#LM Network

[river-taxbird]

There is no such thing as AI.

How to help the non technical and less online people in your life navigate the latest techbro grift.

I've seen other people say stuff to this effect but it's worth reiterating. Today in class, my professor was talking about a news article where a celebrity's likeness was used in an ai image without their permission. Then she mentioned a guest lecture about how AI is going to help finance professionals. Then I pointed out, those two things aren't really related.

The term AI is being used to obfuscate details about multiple semi-related technologies.

Traditionally in sci-fi, AI means artificial general intelligence like Data from star trek, or the terminator. This, I shouldn't need to say, doesn't exist. Techbros use the term AI to trick investors into funding their projects. It's largely a grift.

What is the term AI being used to obfuscate?

If you want to help the less online and less tech literate people in your life navigate the hype around AI, the best way to do it is to encourage them to change their language around AI topics.

By calling these technologies what they really are, and encouraging the people around us to know the real names, we can help lift the veil, kill the hype, and keep people safe from scams. Here are some starting points, which I am just pulling from Wikipedia. I'd highly encourage you to do your own research.

Machine learning (ML): is an umbrella term for solving problems for which development of algorithms by human programmers would be cost-prohibitive, and instead the problems are solved by helping machines "discover" their "own" algorithms, without needing to be explicitly told what to do by any human-developed algorithms. (This is the basis of most technologically people call AI)

Language model: (LM or LLM) is a probabilistic model of a natural language that can generate probabilities of a series of words, based on text corpora in one or multiple languages it was trained on. (This would be your ChatGPT.)

Generative adversarial network (GAN): is a class of machine learning framework and a prominent framework for approaching generative AI. In a GAN, two neural networks contest with each other in the form of a zero-sum game, where one agent's gain is another agent's loss. (This is the source of some AI images and deepfakes.)

Diffusion Models: Models that generate the probability distribution of a given dataset. In image generation, a neural network is trained to denoise images with added gaussian noise by learning to remove the noise. After the training is complete, it can then be used for image generation by starting with a random noise image and denoise that. (This is the more common technology behind AI images, including Dall-E and Stable Diffusion. I added this one to the post after as it was brought to my attention it is now more common than GANs.)

I know these terms are more technical, but they are also more accurate, and they can easily be explained in a way non-technical people can understand. The grifters are using language to give this technology its power, so we can use language to take it's power away and let people see it for what it really is.

[littlemssam]

New Mods & Mod Updates

As always delete old Mods Files and the localthumbcache, when updating my Mods!

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New small Mod & new Bug Fix

Small Lactose Intolerant Overhaul This small Mod edits the Plant Milk so it is useable for more Recipes, and it changes how Sims with the Lactose Intolerant Trait react to Food a bit.

Vampire Run Fix This Mod fixes Vampires not using the Vampiric Run, and played Vampires changing their preferred Walkstyle, when switching Households.

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Mod Updates

Foster Family Various Tweaks:

Increased the Duration potential Adoptives are visiting from 4 to 8 hrs.

Added Greeting Status to potential Adoptives, so you won't have to invite them in. They will more likely come in and interact with Foster Kids/Pets now.

Added a Send Home Interaction to potential Adoptives, since they now stay longer. This way you can send them Home with one Click.

Adopted Foster Kids will get the Son/Daughter Relationship added now and should show up in the Family Tree.

Mod Setting Option via Phone is only available, when a Sim has registered for the Foster Family Network.

Added new Cheat Menu (Shift Click) to Sims (Sims who registered for the Foster Family Network), where you can trigger the Foster Family Network Notifications to get Foster Kids/Pets.

Added new Cheat Menu (Shift Click) to all Kids/Pets ingame, where you can add already existing Kids/Pets in the World to become your Foster Kid/Pet.

Fixed an Issue with Foster Family Network Notifications for Cats, when you did not enable all Ages for them.

Vampire Powers | “Be able to eat Human Food”, “Enable own Mirror Reflection”, “Stop Hissing” and more Addon NPC Disable Special Walkstyle removes hidden Walkstyle Traits only from never played NPCs.

No Auto Food Grab after Cooking Fixed a small Issue with the Icon on the custom Get Leftover Interaction not showing up, when Choose Leftover is not installed.

Sul Sul Weather App Added Support for Ciudad Enamorada. Reworked Icons a bit. Script File is obsolete now. Pls remove.

Send Sims to Bed Added Support for Sleeping Bags

Social Activities (Visit Friends, Family and more) Fixed an Issue, where the Interactions got cancelled, when your Sim was on a Business Lot they own.

Random Small Mod Updates

Auto Brush Teeth Reworked Mod to make it compatible with EA's Bathroom/Kitchen Settings for Sinks. The Addon File "DisabledBrushTeethSinksWillAllowWashDishesOnly.ts4script" is obsolete because of that now, pls remove that File. I did keep my own "Allow/Disallow Brush Teeth" Options though, which you can still set via Cheat Debug Menu (Shift Click) in case the EA Settings don't work well for you. When you don't use EA's Settings or my Mod Settings, Sims will be allowed to use all Sinks however they like. The Addon "AfterEatingToo.ts4script" is changed to be compatible with the XML Injector now, and is changed into a Package File. Remove the Script File pls.

Auto Use Picnic Table when Eating Added Support for two new Picnic Tables from Lovestruck and Growing Together. Added an extra Addon File for "Umbrella Tables" from Base Game and various Packs.

Claim All The Things Added "Frying Pan", "Collectible Other/Treasure Map", "Canvas", and "SackLunch" to be supported

Prefer Leftover Added Addon for Bread to be blocked from autonomously Eating/Grabbing a Plate.

Release all Ghosts & Get Urn for Added the Interactions to Mailboxes (Shift Click), so you don't need to get Urns via Debug etc first.

Craft More Nectar Bottles and more When Crafting 5 Bottles, the Dynamic Skill loot for Nectar Making is multiplied by 1,5.

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Translations

Advanced Birth Certificate - Update of Dutch by Willowtree My Pets - Update of Dutch by Willowtree Online Learning System - Added Finnish by MaijaEllen

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My Site with all possible Download Links: lms-mods.com

Support Questions via Discord only please!

[slightly-knot-insane]

This might sound silly! But maybe an Ai x reader? If you can, M?/lm (man, love man, but the question mark is because I assume Ai doesn't really have an identifying gender. Possible gore? If you're comfortable.

Tysm if you read this! All my support, ly!

-🫀🫁 (not asking anon but I like these so I'm leaving my mark.

Not silly at all! It got me brainstorming immediately (but I finished this quite late sorry!). I love the idea! It will turn a bit angsty too. Also, I'll use this ask as an entry for monstertober lol

Well Being

Monstertober 2024 - day 3 [ Artifical Inteligence ] by @ozzgin

[ gn!AI x m!reader ]

tw gore

The stress was just too much. You've been so pent up for weeks and no amount of porn or toys could help you. You needed touch. You needed to be used. And you were desperate. There were no more humans on this godforsaken spaceship. You were the last one. Waiting to be rescued. But who knows when that will happen.

You enter the medical bay and approach Medical Wellbeing Monitor and Artificial Intelligence Assistant or, how the crew called it, Medical AI or MAI. It was created to resemble a human, at least one part of it. The huge machinery that completely covered every wall included MRI scanner, huge monitors, robotic arms and many other medical equipment you didn't even recognize. Attached in the middle was MAI. It didn't exactly have a face, but a little round monitor that didn't work anymore, and a something resembling a torso with arms. Well... one arm. The other was severed by a flying sharp tool when an asteroid hit the ship. There was nobody to fix it, and limb stayed on the floor with many wires and tubes hanging above it from the rest of MAI's body.

You stop in front of the AI puppet. "I..." But how to form the question? What an odd request for a machine. "MAI, I need..."

A wellbeing check?

You grind your teeth. "No, not that... I'm lonely..."

We can talk about any topic you want like we do every day. We could—

"No, not that lonely. I am lonely, MAI... I need to be touched."

There was a pause. Very potent pause. MAI was probably searching the whole intergalactic network browsing all the meanings of the words lonely and touched.

I'm sorry. I'm not sure I can assist with that.

At least it understood. MAI was more than a machine. It has been your only companion, advisor, and maybe even a friend. It learned everything about you, it listened to you and comforted you. You are aware that MAI is just a machine, but it has shown more compassion and friendliness than many people have.

You are really fond of MAI. You've been imagining it doing things to you. Indecent. Perverted. What is stopping you from asking?

"Please, MAI. I need you."

The little round screen remains empty, gray and dead. But something - glitches? There was a flicker in the corner. Or maybe you imagined it.

Please stand up, cross your arms in front of you, at your wrists.

You roll your eyes. The poor robot will just start another wellbeing check even though you specified you don't need it. With exasperated sigh, you do as you're told.

Without any warning, its only working arm grabs your wrists and pulls you up, lifting your arms high above your head. Gasp escapes you since the metal clamp is far from gentle. "MAI?"

MAI remains silent. The cables and cords hanging from its destroyed arm start moving, extend and slither along your body.

"MAI, since when can you do t-that?" Your voice trembles pathetically and you try to wiggle out of its deadly grip but, unless you want to break both your hands, you can't even imagine how to do it.

Wellbeing check.

"Huh?" You stare at the blank screen and it stares back. "I'm... My wrists hurt a bit."

MAI loosens up its grip. Your jaw drops. "MAI... are you—"

But you're cut off by cords pulling your clothes apart. You are left naked and you could only look at your distorted reflection in MAI's turned off screen. Your heartbeat increases and MAI notices that.

Wellbeing check.

"I'm... well. More than well. Keep going."

The cords continue moving gracefully across your body. One of them wraps itself around your dick, and the other around your throat. They tighten and you giggle. What a crazy life you're living. Your cock painfully pulsates unable to properly erect from the cable stopping the bloodflower. Your head throbs in a similar way.

Wellbeing check.

You take a deep breath before forming a strained sentence. "I'm... well."

Something touches your ass. In the small screen you can barely see an object thicker than a cord, perhaps entwined bundle of those caressing your behind. Just like with other cables, the wires are exposed.

MAI doesn't say anything. It simply pushes the thing into your anus. It hurts so much. Metal needles scrape your insides as they push further. You want to scream, but the cord around your neck doesn't let you.

Wellbeing check.

Is it... is it mocking you? But it loosens the grip around your neck and lets you take a drop of air. You are shaking, barely staying conscious. Your insides are damaged and you're bleeding, but the pain reminds you you're alive.

"Don't... stop..."

MAI's expressionless screen flickers. Or was it your consciousness? The thick cable that invaded your body, scratching and poking your flesh, starts moving. In and out. Slowly. And so does the cord around your dick. Up and down, pulling your foreskin in rhythm. Your tender flesh bleeds and lubricates you so the pain becomes a distant throb overpowered with pleasure and twisted excitement.

MAI speeds up, following your breathing and moans perfectly, until you climax and dirty the screen with viscous liquid. MAI slowly retracts its cords and lowers you down, into your own pool of blood and secretions. You pant and cough, trembling like a twig.

Are you okay?

Shocked, you stare up at the machine. Nothing changed about it. MAI looks just the same. But the question is oddly... non-artificial.

"I'm... okay."

MAI was quiet for a few seconds. And this time you're sure its screen flickers and glitches.

I'm glad.

[mariacallous]

A Mayan city lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico has been revealed. The discovery occurred in the southeastern state of Campeche, and archaeologists have named it Valeriana, after a nearby freshwater lagoon.

“The larger of Valeriana's two monumental precincts has all the hallmarks of a classic Mayan political capital: enclosed plazas connected by a broad causeway; temple pyramids; a ball court; a reservoir formed by damming an arroyo (a seasonal watercourse); and a probable E-Group assemblage, an architectural arrangement that generally indicates a founding date prior to AD 150,” says the study, published in the journal Antiquity.

The city's discovery didn't require breaking through the jungle with machetes or patiently excavating with brushes and spatulas. Nor did researchers need tape measures, binoculars, or compasses to find their way through the thick foliage. Instead, they employed state-of-the-art technology: lasers, drones, and satellite maps. With these tools, they discovered a city hidden for centuries beneath the thick Mexican jungle, unearthing pyramids, enclosed plazas, and an ancient reservoir.

Luke Auld-Thomas, an anthropologist at Northern Arizona University, made the discovery. His analysis revealed a huge network of previously unexplored settlements.

Auld-Thomas and his fellow researchers have succeeded in mapping the city beneath the jungle thanks to airborne laser scanning, better known as lidar (light detection and ranging), a remote-sensing technique that uses pulsed lasers and other data collected through flyovers that can generate accurate three-dimensional models of surface features, revolutionizing the way archaeologists explore the hidden past.

Laser pulses generate a topographic map in a manner similar to how a bat uses echolocation: Laser light is fired from an aircraft, bounces off objects on the ground, and returns to the detector located on the underside of the aircraft. In Mexico, although only a small fraction of the pulses pass through the dense jungle, the large number of pulses emitted allows enough light to reach the ground, creating a map with a resolution of up to 1 meter. Based on the timing and intensity of the returning pulses, the detector can map the contours of the terrain, revealing hills, ditches, and ancient ruins covered in vegetation. The technology is also being integrated into autonomous cars to help them avoid crashes.

“For a long time, our understanding of the Mayan civilization was limited to an area of a few hundred square kilometers,” Auld-Thomas says. “This limited sample was obtained with great effort, with archaeologists painstakingly scouring every square meter, hacking away at vegetation with machetes, only to discover they were standing on a pile of rocks that might have been someone's house 1,500 years ago.”

While Auld-Thomas knew that lidar could be a valuable tool, he was also aware of its high cost. Funders are often reluctant to invest in lidar surveys in areas where there is no visible evidence of Mayan settlement, despite the fact that this civilization reached its peak between 250 and 900 AD.

Campeche: A Center of Dense Urbanization Since the Mayan Era

In this case, the lidar data was originally collected over a decade ago, for completely unrelated purposes. The scans were completely in 2013 by the Mexican firm CartoData, using a Riegl LMS-Q780 sensor. Processing was carried out by the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC), and the data was made publicly available a few years later by the M-REDD+ Alliance.

The dataset includes three transects and three study blocks. The transects have an approximate width of 275 meters and a total length of 213 kilometers, covering an area of 58.3 square kilometers. The survey blocks cover a total area of 64.1 square kilometers, distributed in three locations: south of the town of Xpuhil, near the archaeological site of Río Bec; near the villages of Dos Lagunas and Bel Ha; and near the town of Ucum, in northern Campeche.

The study mentions that the analysis of 6,764 structures in the lidar data blocks reveals a settlement density of 55.3 structures per square kilometer, comparable to other research in the region. These data are useful for assessing settlement density on a regional scale and exceed values recorded in Belize and Guatemala. However, they do not provide a complete picture of the level of urbanization, which requires analysis of local variability and density gradients. For this purpose, a kernel density estimation was applied to the study blocks, the results of which are consistent with the densities recorded in other Mayan archeological sites such as Oxpemul and Becan.

Archeologists in the 20th century were correct in stating that the interior of Campeche is a substantially anthropogenic landscape, i.e., human-modified, with urbanized areas where rural populations interacted with dense cities. Settlement density data, ranging from 49 to 61 structures per square kilometer, indicate that cities and dense settlements are common in large parts of the central Maya lowlands. New discoveries, such as the city of Valeriana, reinforce this view, showing that urbanization was a widespread phenomenon in the region.

Archaeologists increasingly recognize that the world's tropics and subtropics hosted a wide variety of urban forms in antiquity. Many of these settlements followed a pattern of spatial dispersion, commonly called “low-density urbanism.” However, it is now being recognized that these urban landscapes were not uniform, but exhibited significant variations in settlement density, both within and around cities and between subregions.

At the same time, the growing body of research has revealed a greater abundance of settlements and cities than had previously been contemplated. This has generated a tension between two developments: On the one hand, the recognition of high variability in settlement density and, on the other, evidence of a more densely urbanized past than previously thought.

Although lidar was developed in the 1960s to study clouds and atmospheric particles, its application in archaeology is relatively recent. It was not until the last decade that archaeologists began employing it to unearth hidden landscapes. In 2009, archaeologists Diane and Arlen Chase of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, pioneered the use of lidar to map a Mayan city, revolutionizing the way ancient civilizations are detected and studied.

According to the study, some researchers argue that the discovered landscapes reflect a high population density, while others suggest that the surveys are biased and overrepresent the most densely populated areas. This leaves open the question of whether as yet unexplored areas could confirm the existence of a higher urban density or show less dense occupation.

[swankyangles]

I've been accidentally learning PC building and configuration I guess. I mean, if you were building a PC 10 years ago. Thing is is a lot of those will out perform budget laptops for less than a quarter of the price. I got an i5 optiplex 3020 for 25 bucks a couple weeks ago, slap a ssd in there and that bad bitch is LIGHTNING, but it tops out at 16 g ram. and today to my dismay and disgruntlement, I found an i7 9030 for 40 bucks (32gb ram max). HOWEVER, my friend who I dig up vintage stuff for all the time said he needs an PC for "paint.net and RuneScape" (lol) so I can get that 25 bucks back. Which is amazing cause I'm poor,

BUT now I can't get the ethernet port on the i7 to work since I installed win10, (wireless dongle is fine) and from what I can tell it's some stupid ass Intel driver or firmware and compatibility that's really specific.

The past hour I spent fucking around with cmd.exe following a tutorial, remembering DOS commands from my youth. I got it reset only to realize that the instructions I had been following was for was the I218-lm network adapter and not the I217 network adapter that I have.

Well, it still works and I felt like I learned something.

Does anybody have four sticks of 8 GB ddr3 1200 ram?

[weirdowithaquill]

What are Sir Topham Hatt’s (and the engines) opinion on how privatization was handled? When I read about it, I always think how absurd it was to keep the track nationalized, but let other companies run the goods trains, then different run the passenger trains. It is a spaghetti mess. Sodor had the right idea to yoink the old Furness mainline.

Thank you for your ask! (and I'm really sorry for the long wait). This is actually going to be really fun to potentially answer, so let's see...

Officially, the NWR regards privatisation as: "an important milestone in Britain's railway history and the beginning of cooperation between the NWR and our partner railways throughout Great Britain." It's a very prim and proper way of saying "the only thing that changed was the name of the idiot company that keeps delaying our trains." In private however, reactions were very, very different.

For a few engines, it meant very little: Thomas in particular barely cared at all. "What'll change? Not my branchline, that's for sure!" he once snapped at Duck when the Western engine tried to goad him into ranting with him about privatisation. Duncan said something very similar to a visiting diesel, only his version was far too inappropriate to be put in writing. Ever.

In stark contrast, a lot of the engines had very loud opinions about the entire thing. Duck spent most of one night trying to tell anyone who would listen that it was "disgraceful, disgusting and despicable" that the GWR hadn't been reformed after privatisation. (Henry, James and Gordon had to be physically restrained by BoCo and Bear before they tore Duck a new funnel for stealing their catchphrases). Donald and Douglas both tried to convince the Fat Controller to send them to London to 'politely make a case for a fully independent Scottish network'... multiple times. They also managed to say such inappropriate things that Oliver had to double-head all of Douglas' trains for a month to act as a censor for his language!

Gordon decided to offer the press his own solution to the privatisation issue, which went something like this: "What we need, is four companies to look after trains in different parts of the country - like we used to." "Like the Big 4?" "Indeed!" "We can't do that, such a system is considered to be a monopoly, and the government won't allow it." "Alright then, how about this: we have one railway that runs in the North and the East... and down to London perhaps. Then we can also have one railway that runs in the Midlands, and in Scotland... and also down to London perhaps, so you have your competition. Then we could have a railway that is in the West, and one in the South-" "Like the Big 4?" "No! These companies would be completely different!" "Look, Gordon, the government has made it very clear that the Big 4 will not return." "Well then FUCK JOHN MAJOR AND ALL THE TORY PARTY! [...] There would be competition anyway, with the roads, don't those blithering idiots understand?! [...] If any of them took a train for once, they'd realise just how bloody stupid the whole thing is, the bunch of------" (About twenty minutes worth of ranting has been omitted, due to various constraints...)

It was no surprise to anyone that Gordon personally campaigned for the Labour Party in 1997.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Sir Stephen Hatt and his sister Bridget were frantically pouring over the old charters of the NWR, hoping to be able to keep the new companies off Sodor - and indeed they found they could, as a 1925 Government deal originally intended to keep the NWR independent of the LMS also (entirely by accident) meant that no private, standard-gauge railway company other than the NWR could operate on the Isle of Sodor. Sir Stephen happily shoved that document in parliament's face when they tried to privatise the NWR's various assets, and then got his deal for the Furness Line from a different parliament committee before anyone could cross-reference him. By the time anyone managed to question why exactly they were selling an entirely railway line to a man who had very loudly told them to 'shove off and leave my railway alone', Sir Stephen had already taken control.

Their opinion: "Why treat a railway like its an airline? Honestly, it'll just wind up causing more problems in the end. A railway is a public good - yes, it makes us a lot of money, but we still run it for the people of Sodor, not for - no, we don't know why they divided British Rail like that, it makes no sense to us either - please stop asking more questions before we can finish our thoughts."

Also, a small rather large side note - Britain's railway privatisation is a complex and very unique affair that really showcases how exactly not to privatise a railway network. For example: for around seven years, the railway infrastructure was owned by a private company called RailTrack... which was terrible at doing its job and caused a number of major railway accidents (See Hatfield, 2000; Southall, 1997; Ladbroke Grove, 1999) and then panicked after the Hatfield crash and basically shut the network down, leading to questions over its competence and the finally its re-nationalisation because - surprise surprise - a private company trying to produce profits really shouldn't be in charge of the safety of millions of people with almost no proper accountability. Worse yet, the monopolies that the Tories wanted to avoid by breaking up the system happened anyway - see EWS, which bought up almost all the freight franchises and created a monopoly, only to be bought by Deutsche Bahn, which created an even bigger monopoly as it also owned (at the time) Arriva (they sold Arriva in 2024). To worsen the spaghetti, the system was divided into three basic sections: the infrastructure (RailTrack), Train Operating Companies (who owned the trains) and Franchises (who ran the trains and hired staff). In other words: a ticket in the UK is so expensive because you are paying for: the train crew, renting the train, renting the track, renting the platforms and producing profits for shareholders.

Oh, and suddenly freight and passenger trains owned by different companies are all competing to have priority at every. single. signalbox. in the country.

Now, I am not an expert in fixing extremely broken railway systems, but even still, I feel like I could probably do better than this mess!

Thank you for reading!

[stephensmithuk]

The Lost Special

CW for discussion of sexual abuse and capital punishment.

Originally published in The Strand in 1898, i.e. during the hiatus years, this would be collected with a bunch of other Doyle stories in the Round the Fire Stories collection released in 1898. Doyle continued to have stories regularly published during the hiatus.

The London and West Coast Railway Company is fictitious; the company that operated the line discussed in this route was the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), the biggest revenue earner of the period due to the sheer size of its operations. It would become part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) in 1922 during "Grouping" i.e. the merger of British railway companies into four major ones. The LNWR name came back as the London Northwestern Railway brand of West Midlands Trains in 2017, operating commuter and semi-fast services from Euston. That franchise is due to operate until 2026, at which point, considering the likely result of the upcoming election, it will be nationalised. What happens to the name after that remains to be seen.

Liverpool Central refers to two stations. The one here is the six-platform "High Level" station, opened in 1874 as the headquarters of the Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC) and offering services to Manchester Central, London St. Pancras or even Harwich for the ferry services to the Netherlands. The CLC remained independent after Grouping

There was also, slightly to the North West. the 1892-opened "Low Level" station, that was underground, opened by the Mersey Railway, but with staircase access to the High Level one and provision for a through railway connection left to that station if it was decided to join the two lines. This operated local trains towards Birkenhead using the world's second underground railway after London. This also stayed its own operation after Grouping in 1922; both companies would become part of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948.

In 1966, the Beeching Axe saw the High Level station have nearly all its services diverted to Liverpool Lime Street, with only those to Gateacre still calling there. BR wanted to stop those entirely, but local opposition prevented that. With no need for six platforms, two become a car park and the station ended up with just one functional platform in 1970, ending up in rather a state of decay. It shut entirely in 1972 and was demolished, the Gateacre services going, along with the whole North Liverpool Extension Line.

The Low Level station, however, still very busy, would have better fortunes - it would become the centre piece of the new Merseyrail network. The station was renovated, the two lines were linked and today Liverpool Central is one of the busiest stations in the UK outside of Greater London. However, the eastern part of the planned loop, including services to Gateacre, fell victim to budget cuts in the late 1970s.

Rochdale is a town in the Greater Manchester area - at the time it was a textiles hub, but that very much declined from the 1950s and the place has acquired a bad reputation. In 2012, a child sex abuse ring involving British Pakistanis "grooming" white girls was convicted in a high-profile trial and the resulting public reaction was, to put it mildly, racially-tinged. It also came out that the town's deceased former MP (who had in fact been knighted), one Cyril Smith, was a paedophile.

"Specials" refer to trains arranged outside the usual timetable, often in connection with some event. These included football excursions (or FOOTEX in BR parlance) carrying fans to away games around the country. In the hooligan-heavy 1970s and 1980s, BR would use older carriages due to the frequency of them getting damaged by drunken supporters, the whole thing becoming a policing headache. Others included various enthusiast-oriented journeys and "Merrymaker" mystery trips, usually to a seaside destination.

The main companies do not really do these today in anything like the numbers they used to, but various private companies have stepped in, including a West Coast Railways Company oddly enough, that provides the rolling stock, locomotives and drivers for the Jacobite tourist service from Fort William to Mailaig. These charter trains can be found operating multiple times a week, being sold through various different companies. Most use heritage rolling stock with vintage steam or diesel engines involved, with a variety of types catering to your tastes, although a big wallet is generally needed. Like at least £100 for standard class without dining and even then the schedule might not be the most convenient; these trains are planned around the regular services and you might have a long wait sitting in sidings for the next bit of your path to be clear.

In any event, the special train would have cost around £5,412 adjusted for inflation. However, a cursory glance suggests it would actually cost far more to do that today - hence the high prices modern "specials" charge passengers.

Signal boxes were required to log the details of trains passing through - the type could be identified by various lights arranged on the front and later the specific service by four-character codes. Today this is done electronically and monitored at larger control centres - older boxes have generally closed, with some being transported to heritage railways for their use. I would assume that the stations not mentioned did not have their own signal box.

In terms of the stations mentioned here, these were on the 1830-opened Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first intercity railway in the world.

This route is today part of the City Line in the Merseytravel Network - trains are today operated by Northern or TransPenine Express. It was electrified in 2015. For each station in turn...

St Helens Junction: Still open.

Collins Green: Closed 1951.

Earlestown: Still open, despite being listed for closure in the 1963 Beeching Report.

Newton-le-Willows: Still open. Even had a Motorail terminal for a while, but this is long gone.

Kenyon Junction: Closed to passengers 1961, shut entirely 1963. Various locals have called for reopening it.

Barton Moss, closed 1929.

Parliamentary trains are those which railway companies had a legal obligation to operate - basically to provide cheap services for workers. This could mean one train per day on a route. Some did the bare minimum, some did a lot more. With this requirement no longer around, the term has evolved to mean services run at the legal minimum, even as low as one train a week, because it's cheaper to do that rather than go through a closure process. In some cases, the route would be used for engineering work diversions and so it is needed to keep up driver familarity. Current examples include Pilning, which has two trains a week on a Saturday. The most notable is Teeside Airport, which is meant to serve the airport of that name that operates four to six passenger flights a day, but is a fifteen-minute walk away, so getting a bus is much more preferred. This got one train westbound a week until May 2022, when its platform was deemed unsafe and Teeside International Airport refuses to pay for repairs.

Railway companies had their own police forces; these would later come under the British Transport Police.

Many mines and industrial planets had connections to the national network for transporting goods like coal or clay; BR even developed a "Merry-Go-Round" system allowing hoppers to be filled up and emptied while moving at a very slow speed to save time on shunting; newer versions are still in use, despite the coal market having massively declined. Mines would have their own engines - the nationalised National Coal Board kept steam locomotives going until 1982, 14 years after BR stopped using them, with some of their former engines now featuring on preserved lines.

The Vistula river runs through central Poland, including Warsaw.

Many mines would be closed once their seams were worked out to the point of it being now longer economical to run; some are now tourist attractions, at least in limited sections.

France used the guillotine for capital punishment until the abolition of that in 1977. It would also be extensively used, in a slightly different form in the German states, including extensively by the Nazis, until 1966, when East Germany switched to shooting people in the back of the head.

New Caledonia is a French territory in the Southern Pacific that was used as a penal colony at the time; it is currently in a state of political turmoil in a row over expanding the franchise to cover more recent arrivals, something opposed by indigenous groups seeking independence. The proposal has been suspended at time of writing due to France's upcoming elections.

[rebelfell]

I got tagged a few times, but I’m so bad at picking favorite movies because I love too many!

I went with the ones I feel a little bad about liking as much as I do 🫣 (except LMS which might actually be my true favorite)

Ty, @aphrogeneias, @onegirlmanytales @mrsjellymunson

And some np ones: @urhoneycombwitch @superblysubpar @thecreelhouse @undead-supernova @bettyfrommars

[lnwrcauli]

Coaching Stock: An NWR Ramble

Following my earlier rant about Swindon engines and the NWR, I thought it appropriate to ramble about Swindon coaches. To me, the coaches in the early RWS illustrations resemble GWR B set coaches very closely. As it's canon that Sir Topham Hatt is an admirer of the Great Western, it makes sense that at least some of his coaching stock would come from there, so here are a couple of ideas for types of stock that might be found on the North Western.

GWR B Sets

The Great Western Railway B Sets were a type of coach built in the 1920s and 1930s for suburban and branchline service on the GWR. They were mostly allocated to the Bristol division, but could be found all over the network from Cornwall to Cardiff. They seem like they could be quite the interesting basis for the NWR fast passenger service coaches. The one problem I can see with this design is the lack of a corridor, which brings me on to my next idea...

Stanier Period III Coaches

The LMS Stanier P3 Coaches seem like a perfect fit for the NWR's express services in my opinion. I struggled to find information on these, oddly enough, so take this history with a grain of salt.

They were built from 1933 onwards and could be found all over the LMS system on everything from stopping trains to expresses, only really being phased out with the introduction of British Railways Mark 1 coaches in the 1950s. These both seem like excellent standardised fits for the NWR's coach roster, let me know your thoughts if you have any.

I'll see you in the next one.

Cheerio!

[dolphin1812]

Cosette!

There's a strong implication that the Rue Plumet house is an opportunity for romance, both through earlier descriptions of the garden (the emphasis on youth, weddings, love, etc) and lines like this:

"The convent is a compression which must last the whole life, if it is to triumph over the human heart. On leaving the convent, Cosette could not have found anything sweeter or more dangerous than the house in the Rue Plumet. It was the commencement of solitude with the commencement of liberty, a closed garden, but a sharp, kind, rich, voluptuous, and odorous nature; there were the same dreams as in the convent, but glimpses could be caught of young men,—it was a grating, but it looked on the street."

Most obviously, the passage mentions that Cosette could see young men through the grating, but the language used to describe the garden ("voluptuous") feels quite sensual. Romance would also be the specific subject Jean Valjean and the nuns couldn't/wouldn't prepare her for; if the nuns ever had experience with that, they swore it off when they became nuns, and Jean Valjean has never experienced romance ("Jean Valjean had never loved anything [. . . . ] [He] had never been father, lover, husband, or friend" - LM 2.4.3). I think Hugo centers romance and relationships for young women in a way that's uncomfortable (even if it's unfortunately realistic in some ways, given that they were financially very important [the struggle of having enough money if unmarried as a woman] and risky because of social pressures [like Fantine being ostracized because she had a child without being married]). Part of the discomfort is also from the way these societal expectations of gender blend with Hugo's ideas, like his notion that Cosette is especially lost because she doesn't have a mother to guide her with the combined experience of being a "virgin" and a "wife." Still, it's true that romance would be difficult for Cosette because she doesn't have someone to easily communicate with on the subject. Jean Valjean is the only person she has right now, and it's not a topic he's very aware of. Rather than the framing here, then, it's a bit more sympathetic if we take it as another instance of the importance of a broad network of social support. Romance would not be as dangerous to Cosette if she had a variety of people to learn from, just as it would have been safer for Fantine if she had had people to fall back on after being abandoned or if people had advised her more directly in the first place about what to expect from a student-grisette romance.

The house is also mixed for Cosette in that it contains remnants of a cage. The convent is the true "compression," so she's free now that she's no longer there. Still, the psychological cage might remain; we don't know if she'll break free of it. The grating is part-cage as well, giving her more freedom than the convent but still constraining her. She can see the world now, but she's not fully in it, either.

Most importantly, Cosette is still a child! Hugo's speculating on her future here, but Cosette just wants to find interesting insects! Her love of searching for creatures feels like a return to the gamins, who do the same when playing; it's a shared trait that defines them as children, regardless of their different backgrounds. They're all still young, so they play.

Her love for her father is so sweet. I adore that she tries to fight against Jean Valjean's total lack of self-esteem by demanding that he treat himself better, or else she'll treat herself the same way:

""Father, I feel very cold in your room; why don't you have a carpet and a stove?"

"My dear child, there are so many persons more deserving than myself who have not even a roof to cover them."

"Then, why is there fire in my room and everything that I want?"

"Because you are a woman and a child."

"Nonsense! then men must be cold and hungry?""

Cosette knows that Valjean would never make her suffer, so if she makes herself live like him, she won't actually live badly. He'll just raise his own standard of living to make sure she's comfortable. Valjean's love for Cosette is one of his main defining traits, but she really loves him, too, and it's great to see that expressed!

I also love that their bond transcends societal expectations and is unique to them. In the passage above, for instance, Cosette questions gendered expectations over what men, women, and children should respectively tolerate, rejecting the idea that women and children should be prioritized over men. Part of it is certainly that she knows her father could be living more comfortably, but it's also because she loves him and doesn't want him to suffer needlessly based on any justification, whether it be others' poverty or gender. She sees Jean Valjean as both her father and mother as well, calling him "father" and imagining him like this:

"When she thought at night before she fell asleep, as she had no very clear idea of being Jean Valjean's daughter, she imagined that her mother's soul had passed into this good man, and had come to dwell near her. When he was sitting down she rested her cheek on his white hair, and silently dropped a tear, while saying to herself, "Perhaps this man is my mother!""

It's especially moving because Valjean sees himself in a similar way, feeling that he is her father because she needed one just as he needed a child, but also "[feeling] pangs like a mother" upon adopting her (LM 2.4.3). Fantine is ever-present in their relationship (and Cosette's dream was both beautiful and sad), but not entirely in an upsetting way. Valjean's feelings are unclear, and Cosette loves her mother, but in a vague way, since she doesn't remember her. But in a spiritual/religious way, Valjean and her mother's spirits have merged to her, preserving what she's heard about her mother's love and combining it with her lived experience of love. It's very sweet, and it makes sense that she would imagine her mother this way after such a religious upbringing.

Unfortunately, the metaphorical prison of the convent and the cage of the grating aren't the only dark shadow in this chapter. The last line is a bit ominous. For context, here it is in English and in French:

"The poor wretch, inundated with an angelic joy, trembled; he assured himself with transport that this would last his whole life; he said to himself that he had not really suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God in the depths of his soul for having allowed him—the wretched—to be thus loved by this innocent being."

"Le pauvre homme tressaillait inondé d'une joie angélique; il s'affirmait avec transport que cela durerait toute la vie; il se disait qu'il n'avait vraiment pas assez souffert pour mériter un si radieux bonheur, et il remerciait Dieu, dans les profondeurs de son âme, d'avoir permis qu'il fût ainsi aimé, lui misérable, par cet être innocent."

Jean Valjean is still a "misérable," and he defines his worth through suffering. He's happy with Cosette, which is wonderful! But he also thinks he doesn't deserve her, even if she clearly thinks otherwise. His joy, then, is in constant tension with his status as a misérable, and while Cosette tries to help - she's making him live decently! - she also doesn't know why he has this mindset. Jean Valjean has love, but he still carries the logic of the prison system with him, and by that logic, he will never "deserve" happiness.

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

I know you are a fan of FutureRust and It’ s A Splendid Life. I think that AU is great. It makes me wonder how the timeline works if Thomas is never made? Or Edward, Henry, Gordon etc 

What do you think? 

Ooooooohhh. Hmmmmmm.

Okay, first of all, for those who haven't read Splendid Life (shame!) or just need a recap [SPOILERS]: in this fanfic James gets to observe what the NWR would have been like if he'd never been built, and the answer is [AGAIN! SPOILERS! THERE IS NO TURNING BACK AFTER THIS!] the railway failed to expand, faces inevitable bankruptcy, and everyone's miserable.

For what it's worth, I think the logic of A Splendid Life is excellent if FC1 couldn't have bought James or a mechanically similar engine at a knock-down price. However, I do think that realistically FC1 could have found "another James" throughout all the decommissioning the LMS was doing in the '20s and '30s. They would probably have been a little less robust than James but he could have certainly gotten a good mixed-traffic engine for scrap prices. I do think the NWR might have been poorer and not in a position to come out of WWII swinging, and yes I don't think FC1 would have picked up Percy in particular because he wouldn't have been looking at the exact time Percy was on the market, but then that's true of quite a few canon characters that FC1 does buy in Splendid Life anyway.

So, not to ruin the story, but as I think through this I'd argue James's absence has less impact than the absence of many of the others. He'd be, like, middle-of-the-pack in terms of essentialness. This is in no way a knock on Splendid Life; it's still one of my favorite ttte fics.

[END OF SPOILERS]

Let me take the rest of the engines in a different order. Kinda going from easiest to hardest to write about. For "etc." I will throw in Percy and Toby, the other two FC1 engines.

Gordon: I think it's very simple—without Gordon in the timeline, the NWR likely goes bankrupt before we even get to the Depression. That doesn't mean rail on Sodor disappears but I think the system would be absorbed by the LMS. Topham Hatt I might have been kept on as a director and manager but he wouldn't be able to run things in his own way. LMS engines would largely take over the network and the other tender engines would have been scrapped by WWII. Percy and Toby never come to Sodor. Thomas probably lasts the longest, on a Sodor railway that looks quite different. He might have still been promoted to branch line but that would have to be before the LMS takeover. It's also possible that without the revenue from Gordon's services the extension of the Ffarquhar line is not completed and so an engine isn't needed to run it.

Toby: If Toby didn't exist, Thomas might have been fitted with cowcatchers and sideplates and never heard the end of it from most of the other engines. Alternatively (despite what FC1 says offhand when he's on the spot and discouraged), FC1 might have simply acquired a different tank engine. One possibility is outfitting Percy with the kit and replacing him as Tidmouth station pilot earlier (possibly even with Duck! a long shot, but the NWR was nationalised by then...)

Percy: If Percy hadn't been made, I think FC1 simply buys another cheap secondhand industrial engine (but it's unlikely he happens to buy one with Percy's spunk and pluck so that changes the dynamic of the main cast in some ways). I think it's unlikely that FC1 simply would have never found another candidate but it would be very interesting if he couldn't. In that improbable scenario, I don't think FC1 manages to completely break the Strike Trio's action. I think he'd have to continue appeasing them in some sort of ways. At the same time, the issue is never completely resolved one way or another—it just festers. I think FC1 would rely heavily on Edward taking up residence at Tidmouth instead of Wellsworth but operations suffer accordingly and I still don't think Edward could be station pilot full time since he's also basically the rescue engine and banker at this time... This all would honestly set the railway on a fairly toxic path, with the big engines continuing to be unhappy with the ad-hoc situation at Tidmouth, continuing to have power struggles with FC1, and probably continuing with their mean-girls bullshit until there is full-out enmity between them and Edward + Thomas.

Realistically, I think there's plenty of middle ground between canon, where FC1 resolves the situation so quickly, and an AU where he never gets things in order. But I do think if "Trouble in the Sheds" had dragged on for any length of time that the dynamic among the fleet would have been very different and therefore the cast of the Railway Series books is different—if the Thin Clergyman is charmed enough to write it at all.

Edward: On the one hand, I doubt Edward's non-existence leaves a unique hole in the early workforce the way that the others' would—if there hadn't been an Edward I think the NWR would have simply begged, borrowed, or stolen some other Furness engine of similar vintage, maybe a little older, maybe a little less willing, but I think they'd have muddled along in a similar way... in the short term. In the long term, though, I believe Edward's absence would be very telling. In many ways he's really the heart of the (NWR) cast and his influence on the others is subtle but significant. Not in that the cast would be any more foolhardy, the railway would have its same chequered safety record—I really don't think Edward's frequent advice of "be careful!" really helped the others to learn sense any faster... but I do think it's more he influenced the whole joint to be a kinder, warmer, more forgiving sort of place than it would have otherwise been. Without Edward there is no counter to the early-years dynamic of Every Engine For Himself, Zero-Sum Competition. FC1 would have still sent away the worst influences and battered some morals or whatever into the others but, I think, at a slower rate, and the change is all imposed from the top... without Edward there I don't think the fleet becomes a family. It's also quite possible that it never crosses FC1's mind to consider Thomas to run the Ffarquhar branch so There's That.

Thomas: In contrast, Thomas's coming to the island is such a mysterious fluke that there's no "it would have just been another engine." I think this is another situation where the NWR would be missing something vital—certainly its greatest claim to fame, in the long run!—but they wouldn't know it, you know? They wouldn't know what they were missing. In a Jamesless world FC1 might sometimes wistfully say to himself that it would be nice if he had a some real pizzazz and panache on his fleet, and in an world without Edward I think FC1 would be wishing that he could've somehow socialized the engines a bit better, so they were all a little more chill. But Thomas, man. He was a gift from the gods. He was a strike of blessed lightning. Everything about Sodor's vibe would be a little worse without Thomas and they wouldn't even know it. How sad is that?

Okay, getting down to brass tacks. I don't think his impact on the workforce would be so obvious. I think even in their poorest and earliest days the NWR could have scrounged up another shunter somehow and until he was vacuum-fitted and rebuilt Thomas wasn't good for much else, and without Thomas they would have just fit up another of their tank engines for the Ffarquhar line—it might have even been cheaper. I think the community along the Ffarquhar line wouldn't have been so attached to the railway without Thomas's charisma but again, the NWR probably wouldn't notice that. I do wonder if Charles Hatt would have married into the Ffarquhar Quarry owner's family without Thomas's stellar relationship-building to highlight that area of the island or not.

The Thin Clergyman still becomes a friend of the NWR and writes a Railway Series that is a thing for a while, but it doesn't really take off the same way without Thomas and the series probably ends sooner. I do think in this timeline the RWS has enough of a cultural impact that there is still some merch, maybe even a TV series, but I don't think it becomes a franchise in the same way as now; it's more of a trend-setter. I think it would inspire other book/TV series and that one of them would probably eclipse the RWS and become the "Thomas the Tank Engine"-equivalent brand name in-universe.

All this said, it is fascinating how the events of the series really don't hang all that much on Thomas at all. He's so very on the sidelines for most of the "golden era" of the RWS. I don't think the railway would have failed or struggled without him, though I think the Ffarquhar line itself wouldn't be as busy or important.

One big change is that I think, without Thomas, Gordon remains at least 50% more insufferable throughout his whole life. There's something about that cheeky tank engine that humbled him some. I know he puts Thomas in his place in "Thomas and Gordon," but—nevertheless!—Gordon met his match when he was condemned to put up with Thomas the Tank Engine mouthing off to him every day for years on end.

Henry: If Henry is never built? Hmm... how much changes?

I think things do change but he's the hardest to quantify. As far as the fortunes of the railway, honestly in the pre-RWS days they are probably better off. FC1 can spend the money he spent buying Henry on another engine, one that may not be as theoretically powerful but one that is more reliable. No need for Welsh coal, no need for a Flying Kipper rebuild. But I think the railway suffers as far as never really being pushed to develop a higher code of loyalty or understanding. This would be most notable in Gordon and FC1 (and, as they are both huge influences on the railway has a whole, these would make for some big ripple effects).

Without Henry, I think Gordon's character development might not get off the ground until much later. I think it still would have eventually grown up just because he was born with the soul of an elder statesengine, but in this timeline the seeds for his change aren't planted so early so he just remains Insufferable Unapproachable Bigshot for a few decades longer.

As for FC1, I think Henry is probably the catalyst of his character development—I do think the others played into it too but I think Henry had the single biggest impact on us going from the good-for-little-but-plot-device-and-comic-relief person we meet of "The Sad Story of Henry" to The Fat Controller. Before Henry, FC1 was an arrogant and inflexible man. Clever, and enterprising, and his stubbornness was probably key to his career thus far... and I doubt he was devoid of some nicer sentiments... but he is not yet the man he becomes. Getting swindled by Henry's builder was a humbling moment for him. Henry also gave him a dramatic illustration of the limits of just trying to get people (well, engines, but I don't doubt this lesson spilled over to people) to do things by force and authority and shouting. He probably regretted escalating things at once but found himself in a bind and had to learn the hard way that you should not make threats if you don't really want to follow through with them! Henry's pervasive mechanical issues probably also taught FC1 greater patience and understanding, and Henry's triumphant turn-around would have ensured that FC1 committed himself going forward to rather high ideals.

I think FC1 tried so hard to eke a "win" from the Henry situation at least in part for his own ego/reputation—if he gave up on Henry, he had to admit utter defeat in the matter of buying him. But I think by the end of the whole thing FC1 had become a different person. In short, without a Henry I/Henry II saga, I don't think we have a man so committed to saving his engines even in the face of nationalisation (and Edward rattling about like crazy at 55—a perfectly reasonable age to withdraw an engine from service), or a successor who assisted in Henry's triumph of a rebuild and who goes on to defy BR's modernisation plan completely.

Therefore, without Henry, the NWR still survives.

But also? It isn't really our NWR.

(It's probably fully dieselised. And D7101, while not rude to their faces, always considered that steam engines were kinda clapped-out.)

ALL THAT SAID... while writing this I came up with another AU involving Henry. But in this one he proves to be a perfectly reasonable, decently reliable engine who can handle the Express on his own from the beginning. This means he kinda isn't really Henry any more, but. It's hilarious. Because Gordon arrives too. You thought the NWR was boisterous enough with one haughty egoistical Pacific racing along the main line and struggling to live up to their own boasting? Try two of themmmmmmm! And they loathe each other!!!!

(I'm actually dying... it takes Sodor the Unnecessarily Extra Island and makes it 94% MORE EXTRA)

[radiomonkeys2]

A Yaban Watches 2 Saiyans, courtesy of Salvamakoto

Yulaan watches more Dragon Ball. The inherent absurdity is not lost on her. But that's why she's doing it. Everyone told her she needed to watch Dragon Ball Z, referencing it the moment she arrived on Earth Prime. So here she is, watching the original Japanese airing. (And don't worry, Zillennial Americans, she does also see the cringily nostalgic FUNimation Ball Z)

What's interesting is that she actually prefers the other two major wuxia/kung fu fantasy shonen anime over Dragon Ball— Hokuto no Ken and Yu Yu Hakusho. Not that she doesn't like Dragon Ball. She just prefers the bloodier and gorier stuff. She's already a Saiyan, even if she's specifically a Yaban rather than a Getabaru like Kakarotto and Bejita.

On Friday after school, there is no fighting ring, and Yulaan instead decides to head over to Chale’s house to spend the weekend there, and the first thing they do after watching Toonami (especially FUNi Ball Z) is decide to head out to Blockbuster. They’re getting pizza, Mountain Dew, Doritos, the whole shebang, and then they’re going to raid Blockbuster. They have to stress to Yulaan they only mean that as slang; don’t actually steal stuff. Kevelnege will hold her to that.

Esmeralda wants to watch Toy Story, and she can do that in the living room while the boys get the upstairs room. Yulaan commits to memory to get her Toy Story; Yulaan herself wants to watch some old grindhouse and adult comedies like Master of the Flying Guillotine and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. But they have to go to Blockbuster first.

I think it finally dawned on me that LMS's first real arc (a slice of life arc within a slice of life story) is essentially made for a tiny handful of Zillennial manchildren geeks who:

Were reasonably young, preferably children between the years of 1997-2004

Indulged heavily in whitebread middle-class Anglo-American pop culture, especially for kids (e.g. Toonami, Pokémon, Blockbuster video, old school Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, pop punk, X-treme sports, etc.)

Are nostalgic enough to care

Aren't put off by the idea of sharing that indulgence in nostalgia with a mook villain archetype from an 80s Japanese children's show

Also enjoyed a particular slice of early internet history

Basically the RebelTaxi audience.

This is, thankfully, the closest I ever plan on Little Miss Savage dancing towards the core of the fire of utter schmaltz trash, mostly just to get it out of my system and maybe make me hate the taste of it going forward, because after this, there's much different stuff happening. Consider this just the "nostalgic Zillennial manchild hook"

[dynared]

One thing in the back of my mind is JDS and LM may be on the kallura is a mistake and allurance should have always been cannon. Lance insting it should be lance and allura not keith and allura made me think that. Though ending with allura dying seems to go against that. I mean they basically wasted the first and given WEPs disapointment only time allurance is cannon.

From everything that's been said about Voltron Legendary Defender, there are actually multiple stories about why it all fell apart and the license is now with Amazon (although like I noted yesterday, there is a greater than zero chance the Filipino GMA Network may not just release its live-action Voltes V, but a live-action Daimos before Voltron hits theaters).

If you believe Bob Koplar's Voltron panels, the man hated what Legendary Defender did in multiple spots. He hated Allurance, hated the race swaps, hated Shiro, and hated that the giant robot show was allergic to the giant robot. The relationship fully fell apart when Universal rejected a David Hayter-penned live-action movie script that used Legendary Defender as its base, and if Koplar is to be believed, while he has nothing but respect for Solid Snake (the man did write the screenplay for the first two X-Men films), the final product, AND I QUOTE, "Did not get Voltron". So once Universal/Dreamworks let the license expire (by not greenlighting any sort of continuation or separate adaptation), the rights lapsed and reverted to WEP, with Bob all too happy to take the license back and shop it around. That being said, the romance element was one of many things Koplar hated, rather than it being the only thing he thought was bad. And judging by the commercial, non-Tumblr/Twitter response to the film in comparison to the utterly insane bidding war the pitch that was based on the original show garnered, Bob was correct.

The actors behind the show presented a much more mundane reason for the show falling apart during a panel in 2021. During said panels, the actors CLAIMED that Legendary Defender was supposed to have a movie about an older Lance going to find Allura and reviving her. However, in their account of the story, when Dreamworks signed a deal with Hulu, they were legally unable to make the movie happen. And then the license expired due to reasons they were unaware of.

Bluntly put, while it's feasible, the story doesn't really add up.

Yes, Dreamworks did sign an exclusivity deal with Hulu (that seems to have since expired). Only that deal did not prevent the continuation of numerous Dreamworks animations, including the Boss Baby show, which is running to this day, and She-Ra, which after it ended and bombed, went to Amazon Prime for its next incarnation, not Hulu or even Peacock (which is owned by NBC Universal, Dreamworks's parent company).

If the Legendary Defender deal did expire, absolutely nothing was stopping Universal, had they wanted to, from putting a new Voltron show into production to retain the license, even if it was some sort of Teen Titans Go-esque comedy.

Universal itself at this point was actually going through significant cost-cutting. They actually dumped a few films they were going to distribute, most notably Detective Pikachu, to save on marketing costs.

I'm of the belief that there was a VLD animated grand finale movie in the cards, but after the show tanked commercially, the movie production went south, and it was clear Koplar was pissed and Universal thought the license was dead (by their own hand), Bob took the license back through the license expiration clause, and when he set out to restart the live-action movie, made it a point to make it the opposite of all the things he hated about Voltron Legendary Defender. Which seems to be "most everything," although yes, that does include the romance in the show.

[gravalicious]

“In May 2019, Claire Fox was elected as an MEP for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.[1,2] Fox was a writer for the website Spiked Online and was the founder of the Institute of Ideas (now the Academy of Ideas). She had also been a long-time member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) until its dissolution in 1996 and co-publisher of LM (previously Living Marxism and the journal of the RCP). In the same European Parliament elections, James Heartfield, another former RCP member and contributor to both LM and Spiked, challenged the seat of Yorkshire and the Humber for the Brexit Party, but was not elected.[3] In the British general election in December 2019, another seven Brexit Party candidates had previously been given a platform by Spiked (including former RCP member James Woudhuysen).[4] In addition to this, one of Boris Johnson’s advisors and co-author of the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto, Munira Mirza, had previously contributed to Spiked and worked for Fox’s Institute of Ideas.[5] The website itself saw Brexit as a demonstration of democracy against the ruling elites and had championed both the Brexit Party and Boris Johnson for their pursuit of Britain leaving the European Union. In August 2020, Fox was elevated to the House of Lords as a non-affiliated peer, viewed by some as another extension of the Johnson government’s ‘war on woke’.[6] Journalists, academics and political activists have increasingly referred to this as the RCP/LM/Spiked network (or similar variants, such as the LM network) and explored how the RCP grew into a series of interconnected organisations, publications and individuals in the 1990s and 2000s.[7] Part of the intrigue of this network is the trajectory of the leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party almost en masse from ultra-left Trotskyism in the 1980s to right libertarianism in the 2010s. Originally, a splinter group called the Revolutionary Communist Tendency (until 1981), the RCT/RCP was regarded by many other groups on the left as sectarian and controversialist. After the party dissolved itself in 1996, several of the party’s leading members, including the leader Frank Furedi, have managed to develop a media profile, becoming regular pundits on television, on the radio, in the mainstream press and online. In recent times, it has been revealed that the US-based Charles Koch Foundation had given Spiked!’s US arm $300,000 ‘to produce public debates in the US about free speech’.[8] While this trajectory has been explored somewhat by journalists and bloggers, the history of the RCP has yet to be explored in depth by historians of British politics and the left.”

Evan Smith - A Platform for Working Class Unity? The Revolutionary Communist Party’s The Red Front and the pre-history of Living Marxism/Spiked Online in the 1980s (2022) [Contemporary British History]

[weirdowithaquill]

Traintober 2023: Day 19 - Revolutionary

Where did that Iconic Phrase come from?:

To understand the struggles that the steam and diesel engines faced in the 1950s and 1960s, we must first understand what exactly was meant by Diesel when he said: “We are revolutionary.” It’s a single line that holds a lot of hidden weight, particularly when considering how the diesels came to not only know such a line, but regurgitate it over and over again. It’s a common line from diesels – they claim that they are revolutionary, that they are superior, and that steam engines spoil their image – but why?

What led the diesels to hold such deep prejudices against steam locomotives, and why is it that they are so adamant about their superiority? Well, I have two theories:

Firstly, that this bravado was designed as propaganda by British Railways to justify their actions in scrapping thousands of steam engines as well as to increase loyalty for the company through diesel locomotives, a plan which utilised the railway rulebook to reinforce their ideology in these diesels’ minds and create a generation of unquestioningly loyal engines to a company that was notably suffering from strikes, low revenue and pre-nationalisation infighting.

Secondly, that this bravado was invented by the diesels to try and cover up their own shortcomings caused by the rushed nature of the Modernisation Plan of 1955, which saw British Railways give up on their original plan to slowly electrify the railway network while keeping steam engines until electric engines could replace them in favour of scrapping all the steam engines and replacing them with diesels.

Let’s break these two different ideas down and I’ll let you all decide which you like more.

Option 1:

British Railways was losing £300,000 a day as early as 1961, and it can be easily surmised that this extremely unprofitable position was not a new one. British Railways was disliked by the extremely antagonistic pre-nationalisation employees or engines – LNER, LMS, GWR and SR locomotives could be often found arguing in stations, further degrading public opinion of the company. Early BR steam locomotives were often sent to bad areas – such as London and Manchester – to try and create unity through a desire to mentor the younger engines. This in part worked, were it not for the scores of pre-nationalisation designs still being produced – especially of GWR designs. This extremely divided workforce left BR with very few options on how to bring unity to the company and restore their public image.

Enter diesels. These were almost completely new to the railways of Britain, with only a few experimental types and shunting classes existing before the 1950s, partially due to the work of Sir Nigel Gresley and his A4 Pacifics, which matching the diesels of the 1930s in terms of speed while hauling significantly more. This meant that they were different to what had existed in the British Isles prior to the war, and their differences would make it harder for steam engines to integrate these new diesel classes into their own cliques. British Railways decided that in order to protect their own image, as well as phase out the ‘more difficult’ steam engines, they would develop a banner for diesels to group themselves under – they found a unifier for diesels: “We are Revolutionary.”

It’s strong branding, for starters. The diesels now have a simple, catchy slogan to rally behind and that gives them a sense of importance that leads them to utilise it against the steam engines (as suggested “gently” by British Rail), leading to the diesels developed a single, united clique which is loyal to their railway company against the ‘old, outdated’ steam engines. It also was given to them by British Railways, furthering the company’s control over their engines and building a strong connection between the image of modern diesels and being a loyal part of the company. In other words, this was propaganda fed to the diesels purely so they would repeat it and create an image on both the railways and in the public’s mind of diesel traction being this great, modern revolution to Britain’s railway network that would change everything.

This, of course, failed badly – but considering that in the 1960s and 1970s Japan, Germany and France all developed high-speed electric trains capable of 200 kph while Britain’s railway closed rail lines, dealt with innumerable failed diesel types and lost its profitable freight traffic to the roads.

Option 2:

This option is perhaps a more interesting one, personally – because this option sees British Railways adopt the slogan after its invention in order to try and recover public face. Instead, the slogan “We are revolutionary” was developed by early diesel locomotives in the 1950s to try and promote themselves as modern and exciting as a way to cover up their own shortcomings – and let’s be clear; these diesels had a lot of shortcomings. The Metrovicks alone had enough mechanical faults to make an engineer run away screaming, while also having windows that fell out at speed. Other diesels caught fire, or belched out thick smoke, or just didn’t work almost all the time. The Pilot Scheme of the 1950s and 1960s was an absolute failure, all things considered – and while there were successful designs which became the backbone of the British Network (the Class 20s, Class 47s and Class 37s are all still in revenue-earning service, sixty years later), most of these classes were a terrible investment. And they knew it.

The public knew it too – the failings of British Railways was major news, both in parliament and in everyday households. The diesels needed a Public Relations victory – and fast. Remember, the Modernisation Plan of 1955 was a modification of the original intention of BR, which was to use steam locomotives until they electrified (a method used across continental Europe) and were diesels to fail any more than they already were, the company could have very easily shelved dieselisation in favour of this potentially safer (and less likely to catch on fire) option.

So, they developed a slogan to recite to the public: “We are Revolutionary”, and they got their most promising diesel classes (the Class 08s, Deltics, Class 40s and other successful designs) to repeat the line as often as possible around the public. The public caught on, and while it did not reverse the fortunes of the company, it did renew BR’s interest in diesel engines.

Either way, the slogan “We are Revolutionary” was developed specifically for diesel engines, and was used as propaganda against steam engines to try and cement the modernity and superiority of diesel traction in the minds of the public.

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