henfredemars

I’m not sure if an opinion piece is appropriate here, so please let me know if this doesn’t fit the theme of the community, and I’ll avoid sharing such thoughts in the future.

I’m extremely frustrated with the car centric culture in my area. I live about 25 miles west of a quarry. Every day I watch trains go up and down the railroad mostly carrying gravel. This railroad stretches for several hours by car in each direction, connecting several large cities and even passing a few tourist attractions, and despite our traffic congestion problems there is little interest in trying to use this rail for actual people.

One company moved in and started running a new passenger rail service. Within a few weeks, we had protesters at the railroads complaining that drivers don’t understand railroad crossings. I saw posters about how trains were killing residents when drivers park on the tracks and get hit. I don’t understand! Where do you think the train is going to go? They don’t exactly come out of nowhere. They follow the tracks! And we’ve always had trains passing through our town before. At a later local election a candidate ran on the premise that they’re going to protect home values and our children by reducing or eliminating the number of trains passing through our town. This candidate did win our local election and sadly they succeeded in cutting down on rail investment.

Fast-forward a couple years later. Passenger rail stations were built at the endpoints of this rail to ferry tourists. I drive parallel to this rail on the way to work several times per week for almost 45 minutes each way, 20 minutes of which is heavy traffic. I get to enjoy watching people ride the train while there’s no stop anywhere near my house because our local government has sided with homeowners that a passenger rail station is “simply too dangerous.” I would have to drive over an hour to the nearest passenger rail station to ride the train, and I can literally see the tracks from my apartment.

Every time I see that train I feel bitter. I could save so much money if these boneheads would have let them build a train station in our town. Absolutely ridiculous! The train is there. The rail is there. I don’t understand why a train is such a personal, existential threat to your way of life.

Surprised nobody has posted about the new expedition. I learned about the last one from Lemmy, so I'm returning the favor in case someone else learns about it from me.

Six weeks remaining!

AI Summary:

Google Messages will support texting 911 via RCS starting this winter, offering features like location sharing and read receipts. This upgrade improves emergency texting which is already supported by over half of US dispatch centers. Google collaborates with RapidSOS for enhanced responder info. This announcement precedes Apple's expected RCS support in iOS 18, aiming to broaden RCS adoption.

I wouldn't have Chrome installed if it weren't for those crappy school and government websites that refuse to work on anything else but Chrome.

Handle with Care.

It would be so much more convenient for the both of us, and then he could go outside, anywhere, whenever he likes.

I wonder how many thousands of spam bots have tried to connect to the servers and send email using text ripped from these pages federated across numerous domains.

And they can’t just block one website. They’d have to individually block every node if they want to crawl the web for email addresses to steal. I hope it’s a real thorn in their side.

You’re indoors in the sense that you’re protected from the weather and the elements, and the cave could even have some kind of covering or entrance area that could be considered a door or doorway. People have built homes in caves.

Is caving an outside, inside activity?

Almost a month without a new post? Can’t have that. Have a cute clip!

I really don't want to go into work tomorrow.