I’ve now been to Berlin at least 5 times in 28 years. I say at least because I now have to start rebuilding what happened when to have a truly accurate accounting. Once it gets above 10 I’m going to have to keep a note card reminder to have the number around.

Someone with Governor Walz’s travel history would be just a blur unless you get official records or work really hard to remember exact trip counts.

Ask Felon Trump how many times he’s been to Russia and see what guess he makes. This is a nothingburger of a story.

Trump is a coward. He’s a schoolyard bully coward. He got punched in the last debate so he’s crying foul in the corner.

It wasn’t fun, that’s for sure.

The Amtrak system in the US shares rail, and is low priority, than freight trains. Basically, passenger rail has always been a side business for the train companies the US. It is subsidized and used as a bribe by the federal government to even try to keep a passenger rail service alive.

That means our trains are often kept as slow speeds to stay behind freight trains, and will be stopped to wait for freight trains if some is off schedule. The routes are also mostly only rated for 60mph speeds, so even at full speed you’re barely keeping up with cars on the highway, and then you add in stops at every podunk town that slows it down even more.

Until the US invests in a separate passenger rail network that can support consistent speed and schedules, it will remain on par with similarly under developed nations for rail service.

There’s also the very muddled announcement that to make it you’ll need to change trains at some small town.

Or, they just decide to not stop at your station, so you get to hop off past your station and ride a train back the way you came.

All that said, it’s still a miracle from God compared to the crap we have in the US.

Okay. Regardless of what it really is or not. I’ve decided I’m not voting for President Biden in the next election. Nor Hunter Biden. They’re both off my list as candidates.

It sounds like Twitter is hosting their services on several cloud platforms or replication services that weren’t blocked by Brazil. So, users in Brazil just hit the 3rd party platforms and kept going like usual.

Is that Twitter’s fault and/or on purpose? Don’t know yet, but services like Akamai need to make sure their hosting Twitter doesn’t get them banned in Brazil across the board.

International relations are often tough to build, especially when one side is quite rude and then wanting special benefits afterwards.

The UK cut the ties, so the EU has more say in how relations are rebuilt. The UK had a ton of special exemptions and their own national identity in the EU then many other members and the UK still freaked out about how oppressed they were.

The EU doesn’t really owe the UK anything that’s not in still existing agreements and if the UK wants a relationship they’ll have to come to the table bringing something, not just hurling demands.

I’m just really glad that the UK leaving the EU didn’t devolve into armed conflict. That’s a pretty normal arc for such a big relations change.

I still use wired headphones and earbuds. On the phone it’s got a USBC connector, so I had to find a compact adapter. Fortunately USBC is a tough connector so they’re holding up well enough.

The earbuds themselves are very cheap. They normally only last a few years (3-5 or so). I snagged a couple little zip up pods that hold earbuds from a job fair years ago. As long as I do a quick coil up, it’s easy enough to pack them away and get them out without tangling. They also don’t get hurt living in my satchel.

I’ve considered moving to something wireless, but I have enough battery driven devices to babysit already.

Incel shit.

Cool, but we also take Finland’s law about tuition: it’s illegal to charge it.

No private schools. It’s done wonders for their society because the rich people invest in the same schools as everyone else.

I accidentally started a video way outside my usual feed. It was some right wing fascist starting to talk about replacement theory bullshit. I closed it fast, but it was like a starter gun for YT to race every kind of conspiracy theory, right wing, Nazi supporting, women hating, christofascist channel it could try out to me. I had to block channel after channel for weeks until it gave up.

If someone takes (or tries) to take your vote they want to have you live in a dictatorship. We had a war about this and sent King George packing. If we have to do it again with people more home grown, then so be it.

Aw darn it. Now I’m reading your posts with an Australian accent in my head.

I’ve been accused of being a bot in online games due to my robust vocabulary, resistance to abbreviation and slang, as well as pedantic punctuation use. It has been happening for decades.

Note: rarely have I been accused of a being a bot for my skill at gameplay. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Now, if you wish to truly delve the depths of linguistic proclivities, one should peruse the works of Terry Pratchett, especially the Discworld novels. Any and all of his works are wonderful prose and deep storytelling.

Yes. A 12 year old is better at handling Alt-Right misinformation than the main steam media journalists.

Surprise! A right wing candidate is in support of a very right wing candidate: news at 11.

You don’t need the voters. You need the states.

We’re about to find out what happens when states refuse to recognize the winner of the Electoral College. Georgia, Arizona, and likely other states are going to fuck the state votes and refuse to certify.

If you can get enough state reps and congressional reps to vote for you each cycle (as VP), then take over from the sham president, you could effectively be president forever.

You’re spot on.

With about 10% overhead on the travel time, a pretty mainline high speed rail line would take about 15 hours to go from DC to San Fransisco. Each train (assuming Japanese trains like Amtrak is buying for Texas) can carry about 1323 seats, plus standing room. They can run 16 trains per line per hour. So, that’s 21,168 people per hour passing on the rail.

Assuming the 15 hour lead time (and no loading time of note because Sergents are really good at yelling people onto trains), within 24 hours, the Pentagon could move about 211,680 soldiers coast to cost from time t=0 to t=24 hours. That’s coast to coast, mind. If you do it from say the middle of the country to SF, it’s only a 4.7 hour trip, so now you can get 19.3 hours of soldiers moving (and arrived) around 408,542 people delivered by t=24hrs. Then, it’s another 508,032 every 24 hours after that.

Now, while it’s not particularly feasible to have commercially driving HSR across the empty center of the US, the military has a whole different set of priorities, and damn, that’s a lot of equipment & people that could be moved really fast. Yes, planes are faster, but there’s no way they’ll keep up with HSR once the train pipeline fills. This is a latency vs carrying throughput load equation and trains will win it big time. Always have, always will.

The US way way way behind on building infrastructure. Our infrastructure deficit is trillions of dollars, and our transit modality is decades behind Europe, China, India, japan, and even starting to slip behind sections of Africa. We’re failing as a developed nation because we refuse to invest in modern transit (and many other issues like healthcare, usurious education costs, and losing our democracy to dictator thinking). We’re flailing hard right now. HSR should be a massive investment for our country, along with regional/city rail (trams, metros, heavy regional), but since our population mostly has never ever seen a modern city like Paris, London, Beijing, Tokyo, or Rome so they have no idea what it can even be like to live somewhere well designed for people instead for for cars.

Though, watching the military test the rails by moving a half million people in 24 hours would be hilarious for those of us not trying to coordinate it.