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Technically true if you applied it universally, if the whole human race was superpositioned as close to brussels as possible brexit would no longer be a problem.
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Oct 10, 2020 17:57
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namesake posted:HS2 was the victim of a lovely publicity campaign because no one except a tiny enclave of people living in Manchester (who wished they lived in London) cared about reducing the travel time from London to Manchester from just over 2 hours to an hour and a half while all forms of public transportation that most people used were cut back or price gouged to poo poo. If they'd started with the connections in the north or accompanied it with more regional connections then it could have been an easy 'Reconnecting Britain' public works PR campaign talking about more trains carrying more people to more places but they hosed up and led with 'Now a tiny part of the North is almost like a suburb of London!' and so people hate it. People make the argument of "Oh well who cares if you can get to London faster!!" (and to be fair that's what a lot of the marketing of it seems to have been) but I'm pretty sure the actual main benefit/point of it is increasing capacity, no?
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Oct 10, 2020 18:04
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radmonger posted:Presumably because implying a moral obligation is a violation of the non-aggression principle, and so basically terrorism. As Rand said, ‘altruism is a pernicious doctrine that is incompatible with individual rights and a fair society.’ And she wasn’t just talking about tax-funded state famine aid, but the mere existence of a private charity that asked for voluntary donations. The organizers of the Irish and late Victorian Indian famines argued similarly. Private charity was inherently bad because it artificially enabled people to live who needed to die. They love telethons and gofundmes and poo poo like that (while never actually donating to them), because in their fantasy world that's how the state would function. Basic night watchman state and welfare, schooling, etc. is provided by private charity drives and the philanthropy of big businessmen, what are fiscal multipliers. The Libertarian reading of Ethiopia would be something like that communism failed again through the forced villagization scheme, starving everyone, and private charity through voluntary contributions saved the day, and if there was any corruption and extension of the conflict this just proves that we need less government and more freedom, read my Spiked article about why the proliferation of food banks is good actually.
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Oct 10, 2020 18:32
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Private Speech posted:Not everyone can do it but it's not inherently terrible, aside from the central Brussels apartment thing (which is still considerably more affordable than a central London one, nevermind a house). I would rather take my chances in the Mad Max Brexit wastelands being hunted by leather boys TT than live in Belgium
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Oct 10, 2020 18:48
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Since they wrote about being in Strasbourg, that shouldn't be too much of a problem
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Oct 10, 2020 18:53
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lol https://twitter.com/brokenbottleboy/status/1314972431426228225?s=20
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Oct 10, 2020 18:54
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I mean, agreed about 24 hour news I guess. Also good to know paul has very strong opinions on the subject of people getting turned on by being stepped on by godzilla.
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Oct 10, 2020 18:58
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24 hour news and twitter hosed everything, the other stuff is either made up (cancel culture, at least, the sort to which he's referring, IDpol), irrelevant (smartphones), or has always existed (have you SEEN Henry VIII's codpiece?!).
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Oct 10, 2020 18:59
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If social media didn't exist then neither would paul so it's rather weird for him to be angry about it.
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Oct 10, 2020 19:02
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How would be sell his brain juice without social media?
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Oct 10, 2020 19:06
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OwlFancier posted:If social media didn't exist then neither would paul so it's rather weird for him to be angry about it. his life probably would be better as just some dumb guy in the pub so he might have a point
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Oct 10, 2020 19:08
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Yeah but that presents the worrying possibility that paul is self aware. And also that he was born out of a human rather than an elemental from the bad take dimension.
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Oct 10, 2020 19:09
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thespaceinvader posted:24 hour news and twitter hosed everything, the other stuff is either made up (cancel culture, at least, the sort to which he's referring, IDpol), irrelevant (smartphones), or has always existed (have you SEEN Henry VIII's codpiece?!). 16th century portraits are very 'felt cute, might delete'. I can just imagine a 'cool' history teacher describing Henry viii's marriage to Ann of cleves as a bad match on tinder or something along those lines
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Oct 10, 2020 19:10
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Louis XIV and his fabulous red high heeled buckle booties and garter socks are an eternal delight.
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Oct 10, 2020 19:14
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OwlFancier posted:If social media didn't exist then neither would paul so it's rather weird for him to be angry about it. What's more interesting to me than Paul's Wille zum Tode is his claim that they've not "improved quality or authenticity of life", it makes me wonder what he feels is important about authenticity, and what he believes makes something authentic. (Also why he ignores that in every generation since Antiquity there's been people moaning about how the pencil and Wesleyan Methodism are inauthentic tools, but that's just because he's a dick.)
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Oct 10, 2020 19:20
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Guavanaut posted:What's more interesting to me than Paul's Wille zum Tode is his claim that they've not "improved quality or authenticity of life", it makes me wonder what he feels is important about authenticity, and what he believes makes something authentic. same as all conservatives, the closer it is to an imagined past
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Oct 10, 2020 19:27
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WhatEvil posted:People make the argument of "Oh well who cares if you can get to London faster!!" (and to be fair that's what a lot of the marketing of it seems to have been) but I'm pretty sure the actual main benefit/point of it is increasing capacity, no? Correct. The "why spend £billions to get to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker?" is facile anyway, since a) the whole system doesn't just go to Birmingham and as the distances increase the relative time savings improve and b) that argument would pretty much stymie any advance or improvement in transport technology or infrastructure. Granted, the expanded version of the question - "why spend £billions and destroy some irreplacable habitats and biomes to get to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker?" is one worth having. But the point of HS2 isn't really to get people from place to place more quickly - that's a side benefit. The West Coast Main Line is at nearly full capacity, with long-distance passenger, local passenger and freight services all competing for space and paths, and all three being fundamentally incompatible with each other, and more of all three being desirable. As an illustraion for what a massive headache (and capacity-sponge) running different train types on the same paths is - say a 3000-ton freight train turns onto the WCML having collected a bunch of freight from a siding or secondary line and needs to run on the main line for 20 miles before turning off again. Behind it is a 120mph passenger train. The freight train needs to turn onto the main line while the express is about 50 miles away from it - any shorter headway and the fast train will catch up with the freight before it turns off, requiring it to slow down and lose time. There is a pressing need for 'more lines', and the best way to do it is with a new railway. And if you're building a new railway, the extra cost of building it to High Speed Rail standards are relatively insignificant - main line railways of any sort are horrifically expensive. But if you can take the intercity traffic off the existing WCML - with a bonus of improved journey times and connections at the interchanges and terminii - then you can fill the WCML with local services which stop all the time and freight trains that trundle along at 60mph. And almost the entire WCML between London and Crewe is quadruple track, so the freight trains can go on the 'fast' lines and not be held up by the local services stopping everywhere, while at the moment the long-distance passenger services have to go on the 'fast' lines while the local and freight traffic fight it out on the 'slow' lines, getting in each others' way. There are lots of questions and problems with HS2 with regard to its route, from perspectives beyond the environmental (I think I mentioned last time HS2 came up on this thread that I was involved in a very minor way in the analysis of reusing sections of the closed Great Central Main Line for the new line) but the need for it, and the benefits it would bring to the railway network are undeniable.
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Oct 10, 2020 19:33
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I'm curious too. Cos i could agree that there are aspects of life that are getting less... I don't think I would describe it as authentic but paul probably would, over time. I think that everything being always on 24/7 can leave people with a lack of pacing and rhythm in life, but I probably don't agree with what his suggestion would likely be to fix it.
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Oct 10, 2020 19:35
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Hm, been looking at that tax rebate for working from home due to coronavirus, and it looks like it's £6 for each week you're working from home. Which for me is like 30 weeks now, so more like £180 rather than £50... In any case, well worth doing, took me about ten minutes to sign up.
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Oct 10, 2020 19:54
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Communist Thoughts posted:same as all conservatives, the closer it is to an imagined past Like before 'hyper-sexualization' (although that's a thing we've gone in and out of a few times, fnarr) there were a whole lot of books and art that could not be published due to obscenity laws, how does that make an artistic landscape more authentic? Was the world more authentic when we didn't talk about cultural imperialism, violence, exploitation of labour, marginalization, or subjugation (well, they were always talked about, but never in front of them upstairs)? He's confusing 'authentic' for a believed 'simple for people like me', and I'm never going to stop using that hammering the world flat metaphor. OwlFancier posted:I'm curious too. Cos i could agree that there are aspects of life that are getting less... I don't think I would describe it as authentic but paul probably would, over time. I think that everything being always on 24/7 can leave people with a lack of pacing and rhythm in life, but I probably don't agree with what his suggestion would likely be to fix it. But I do think the amount of manufactured spectacle required to keep people interested in multiple rolling 24hr news networks and hitting refresh on social media is far higher than for news once a day from the three leading newspapers. That's a matter of volume rather than intensity though, because lmao if he thinks 19th century yellow rags were bastions of integrity. That's just capitalism manufacturing as much as what sells as possible though, and that's the elephant that he won't address.
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Oct 10, 2020 19:55
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We need to get prison Paul to start reading Baudrillard
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Oct 10, 2020 20:03
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Gort posted:Hm, been looking at that tax rebate for working from home due to coronavirus, and it looks like it's £6 for each week you're working from home. Which for me is like 30 weeks now, so more like £180 rather than £50... It's a claim against tax though so assuming you pay the standard rate you're saving 20% of the claim, effectively.
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Oct 10, 2020 20:11
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Gort posted:Hm, been looking at that tax rebate for working from home due to coronavirus, and it looks like it's £6 for each week you're working from home. Which for me is like 30 weeks now, so more like £180 rather than £50... Wait, what? I hadn't even heard thing was a thing.
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Oct 10, 2020 21:16
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It isn't specifically a covid thing afaik, it's a thing everyone can claim if they work from home.
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Oct 10, 2020 21:17
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OwlFancier posted:It isn't specifically a covid thing afaik, it's a thing everyone can claim if they work from home. Aye you can reclaim tax for legitimate expenses like extra electricity and gas while you're working from home. There's no real limit but anything over a small amount of ~£6 a week you need receipts for. Employers should be able to do this for you but lots aren't willing so there's a form people can fill out on .gov.uk.
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Oct 10, 2020 21:23
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Lungboy posted:Aye you can reclaim tax for legitimate expenses like extra electricity and gas while you're working from home. There's no real limit but anything over a small amount of ~£6 a week you need receipts for. Employers should be able to do this for you but lots aren't willing so there's a form people can fill out on .gov.uk. Huh, my employer's never even mentioned the possibility of that (although stuff like office equipment they've been really good with). £6 a week is £6 a week though. 
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Oct 10, 2020 21:30
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OwlFancier posted:It isn't specifically a covid thing afaik, it's a thing everyone can claim if they work from home. Presumably this applies to people who are 'employed' (as in Class 1 national insurance payers).
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Oct 10, 2020 21:35
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if youre working from home or self employed and working from home you can get at least £6 a week for 'tha chill zone' as the government call it: https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2020/04/martin-lewis--working-from-home-due-to-coronavirus--claim-p6-wk-/ I don't get HS2 or 1 or whatever, its from London to Birmingham right? Or is that London to Manchester? Manchester to Leeds would be nice, but the whole rail system up this way is hosed anyway, only because of coronavirus is it working almost the way it should. Bring on the double decker trains and decent buses rather than some rail system that will take longer than building a rocket that can land on the moon. Transport in this country seems very much to be like spokes on a wheel going towards a city, rather than looping the outer ring of a place. High speed coastal rail! By the time they finished the loving thing we'll all be living in the country building windfarms and working from home anyway.
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Oct 10, 2020 22:15
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https://twitter.com/KaraSchlichting/status/1126489858023854080 For those telling me to write a book - every footnote would be like this, apart from the ones that said "According to this bloke I was talking to, I think he was called Dave, and he said that his brother's mate had worked with a guy whose sister's husband was there".
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Oct 10, 2020 22:26
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hey so this is the last chance for this: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3934042 when all the horrible lowtax stuff came out someone started this thread to allow people to donate to RAINN in lieu of paying for forums features. goons have been incredibly generous and there is still a large surplus - but as soon as the store opens and JoY is getting the revenue the thread will be closed and probably goldmined. get it while the getting is good! and if you can donate please do.
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Oct 10, 2020 22:32
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Honest question for TrainChat, why do new lines need to be built for High-Speed rail instead of using existing lines? Are they incompatible? I'm guessing this is why it's costing 10x of what it costs China to do it.
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Oct 10, 2020 22:38
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Not So Fast posted:Honest question for TrainChat, why do new lines need to be built for High-Speed rail instead of using existing lines? Are they incompatible? Short answer - high speed and non-high speed lines have to be completely separated to allow trains to actually reach high speeds, particularly as the kind of signalling you have to use for high speed lines is different from, and mostly incompatible with, conventional rail lines. Longer answer is that most of Britain's train lines were laid out for trains with a top speed of 50 and a massive aversion to gradients, so tend to have quite a lot of tight curves (this was the whole point of the APT, and the fact that we can squeeze 125 mph out of these tracks is legitimately impressive). More generally, closing down a whole line for the complete re-engineering you'd need to do for several years would extremely bad, and of course if you were to take just the fast lines on 4-wide tracks and upgrade them you're forcing all the non-high-speed traffic onto them so you'd actually end up with less capacity than you started with. You might be able to reuse alignments of existing (or recently closed) lines, adding high speed lines alongside, but apart from in a few special cases this works out much more expensive.
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Oct 10, 2020 22:51
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Not So Fast posted:Honest question for TrainChat, why do new lines need to be built for High-Speed rail instead of using existing lines? Are they incompatible? I believe it has to do with large portions of the British rail network being laid out for Victorian spec locomotives. Many lines curve around obstacles to ensure there's no excessively steep angles that relatively low HP locos would struggle with, but the angles prevent modern high speed travel. Plus I'm sure there's something about signalling systems and the UK rail network being a hodge podge of different private schemes merged into one network. Given this thread, am sure someone will have a much more accurate and detailed answer shortly!
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Oct 10, 2020 22:51
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OwlFancier posted:I'm curious too. Cos i could agree that there are aspects of life that are getting less... I don't think I would describe it as authentic but paul probably would, over time. I think that everything being always on 24/7 can leave people with a lack of pacing and rhythm in life, but I probably don't agree with what his suggestion would likely be to fix it. He's just done the dumb guy thing of listing stuff that has both positives and negatives and the impact of them can't really be measured and said 'these things are bad look I'm a modern day philospher'. I do think authentic is a fair word to use just because it's in comparison to vague transient/performative/engaging-but-not-fulfilling feelings. All the things he's whining about are definitely bad in some ways but the coherent link between the negatives is 100% behaviours caused/exacerbated by systemic socioeconomic alienation. Don't loving come at IdPol or hyper-sexualisation unless you're already critiquing capitalism son.
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Oct 10, 2020 22:54
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Lobster God posted:I believe it has to do with large portions of the British rail network being laid out for Victorian spec locomotives. Many lines curve around obstacles to ensure there's no excessively steep angles that relatively low HP locos would struggle with, but the angles prevent modern high speed travel. Plus I'm sure there's something about signalling systems and the UK rail network being a hodge podge of different private schemes merged into one network. Or even slightly before  e: Actually, the Great Western Railway - so averse to hills that it was also known as the Great Way Round - isn't even a Victorian-spec railway - the route was originally laid out under William IV, and the first passenger service from Maidenhead to London less than a year into her reign. goddamnedtwisto fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Oct 10, 2020 |
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Oct 10, 2020 22:59
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Or even slightly before I was even debating whether to add 'probably by twisto' to that last sentence.
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Oct 10, 2020 23:00
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Lobster God posted:I was even debating whether to add 'probably by twisto' to that last sentence. Now let me explain how if we'd only kept the Brunel 7 foot gauge we'd now be able to travel from London to Birmingham in 30 minutes.
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Oct 10, 2020 23:09
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Now let me explain how if we'd only kept the Brunel 7 foot gauge we'd now be able to travel from London to Birmingham in 30 minutes. Bet you can’t whip up a ‘Hyerloop is a knockoff of a Brunel design’ post
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Oct 10, 2020 23:13
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https://twitter.com/DawnHFoster/status/1315050431438114818
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Oct 10, 2020 23:19
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Train chat: Cost of resignalling, curvature of tracks & 'kinematic envelope' (the space carved out by the moving train) of longer trains to cope with higher speeds For example, people moan as to why there aren't more trains going into London during peak hours without appreciating that there is a 2 min headway between trains due to the signalling*. And this is why if you have an incident anywhere between London Victoria and East Croydon you're looking at thousands of minutes of passenger delays (and consequent fines/penalties etc) even as a result of quite a short incident of just a few minutes duration as the delays multiply all the way down the lines to the South Coast and the other lines feeding into the main line. *NB this might have improved in the last 10 years, my experience is well over a decade ago now. New lines are a lot less inconvenient to build than trying to rejig existing lines (from the construction & disruption to passengers perspectives, obviously the environment / economic etc considerations are different.)
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Oct 10, 2020 23:21
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