Nikolai the Nuclear Missile Launcher?
Probably friends with Antonov the APC…
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Ahh, I know!
Kenyan is one of their trigger words.
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It was last year last year too. And the year before that. Turtles, way down, etc.
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In case you don’t know them, and are looking for allies in your fight (link below) Campaing for Commercial Free Childhood does some great work. They’re a little draconian on “Screen Time” but their heart is in the right place, My early childhood org has done a few partnerships with them.
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What’s really funny about this story is that the NRA has turned itself into the media it rails against. In fact, with this story they have made themselves into an even worse example than 90% of the media.
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And @IronEdithKidd
I think you’ll find this is Thomas’ true form…
ETA @bcsizemo beat me to it.
Oh, dear. There’s a Shed 17 sequel.
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Interesting. Thanks.
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(Also, Janelle Monae is amaze-balls, and a free motherfucker)
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A sequel…well here comes the nightmares…
Ironically it is like a train wreck, I can’t look away.
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I assume she doesn’t realize that the Kenyan rail network was built by British colonial interests to make their imperializing a bit more efficient? (except for the newer standard-gauge stuff, which is built by the Chinese, TBD on their motives in the matter)
If being a literal engine of colonialism isn’t good enough there’s just no pleasing some people.
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Does Janelle Monae do the voice for the train?
I have absolutely no shame in admitting that I have a huge fan-crush on her.
(and yeah, I get that gendering a train is really weird, but I read the face as “female”)
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Who doesn’t?
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The Carcinogenic Kumquat doesn’t count… literally and figuratively.
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It’s older than that.
(Sartre, writing in 1945)
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Chilling.
Yes, the older episodes in particular are rather authoritarian and all about obedience and punishment, while focusing mostly on petty character flaws of the trains.
More recent episodes seem to be a lot more reasonable in their morality, but they don’t use cool model trains but use animation instead.
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I too wonder why trains (and other objects in other shows) need to have gender. Then again, by default they often get implicit male gender: all male names, male voices, etc. Had they started right away with ungendered trains, it’d be different, but once you accidentally go down that route, it’s hard to get back.
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True, though I think there’s something of a difference. I feel like the thing Sartre is talking about is more willful, a deliberate (if not always conscious) refusal to follow the rules of discussion and discourse and so on. Whereas what I’m describing seems more like the right-wing loons having lost the ability to follow the rules or to believe in words. Maybe it’s the end result of a political subculture engaging for decades in what Sartre’s warning about?
People, for the most part, are gendered, so when we anthropomorphize things, it’s something that comes “naturally” if you don’t specifically think about it.
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I don’t think there’s that much difference between then and now.
A key part of Sartre’s argument is the first highlighted sentence:
Yes, he’s saying that their behaviour is at least partially willful. But he is also implying that many observers of the time did not realise this.
They know that their arguments are daft. That doesn’t matter to them, because they aren’t playing by the same rules. It’s driving trollies, not debate. Consistency and logic are irrelevant.
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There was a Honda motorcycle safety project that found that motorcycle invisibility to car drivers was reduced if the motorcycle had a face-like appearance on the front.
FACE Design
The human brain exhibits a strong response to facial patterns, especially to the eyes and mouth. Honda’s new FACE design for ASV-3 takes advantage of this to make motorcycles more noticeable to other motorists by modifying the front of the motorcycle so that it resembles a human face.The FACE design is the result of collaborative research and development efforts by Wako Research Center, the Asaka R&D Center, and Honda Research Institute Japan. In fact, brain function measurements taken with fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) confirm that the FACE design elicits a response in the brain similar to that when a human face is seen. This design significantly improves motorcycle visibility.
(Then again, it could be to justify the Japanese tendency to anthropomorphize stuff.)
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