I wouldn't be surprised. But, I suspect there's also a factor of just implausibility. Apparently, the main vessel they use is "experimental", so it may just literally be impossible to have a recovery vessel without being a literal government.

My money's on this being the result of someone ignoring the "hey, these are not good conditions" warnings.

One of the other posts in the feed makes it sound like they only do it a handful of times a year, and that cost is covering a multi-day excursion since they have to wait for conditions to be right. Still, no excuse to not have contingencies, but I think their take gets eaten into a fair bit more than the raw math would suggest.

So, in the live feed the BBC has going, there's a post suggesting that a group of explorers were apparently on board based on one of them's Facebook feed, so it's safe to say they probably had the full passenger set on there.

BBC's also got a live feed going for this.

Apparently, the sub's supposed to have a suite of systems to more or less warn the pilot if things are looking dicey, so hopefully this is a communications problem and not something worse.

I am pleased for my role in performing science today. :D

All the satisfaction of downvoting someone for being wrong, but none of the knock-on social effects, eh?

That's what seems to be the case. So, it's looking like it's basically a placebo button for y'all. :P

I'm still seeing a 1 here. So, I think the downvote is literally just a placebo for you. :P

I mean, does it seem to change the vote numbers when you do it? Like, try downvoting my reply and we'll see if it results in us both seeing a 0. :P

I suspect the answer is that there's probably a depressing number of authentic human adults who just are like that, and it creates a feedback loop/spiral where people are pushed into being more aggressive/vitriolic as a defense mechanism.

The real problem, I think, is the ease with which those individuals can hop between communities/be directed toward communities particularly sensitive to their brand of bile on social media sites. I know there's a lot of talk out there about making on-boarding to Fediverse stuff easier, but realistically, being able to layer several barriers along the way (e.g. finding an instance to join, finding an instance to harass without getting either yourself banned or your entire instance defederated) will go a long way toward limiting the influx of bad actors.

... I think I may have to stop the escalation there before it infects my internal dialogue.

... Do I still get to claim I'm merely "fandom adjacent" if I've crafted several 'sonas and have actively played as them in various media? Asking for a friend. :P