Amtrak currently runs trains on the freight tracks, but as Amtrak essentially leases the privilege of using the tracks at all from CSX and BNSF and Union Pacific and the like, their traffic gets heavily deprioritized to freight trains. You can totally catch a train from Fort Worth to Los Angeles, but it will take a few days longer than driving, will be almost as expensive as flying, and the train will be delayed many times for freight traffic.

If the federal government nationalized the rails, put them under the care of the FRA, properly funded Amtrak, and gave it a healthy advertising budget to let people know rail is the clear choice for medium length trips (like Chicago to St. Louis), there’s no reason we couldn’t send passengers on the same rails and with the same priority as freight trains. They’re perfectly safe, and the reason we’ve been hearing about so many train wrecks lately is the degradation of work conditions for rail workers. Longer trains and longer hours make for more dangerous operating conditions and more frequent wrecks.

And while the trains wouldn’t run 190 miles an hour, many long, straight stretches do exist, and it’s not unheard of for a train to be running 80-100 miles an hour on those stretches. That kind of speed is very doable for passenger rail. Hell, some Amtrak trains are capable of 150 miles an hour.

My point wasn’t to use 150 year old rails. It’s that the rails already exist so it doesn’t need to be a decades-long multi-trillion dollar project. It’s highly unlikely that any of the rails in use today are from the 19th century.

Don’t even need to lay down rails. The rails are already there. Built by Chinese slave labor 150 years ago. We need merely to seize them.

Or just cut a check to the freight companies.

Auto parts, YOW!

wait wrong song-

I, for one, support a trans person’s right to burn it all to the fucking ground.

Adam Conover’s last video changed my view on the shock. They’re not voting for him despite his bad qualities. They’re voting for him because of his bad qualities. Telling them he’s a Nazi and a felon and blah blah blah will reinforce their idea that he’s the right guy. When people who worked in his government come out against him, the response is, “Of course they did. They’re part of the swamp we’re trying to drain.”

Reason is dead. We’re never going to convince these people that Trump is unfit for the job and a horrible human being. It’s time to stop being so shocked these people exist. They always have and will continue to exist. All we can do is show up and end the man’s political career.

The South Park episode about voting always applies. It’s always the choice between a douche and a turd. But even between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, one of those choices is still objectively better.

Another reason EVs are NOT the way forward. They’re heavier than ICE cars and so they go through tires significantly faster. I wonder if anyone has done the math on how much of our world is filled with microplastics from car tire treadwear. I imagine it’s astonishing.

Adding: It’s also not surprising to me if car tires are made of plastic these days. The level of engineering it takes to make a tire sticky enough to bring a modern 5,000 pound SUV to a full stop like the 3,500 pound sedans of yore has to be insane.

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Which is ironic, given that with the sea level rise happening, the last thing Venice needs is more water.

But hey, the fish will have some really valuable real estate in a few decades.

And then there are the teachers using memes specifically because they know it will make those memes uncool. And I salute them.

Heat cycling is a huge stressor on any material. That’s part of why diesel freight trucks tend to last well past a million miles while it’s newsworthy if a passenger car makes it that long. How many times a week is your Toyota Corolla driving 10+ hours at a time? Most commonly, when you hear of a million mile vehicle, it was making long haul deliveries daily and was maintained at the correct intervals.

Just gonna leave Brainrot Girlfriend here for you to read.

Can’t say I’ve ever been to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

Huh. I just Ctrl+P before the paywall comes up. Then I can print to a PDF and view it the way it was meant to be.

What if shutting down and dissociating is relaxing to me?

I wouldn’t even mind ads if they weren’t so obtrusive. The ones that take up 70% of your screen between one liners are the worst.

Far as I know, they still make sewing machines; they just don’t sell them in the States.

Lamborghini started out making tractors.

My parents had a Mitsubishi television about 15 years ago.

Coleco started life as the Connecticut Leather Company.

And it’ll never fail to amuse me how Michelin tells you where to find the best restaurants on the planet.

I’ve seen too many videos of people launching Wiimotes because they weren’t wearing the strap. The Wii was around right as CRT was on its way out so I wonder how many LCD and plasma panels died this way.

Gotta swing 'er wide left then hard right for a turn on those tight city blocks.

What’s a good wee without a little target practice?