#South-East England

[bulletines-news]

Train Strikes to Halt Most Trains in South-East England on Tuesday

Tue 7 May 2024 00:00 EDT Commuter routes in and out of London are set to be severely affected as train drivers begin three days of rolling train strikes amid a six-day overtime ban. The train strikes, organized by the Aslef union, will impact most trains in south-east England on Tuesday. Key Points: Strike Duration: The strike will last for 24 hours at each English operator between Tuesday and…

[espiritogato]

See You There! 🏳️‍🌈

[thoughtartistry]

Love the white cliffs here.

[thecurioustale]

The "Middle West"

I was recently watching Trump speak (not something I typically do 🤢), and the most interesting thing he said had nothing to do with anything he was actually talking about: It was that he used the term Middle West to refer to that generally north-central part of the United States, centered on the Mississippi River, that is neither the South nor the Northeast (nor the Mid-Atlantic, but that's really just a subcategory of the Northeast that Northeasterns use to not get lumped in with each other).

We all know it today as the Midwest. But in times past it was much more commonly known as the Middle West.

(Tangent: It is also one of many geographical region-name reminders of our national East Coast beginnings, as America has like six different kinds of "West": the Midwest, the Southwest, the (Pacific) Northwest, the Mountain West / Interior West, the West Coast / Pacific West—and that's not counting the deprecated terms (such as "Far West," i.e. distinguished from the Midwest) or the old Northwest (which would've referred to places like Ohio and (what we know as) West Virginia)!)

Over the course of the 20th century, "Midwest" became an increasingly common form of the term, eventually overtaking "Middle West" in popularity and, by our lifetimes, completely replacing it. The only people who still use "Middle West" today are very old. I'm only aware of the term's existence because I'm a fan of midcentury media and if you go watch (for example) old Dragnet episodes from the 1950s you'll hear the term used.

I was looking at the Google Ngram Viewer to get a sense of the relative usage frequencies of these terms, and I noticed something interesting: Not only has "Middle West" been driven almost extinct from active usage, but "Midwest" itself has also declined precipitously in the 21st century. People today are not calling the Midwest the "Midwest," at least not with the frequency and relevancy they once did. I was curious if this was another permutation of the usage, so I also looked up "Midwestern" (which I included in the link above), thinking that maybe people nowadays are calling it the clunkier "the Midwestern states" / "the Midwestern US," but the adjectival has declined in step with "Midwest." It really does seem to be that people are just using this geographical category less often.

Perhaps unsurprisingly: the sociopolitical cohesiveness of the Midwest has significantly diminished over time. I think most Midwesterners would still recognize and affiliate with the term if you applied it of them to their faces, but increasingly I think many of them do not think of it in their daily lives as a personal or cultural identifier. Which has many fascinating implications that I'm not going to get into.

(Another Tangent: I feel like I've talked about specifically this "Middle West / Midwest" thing on Tumblr before, but I feel that way about half of everything because after all I've been writing down my thoughts for over 20 years and I've been having thoughts for considerably longer than that, and it's often not clear to me what I've talked about publicly and where.)

Anyway, this entire post is really just me scratching the itch of verbal brain noise about the orange guy using a term in a public address that I never hear people use in the present day. A little piece of lost language, hearkening back to a completely different era and world.

[aisphotostuff]

Little Lilac Flora..London by Adam Swaine Via Flickr: Beautiful little flowers in the wild section of peckham rye park by the bee hives..

[goldenstarprincesses]

While I understand the historical significance of canon nyo!Englands dress being a call back to a WW1 nurses uniform, I have never been a fan of the overall design. Despite actually liking how all the other canon nyo characters were drawn

I'd like to propose the Pit Brow Women of Northern England as another source of historical inspiration

[fluentisonus]

why did they do it like this

[xhanisai]

every time i (a mixed race girl) come across a post that’s basically saying that Marinette, a mixed race girl, isn’t Chinese enough, my urge to set hellfire on this world increases by 100000000%.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

South Downs, East Sussex, England

By Lloyd Lane

[filmap]

La flor / The Flower Mariano Llinás. 2018

Hovercraft Portsmouth PO5 3PA, UK See in map

See in imdb

[plangentia]

having not driven for three months, why will i have done 1000 miles in a week by sunday

[catdotjpeg]

Palestine [Action] actionists broke into Elbit’s Instro Precision, an Israeli weapons factory in Kent, UK. Causing the ‘highly secure’ factory extensive damage.

-- Eye on Palestine, 17 Jun 2024

Palestine Action say that their activists targeted Instro Precision, a subsidiary of Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, and the offices of Canadian Scotiabank, which activists say has not completely divested from Elbit. Instro Precision, which described itself as a leading supplier of “support equipment for military and commercial electro-optical sensors”, had their Kent factory targeted overnight. Activists blocked entrances and others invaded the facory where thay began “dismantling technology, machinery and parts” involved in the “manufacture of scopes, sights, and targeting equipment for Israel’s exterminationist military”, the group said in a press release.

-- From "Palestine Action targets Kent arms factory and Scotiabank offices in London" from Freedom, 17 Jun 2024

[thoughtartistry]

[aisphotostuff]

Onopordum acanthium.. Thistle - National Flower of Scotland by Adam Swaine Via Flickr: The thistle is the flower of Scotland and one of its most recognisable symbols. Since King Alexander III, it has been Scotland’s national emblem

[tavtarnish]

Ghost would love snowy weather and is flabbergasted when he sees snow because it rarely snows in England. He is fully convinced that Johnny brought the Scottish weather with him when it snowed the first time they shared Christmas time together.