Correct, Orcas are not our friends

Remember those Orcas? I was reminded today of early summer’s darlings, the yacht-sinking Orcas off Europe.

I partly bring this up so I can link to my favorite Atlantic article of all time: Killer Whales Are Not Our Friends.

I love this because, yes, that’s the whole point. They managed some kind of semantic integer overflow; so contrarian they wrapped around and just said the thing.

Every time the Atlantic gets all “tut tut, poor people are having Bad Opinions” I just think of the montage from the middle of the original 1984 Ghostbusters where the Atlantic cover story is “Do ghosts have civil rights?” and I’m like awww yisss, nothing has changed. “All this has happened before, etc”.

However, the other reason I bring this up is so I can link to what made me think of the Orcas, which was this absolutely unhinged list from the Financial Times: A complete guide to yacht-desking: All the gadgets you need to work on the high seas.

And, sure. The Financial Times, of course, is read by the people who own the country, rich British people who want pretend they’re richer. The premise of the article, which does seem a year or two past the point where it was fully relevant, is that if you’re going to be working from home and outfitting a home office, why not outfit your yacht and work from there instead?

It’s one of those basically harmless cosplay lists, full of things you could buy to show off, maritime clocks costing £55,000 and whatnot. Stuff you buy to show off the fact that you could afford it, mostly. I skimmed it with a sort of amused “yeah, probably” smirk at the work-from-yacht essentials, fancy satellite internet, soloar backups, clocks, yacht-compatable pool tables for “the ultimate breakout zone.”

And then, the recommended laptop is… a midlist Asus Zenbook? What? Neither ”show-off expensive” nor “actually good”, it’s just a mostly fine but overpriced Windows laptop?

I don’t know much about maritime clocks or self-stabilizing pool tables, but I do know something about laptops, and that’s a fine laptop, but not a great one. For the quoted £1,600 you can get way more computer, the industrial design is nothing to write home about, and if you’re looking to spend more on a better looking and higher performance device, Apple is right there. All an Asus Zenbook says is that the owner doesn’t know enough about the subject to not get took by a salesperson.

And so… I have to assume everthing else on the list is the same? Overpriced crap? Is this what the yacht set is filling their boats with?

I take it back. Maybe the Orcas are our friends.