mpk

joined 2 years ago
[–] mpk@awful.systems 6 points 10 months ago

One of the things I miss about living in Switzerland is that both of the major supermarket groups had lots of self-checkouts and they were the trusting sort, not the ones which weigh everything constantly and hate you. The advantage of an economy with low unemployment and where supermarket work pays a living wage, I guess.

[–] mpk@awful.systems 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

An "Oops, racism!" incident is pretty much inevitable as well, of course.

[–] mpk@awful.systems 6 points 10 months ago

Frickin' laser beams or GTFO. A gunbot with a metal-projectile weapon taped to its arm is like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie where they've lost all the knowledge needed to build new tech.

[–] mpk@awful.systems 9 points 10 months ago

Well, "Man who wrote some code mostly based on other people's code a very long time ago and parlayed that into media darling status and a lucrative income" is a bit long-winded.

[–] mpk@awful.systems 10 points 11 months ago

worst prog rock band ever

[–] mpk@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago

Claim to fame! Aleister Crowley was born a short walk from the house where I grew up, although then he was plain old Edward Crowley. My home town isn't that keen to be associated with him, largely because of the above - at a superficial level he was a harmless crank, a rich kid who decided to start his own religion and dress up in robes, but once you dig down into the history he was a pretty unpleasant, exploitative man - a classic cult leader.

[–] mpk@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago

"sponsored content, but only very smol bean sponsored content, pls not be mad thx"

[–] mpk@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago

There was a new government elected last week on a platform which can be broadly summarised as “no more insane politics shit”. So far they’re showing dangerous signs of competence and rational thought. What a load of weirdos.

[–] mpk@awful.systems 10 points 11 months ago

If you want more crazy, that political party is actually a limited company in which the leader is also the majority shareholder and the bylaws permit him to fire and appoint a majority of directors at will. I’m not sold on whether all those candidates were actually fake, but journalists from more credible outlets than Byline Times are no doubt working on physically tracking down every one off these candidates as we speak to verify their existence or otherwise.

[–] mpk@awful.systems 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I vaguely remember his original car crash on Wogan after he went loopy and it was barely veiled antisemitism even then - lizard people and the like

[–] mpk@awful.systems 0 points 1 year ago (9 children)

(without reading article) The answer presumably boils down to "the Tories".

[–] mpk@awful.systems 6 points 1 year ago

Well, they're arguing that your claim is nonsense. Here's the reason why different countries ended up with different standards for various railway things: interoperability simply wasn't that big a deal at the time. These weren't continent-spanning high speed train services, they chuffed along at a speed of 30-40mph and had frequent stops because the locomotives needed regular watering and coaling and the passengers needed regular watering and emptying as well (no on-board toilets or restaurant cars yet). Border crossings usually involved a lengthy stop while formalities were completed, and if a train was crossing the border they'd simply do what happens right up to the present day in many cases: change the locomotive for one belonging to the company that operated the railways in the country they were entering, staffed by drivers who knew the local rules, signalling and practices.

I know this doesn't cover for breaks of gauge, but they were handled in a similar way -- border stations were simply connected to both systems, so when crossing from (say) France into Spain passengers would alight, clear immigration, and board a new train on the opposite platform to take them onward into Spain. The French train would then usually (all going well) return into France taking the passengers who'd left the train from Spain (which falls mainly on the plain) when it arrived there. Freight was obviously harder to transship, which is why at least initially the railways were more interested in enabling through-running of goods wagons without having to offload and reload the whole shipment than they were in through-running of passenger carriages.

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