Have mercy
The vessel now has starshield, which is the military version of starlink. When I was on the vessel in February, the other satellite connections we had were so bad that I couldn’t even open my email program, let alone do anything like banking. While it is great to have actual connectivity down here in the deep south, it does mean that everyone is on their phones all the time, just like in the real world.
There is a whatsapp group for the employees only and one for the employees and the grantees. There is probably also one for just the grantees as well. The employee one is full of inane things that people must say to each other on the app. Video games in the lounge at 8! Where are the cornhole bean bags? Let’s watch Hocus Pocus on Halloween, the chorus chimes in, No Beetlejuice Beetlejuice! Addams Family! It just goes on mindlessly. Last night someone posted about a 60’s hits show in Branson MO. Then someone posted pictures of the performers. I turned off all notifications for that group. If someone needs me for a work announcement they can call me or write it on a whiteboard. In our morning meeting, five people were on their phones, doing wordle or connections. This evolved into watching youtube videos of praying mantises killing hummingbirds, swarms of rats and rat terriers and other grisly animal related activities. Spare me.
Also in the meeting, we talked about phones.The NSF and the antarctic program have a dismal record in terms of sexual assault and harassment. In the past couple of years this has become known to the rest of the world and many horrible stories have been told in public by victims. They are now putting effort into correcting the situation, with hotlines, victims advocates, counselors and more. On the vessel there is very little private space and one of the things they want is for phones to be installed where people can talk in private.
I installed a phone in a conference room. The marine project coordinator solemnly said - good deal. Then he asked if we should put a note on the phone to say you needed to dial a 9 to get out. I explained that dialing 9 to get an ‘outside line’ has been common practice for about 50 years and that most people are aware. Except maybe these people aren’t! They are so young they haven’t used actual telephones in their whole lives. One of the people in the meeting was particularly baffled and belligerent about dialing 9 being too complicated.
We had our second vis-a-thon session. We had to list out verbs, to clip, to chart, to whistle and so on. Then we had to act out a verb, draw a verb and finally ‘sculpt’ a verb.
The scientists will be gathering some of their samples using a CTD instrument. This stands for conductivity, temperature and depth. The electronic device is in the middle of a bunch of collection tubes. The whole thing gets dropped in the water to whatever depth they decide is interesting to them, then pulled up with the tubes full of water (and diatoms, phytoplankton and maybe a tiny fish or two).
Most of us are trying to keep ourselves distracted on this uneasy day.