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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: May 15th, 2019

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  • The president is a civilian and other decisions ultimately lie in civilian hands. While it’s common for presidents to have some level of service in some form of armed forces, it’s usually low ranking. There are some notable exceptions: Washington, Eisenhower, and Grant. So yes, killing them is political violence. But targeting leaders in the armed forces is not.

    And yes, Iran fought ISIS, a lot of players held common cause against ISIS. Cool. Doesn’t excuse what they’ve done elsewhere.









  • Absolutely. I was hearing that Switzerland has excellent on time performance, to the point where 5 minutes is considered late (and that happens infrequently). For comparison, Amtrak uses a 15 minute threshold for lateness. This accuracy, the “integrated timetable” strategy that syncs trains with other trains and transportation modes, and frequent service allow for tight transfer times.


  • Yeah, passenger trains pretty much have no choice if there is a 2 mile freight train, a single track, and a short siding. The passenger train has to pull off and wait. There really need to be something like financial penalties for the rail carrier every time that happens. Something to make extremely long trains uneconomical.

    One thing they’ve been working on in my neck of the woods on the Amtrak Cascades line is passenger train only track that runs in the same right-of-way. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I assume that passenger trains run on it by default and switch to the freight rail or sidings when there is a passenger train going the other way. The Seattle-Portland leg is already congested between freight and passenger traffic. Additional track should aid on time performance for the eventual target of 13 round trips per day. They also got the line rerouted off a single track route that was a serious bottleneck.








  • Bingo. No one wants to read articles about how a celebrity is decent person. You are going to hear about the feuding broken divorce more than the loving decades long marriage. Or you hear about an off day where someone got mad at someone who didn’t deserve it. We all have off days, but celebries have public off days.