America is Becoming One Big Consumerist Theme Park

Theme parks are fun family-friendly destinations, but underneath the fantasy lurks a more sinister reality. In this video, we’ll explore the dystopia lurking beneath theme park utopias and ask: Are our cities becoming theme parks too?

:baudrillard-agony:

smth smth trying everything before doing the right thing

The new technology will make Zemu the first hydrogen-powered, zero-emissions passenger train in North America to meet Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) requirements when it goes into service early next year.

Developing a lightweight frame that passed FRA standards is a promising accomplishment because it provides a zero-emission alternative to the expensive overhead electrification that’s common in Europe, but is prohibited by the FRA on freight lines in the US. “Once you take that vehicle and you add hydrogen to it, you make it possible to have zero emission technology on the same corridors where Union Pacific and NSF run,” Killpack said. “That’s what’s really crazy and cool about this”.

Incredible, freight trains are prohibited from running on electricity in the empire?

In order for these small but promising steps to be economically sustainable in the long run, though, huge investment will need to be made to expand the infrastructure. “You’ve got to be selling at least hundreds [of trains] to start to get some scale economies and bring those costs down,” said Lewis Fulton, the Energy Futures Program director at UC Davis’s Institute for Transportation Studies.

(fucking bullshit)

They're like brutalism haters in that while I personally enjoy it, they're not wrong. There's very bad examples of it. But also anyone who gets into hating it a lot seems entirely incapable of producing any evidence for it being so. They're like truffle pigs for getting it wrong. What the Habitat 67 is to architectural aesthetics is "guy getting run over by a car cutting the corner standing still at a red light" is to active transport

basically by tying it to federal funding to force states to allow more housing to be built, which is how the federal government got the states to all raise their minimum drinking age to 21 in the 1980s.

semi serious question.

I stumbled onto my local metro area's reddit while trying to look up some historical photos and stared into the abyss for a few mins.

I resisted the urge to leave libreddit and make an account just to reply but, I ran into this post that is basically complaining about having a car in one of the most central neighborhoods in the city, and asking for advice on getting off street parking (in reality, anything that isn't an overpriced surface lot that offers no protection is going to be quite a hike away from their apartment, there's no way this will work out).

They claim they work in X first ring suburb where "there are no buses" and that's why they have to have this car, which is hilarious because they could one seat ride to half of that suburb in under half an hour from a bus that leaves from their front door. the other half it'd be a 2 seat ride but still under 45 mins, and obviously way cheaper than a car. There are also plenty of neighborhoods they could move to that would have less breakins and cheap off street parking, but they seem convinced that's not the case.

But I digress.

The fellow ers in there commiserating about how horribly expensive off street parking is (in a neighborhood that is basically in downtown) got me thinking... If we can't get city governments to do shit about on street parking and massively unsafe roads, is allowing the street to be so unappealing to park on that people have to actually pay for their giant waste of precious urban land, a viable option to improve things?

this expectation that you should be able to just leave your 2 ton death box lying around in public anywhere for any length of time and nobody will so much as touch it doesn't apply to any other kind of property (just look at bike theft), and it really fucks with people when you violate that. I feel like that's a usable weapon, in a way, against gentrification and car dependency and traffic violence.

Were kia boys doing praxis?

Pictured: unit 4 at lizard head pass, Colorado, 1950. Photo by the Ridgeway railroad museum

The Galloping Goose was a series of railcars built in the 1930s by and for the Rio Grande Southern Railroad (RGS) (Not to be mistaken with the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad) as an attempt to maintain revenue during the great depression when passenger and freight traffic severely dropped. During this time, RGS was strapped for cash and sought mail contracts. They developed a lightweight and cheap solution for their narrow gauge infrastructure which was fragile and battered by both deferred maintenance and the harsh elements of the rocky mountains.

Such solution was a series of gas and diesel automobiles fitted with bogies and cargo space- with the first unit constructed utilizing the front end of a Buick Master Six. Several additional units would be constructed using Pierce Arrows and GMC bodies with a variety of configurations to carry small freight, US mail and the occasional passenger. During WW2, the RGS continued to run irregular heavy freight service to haul livestock in addition to their goose lineups.

By 1950, the RGS lost their mail contract as the postal service found trucks more favorable. Few cars would remain and RGS would run occasional scenic tours throughout Telluride. In 1952, after losing the mail contract and being unable to maintain finances, the RGS would fold, with the final run of the cars assigned to carry track being torn up.

The name behind the “galloping goose” is unclear- but it is asserted that the name originated from the jittery nature of the railcars rolling through the battered trackage along with the installed horn resembling the sound of a duck.

A few units have been preserved and are mostly relegated to museum displays. However, two units run on excursions at the Knotts’ Berry Farms Ghost Town & Calico Railroad.

Highball | The first passenger train… | Flickr

The first passenger train to the diamond in Whitefield in 25 years gets the highball with 252 on the point.

The Wiki page for highball (the train thing) - redirects to the page for express train. And there's an illustration of a highball.

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Highball - Wikipedia

A highball is a mixed alcoholic drink composed of an alcoholic base spirit and a larger proportion of a non-alcoholic mixer, often a carbonated beverage.

Etymology

The name may have come from early railroad signals with raised globes meaning "clear track ahead", i.e., "you're good to go".

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Highball can be a verb meaning travel fast. But that usage seems obscure to me. I don't think I've ever heard it.

Saw this guys blog floating around lefty spaces and he’s an ultra these days attacking China for “imperialism” in Mozambique (he’s Kenyan). Look him up on LinkedIn and he’s a radlib green imperialist who just really fucking hates a China, obvious opportunist and grifter who pretends to be a ultra anti-imperialist third worldist now when he was a saying the neoliberal nonsense a couple years back - the only thing that has stayed consistent is his hatred of China.

Remember folks, to solve traffic we have to innovate entrepreneurial solutions like hyperloops and donkeys. None of that icky polluting crap like trains and buses.

Living the dream right there. See? It's totally doable if you skip the avocado toast and stop buying the latest model phone and going out so often, or at all.

I know I've made posts about this locomotive before, but just look at it. It is the best-looking locomotive ever made. While it never officially broke the world record for speed, there are rumors, the fastest of which was rumored to be 152mph, leaving the Mallard speed record of 126mph far in the dust. While I doubt that actually happened, doesn't it look like this train could keep that pace?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_S1