Ancient Greek Word Of The Day: (kakothers),unfitted To Endure Summer Heat

ancient greek word of the day: κακοθερής (kakotherēs), unfitted to endure summer heat

"Let me be your inside man." -Harry Wilson

Harry Wilson is a nice man.

Gotta admit, I wasn't expecting that. I guess when I heard "fixer" and "lawyer to the wealthy," I was expecting a brash, arrogant scumbag who would eventually un-sleaze with the power of found family and vigilante justice.

But he's not?? He's likeable right off the bat, visibly vulnerable, and he latched on to the crew without any degree of chill. He's open with his emotions, comfortable with being the butt of the joke, and humble about being out of his depth. He accepts rebuke, listens to advice, and offers support with remarkable earnestness. This man is—against all my expectations—a damn sweetheart.

But the narrative makes no bones about it: Harry Wilson is—or has been, until very recently—a bad man. He's done incredible damage, blithely rationalizing it all as "just doing his job." So caught up in the rush of the challenge and the thrill of his own competence, he failed to realize that his veneer of neutrality is flimsy cover for the fact that he's slipped completely over to the dark side. He could've been one of Leverage's targets not so long ago, and he would've deserved it.

This isn't new, but it's an uncomfortable truth we often forget: evil can be nice. Evil people can be just doing their job and doing it well, then going home to dote on their family and sleep soundly at night, oblivious to the harm they'd inflicted. Their victims know they're evil, but everyone else would call them nice. Nice is not the same as good.

The interesting thing about Harry is that he actually had a paradigm shift and saw himself for what he was. Do you know how difficult that is, for a man insulated by all the trappings of wealth, success, and privilege to actually be shaken from complacency to confront his own broken humanity? There was no personal tragedy, no near-death experience nor voice from heaven giving him an epiphany. But he looked at his victims, and for once he saw them, and he took the hit. He let his self-delusions shatter, made himself sit with his shame and remorse, and now he's actively trying to make it right. The nice man on the path to becoming a good one.

So, like Hardison said: it's a start. He's got work to do. And I have high hopes for our Mr. Wilson—after all, he's found the perfect people to travel with on the road to redemption.

This is awesome and I love it.

(X)

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.

This is absolutely gorgeous!

Also I need to mention that my brain skipped a few words and read this, ”Percy Jackson and the Last True Poets of the Sea”.  I know nothing about the second book but it makes a great title for a Percy Jackson story.

It occurs to me that I never shared my art for Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe here! This art was featured on a puzzle in the October @rainbowcrate! It’s also included as a print in the December box, which will be shipping soon, along prints of my Percy Jackson art and the Last True Poets of the Sea art. :)

Thanks to awildbooknerdappeared on IG for the photo!