Tieplate-writes-stuff - Lesbian Space Pirates & Sci-Fi Trains

Here's the infuriating thing though, most of America ALREADY DOES live next to train tracks, or not far away. It's not a matter of building more lines, it's a matter of using them. America has the largest railroad network in the world by a huge margin; it's almost the size of the next two largest networks combined. The problem is that, unlike those countries and nearly every other industrialized nation, American railroads are owned and operated almost entirely by for-profit corporations whose sole concern is to be as profitable as possible. And moving freight is far more profitable, and far less hassle, than moving people (the accounting methods used for the first point are...not always the most objective). So these 6 massive duopolistic railroad companies choose to only move freight instead. As far as I know, there is nothing legally stopping these freight railroads from running their own passenger trains, like they used to do before 1971; Brightline in Florida and the Alaska Railroad (where I was a conductor briefly) both do quite good passenger business, and Brightline doesn't even own its tracks. In fact, when Amtrak first started up in 1971, there was a fee that railroads had to pay in order to get Amtrak to take over their passenger trains. Some railroads, like the Rock Island, could not afford the fee; others, like the Southern and the Rio Grande, chose to continue to operate their own passenger trains for a few years. But eventually they too threw in the towel, and now Amtrak is all we got.

"ohhh wahhh the problem with building out america's rail network is that nobody wants to live next to train tracks-" I DO BITCH!!!!!!!! #I<3INDUSTRIALNOISES #SEXWITHATRAIN

Reblogging particularly for LibreOffice mention, it can literally do everything MS Office can do but it's free and open-source

It is with the deepest frustrations that I must report Microsoft has pushed out Copilot onto Microsoft Word no matter what your previous settings were. If you have Office because you paid for it/are on a family plan/have a work/school account, you can disable it by going to Options -> click on Copilot -> uncheck 'Enable Copilot'.

(Note, you may not see this option if you haven't updated lately, but Copilot will still pop up. Updating should give you this option. I will kill Microsoft with my bare hands.)

In addition, Google has forced a roll-out of it's Gemini AI on all American accounts of users over 18 (these settings are turned off by default for EU, Japan, Switzerland, and UK, but it doesn't hurt to check).

To remove this garbage, you must go to Manage Workspace smart feature settings for all your Gmail/Drive/Chat and turn them off. Go to Settings -> See all settings -> find under "Genera" the "Google Workspace smart features" -> turn smart feature setting off for both Google Workspace and all other Google products and hit save. (If you turned off the smart settings in your Gmail, it never hurts to open Drive and double-check that they're set to off there too.)

Quick Edit: I found the easiest way to get to the Smart Feature settings following the instructions above was to do it through Drive. Try that route first.

Now is the time to consider switching to Libre Office if you haven't already.

ah, google is still useful sometimes I see

public transport and public libraries are making out nasty on the couch

ICE raids happening in Chicago on Tuesday January 21st. Get organized and get prepared.

I have no mouth and I must scream

Cleopatra | John William Waterhouse

An Egyptian Pottery Seller near Gizeh | Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann

The Sorceress | Georges Merle

Empress Theodora | Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant