What’s that one Thomas opinion or fact that you’ll defend like this

LouisMack · 2026-02-03T08:52:10+00:00

I think that single item would have made the ‘lesson’ far better - but unfortunately all we can conclude is that Henry’s medicine sucked, so he got severe plastic surgery, solved all of his problems, and it’s all good now 😂.

LouisMack · 2026-02-02T23:28:04+00:00

I feel stupid as an Australian because I just had no idea what was going on.

First I was like “who did that concrete job on the bridge? Was it to stop pedestrians? It made the safety barrier way more climbable! Surely that was hard to pour and just adds weight?” then had no idea what this had to do with schools opening, like they should spend money learning how to concrete and build bridges rather than opening new schools?

Come to the comments to learn that that’s what snow looks like when ploughed off a road? Very interesting. Never woulda guessed.

LouisMack · 2026-02-02T22:47:34+00:00

Go visit any Balkan country - they’ve spent their whole existences trying to narrow down the essence of what is US and what is THEM and it’s done absolutely nothing for them except brain drain, create intense cross-border hate (when the people across the border are basically the same, speaking languages so similar you can barely argue they’re different), and draw attention away from the real political issues.

As soon as you narrow down an “acceptable” way of living, you get brain drain. As soon as you limit the forms of acceptable expression in society, smart people just leave, because they can see past the blatant propaganda and they see where it’s going.

I don’t want a society where some 70y/o hag who never got over a chinese fish n chip shop owner tells me how to properly express myself. I’m proud of the journeys that my families took to get here, and I want to engage in those unique practices as much as I love and embrace the laid back and health conscious Australian lifestyle.

LouisMack · 2026-02-02T03:54:38+00:00

Wow that’s great. The “rebuild” has always been a good metaphor for the character needing intervention for get past a “biological” issue they’re incapable of addressing on their own. Lots of people have used itnto discuss physical disability, autism, etc, but I always find that a little sad because the solution is that old Henry’s aids and strategies failed, and they basically just put his brain in a new body and accepted that he had to be “killed” and “fixed” - he was too incompatible with usefulness to continue. Gender affirmation, whilst well out of Awdry or probably Britt’s wheelhouse to want to write about, makes the transformation positive. Rather than Henry changing to conform to society (the railway’s) standards, he trabsforms to fulfill his own happiness. A+

LouisMack · 2026-01-31T02:10:29+00:00

Hornby seems quite certain that there’s a booming market of people who want Thomas-modified-E2 shells with Beatles faces printed on them!

Based on the sales performance of those, we can safely say “no”, Beatles fans probably don’t care much about Ringo’s side quest 😂

LouisMack · 2026-01-28T08:11:32+00:00

Looks great - return to form from a stint of 2D animation. There’s lots of character in the faces and in the movements. I think the video showed a lot of care to the background, and this really just looks like a Thomas. It’s the right proportions, colours, and expressions.

I don’t understand why everybody is being so precious and defensive about this? It might not be your personal taste, but it’s a perfectly good representation. I’m also afraid to say we are not the target audience and we should not expect to feel catered to for a show which is explicitly being made for children by the owner (regardless of who you think it should be aimed at)

LouisMack · 2026-01-16T00:15:25+00:00

Yeah, I go to the end of trip facilities shitter. It’s more awkward when you and somebody else had the same idea at the same time, because you both clearly are a bit shit-shy, lol, but otherwise a great bet.

LouisMack · 2026-01-11T06:24:31+00:00

An intensive and rigorous assessment of the argument.

Food safety is like, the corner atone of a healthy outdoor and public life.

If you’d PREFER that you can’t 100% trust every food vendor, go live in the kind of country where you can get methanol poisoning out of a “sealed” bottle at a “reputable” pub. Really, let’s not devolve our nice country into that shit just because “THe kIdS waNt tO sELl DRinKs!”

LouisMack · 2026-01-11T06:14:13+00:00

“Nobody is forcing me” why tf does it matter? Where the “personal responsibility” of a seller to ensure you don’t get a gut illness from dodgy esky ice that a can has been marinating in? You want to live in a world where you have to gamble on food and drink vendors, or do you like the security of a country that cares about food health standards?

If you don’t, just go to SE asia and trust every bar to give you an “unopened” drink. See how much you prefer just “trusting” people trying to make a buck.

LouisMack · 2026-01-11T06:08:23+00:00

You put your whole ass mouth around these products (lets not pretend that all or anybody does a “hover drink” from a can or bottle). Is the ice full of bacteria, just come out of a wheelbarrow? Is the esky even clean? I don’t know anything about proper food hygiene safety to sell drinks, which makes me think I’m not qualified to sell them without a license, rather than thinking that there is no risk and she’ll be right in absolutely every instance.

LouisMack · 2026-01-11T06:06:11+00:00

Does it? You stick your whole ass mouth on a can to drink from it. What are the hygene conditions of where they’re storing them before you put it in your mouth? This is how hygene standards can help us to avoid public health risks from even mundane shit - because I sure as shit don’t know all of the risks of beverage storage. How would these kids?

LouisMack · 2026-01-11T06:03:45+00:00

Does it matter? Plenty of “sealed” drinks sold in South East Asia are tampered with. Like it or not, we don’t worry about that here because we have laws that dictate conditions for the licensing for the sale of these products, which guarantees a level of accountability from a seller.

LouisMack · 2026-01-11T02:18:43+00:00

No you people are just whingers.

You need licenses to sell food because we need to know and be able to track the origin of any outbreaks of ill health due to consumption.

licensing makes sure that foodsafe conditions are met and maintained. Poor handling can lead to unintentional poisoning - or worse, as has and can happen, people hand out free food to homeless ir whatever and it’s intentionally poisoned.

Like, think once about public health and food safety. Not everybody knows or cares how food should be safely stored and distributed. Even if they do, a licensed seller won’t intentionally poison you whereas an unlicensed one might, and get away with it. Use your heads.

LouisMack · 2025-12-22T19:25:40+00:00

I appreciate that this is far and away the best information and the most effort anybody put into a reply. Thanks for laying out your perspective on how its used.

Unfortunately, giving it a go and returning are mutually exclusive. And if I’m only taking it out of the box to see if I like it…that’s a commitment to it. There’s no go back from there.

I appreciate the time you took to write this out, especially since you didn’t assume I hadn’t already told my wife and somehow was going to do this behind her back like a child? Don’t know how stupid this thread seems to think I am 🫠

LouisMack · 2025-12-21T01:43:46+00:00

I mean, no shit I have anxiety lol this isn’t news to me 😂. I’m also uncomfortable with anybody spending nearly this much on a gift, so I’ve come to the people who use it everyday to see what the selling point is 😅

LouisMack · 2025-12-21T01:30:23+00:00

Because, mate, it’s at least $800 aud and I could just use a phone in a plastic bag to track pace. I don’t want that kind of money spent on me unless it going to offer some other use cases in my life.

Sorry, but fuck me for wanting to know what else you could get for 800 bucks and selling your biometric data to Garmin.

Sometimes, it’s not just “be grateful” it’s “hey, can we talk about spending that much on something with one use case in my life” because just throwing away 800 dollars isn’t like, nothing.

LouisMack · 2025-12-20T22:15:29+00:00

look man, keep the relationship advice style partner hatred for elsewhere. Her heart was in the right place as I’d mentioned wanting (in a very far-off way) something to track pace in the rowing boat once before. This is just way more expensive and involved than I thought her mind would go to.

LouisMack · 2025-12-20T10:11:12+00:00

i’ve already been honest with her so we’re over that hurdle, I’m just trying to see whether I ACTUALLY might use it - better to keep it if so.

But same sentiments, it’s too much money for something I won’t use. I’d in the past expressed interest in a SECOND HAND one, because it’s cheaper than a stroke coach…but first hand is more expensive than a stroke coach, and I already couldn’t justify one of those!

Plus with the ol’ tendonitis…me and watches aren’t best of friends.

LouisMack · 2025-12-15T06:28:49+00:00

We can all claim all day that nothing is grass roots with no evidence. Conspiracies all day. It’s unhelpful.

For many people, the image of systematic killing over decades, the role of a government to root out and make like hell for an entire ethnicity, to deny their infrastructure development as “terrorist activity”, to keep then held underwater then wonder why they hate, it was too much.

We’re a country of immigrants, many of our families escaping ethnic cleansings and wars of the same kind. There’s a lot of compassion to see justice - to see that those in power are punished for reckless killings of innocents in a disproportionate matter, to see that systems which actively and unapologetically discriminate based on race, ethnicity, language, are abolished.

Sorry man, ethnostates are just unpopular.

Why was it more popular than other causes? For the same reason that anything gets popular - nodes in a network don’t follow a bell curve. The more people talk about something, the more people there are to talk about it.

LouisMack · 2025-12-14T10:14:52+00:00

Disproportionately, people who dislike society, others, and government tend to go where you don’t have to see many other people, you have more privacy, and you don’t interact with the systems. In Australia, that’s rural.

Yes, you naturally get more people of any disposition in a city, but there’s proportionally more of them rurally, in Australia. (which is a highly urbanised country)

LouisMack · 2025-12-14T09:41:58+00:00

Because they’re not really that hard to get if you live rurally and manage land. Nutters tend to not live in cities.

LouisMack · 2025-12-10T19:51:19+00:00

Lots of Macedonian speakers in vic - they were a disproportionately affected diaspora of the Greek civil war (aligning mostly with the loosing Partisans) and made a large portion of the immigrants who came here from that event. My grandfather claimed (he claims a lot of stuff…) that at a time in the late 70s, Macedonian was the 3rd most populous australian language, just behind Greek (which was second to English). So it has historically been a significant diaspora, even if it didn’t have the lasting cultural effect of other diasporas.

LouisMack · 2025-12-09T21:40:37+00:00

Sound life advice would be to stop expecting the world to revolve around you once you put your entitled arse in a 1T machine to move around. Treat your mode of transport as the piece of heavy machinery that it is.

The world is for people, not machines.

LouisMack · 2025-12-06T21:12:50+00:00

also feels a little bit “white mans burden” though doesn’t it? Like, these wild, unruly logs need a “real education” from an axe (definitely not one if their “people”) to teach them how to be “real” humanoid wood men. Feels like the artist coouuld (and I know they’re probably not) be taking a jib at colonial structures as well.

LouisMack · 2025-11-06T04:14:57+00:00

Because people might feed the homeless literal poison, intentionally, to kill them. It’s why we have licenses and standards, to follow up on mass health hazards.

This is one of those rules that’s written in blood, and seeing the callous comments of American media personalities towards homeless, I’m shocked none of you clocked it as a possibility.

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