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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: February 2nd, 2022

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  • This strike was regarding freight rail and would definitely not cause the industry to disappear since rail is the most cost effective way to transport certain goods, and we do not have enough infrustructure for trucks to be a reasonable alternative (and we have a hell of a lot of roadways). Here’s a basic list of common things freight trains carry.

    Many people would feel the hit from things like lumber and car shortages, but I think hazmat materials would be the biggest stopper of the economy. According to this page rail transports 99.9% of hazmat materials in the US, including 11% of the US’s crude oil at it’s peak oil shipments in 2014, though idk how pipelines factor in/how companies distibute gasoline, so not sure if that would affect gas prices in some areas more than others or if it would affect the nation as a whole. What I do know is that many industries rely on our freight system, and it can’t all be converted to trucking. Many workers wouldn’t have raw materials to work with and it would touch everyone in some way.


  • I actually did miss that, thank you for replying. I had been working for a passenger rail company at the time, but ended up leaving my job a little after the big event and didn’t keep up on the news.

    That being said, I still think the union could have gotten a much better deal had they been permitted to strike. They were originally asking for 15 paid days (note: I think they would’ve settled lower, but higher than 4). While the deal that was negotiated does help people, it is a far cry from what’s needed. I worked at the best of the railroads (in terms of contract), and that was too much for me. I was on call 6 days a week and worked all 6 of those days for several months straight. I got sick a lot more often in my year on that job than ever before and it’s becuse I didn’t have rest. But again, that was the best contract in the RR, freight workers (at the time at least) were on call for up to 2 weeks at a time, sometimes being called in more than once a day.

    I haven’t looked at the new contracts that freight workers are getting now, but I know that 4 days sick leave (7 if you convert your personal days), is not enough, even if they got contracts as good as we had at my company. The railroads use and abuse their employees, and employees should’ve gotten a lot more than they did. A strike would have ground things to a halt, but that’s literally the point. That’s the only card we have as workers and Biden took that away at a pivotal moment.

    So I personally still think it was a shit deal, and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m glad that workers are getting more now than they were, but they could have gotten more had they not been kneecapped.




  • Traditional for everything that isn’t a touchscreen. Partly bc it’s what I was raised with, partly practical. It’s easier for me to two-finger scroll traditionally on a trackpad since it’s less finger/wrist movement. If I use natural my fingernails hit the trackpad making the input unreliable, or I end up having to p much move my whole forearm to scroll. So traditional works better for me personally.

    I get the idea behind natural scrolling, but there’s that level of disconnect for me since I’m not interacting with screen directly, so my brain thinks of it like a mouse instead of like touchscreen. I’m guessing my brain might think of it differently had I been a little younger; I’ve used computers to some extent all my life, but didn’t own a touchscreen device until college.

    Idk, natural scrolling on any pointing device trips me up.







  • A lot of my faves have been mentioned (BtB, wtyppod, Bad Gays), so here’s a few I haven’t seen lited here.

    Discussion Podcasts

    It’s Not Just In Your Head: Therapists talking about the intersection of mental health, capitalism, and treatments (problems with how we go about it and what we could change).

    The War on Cars: What it sounds like, urbanists talking about biking, transit, issues with car oriented development.

    Tech Won’t Save Us: Interviews with people, having critical conversations of different technologies. Discusses issues of tech, capitalism, surveillance, and more.

    Total Liberation: Leftist podcast discussing a variety of topics about the decay of capitalism and how we can recreate and liberate ourselves.

    Audio Dramas/Story Podcasts

    The Punumbra Podcast: I listen to the Juno Steel series, it’s about a private detective on Mars. Great story and characters, a bit more humorous but will also destroy you emotionally in the best way. Also very queer!

    The Bright Sessions: People with super powers go to therapy. I really loved the world they created and how they relate the super powers and mental health.

    Scare You to Sleep: Scary stories read in a calm voice. The stories are really good, I actually like the hosts original stories that she sometimes reads quite a lot.


  • Sorta, sorta not. Looking at the wiki page, it used “EdgeHTML” as the browser engine, which was a fork of ie’s engine (MSHTML). But it was a massive overhaul removing a bunch of legacy code and rewriting parts to fit modern standards and to make it compatible with webkit. It was maintained alongside ie11.

    I remember testing it out and it being a lot faster than ie was when it first came out, but I’ve always been a ff user so I didn’t switch to it.