The default news feed setup for my combination of browser and Internet feed presents a variety of lame headlines offered as “click bait.”
One story sourced by MSN is that President Biden’s historic (don’t you get tired of that word?) visit to Kyiv has “Putin shaking in his shoes.” OK these are not quotes, these are my loose paraphrases, but I don’t want to chase down what I exactly saw right now.
OK, let’s posit that Mr. Putin is evil and 100% at fault in the Ukraine War and to let Russia’s territorial annexations stand will lead to the eventual fall of the Western World Order and that getting tough with Russia will not provoke a nuclear war. Let’s posit that Mr. Biden “standing with” Mr. Zelensky exemplifies the peak of US presidential leadership.
That this has Mr. Putin rattled? There are probably many things right now going through the man’s mind along with regrets, frustrations and anxieties that his Special Military Operation hit the skids, even if only for now. But President Biden showing up in Kyiv moves the needle even one little bit about what Mr. Putin is thinking? C’mon, man!
Another story is entertainer Stephen Colbert besting the president of the Norfolk Southern Railway in a verbal exchange. I am certain that Mr. Colbert came out on top in that scrap, but how about picking on someone in your own weight class of repartee as it were? I am sure that a news reader from a third-market TV station has the wit to put the president of Norfolk Southern in his place for making risible claims of cleanliness of the soil, water and air after the Ohio train wreck.
A third item is some rant about “stupidity being on the rise”, not only among experts, leaders and elites but also among voters. The story has a picture of Lauren Boebert, Member of Congress.
OK, OK, this has a left-wing slant, and if it were a right-wing news feed, it would show a picture of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. With her mouth agape. Showing her oversized-in-relation-to-everything-else teeth. I “get” that.
So it it just me, or as the mainstream presentation of the news hit peak lameness?
Perhaps unprecedented, generational, or inexplicable lameness. But not peak.
No, not peak. The mainstream news will become even more lamer.
Mainstream news has made me more of a believer of what I read on the web – and I know many sites require a coal lump sized amount of salt.
I’d say peak shark jumping passed some time ago, but not peak lameness. As Richard Feynman said, there’s plenty of room at the bottom.
has the wit to put the president of Norfolk Southern in his place for making risible claims of cleanliness of the soil, water and air after the Ohio train wreck.
I watched him give an interview with one of the PBS Newshour co-anchors in East Palestine OH yesterday and I thought he actually did pretty well. The main point he worked hard to get across was that NS Rail would remain on-site to provide testing over the long term while deflecting all questions about NS Rail’s responsibility for the accident onto the NTSB. Maybe because the PBS interviewer didn’t follow up too aggressively, but the CEO managed to do no additional harm to his company in that interview. Personally I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes these days. The security cam video I’ve seen of that train rolling through another town prior to the derailment with one of the car’s wheels ablaze and firing off sparks in all directions was pretty damning.
Didn’t they used to have a caboose on the end of the train for a conductor or other crew member to look out the window to spot a smoking wheel bearing (a “hotbox”) before the train jumped the tracks?
Roller bearings are supposed to have many fewer hotboxes than the older style of oil-film lubricated journal bearings, but still.
I guess those are replaced by automatic wayside hotbox detectors, but the trains are so long on account of Precision Scheduled Railroading practices that maybe the detector was in a radio shadow from the enginer driver in the locomotive?
Not to put additional burdens on the fine men and women operating America’s railroads bringing us the feedstock (vinyl chloride) to make our plastic milk containers (PVC), but maybe asking the representative about long trains and whatever-happened-to-the-crew-member-in-the caboose could get someone’s attention.
A rickety low-speed railroad line goes smack through the middle of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, where I have seen trains pulling tank cars of propane.
Should a person attend a meeting of Faculty Senate and raise at the UW-Madison Chancelor’s Question Time about whether tank cars of propane passing through a campus hosting nearly 50,000 students and 20,000 employees in different capacities is such a great idea?
The people working for that railroad have “an attitude” as evidenced by emergency phone numbers printed on the signal boxes near the crossing gates, but when a person calls that number in instances where the gates are malfunctiong, the phone is answered with a curt “Why are you calling this number!”
You worry too much. Look on the bright side. It’s a great chance to get the railroad and federal and state governments to replace your aging campus infrastructure. There’s a good reason why there are no downtown business buildings in Crescent City IL that predate 1970.
Having a caboose occupied by a brakeman and conductor is extinct. Modern freight haulers are too long for that style spotting to work.
But like Colbert points out what’s cheaper? Modernization of your trucks and brakes of your freight haulers or replacing all the topsoil in Eastern OH?
The default news feed setup for my combination of browser and Internet feed presents a variety of lame headlines offered as “click bait.”
One story sourced by MSN is that President Biden’s historic (don’t you get tired of that word?) visit to Kyiv has “Putin shaking in his shoes.” OK these are not quotes, these are my loose paraphrases, but I don’t want to chase down what I exactly saw right now.
OK, let’s posit that Mr. Putin is evil and 100% at fault in the Ukraine War and to let Russia’s territorial annexations stand will lead to the eventual fall of the Western World Order and that getting tough with Russia will not provoke a nuclear war. Let’s posit that Mr. Biden “standing with” Mr. Zelensky exemplifies the peak of US presidential leadership.
That this has Mr. Putin rattled? There are probably many things right now going through the man’s mind along with regrets, frustrations and anxieties that his Special Military Operation hit the skids, even if only for now. But President Biden showing up in Kyiv moves the needle even one little bit about what Mr. Putin is thinking? C’mon, man!
Another story is entertainer Stephen Colbert besting the president of the Norfolk Southern Railway in a verbal exchange. I am certain that Mr. Colbert came out on top in that scrap, but how about picking on someone in your own weight class of repartee as it were? I am sure that a news reader from a third-market TV station has the wit to put the president of Norfolk Southern in his place for making risible claims of cleanliness of the soil, water and air after the Ohio train wreck.
A third item is some rant about “stupidity being on the rise”, not only among experts, leaders and elites but also among voters. The story has a picture of Lauren Boebert, Member of Congress.
OK, OK, this has a left-wing slant, and if it were a right-wing news feed, it would show a picture of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. With her mouth agape. Showing her oversized-in-relation-to-everything-else teeth. I “get” that.
So it it just me, or as the mainstream presentation of the news hit peak lameness?
Perhaps unprecedented, generational, or inexplicable lameness. But not peak.
No, not peak. The mainstream news will become even more lamer.
Mainstream news has made me more of a believer of what I read on the web – and I know many sites require a coal lump sized amount of salt.
I’d say peak shark jumping passed some time ago, but not peak lameness. As Richard Feynman said, there’s plenty of room at the bottom.
has the wit to put the president of Norfolk Southern in his place for making risible claims of cleanliness of the soil, water and air after the Ohio train wreck.
I watched him give an interview with one of the PBS Newshour co-anchors in East Palestine OH yesterday and I thought he actually did pretty well. The main point he worked hard to get across was that NS Rail would remain on-site to provide testing over the long term while deflecting all questions about NS Rail’s responsibility for the accident onto the NTSB. Maybe because the PBS interviewer didn’t follow up too aggressively, but the CEO managed to do no additional harm to his company in that interview. Personally I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes these days. The security cam video I’ve seen of that train rolling through another town prior to the derailment with one of the car’s wheels ablaze and firing off sparks in all directions was pretty damning.
Didn’t they used to have a caboose on the end of the train for a conductor or other crew member to look out the window to spot a smoking wheel bearing (a “hotbox”) before the train jumped the tracks?
Roller bearings are supposed to have many fewer hotboxes than the older style of oil-film lubricated journal bearings, but still.
I guess those are replaced by automatic wayside hotbox detectors, but the trains are so long on account of Precision Scheduled Railroading practices that maybe the detector was in a radio shadow from the enginer driver in the locomotive?
Not to put additional burdens on the fine men and women operating America’s railroads bringing us the feedstock (vinyl chloride) to make our plastic milk containers (PVC), but maybe asking the representative about long trains and whatever-happened-to-the-crew-member-in-the caboose could get someone’s attention.
A rickety low-speed railroad line goes smack through the middle of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, where I have seen trains pulling tank cars of propane.
Should a person attend a meeting of Faculty Senate and raise at the UW-Madison Chancelor’s Question Time about whether tank cars of propane passing through a campus hosting nearly 50,000 students and 20,000 employees in different capacities is such a great idea?
The people working for that railroad have “an attitude” as evidenced by emergency phone numbers printed on the signal boxes near the crossing gates, but when a person calls that number in instances where the gates are malfunctiong, the phone is answered with a curt “Why are you calling this number!”
You worry too much. Look on the bright side. It’s a great chance to get the railroad and federal and state governments to replace your aging campus infrastructure. There’s a good reason why there are no downtown business buildings in Crescent City IL that predate 1970.
Try again: https://youtu.be/hO1IPJbU4Zg
Having a caboose occupied by a brakeman and conductor is extinct. Modern freight haulers are too long for that style spotting to work.
But like Colbert points out what’s cheaper? Modernization of your trucks and brakes of your freight haulers or replacing all the topsoil in Eastern OH?
Joe Biden is not elite, but his babysitters are.