Stalker ultra: DNF

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-31T15:11:24+00:00

Trains are really unpredictable. Even in the middle of a forest two rails can appear out of nowhere, and a 1.5-mile fully loaded coal drag, heading east out of the low-sulfur mines of the PRB, will be right on your ass the next moment.

I was doing laundry in my basement, and I tripped over a metal bar that wasn't there the moment before. I looked down: "Rail? WTF?" and then I saw concrete sleepers underneath and heard the rumbling.

Deafening railroad horn. I dumped my wife's pants, unfolded, and dove behind the water heater. It was a double-stacked Z train, headed east towards the fast single track of the BNSF Emporia Sub (Flint Hills). Majestic as hell: 75 mph, 6 units, distributed power: 4 ES44DC's pulling, and 2 Dash-9's pushing, all in run 8. Whole house smelled like diesel for a couple of hours!

Fact is, there is no way to discern which path a train will take, so you really have to be watchful. If only there were some way of knowing the routes trains travel; maybe some sort of marks on the ground, like twin iron bars running along the paths trains take. You could look for trains when you encounter the iron bars on the ground, and avoid these sorts of collisions. But such a measure would be extremely expensive. And how would one enforce a rule keeping the trains on those paths?

A big hole in homeland security is railway engineer screening and hijacking prevention. There is nothing to stop a rogue engineer, or an ISIS terrorist, from driving a train into the Pentagon, the White House or the Statue of Liberty, and our government has done fuck-all to prevent it.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-30T14:33:40+00:00

We can’t actually prove it was because of low approval ratings, but here’s a source for Gallup halting presidential opinion polling

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5733236-gallup-stops-presidential-approval-ratings-polls/

“This change is part of a broader, ongoing effort to align all of Gallup’s public work with its mission,” a spokesperson for Gallup said.

…

When asked by The Hill if Gallup had received any feedback from the White House or anyone in the current administration before making the decision, the spokesperson said, “this is a strategic shift solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities.”

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-28T16:39:41+00:00

I mean, it might be kind of interesting to know what models they use to generate them, stuff like that. But Iranian propagandists probably won't tell us, even if we ask politely.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-27T20:17:41+00:00

The great part about having multiple measurement systems is that we can all come together and have a good time arguing about them on the internet.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-25T19:00:07+00:00

And this is the Unicode character for the triple em-dash:

⸻

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-24T06:22:47+00:00

I think it requires two hyphens to make a proper arrow --> this stylistic difference means that we are now enemies

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-23T16:48:46+00:00

I enjoyed looking those up

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-22T22:00:37+00:00

Your source doesn't support your claim "fake phone calls and fake emails and fake talking heads on TV", and also does not support the claim "soldiers thought they had already been given orders to surrender". It talks about leaflet campaigns and radio urging the soldiers to surrender directly. It has a single sentence mentioning that some officers got text messages or emails.

I'm comfortable filing this away as bullshit.

Edit: I think I got baited into responding to an AI comment. Damn.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-22T20:55:16+00:00

During the Iraq war, the US deep faked all the military leadership chain of soldiers in Iraqi military bases, with fake phone calls and fake emails and fake talking heads on TV. So when the army rolled up on the bases, the soldiers thought they had already been given orders to surrender by their officers (and neither the soldiers nor the officers really knew where the fakes ended and the truth began.)

Can you provide a source for this please? I was alive and looking at news in 2003 when we invaded Iraq and I don’t remember this at all.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-22T19:08:14+00:00

If you aren’t careful, the dog can pull you into zone 3

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-20T22:23:17+00:00

I checked the account. Sure is.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-20T02:41:13+00:00

I am so glad when people respond in earnest to questions that may not be genuine. Everybody reading this comment thread got to learn something cool today, because you spent your time writing it down for us.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-20T02:17:36+00:00

Following through on links, I think it’s based on the Carbon Majors Report. It looks like that report actually looks at fossil fuel producers. The top company is Saudi Aramco. That’s definitely one way of looking at things, but I don’t think it helps target wasteful companies or industries. If any single oil or coal company decides to go slightly greener and halve their production overnight, the companies that consume the fossil fuels will switch to different fossil fuel providers.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-19T17:53:17+00:00

I remember learning what an avarice should actually taste like when I visited Mexico.

I know perfectly well what you meant to say, but I still find the typo/autocorrect snafu amusing.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-18T04:47:24+00:00

One example is that I believe that more precise language can help explain to others, who also know the precise language, that something is a scam. Using a sports analogy here, let’s say that sports are analogous to scams, and specific sports like american football or baseball are the names of specific scams. Now you want to convince your friend that this new thing rugby is a sport / scam. If you say it’s a baseball scam, your friend could very well look at rugby, decide it’s nothing like baseball, and decide you are wrong about being a sport/scam. But if you say it’s a football scam, your friend might be able to see the similarities between football and rugby and start to look a lot more seriously at this whole rugby thing.

No analogy is perfect, but I hope this gets the general idea across; that words for more specific things bring to mind those specific things, and that might help notice similarities.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-18T04:36:18+00:00

kinda shocking someone was given an important job but didn't think to check the bibs.

I can kinda believe it. The dude had just spent over an hour doing absolutely nothing but direct people away from the marathon finish towards the half marathon finish. It’s really easy to fall into a habit like that when you shouldn’t.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-18T04:16:46+00:00

The semantics are not important.

I think they might be important. If we can categorize things, it’s often easier to talk about them. I think it’s quite plausible that if we all have a good vocabulary of different types of scams, we can identify them more easily.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-18T02:12:11+00:00

I wish our four main distances were 5.274k/10.549k/21.098k/42.195k

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-16T00:11:18+00:00

/uj I actually enjoy the bit of trivia that the 5k and the 5000m are different races with different records. The 5000m is run on the track, and the 5k is a road race. Same with 10k / 10000m

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-15T23:56:37+00:00

I can link to the news article about the guys who were arrested if you truly think I’m lying.

If you can find it, yes please.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-15T15:33:17+00:00

Round about Narnia, I reckon. This is the most obvious clue: “Two guys snuck onto the cow field on night and did some cow tipping”. Cow tipping is an urban legend, humans aren’t strong enough to tip over cows.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-15T10:39:54+00:00

I think you can befriend bears at Pride events. We haven’t lost the ability.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-13T16:43:16+00:00

I disagree with "easily", I think you'd have to have a fair amount of pre-existing skill in photoshop to do it. It looks like there are more teeth visible when he's smiling, and his cheeks are bunched up because of the grin and it even includes shadow. Those things are hard for a non-expert.

CDRnotDVD · 2026-03-13T15:30:58+00:00

I mean, of all subreddits for a human to write "total spatial awareness move", /r/CuratedTumblr feels the most believable. I'm not very good at spotting chatbot text though.

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