Trainguyrom
@Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
- Comment on same shit every day, on god 1 day ago:
China was notably one of the last places on earth to retire steam locomotives from revenue service, only ending mainline steam in 2005 and reportedly ending the last branchline’s use of steam in 2023, but may still have some revenue steam service surviving elsewhere
Bosnia still has some revenue steam service at a coal mine (notably running locomotives built by Germany using prisoner labor during WWII that were designed to use minimal resources and with a design life of only 10 years)
- Comment on same shit every day, on god 5 days ago:
But more seriously, watch the water in your sight glass, keep it about 3/4 full at all times and check it like you check your rear view mirror in your car, and don’t forget to open the cylinder cocks every time you stop (or at least when you first start moving) and you should be pretty good to avoid unexpected damage to your locomotive!
- Comment on same shit every day, on god 5 days ago:
I’ll be real, I absolutely loved the first story, it took a little bit to get into the second one (but thoroughly enjoyed it after all) and I gave up partway through the third one because I was struggling to get pulled in and my library book was due soon anyways. So absolutely worth it for the first two stories at least, and hopefully you enjoy the third one more than I did!
- Comment on same shit every day, on god 5 days ago:
Hilariously this was a plot point I read recently. Isambard Kingdom Brunel replaced the firebox with some poorly shielded uranium, but the initial locomotive that was to demonstrate the technology was sabotaged and exploded, killing his parents.
This same book also had a fictional mad inventor who created a part newt-human hybrid named Victoria with womanly assets if you catch my drift, who upon failing to educate it he sent to a brothel because he couldn’t stand to “dispose of it” but when the princess and heir to the throne Elizabeth went missing, the newt-human hybrid Victoria was installed on the throne to prevent a constitutional crisis. And this is all events that occurred in the first 2 pages, so I’m not even spoiling anything!
spoilers for ending of the story *Victoria* in *A Steampunk Trilogy*
To spoil where the Queen to be Victoria was so well hidden that she couldn’t be found, she was in fact working in the newt-human hybrid Victoria’s room at the brothel! Seriously bonkers stories in that book!
- Comment on same shit every day, on god 5 days ago:
Reminds me of one of my favorite photos, a steam engine being delivered by steam engine!
- Comment on It improves the morale of the future worker. 1 week ago:
Oh absolutely without actual government action the overall population decline will be catastrophic. Basically if it’s handled the way that climate change has been, our kids/grandkids/great-grandkids will be screwed because it’s a similarly significant world-wide challenge for humanity that like climate change will require some changes to how people live and run the world. However, unlike climate change, population decline won’t necessarily kill off humanity entirely, because it will self-resolve one way or another, either by society collapsing due to the medical system collapsing or by actual social change to adapt to the normalizing population level
- Comment on It improves the morale of the future worker. 1 week ago:
This is a problem that’s being co-opted by right-wing nazitards like Elon Musk who are making it about race, but it’s really a global issue without a lot of clear causes or solutions
Its really only an issue in the context of capitalism. Capitalism relies on growth. No growth or negative growth means capitalism collapses and all of the hoarding that the rich and powerful have been doing was meaningless. Capitalism grew out of Mercantilism which was an extremely similar economic theory but Mercantilism largely assumes that any trade is bad because someone is “winning” and someone is “losing” meanwhile capitalism learned that trade is good because the same money can be spent more times by more people.
The short term solution is to create significant financial and other incentives for people to go into healthcare, particularly CNAs because a larger aging population than the working population will require lots of CNAs to care for the elderly. Right now these workers are woefully underpaid and largely abused by both their patients who lack the mental faculties to know what they’re doing and their workplaces which are increasingly frequently owned by private equity
- Comment on dating profile 1 week ago:
Its an interesting prospect, but realistically it would be comparable to eating wild boar and maybe comparable to wild fish?
Livestock populations that are bred and raised for human consumption are heavily monitored for health while they’re alive, mostly by the farmer and companies they contract with (and the USDA and Farm Bureau has some involvement in the farms overall production process), and at the meat processing facilities the USDA (and CFIA in Canada) are heavily involved with actual staff on site every day monitoring the health and safety and with the power to stop production if they observe a single thing out of place that poses a danger to food safety. Plants don’t want to have production stopped so they will invest heavily in mechanical and workforce resources to maintain an acceptable standard of cleanliness and limit the potential for contamination. We’ve really already got a pretty dang solid understanding of the risks and tolerances in our existing food chain of beef, pork, poultry and fish.
Wild animals need to be tested for disease before they can be safe for consumption. Deer hunters know this all too well, especially during Chronic Wasting Disease and similar outbreaks. We also don’t have the industrial scale apperatus yet for processing felines for human consumption. I’m sure small butchers can work with the meat since they rely on humans rather than machines and assembly lines, but it would also take time to ramp up demand. Of course the real challenge is trapping thousands of feral cats per day for human consumption. With cattle you know where the herd is, you can load 30 head onto a truck in just a few minutes (assuming none of the cattle get crafty and escape) and be off.
At a scale of thousands or tens of thousands per day, you’re looking at farming cats, not just culling feral populations. So ultimately you’re trading farming one animal that’s been selectively bred for centuries to be the perfect meat source to another that’s been selectively bred for centuries to be good companions and good vermine catchers
- Comment on dating profile 1 week ago:
Is it even meat we’d want to eat though?
Also the easier solution is more TNR and more education and resources to help prevent dumping unwanted cats.
I worked with a shelter for a bit which specialized in feral cat populations. They would work with local landowners and municipalities to trap feral cats and engage in both TNR and they would separate out friendly cats to adopt out. They also worked with a local community college’s vet program to run an annual spayathon, with low cost spay/neutering services available, giving veterinary students valueble experience and helping reduce cat populations.
With enough funding such projects can be successful, but its ultimately a numbers game since one mother can have a litter of 5+ kittens every year, and those 5 kittens can have litters the next year and so on, so it takes a lot of hands on work trapping, spaying/neutering and releasing and maintaining that progress indefinitely to make a dent in the local popupation. There’s always going to be a few cats you never catch who keep the population going, so you have to limit their impact on the overall population
- Comment on This is the type of Q&A that makes the internet so important 1 week ago:
Ehhh all of my clean towels hang too because my bathroom is so small the sink is in the hallway, and I don’t have space for another dresser in my bedroom. Something something old house problems
- Comment on This is the type of Q&A that makes the internet so important 1 week ago:
I mean, when you use a towel to dry off your clean body, does it dirty the towel that much?
- Comment on Well, when you frame it like that it sounds absurd. But yes. 1 week ago:
It does raise the question of who is financing these accounts. Is it one of those skeevy conservative thinktanks that writes policies for politicians to rubber stamp? Is it the Republican party itself? Is it financed by the actual governments of the countries these accounts appear to be from as a way to try to encourage policy that benefits them?
- Comment on Moisturize me 1 week ago:
Khajit has wares of you have the coin
- Comment on Anon finds a bot 1 week ago:
That’s the best description of reddit I’ve ever seen both past and present, and you’ve completely bypassed all of the usual sayings about reddit in the process. I applaud you! Now where’s that Lemmy gold thing…
On a side note, an actual financial implementation of Lemmy gold would probably be a really good feature to drive donations to hosts. I’d imagine the implementation as the user donates to their host and receives a configurable amount of gold to give as a reward for donating. That gold is entirely tracked by the instance their account is on, then when they gift gold to a user the receiving instance just receives notice that gold was given, similar to an upvote. Then to filter for bad actors instance admins can whitelist/blacklist instances from giving gold to their instance, and probably also make it possible to see which instances a user’s gifted gold came from as a layer of transparency to help spot bad faith instances that give free gold or too much gold or whatever.
I could also see an extension where a portion of the gold’s value is transmitted to the recipient via cryptocurrency (about the only thing cryptocurrency is actually good at, peer to peer online transactions) but that has way too much opportunity for abuse. Maybe that can be done manually by admins to help ensure a fair dispersal of gold funds? Still overcomplicating and introduces a ton of opportunity for abuse though
- Comment on Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway 2 weeks ago:
So I recently looked at both Girlscouts and Scouts of America for my daughter. Honestly when I tried to compare with Scouts of America the folks from Girlscouts were very sexist and very quick to bash on their competition while Scouts of America was just like “yeah were gonna go hiking and make pinewood derby cars and have a good time” both organizations have their problems but Scouts of America was noticably the less toxic of the two at this point
- Comment on Is it gay to have pleasurable sex with your wife? 2 weeks ago:
I picked up a fascinating book about Shaker furniture and architecture at a thrift store a while ago. Their religious ideals led to some extremely functional designs of furniture and structures that honestly can still be useful today. For example, Shaker chairs are designed with extra tall backs to be able to be hung up on the wall to make it easy to sweep underneath them when cleaning
I’ve seen a theory that the shakers were specifically founded by a handful of aromantic/asexual folks and basically built a community for aro/ace folk before any acknowledgement of these concepts existed. Given their views on equality and functionality it does not take much of a leap of the imagination to see how such a community could form from a bunch of autistic aro/ace folks in a period when any of those characteristics would make it difficult to survive
- Comment on Is it gay to have pleasurable sex with your wife? 2 weeks ago:
What am I looking at exactly here?
- Comment on Scandal 2 weeks ago:
To be clear: there is absolutely nothing wrong with consenting adults sucking each other off. But this is just so god damned juicy.
He’s an anti-queer piece of shit. Go ham! He deserves exactly as much respect as he gives to the women and girls he’s raped
- Comment on You can do anything at Zombocom 3 weeks ago:
I mean VGA is good for 1080p 60fps which honestly is a plenty high resolution even today. Sure you can get higher resolution and you can get higher refresh rates, but for a ~20" panel 1080p/60 is a sweet spot and you can get some really good panels for pretty cheap these days at 1080p/60
- Comment on You can do anything at Zombocom 3 weeks ago:
I learned the “more speakers = more better” when I once had 2 radios tuned to the same station and noticed it sounded better with both playing than either one turned off
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
Historically in most cities property taxes have nowhere near kept up with inflation. The town I live in right now just did its first property tax increase in over a decade, which increased my property taxes by about $100/year for my extremely average for the town home. My property taxes are about $2100/year and were about $2000/year when I first moved in almost 5 years ago. Comparing to family located in other much larger cities trends are similar. California famously capped property taxes for existing home owners. Property taxes are generally a very small part of the equation for most of the country
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
Yeah I compared some numbers and guessed a plausible interest rate for the 50 year based on the 15 vs 30 year interest rates at a couple of real banks near me
50 years at 6% with 5% down on 200k (fairly plausible for a decent home where I live and realistic for a first time home buyer who 50 year mortgages are clearly catering to) is 1k/mo almost exactly
30 years at 5.85% is 1,121/mo 20 years at 5.75% is 1,334/mo 15 years at 5.50% is 1,553/mo
So the difference is pretty small on a realistic first time home buyer’s home, but having been on the edge of approval for a home loan before that $100/month can absolutely be the difference between getting the home now and having to wait another 2-4 years depending on markets. In my case they assumed my insurance would cost more and that actually made all of the difference in my home loan application because that shaved about $100 per month off
One interesting side note, one of the local credit unions I looked at offers different interest rates depending on the value of the loan! For a 30 year fixed loan they offer the following rates:
800k or less: 6% 300k or less: 5.875% 200k or less: 5.875% (presumably they have this bracket for future rate changes) 100k or less: 5.75%
So yeah that’s new! I’ve not seen that before!
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
And my property taxes are 2k per year and that’s high for this county. It’s all relative and back of the envelope math is all about getting a rough idea, not getting spot on for any specific person
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
good luck finding a 350,000 home
This is going to vary wildly by region. There’s tons of large cities where the going rate for homes is around 300k and there’s notable large cities where you’re lucky to find any property for under a million.
Depending on the market you might simply need to lower your standards if you’re filtering by homes built too recently or homes with a ton of square footage or a high number of bedrooms/bathrooms. Or you might be in a truly fucked market where your best bet is to get creative and either buy a home with friends and/or family or even buy a home with a family member or friend helping with the intial mortgage and then rent out some space or find some other hustle with the property (I’ve heard of folks buying homes & property in the country and turning it into a wedding venue for example. Or renting it out for film shoots or AirBnB or whatever else happens to work where you live. I know a guy who built an ADU just to rent out on AirBnB as a side stream of income)
Even the homes that are 40 years old in my area
That’s…extremely new even by American standards. I say this sitting in a home which was built while the ottoman empire still existed. Yeah there’s quirks and it would be nice if the home was built to more modern standards, but it’s nothing that a bit of creativity, ingenuity and maybe a contractor or two when you can afford them can’t sort out. Plus the equity I’ve gained in just a few years makes it a damn good choice that I bought when I did and didn’t wait until I could afford to buy the perfect house
So getting a home at $260,000 that you got would be a dream.
Hey, the house across the street from me is listed at that right now. It’s got a pool and some nice updates, decent amount of bedrooms and bathrooms. Cute place. I live in a pretty small town so you might not like that, especially since job availability can be a struggle here even during good job markets if you’re in a white collar role. On the other hand if you’re willing to change careers entirely it’s pretty affordable. Guy who’s selling it works for a landscaping company and mows lawns on the side for several folks in the neighborhood. Or I’m thinking I’ll go be a school bus driving as a backup if things go south with my employment status for example. See above about either lowering your standards to what you can afford or getting creative if you’re in a more fucked market.
Ultimately life in this world is all about finding the best way to enjoy the opportunities available to you. If you’ve got a career you love living somewhere you love maybe it’s worth renting for an extra decade or two until you can finally afford to buy. Or maybe you aren’t fully in love with your career and/or where you live so relocating or a creative change to your finances might make sense.
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
Usually folks signing a very high interest mortgage do so to snag property while prices are down due to the rough market then will refinance in 2-5 years when rates are lower.
As long as homes are investments, buying a home as soon as you can regardless of interest rate is the most accessible path to financial success for the average middle class American
For one thing, when you buy a home you’re basically locking in your home payment for decades. A 30 year mortgage originated in 1998 would have the exact same payment this month as it did in 1998. Unless of course you pull equity out of the home in a HELOC or refinance but that’s generally not a good idea anyways since you’re trading long term wealth for short term cash, and that’s basically always a path to economic ruin. Point is though, whatever payment you lock in with your initial mortgage it’s not going to change significantly until the mortgage is fully paid off. Even if you refinance, even considering property tax changes, your home costs are largely not going to increase. About the only wildcard is insurance which those rates are mostly determined by the risk of property loss, so as long as you don’t live somewhere that is at relatively high flood, fire or hurricane risk you’ll probably not see a dramatic increase
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
Truth is rural any state usually has affordable homes, just not the jobs. It’s a good option if you work remotely or in an extremely in-demand job like healthcare
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
Having worked at a bank before (in their IT dept specifically), banks are extremely risk averse (and that extends to all aspects of the bank, from financial risks to HR risks to IT risks), and all of the loan officers I worked with were far more interested in doing their job right than being sales people.
It’s in the banks best financial interest if it’s customers get wealthier because where does that wealth go? Into the bank they already bank at. Banks need to keep a certain amount of deposits in reserve, so the more cash deposited the more money the bank can invest in financial products itself to make itself more money. If all the bank does is mint loans that customers struggle to pay back their deposits will be very low and therefore they’ll make less money.
Also sketchy loans are harder to sell as securities, as security bundles have to have balanced risk profiles both for legal compliance and for investors to be interested. Investors in mortgage backed securities (MBS) aren’t investing in MBSes for insane growth, they’re investing in a relatively safe security to park some cash in as part of their diversification
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
I think it’s a famous photo of folks at NASA celebrating but it does look different. You might be right that this one’s been touched up or even fully generated by AI as the depth of field is just all over the place in a way that cameras don’t do. Also some funky compression artifacts that don’t really look like compression artifacts (which I’ve seen AI image generators add generate fake compression artifacts to generated images before)
- Comment on The height of sophistication: the 1994 McDonald's manager collection 3 weeks ago:
My first job was as a cashier at a grocery store. When I started they required everyone to wear a white button up shirt, black pants and a tie. Hilariously that’s the only job I’ve worked where I’ve been expected to wear a tie. Anyways about a year after I started they shifted to these weird slightly patterned shirts and you could either wear that or a dress shirt and the tie was optional. Now they’ve shifted entirely to just black pants and a red or black logo wear shirt and nobody wears ties anymore. It’s not even been that long! I’m not old enough to see this much of a change am I?!
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
All I know is one minute it was summer and the next my heat is on, my coat is now on daily and there’s no leaves on the trees. I miss autumn, it seems to get shorter every year
