glenagalt.bsky.social
Big trains at work, then travel for small trains and tiny trains in the garden at home, shared with in-scale wifey. WARNING, may contain unprofessional opinions on other subjects: TTRPGs, Space, History &c
156 posts
62 followers
263 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
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Is that the same Musk who claimed that FAA was full of incompetence and offered to give the ATC contract to SpaceX without any of that pesky timewasting competitive bidding or scrutiny?
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This isn't even George III level stuff, this is pure Charles I.
Note: The reign of Charles I did not end well.
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Given his dietary and lifestyle habits, I was unpleasantly surprised he lasted long enough to take the nomination. A certain fast food chain needs to step up, name a quadruple cheeseburger in his honour and offer him a lifetime free supply.
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The ghost of George III would like to know what the fuck all that was about anyway? If you actually LIKE absolute rule by a fat despot untrammelled by any legal constraints, what was the bloody point?
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I suspect the risk of catastrophic failure is "not a bug but a feature" & "accidental" temporary shutdown is the objective. Their economic credo is that any form of welfare or medical dependency is merely laziness, so they doubtless believe this will starve people back to work...or to health.
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What's depressing is realising I've seen some of this before...and not necessarily in history books. ISTR a populist president in a work of fiction performing a flurry of actions calculated to be both popular and unconstitutional, engineering a collision he calculated he would win. Ring any bells?
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Design and approval is more expensive than physical construction, even if you only do it once. Redesigning the whole thing every five minutes for political dithering, then burying it to avoid intrusion into the views of Jolyon and Jocasta in the Home Counties pushes the cost up quite a bit.
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Isn't it? If you want to impose extreme measures, but think people will only accept them in the direst of circumstances, the obvious play is to create those dire circumstances. After all, disaster capitalists need disasters to capitalise upon...
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Why is that a desirable objective? I'm not sure that keeping clam and carrying on is the appropriate response to...
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It was worth it, just to see Charles Dance embracing the kitsch and playing it as straight and serious as a heart attack.
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Well, I suppose the ordinary rank-and-file members of the party can just vote him out if that's how they feel.....oh, wait...
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I appreciate what she did, but I also remember her terrible reputation as "Britt the Litigious Engine" for some expensive and ill-advised copyright lawsuits against the heritage rail industry around 1990. Win some, lose some...
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In the words of my old maths teacher "Somebody stole the Orange*"
*Orange= his preferred term for "origin" when he wanted to wake us up with a laugh if we were looking bored.
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When deciding whether a shiny new gizmo is a serious transport contender or just another techbro media-friendly gimmick, ask yourself one question:
"What transport problem does this solve better than anything else already out there?"
...and if no answer springs to mind, you know the answer.
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Thanks for the announcement....and for the trail of crumbs to several other Hermits here.
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Click to Cleo's profile and under their name you can see counts of who's following them AND who they follow. Click onto that and you'll seem some familiar and welcome names...
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One of the many, many things we could learn from Europe is how to do vocational-technical education better. The German system, for example, gives trade school graduates a protected title with meaningful benefits to their career...and consistent reliable standards that benefit the consumer.
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Individual, baddies are stronger because they fight unconstrained by rules or ideas of fairness, and punch below the belt at any time.
But evil is fundamentally selfish. Each baddie is an army of one alone, while those who fight for others are never alone, & always have numbers on their side. 2/2
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Erm, yes...and then again no.
Something motivated the victors.
The Hollywood myth is that one goodie can defeat armies of baddies.
The reality is precisely the other way around.
1/2
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Most of them are Soviet legacy organisations, right down to the names- and historically they were never "companies". Mikoyan, Sukhoi, Tupolev &c were all "Design bureaus", government bodies named for their founding engineer/managers. It seems to be just reverting to type.
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For purely selfish reasons @annaonthemoon.bsky.social and I were surprised and delighted to see you this evening in Birmingham…. and @xkcd.com certainly qualifies as a nice person- but there is only one of you.
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It's as if a society can only be open about one thing at once. The Victorians were frank to a fault about death, but notoriously prudish about the other end of life- and what made it happen. Meanwhile our society is In Your Face about hot sweaty activities, but hides death in a cloud of euphemisms.
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"Choose your own Adventure" is fine. That's the name of the game of life. The problems start because we're now playing "Choose your own facts"
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Cool postnominal, bro. Seriously, your “style” is Sir Seth Skorkowsky, Bart. enabling you to lord it over mere knights with non-hereditary titles.
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I can't remember which SF author it was, but ISTR a quote along the lines of "If you predict the car, you also have to predict the traffic jam"
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Beyond ridiculous. If even the all-male world of pre-90s (Royal) Navy aviators could use "Mother" as the callsign for their carrier without fear of their willies falling off, how pathetic are these sadsack incels?
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This sounds so much like our Hexe and Merddin it's almost creepy.
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Ask me about Orenstein & Koppel locomotives some time…
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To be fair, since the mission was "Find uncharted underwater hazards" they can report a complete success.
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They evolved from trikes in the early 80s, after safety/stability problems with only three wheels. The "bike" term makes perfect sense when you consider the skill-set required to operate them, as they have a motorcycle control layout- twistgrip throttle, hand lever clutch, foot gears &c
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Wouldn't it be poetic justice to base a character on him, an all-mouth-and-no-trousers self publicist running on pure weapons-grade Bravo Sierra.
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You’ve always had a gift for le mot juste, but in “extremely expanded polystyrene” you have truly excelled yourself.