Monthly Archive:December, 2019

Nitriles, Part 2

“They’re still nitriles, what’s the fuckin’ difference?” Banshee complained. He crossed his arms obstinately.

“It creates a Mr. Black situation, Banshee,” Wintour explained with steely patience. “If you show up to a job wearing black nitriles when everyone else is wearing blue like they’re supposed to, then your crewmates get jealous of you and resentful of the uniform. Then all of three of those crewmates are going to show up to their next jobs wearing the wrong color gloves, which perpetuates the disruption in team morale. It creates a ripple effect that could lead to people trying to disregard the uniform entirely, which would in turn create problems with crews being recognizable as such to civilians. And if civilians cannot immediately recognize you as a Syndicate agent, they’re more likely to resist and interfere with your work which could lead to casualties.”

“Besides, the pattern on the tie was designed specifically to embrace the blue in the nitriles,” Wintour added. “Without that blue for it to draw on, you look like you can’t dress yourself. You may as well be out there wearing black shoes and a brown belt.”
Read on…

Political Theatre

Just as they had the score secured and everyone was seated on the escape boat, they heard someone call out to them from the end of the dock.

“Wait! Wait!” a man’s voice shouted to them. He ran towards them and everyone pointed their guns at him. He either didn’t see or didn’t care. He approached anyway, stopping at the edge of the dock. He doubled over, hands on his knees, and panted. After he caught his breath, he stood upright again.

His tie, mask, and gloves marked him as Syndicate agent too.

“Please,” he huffed, putting his hands up to show he was not planning to pull anything, “let me come with you. My crew’s all been arrested. I’ve been running from cops since 9:00.” It was now 11:35.

They had room on the boat; it wouldn’t have been a problem to let him board. Yet none of them lowered their weapons. Cleo, Dixie, and Melrose all looked to Dauphin. He was lead on this job so it was up to him if he wanted to take the risk.

“How do we know you’re not an undercover cop trying to get us all arrested too?” he asked.
Read on…

Rudolph

“I don’t know, man. I feel a little iffy about this job,” Savoy said. “But I can’t tell if it’s a gut feeling or if it’s just because working in places decorated for Christmas feels like a bad omen.”

“Bad omens? We got fuckin’ Rudolph up here guiding the sleigh tonight. There isn’t a better omen than that,” Nero smartassed.

“Wow, that’s an original fuckin’ joke,” their driver, the aforementioned Rudolph grumped. “Why don’t you tell one I ain’t heard a million times before?”

“Damn, Scrooge, who pissed in your porridge?” Nero asked. “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”
Read on…

Hello

Presently

The Future is Still Silver and Black: The MSI’s Pioneer Zephyr and the IRM’s No. 9911-A “Silver Pilot” are pen pals, writing to each other from their respective museums about their service lives both pre- and post-preservation.
Low Art Lyseum: DJ, Ray, and Ellie play and critically analyze videogames. 7:00 CST on Thursdays/Fridays. Currently playing Mafia: Definitive Edition.
Engines in Sidings: Thomas the Tank Engine stories. Written with Ray.
We Happy Few Poedit: all the cut content I’ve collected out of the game’s translation file.

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This is going to be a startling question: Are you aware of the youtube ai age verification situation? If yes, could you help me get more awareness for this issue? If no, I would highly suggest looking into it as well for your benefit.The age verification will destroy online privacy and effectively censor the rest of the internet. We may lose the ability to watch videos that an ai determines to be of childish nature, whether it be a commentary of a tv show or a slime review video. The ai will deny you of your access to youtube, unless you present an id like a credit card or a drivers licence to regain access to watching any video. Even if you are an adult, it will not allow you access unless you surrender sensitive info about yourself. Should this spread, internet privacy and safety will be gone, and even a 1984 situation would take place (hoping not). The surrendered data can be exposed to the world, doxxing so many people and allowing scammed and hackers to steal personal info. I do not want to see this ruin anyone's love for anything that may seem childish to a faulty machine designed to somehow replace a parents' responsibility of looking after their own children. It is scheduled to take into effect on August 13th this month.I am afraid that this is what will shatter many fandoms of beloved childhood shows, games, books, and franchises. I just hope that at least the TTTE fandom will help step up against the loss of internet security and privacy. United we stand, together we fall. Let us stand and stand firm against this ruin.Cheers,A worried American who is a thomas fan

So like, there seems to be a wave of bad, privacy-violating legislation going around lately. Gonna be real in that I don’t really know how to fight that kinda thing effectively. Based on the UK one that just passed, kinda seems like the point is actually to stifle communication, since… [more]

for the WIP ask game... The Future Is Still Silver and Black? (original train fiction from you two sounds really interesting!)

So last year, I went up north to visit Ray. Ray lives in Chicago, which just so happens to have the largest railway museum in the United States, the Illinois Railway Museum.

At the IRM, we saw the Nebraska Zephyr, which is a streamlined stainless steel articulated trainset. Each of the… [more]