to have a purely neurological issue in that area, but at each juncture they had to rule out all the physical options (growths, tears, cancers, etc.), so I’ve gotten a rolling view over the last decade of ENT procedures. Sounds like you two have seen most of them, too.
461 chars
Peter said on August 8, 2025 at 11:18 am
Dorothy, I am so sorry to hear that news. I hope for the best, and I’ll be thinking of you on Sunday.
My lovely spouse went through a few of those episodes, but that was some time ago. I don’t know how I’d feel if it happened now…
239 chars
nancy said on August 8, 2025 at 11:19 am
I’m adding support to all those above, Dorothy.
47 chars
Dorothy said on August 8, 2025 at 12:07 pm
You are all so wonderful! I appreciate all the positivity. I’m crazy about prayers. It’s just that expression I can’t stand. Uttered after every mass shooting and natural disaster. It just irritates me. But I welcome all means of support for promise.
He already got the CT results from 10 am today and the word ‘unremarkable’ appeared several times. Here’s hoping that portends more good things.
400 chars