(it's his annual rabies shot)

I should reread those. Genuinely one of my favorite book series of all time. Stan Murch is a car autistic and I love him, and one of the crew's regular lockmen, Roger Chefwick, is a fellow train autistic. I adore all the characters so much.

I'm counting on you, baseball Bluesky!

Also, I see you have good taste!

EXACTLY the locomotive I was thinking of when I wrote this!

I know the primary reason the shift from steam to diesel happened was because of the ease of repairs and cost. It's easier and more affordable to maintain a diesel than a machine that is essentially a living, breathing animal.

But the living, breathing animal is objectively cooler.

Genuinely, I do think more people would be incentivized to travel by rail if we made it the cool thing to do. Make the trainsets stylish, prioritize comfort and efficiency, add improved and cleaner streamlined steam locomotives like the ideas I mentioned above (and let me drive them)...

Also, you could install PTC from the beginning.

Also also, I could drive it and live happily ever after.

The irony is that you could easily build a modern steam locomotive that runs "clean" using vegetable oil or torrefied biomass as the fuel and it would end up emitting less than the station wagon AND moving significantly more people and goods.

I just don't understand why people are okay with it. I don't want strangers knowing what I talk about on the phone and I don't want to subject them to me yelling, either. If anything, now more than ever is a good time to relearn protecting your privacy.

You have a responsibility to behave in and share a public space! These people always think they get to opt out of being decent people!

I had to move seats on the bus just now because the woman next to me was FaceTiming someone. If I happened to be fluent in Spanish I would have known too much about the people involved that I don't care to know. I am sure she's not the only fluent Spanish speaker on this bus, so someone knows.

This also extends to people blasting videos, too. No, I don't want to hear the audio of your stupid TikTok, I'm trying to listen to my own music with my headphones that mean you don't have to hear it too!