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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.




  • I’m a trans woman and I recall this myth when I first learned abt trans stuff back in '06 or so. It was widely believed and shared in trans spaces that phytoestrogen could help marginally before getting access to human estrogen. Sites like Laura’s Playground (one of the largest online trans resources at the time) were filled with junk like this, along with a bunch of heteronormative and gender-essentialist takes that were super damaging. I’m glad resources are better and more prevalent now.

    That was a long winded way of saying that I’m pretty sure a chunk of the culture war bs regarding soy (“soyboys”) came out of these pseudoscientific claims on trans forums, mixed with a dose of racism (wrt asian cultures that use soy in cooking).


  • 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.




  • Depends on device for me. For android I use Librera for books, Tachiyomi/Kotatsu for manga/comics, on the old Kindle I was gifted (Kindle Touch 2) I use KOReader so I can read epubs. For desktop I do use Calibre for reading, though I’m not a big fan of their reader. I mainly read textbooks on desktop and find the search features useful, which is the main reason for using it, it all works well enough. I had issues getting Okular to work well on my computer, but I’ve heard it’s good? Here’s hoping I can unify things a bit in the future.

    Eta: I forgot I actually started using Seeneva for comics, since I like the speech-bubble zoom feature



  • I’m firmly in the fuckcars camp and agree with you, I was more wondering why they made that decision. Someone else answered that they don’t want to pay to use the station, so I guess my question to you then is what local municipalities can do to prevent this/promote better intercity travel. Are they able to require the buses to use the station (and pay for it’s use)? I’m worried this coach company would just shut the line down.

    I should also note that this is a popular transit route, there is an amtrak train that connects the cities as well, but only one train a day. I take the bus bc the train schedule is a bad deal if you’re visiting the small city (arrive in the evening, depart in the morning). The bus isn’t as popular as the train, so it seems like they’re cutting costs wherever they can.