M o i s t u r i z e m e

In 2021, I was riding an Amtrak train when it derailed at 80 mph. Several of the cars, including the one I was in, fell onto their sides and slid a significant distance along the ground. Three people were killed.

After spending the night in a hotel, they arranged for me and several other passengers to get on another train to get us home. I didn’t think much of it, I just wanted to get home, but the moment the train got up to speed I realized I had made a mistake. I spent the entire journey in a state of extreme stress, on the verge of crying. This train (the Empire Builder) is timed so that you get to sit in the diner car and eat dinner while passing through the most scenic part of the trip, the Rocky Mountains of western Montana and northern Idaho. But I didn’t enjoy any of it. I remember staring at my dinner, desperately trying to hold myself together, wincing every time there was a bang or jolt (and for those who’ve never been on an Amtrak train - there are a lot of those).

I had never experienced an anxiety attack before, and based on this experience I never want to have one again. The train got to my home station at about six in the morning, and I didn’t sleep at all.

ow

!surrealmemes@sh.itjust.works

Fun fact! During the Apollo flights to and from the Moon, the spacecraft would perform “Passive Thermal Control” or “barbecue roll” where it would rotate around its long axis about once per hour, to distribute the thermal load from the sun and keep one side from heating up too much

Because it was sponsored by grain industries. Similar to the “breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” and “milk is good for your bones!” myths.

Who the hell watches videos at 2x speed anyway?

My favorite fact about the ISS is that it actually has an engine to do its own orbital boosts. Astronauts have taken videos where they slowly drift from one side of the cabin to the other during a burn

Wow, I had no idea the Calabi-Yau Manifold was a real thing. I thought it was just made up for Barotrauma, since that was the only place I heard of it. It sounded Lovecraftian enough so I never questioned it lol

Excel has entered the chat

September 28, 1956 was a Friday

My parents had an Amana “Radarange” while I was growing up, with chrome dials and wood paneling. It was an absolute tank, probably weighed like 50 lbs and had the power consumption of a small country, but I loved that thing

That’s just Carl.

You can rip my Oxford comma out of my cold, dead, and grammatically-unambiguous hands.

Is there a way to undo/reverse it?

I consider every trip to Walmart an American safari.

I’d like to keep as much gold as possible for when I inevitably don’t have enough bismor to promote

I’ve been getting into collecting vintage hi-fi equipment (1960s and later, though) and this sounds absolutely amazing

Just pull yourself in like a turtle. Bam, perfect privacy too.

I was on this train. Amtrak paid me a settlement not to sue them, but it’s not Amtrak I blame, it’s BNSF, who owns the track. It’s very clear from the camera footage that the track was badly misaligned by the time the train went over it at 80 mph. That line is one of the busiest in the country, and if the freight locomotives (one of which had gone over that section of track barely an hour prior) had some kind of monitoring system, they would have alerted all the other trains to stop or slow down. I used to love riding trains, but our rail infrastructure is much too far behind places like Europe.