genuinely so scary that you can't access the page on the ssc website that guides you through changing your sex designation. so so fucking scary. they are already making our lives harder. they are already taking what little resources we have.

Calling all Brits on this hellsite.

We all saw Elon Musk do the nazi salute at the Trump inauguration. We know that he is influencing and fanning the flames of right wing political parties.

And that very well may include ours.

Because Elon Musk has pledged to donate $100 million to the Reform party. He has since mentioned that it might be hard to give such a large sum now.

But I don’t think we should take our chances. And I think we can agree that letting billionaires influence our countries politics is a terrible idea.

If you also agree here’s a link to a Parliament petition.

It calls for the government to remove loopholes that allow wealthy foreign individuals to make donations into UK political parties (e.g. by funnelling through UK registered companies).

As it is a parliament petition the government are required to debate it in parliament. But for that to happen it needs to reach 100,000 signatures.

Non British folk I’m afraid you guys can’t sign but I encourage you guys to reblog so that more people can see this.

Part 1/6

I could be alone in this .. but um...

fuck, I'll just say it

does anyone on this site like snacks

Britt Allcroft, creator of the Thomas and Friends TV show, has passed away. It's the beginning of the year and there's already a celebrity death. She brought joy to millions worldwide through Thomas, and transformed the little tank engine into the global icon that he is today. May she rest in peace.

Thank you, Britt.

ALT

Dumb RWS Headcanons: How Do the Faces Work?

I know it's kind of silly but I really like the idea that the engines' faces are actual physical objects.

• Vehicles' faceplates are in theory a single piece of metal other than the eyelids, but it changes shape and moves.
• Faceplates are manufactured as "blanks" with nondescript features. The first time an engine is steamed or otherwise activated and able to move under its own power, their face warps itself into shape. Within a class there's usually some family resemblance, but no one truly knows what an engine will look like until they're fired up! Twins sometimes happen when two or more engines are built at the same time and place, but identical twins are a small minority of engines, especially steam engines! They're more common the more standardized and mass-produced a vehicle is. Maybe 10% of steam engines and 20-30% of older diesels and electrics are twins/triplets - but this number has risen as multiple units and trainsets become more common. Sometimes engines call themselves twins even if they're not identical - Tallyln and Dolgoch's faces might not be the same as their Sudrian counterparts!
• The face is not the center of an engine's sentience, as evidenced by the fact that some engines get on just fine without them! Why do people bother putting faces on them, then?... Honestly it's tradition. Modern people might be more comfortable having a conversation with a machine, but steam locomotives were invented not only over a century before computer-synthesized voices but several decades before the phonograph! Victorian-era British people were not comfortable entrusting their lives to an expressionless machine capable of speech and malice unless they could make eye contact with it.
• The reason engines' faces are usually pale grey is because they're made of metals like white bronze, white brass, cupronickel, or nickel silver (note: this is a copper/nickel/zinc alloy and does not contain silver). These alloys are highly corrosion-resistant. Steam engines' smokeboxes are usually painted black because black paints are cheap, IIRC at the time were the only thing heat-resistant enough, and also coal dust and soot are less obvious on it. But the movement of an engine's face will cause paint to flake off very quickly. Theoretically making an engine's face out of colored metals or polishing it to be super shiny is possible but it's not done much, at least in the anglosphere. Some diesel and electric engines have faceplates made of anodized aluminum, (which lets them be the color of the surrounding bodywork), or stainless steel
• Yes, you can remove and replace an engine's face! Usually this doesn't need to be done unless they're in a severe crash: steam engines' faces are made of thick metal and are supernaturally strong and ductile, and very corrosion-resistant, and will be just about the last thing to go if an engine is left to rust. If it is replaced, usually a blank won't warp to the right shape until the engine's fired, so the one time faceplates are specially sculpted for a specific engine is with preserved engines whose boilers can't be fired any time soon.
• You shouldn't put an engine's face on a different engine. It will end up looking like the engine "wearing" it is supposed to look, but it's painful and results in the face developing cracks prematurely.
• Also don't mess with the face of a scrapped engine. Don't use it on another engine, don't mount it on a wall or put it in a museum, just don't. Just lay it to rest by melting it down. You don't have the luxury of "not being superstitious" with the remains of a being that demonstrably had no physical means of speaking, moving, or changing its facial expressions. Human ghosts may be scary but relatively harmless specters of mist, wind, and whispers: the ghost of a machine is a poltergeist with the same power over fire, metal, electricity, inertia, and building-leveling amounts of pressurized steam that it did in life, but no longer limited to influencing its own body. The vengeful spirit of a departed steam engine doesn't rattle doorknobs or knock vases off tables, it causes unexplained gas leaks, failed pilot lights, broken chains or cables or hydraulic jacks, glitched carbon monoxide detectors, and water heaters or boilers that won't shut off and the emergency relief valves inexplicably jam.
• Usually faces for non-powered rolling stock are made of carved wood or are painted on. Putting metal faces on them is mostly a Sodor thing, and possibly the GWR.
• I'm not sure what engines' eyes are made of... maybe glass, or maybe they're hollow metal spheres? Either way the pupil is actually transparent and the inside surface of the eye is black. Faceless vehicles can see without eyes moderately well, but ones built with faces aren't used to it and can't see at all or very little if their eyes are covered or removed. Some engines' eyes light up (if an IRL engine's headlight is on the front of the smokebox, it probably has glowing eyes).
• There isn't any mechanical device that moves an engine's eyes, but they do have physical support. They're kind of like a trackball computer mouse. They need to be lubricated and kept clean, and there is a real system for this. Some engines use condensed steam (usually coming from the source of steam for other accessories) or other water-based liquid for tears, but some might use mineral oil?
• By the way these eyes can be big! Some of the largest American engines have eyeballs well over 2 feet in diameter!
• Yes, the face swings open to access the smokebox/grille. The face itself may be on the smokebox door or be in front of it and on a separate hinge. The catch for the faceplate hinge is typically on the side of the smokebox. And then there are the Cab-Forwards and Garratts.

Some of you are literally watching the right wing continuously try to expand the definition of "pedophilia" to include "existing around a child while queer," and then agreeing with them when they say pedophiles deserve to be summarily executed.

Not only does this place innocent people in danger of political executions, it also puts children in danger, as most children who are sexually abused have this done by someone close to them, and feelings that they would be responsible for the death of their abuser if they reported leads to lower rates of reporting. It also leads to higher rates of abusers murdering their victims when they're found out because the punishment will be the same anyway.

Part of being on the left is realizing that it's better to let 100 guilty men go free than to wrongly convict one. Another part of being on the left is realizing that one's life is never something others have the right to take away- even the most evil people alive. Yes, that includes mass murderers and rapists and pedophiles. Once you make one group acceptable to kill, you give others a vested interest in defining groups they have prejudice against into that group.

You have to start dealing with the fact that no crime makes one's life forfeit. Not even the worst most depraved and sadistic acts. The worst people alive have rights, and if you can't accept that they deserve them, at least try to accept that it is to your benefit that they retain rights no matter what they're accused of. And if you can't do even that, well... you just might be the kind of person who would cut off your nose to spite your face.

If you want to protect victims, if you want to protect minority groups, you have to realize that sex crimes, or any crimes at all, do not deserve the death penalty. Period.

I'm sorry, but I'm just too fucking old to pretend that the presidential ticket of "Person who performed some of the first gay marriages in her state while it was still federally illegal" and "governor who created a trans refuge state while other states were making it illegal to transition" is somehow 'jUsT aS bAd foR QuEer pEopLe' as the ticket promising to reverse marriage equality and make trans healthcare next to impossible.

That is such a monumentally stupid opinion that I'm going to have a hard time believing that you're actually that stupid, and I'll probably just assume you're malicious.