Hello all, I am Engineer GunzelPunk. Pronouns They/Them. By my name, I'm an Australian railfan (a ''Gunzel" is a Australian term for a railfan used a lot in Victoria; it used to mean something similar in implication to 'otaku', ‘foamer’ or even "Queer" in the LGBT sense, but it's changed a bit since then), and think way too much about trains and the Railway Series/TTTE. Here is where I will dump all my odd train thoughts, art (OCs, redraws and other things), some videos and generally engage in nostalgia.
I simp really hard for Henry, the green Black Five. If there is a bit of an excess of Henry content, that is the reason why. I also simp for Victorian Railways locomotives. I do not apologize.
I may also indulge in a bit of TTTE AU (human-This Is Sodor: The Age of Iron)/ Red and Black Steam On Southern Metals (Victorian Railways RWS/TTTE AU/Extended Universe)/headcanoning from time to time.
THIS IS AN NSFW 18+ BLOG. DNI MINORS AND PEOPLE THAT DON'T LIKE ANY SORT OF ADULT CONTENT.
I will tag all "adult" topics appropriately for the benefit of everyone, as there will be some topics discussed on my blog such as death, funeral culture and its associated practices, criminality, obscure and bizarre magical philosophies or other such things that may offend or trigger.
Some of my fiction is spoken in my native tongue (liberal use of the word "cunt" will be the least of it). It will offend or be incomprehensible.
There may be gore, violence or drug references.
IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY SUCH CONTENT, TURN AROUND AND WALK.
DNI
Here is a list of tags you can put in your filter list:
#thomasallgrownup (for spicier TTTE or my other sentient train related content, mostly varying levels of Coarse Language, Violence and Adult Themes, you’re not gonna see porn here. There may be some topless reference drawings or commissions.)
#gunzel speaks (for any particular thing I want to make an announcement for)
#henrycore (anything that evokes my Spooky Henry OC aesthetically; music, fashion, tastes etc)
#Harrycore(anything that evokes my OC Heavy Harry aesthetically)
#redandblacksteamonsouthernmetals(my Victorian Railways trains with faces AU)
#this is Sodor:the Iron Age (my humanised TTTE AU)
#cw gore
#cw violence
#cw suggestive
#cw language
#cw drug use
#cw alcohol use
This blog is LGBTQIA+ allied. NO APOLOGIES. All in the Queer community are welcome at Casa D'GunzelPunk.
It should go without saying but I'm going to anyway... NO TERFS, NO SWERFS, NO FASCISTS.
I don't want to single out Ace/Aros but all sexual/suggestive content will be marked for your convenience, if you wish to proceed.
NO MINORS PLEASE. THIS IS AN ADULT BLOG.
This is for your own safety. There will be adult content here. Minors DNI.
MAPs GET THE FUCK OUT. NO PEDO REQUESTS. FUCK OFF.
Otherwise I just wanna have fun posting stuff. No Drama.
Now with all that out of the way, I shall introduce my GunzelVerse under the cut:
This Is Sodor: Iron Age (Gunzelverse human/transformation AU/EU branch)
“All things pass into the night...
Goodbye Horses! I’m flying over you…”, Q Lazzarus
The name the “Age Of Iron/Iron Age” is supposed to evoke the Ages of Metal in Classical thought, with the Golden Age being the best and the age of Iron the absolute nadir, a Dark Age. (Such phraseology is used in steam enthusiast culture with the term ‘Golden Age of Steam’ being a well worn phrase, so the reference to the ‘Iron Age’ is a darkly ironic answer to that.)
It's grimly ironic considering the primary metal that steam locomotives are made of and the fact that during the Lokodammerung ("Twilight of The Locomotives", my term for the mass locomotive scrappings during the Beeching Axe/Operation Phoenix), they were being reduced to this base component.
Given as the AU occurs during that particular Dark Age for locomotives, the 60’s and early 70s, I thought it would only be appropriate as a subtitle for it.
The locos when they become humanised start becoming wise to humans, what it is to be human and messing about with subcultures in vogue at the time (in Britain; Mods, Teddies, Rockers, Skinheads, Greasers, Hippies, Punks, etc, and in Australia; the Mods, Sharpies, Bodgies and Widgies etc.), for them its a second sort of adolescence where new info, new sensations flood their conciousness, new modes of being... and a potent new weapon in their survival against the scrappings.
#GunzelVerse# This Is Sodor: Iron Age#ttte humanisation#ttte gijinka#thomasallgrownup
Red And Black Steam On Southern Metals (Victorian Railways AU/EU)
The Island Of Sodor isn’t the only place with non-faceless vehicles.
On the other side of the world, on a railway network the size of Great Britain and every Victorian human is no more then 25 kms away from a railway line; the steam locomotives of the Victorian Railways live and work.
They breathe and suffer and love like humans; from Newport Works where many locomotives were built, to the notorious soot-caked North Melbourne Loco Depot and the 1-30 slopes of the high country at Cudgewa, known as ‘K-class Country’, and the ever stylish Spirit of Progress and The Overland; when the Oz version of the Beeching Axe and Lokodammerung strike their Broad Gauge fiefdom, their world is upended forever.
And the survivors must carry on as best they can.
This is an Extended/Alternative Universe existing parallel with the Island of Sodor and overlapping with This is Sodor: Iron Age, though the sweep of time is longer. It will feature humanisation.
The 'Red and Black' of the title refers to two common liveries, black for goods work, red for passenger work during the active days of the VR (with plenty of variation such as the blue and gold "Spirit of Progress" livery of the S-class Pacifics).
It will feature OCs of mine based on real life locomotives like VR Pocono H220 ‘Heavy Harry’, Hudson R707 ‘City Of Melbourne’ (but here called ‘Cerberus’), A2 4-6-0 No 986 (in this universe, ‘Pluto’) and others. And there will be some reference to real life personages.
These are fictional representations of locos and humans and no comment is to be inferred from them, or offense intended in their depiction.
There will be very heavy coarse language (like I said in my intro, the word ‘cunt’ being used will be the least of it) and adult themes, and be written in the Australian vernacular.
A lot of it will jump time as the mood takes me. They will be dated if possible.
OC Profiles below:
VR A2 4-6-0 No 986 "Spirit of Warrigul" aka "Pluto"
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
VR H-Class Pocono H220 "Heavy Harry"
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
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random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google
I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.
also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo
also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)
i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:
Search Engines
Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy
DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)
WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.
Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.
Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.
Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines.
Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted.
Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy.
Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.
Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden.
MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.
Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching.
Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar.
https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results.
https://www.mojeek.com/
https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites.
https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.
https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.
https://yep.com/ is a crawler
https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx
https://www.dogpile.com/
https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)
https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?
https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?
https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.
Other Searchers
www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine
Some viral illnesses are known to cause rashes, like hives.
Also preserved in our archive (Daily updates!)
By Sarah Jacoby
We usually think of COVID-19 as a viral illness that causes respiratory symptoms, like congestion, sore throat and a cough. But, like a surprising amount of other viruses, the coronavirus can also lead to annoying, itchy and even painful skin rashes.
When you see a rash as part of a virus, you're not really seeing the virus go into your skin directly, Dr. Andrew Walls, dermatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, tells TODAY.com.
Instead, what you're usually seeing "is the virus activating your immune system to a high degree as it's combating the virus," he explains. While it's not a common symptom of COVID, a rash is yet another manifestation of your body's overall immune response to the virus.
And viral rashes aren't unique to COVID-19; other viral illnesses such as measles, chickenpox and hand, foot and mouth disease frequently include a rash.
A rash related to a viral infection is sometimes called a viral exanthem, Dr. Jeffery Gehlhausen, Ph.D., assistant professor of dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine, tells TODAY.com. And the term encompasses an entire category of well-known skin conditions. "This (link) is something that we've known about for, honestly, centuries," Gehlhausen says.
So, if you develop a rash as a symptom of COVID-19, you certainly aren't the first. Here's what to expect — and when to talk to your doctor.
COVID skin rashes
Hives
Hives, also called urticaria, can be related to allergies. But they also appear after a viral infection, including COVID-19.
The condition can present as raised, itchy red, pink or flesh-colored bumps. They can occur in isolated patches or large clusters. And they can appear pretty much anywhere on the body, including your back, chest, legs and face, Walls says.
Hives also "move around your body quite a bit," Walls says. You could have hives for several days, but the patch of hives may move from area to area, he adds.
When hives are related to a virus, they tend to show up near the end of your infection, Walls says. The timing typically goes like this: Someone feels pretty sick and develops a fever. Then, when the fever breaks and it seems like they're turning a corner, that's when the rash starts to show up, Walls says.
Hives on their own or even with COVID-19 are not necessarily worrying, Gehlhausen says. If your hives require treatment, the first-line option is antihistamines, he explains.
Morbilliform rash (measles-like)
A typical viral exanthem is a rash made up of smooth, raised pink dots which can collect into larger patches, Walls says. The rash tends to start on the chest or back. Then, over a few days, it spreads to the extremities. (Some people only have a small area of their body covered while others have very large areas with rash.)
The rash will then reach a peak and “kind of fade away and peel, almost like a sunburn,” Walls says. For some, the rash is completely asymptomatic. But for others, it's very itchy, he adds.
One specific type of viral exanthem that dermatologists have seen with COVID is a morbilliform rash, meaning a measles-like rash. Measles rashes tend to look like small raised bumps that eventually coalesce into larger rashes, which can affect much of the body, before gradually fading away, as TODAY.com explained previously.
Coxsackie-like rash
Dermatologists have also seen COVID-related rashes that resemble those caused by the Coxsackie virus, also called hand, foot and mouth disease.
"These are fixed, small, painful, sometimes itchy oval blisters that develop on the hands, feet and the inside of the mouth," Walls explains, "often without a whole lot of rash elsewhere."
However, this is an "uncommon skin manifestation for COVID," Walls adds.
More recently, some strains of the Coxsackie virus have caused "more unusual rashes that may affect a larger body surface area," Gehlhausen says. In other cases, the rash may affect less common areas, like just appearing on the buttocks, he adds.
"Obviously, COVID has evolved over time," Gehlhausen says, "so you may see different distributions of the rash as a result of that."
COVID toes
You may remember a lot of talk about "COVID toes" early on in the pandemic. But it's not something dermatologists see a lot of these days, the experts say.
Chilblains — the technical term for COVID toes — is a skin condition that seemed uniquely linked to COVID and not to other viruses, Walls explains. "Sometimes it was linked to autoimmune diseases ... and it was thought to be associated with cold exposure," he adds.
The condition causes small areas of skin on the feet and hands to become swollen, itchy and painful, the Mayo Clinic says. The affected areas may also blister and become temporarily discolored.
Today, experts don't see COVID toes very often, they tell TODAY.com. That could be because people have stopped reporting it, the virus has mutated and is no longer causing the issue, or there was never a link to begin.
For now, "researchers are still looking at whether the swollen, discolored toes are caused by COVID-19," the American Academy of Dermatology says. "It’s possible that COVID toes develop when the person’s immune system reacts to the virus that causes COVID-19."
Vasculitis
Vasculitis is an autoimmune condition caused by inflammation of the blood vessels, an it can present as a rash.
Experts have seen some cases of vasculitis with COVID-19, particularly small cell vasculitis, which is the "least destructive" version of the condition, Walls says.
We know that SARS-CoV-2 can affect the cardiovascular system and make blood clots more likely, Gehlhausen says, so it's not surprising that we see vascular rashes in some patients. Generally, he says, vasculitis-type rashes occur in people with more severe infections.
Small cell vasculitis has been linked to many other conditions as well, including bacterial infections (even strep throat) as well as antibiotics and other medications, Walls says. "A huge array of things have triggered small vessel vasculitis in people," he explains.
Thankfully, the condition typically appears as a single episode that fades away on its own. But some people have cases that linger for months or recur down the line, Walls says.
Can COVID trigger or exacerbate other skin issues?
In addition to causing skin rashes, COVID-19 infections can also exacerbate or trigger a recurrence of pre-existing skin issues you may have.
That includes chronic skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema, the experts say. Interestingly, these can also flare after a COVID-19 vaccine, Gehlhausen says.
Illnesses, including COVID, are also known to trigger conditions such as shingles and cold sores due to HSV (herpes simplex virus), Walls says. These conditions "like to reactivate when something else is running you down anyway," he explains, which could be not getting enough sleep, stress in your personal or professional life or another illness, like COVID.
COVID skin rashes in children
Kids can get skin rashes due to viral infections, including COVID-19. In fact, children are "a little more prone to these skin reactions with viruses than adults are," Walls explains.
"Kids who are experiencing these viruses for the first time are going to be prone to getting these sort of things," Gehlhausen explains. For instance, dermatologists see a lot of kids with various forms of hives-like rashes, such as urticaria multiforme, alongside a viral infection, he says.
When to see a doctor for COVID skin rashes
"If you have a rash and COVID, it is absolutely worthwhile to go to see your primary care physician and discuss it with them," Gehlhausen says.
That said, if you have one of the more common rashes — like hives or a measles-like rash — those aren't necessarily "anything scary or concerning," he adds. "They're just types of rashes we know are associated with COVID, so it wouldn't prompt us to manage the virus any differently."
And, if it's on the milder end, you may be able to treat it at home with over-the-counter antihistamines or pain medication.
If your rash is severe, covers a large area of your body or is especially painful or itchy, you should definitely check in with a doctor or dermatologist, Walls says. They may be able to prescribe medications, like topical antihistamines or steroids, to help your skin heal.
The other concerning scenario is if you are generally feeling very unwell along with the rash. For instance, if you have a bad headache, high fever and trouble breathing and a rash shows up, Walls recommends checking in with a health professional.
He makes the comparison between Karl Stefanovic’s AI nostalgia-slop/general PHON propaganda to ‘Wake In Fright’, which isn’t wrong. The general vibe of a lot of this nostalgia bait has this brooding implicit threat to anyone outside of it.
If the trash pickup people stop doing their job for two weeks you'd be throwing a fucking tantrum. Same for the janitors who keep your office spaces and bathrooms clean. (And that's before the various illnesses start to spread all over your city from the build up of pathogens.)
The people responsible keeping our spaces clean (and thus, mostly disease-free) should both be paid more AND thanked more.
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a lot of interpersonal problems come from the fact that every dipshit can hop on the internet and give their stupidass opinion and vent their feelings in a context that suggest they're trying to give life advice or advocate for social justice or whatever. and because all of this goes in the same swirling morass as every other stupid god damned thing on the internet which includes people trying to do various levels of education on life advice and social justice, a lot of people then hoover up every well written textpost uncritically without any thought to "is this person a dumbass, are they just posting straight poop from a butt, are they actually just mad at their recent tinder date, are they actually from some insanely weird set of niche life circumstances that has made them all wrong." and just incorporate poasts into their worldview.
once I realized that a lot of people were in fact just uncritically absorbing well spoken points made on lefty twitter, podcasts, and popularly screengrabbed tumblr posts, it made sense why a ton of people are fucking nuts and also stupid.
Like yeah man, it is perfectly logical that you feel fucked up and bad inside about yourself if you're on this website, there's a ton of contradictory but equally condemnatory rules established by anonymous figures with no responsibility to their content.
in a previous world, this kind of assinine shit shooting that comprises the early 21st century "poast" would instead take the form of two shitters shooting shit in person or on the phone. in which case, they don't have the opportunity to edit and plan the statements and you can see how uncommitted or emotional or unserious the dumb cocksucker is because he's someone sitting across from you and you more or less got him figured out.
If one of the mentally ill teenagers on the internet or deeply mentally ill moral scrupulosity 30 somethings on this website tried to convince you that if you were a man you needed to kill yourself for political reasons and that actually you're a rapist colonizer if you eat any food that casts a shadow, well, the bevy of other senses provided to you besides reading comprehension would kick in and you would realize "oh, this person is fucking nuts. not just because the contents of their statement make me upset, but they're noticeably unwell. I think maybe I don't need to seriously consider the philosophical, legal, ethical, or political stances they're suggesting due to how manic and also unemployed and isolated they are."
but the internet has given an unfair advantage to both the charlatan and also the educated nihilist.
A shocking number of neo nazi terrorists in one of the atomwaffen offshoots were unable to tell that one of the loudest voices leading them towards acts of violence was a fucking 12 year old. But if you're both kind of a dullard and also conditioned to seriously contend with any ideas presented to you polemically, any 12 year old who reads above grade level damn well might convince you. A precocious 12 year old charlatan wouldn't convince you in physical space, but if you consider online to be on the same level of importance as real life (and why wouldn't you? everything is online now in the first world, outside doesn't exist) then I can see how you could be easily sucked in by this.
In a similar sense, you get people on this website with a mile long set of identity markers who can't make their own phone calls who will be able to spend all day arguing online. You notice this especially in the disability advocacy circles, people who literally can not go outside and are stuck online start metaphorically crawling the walls and can use their seemingly endless spare time to philosophize reasons for whatever solipsistic politics they've convinced themselves of.
but someone had to write this. someone had to film every viral video. every reaction is because someone decided to record it.
we very easily lose our sense of selves because the separation between the human and the thing representing themselves on the internet is as thin as it's ever been.
Oh wow, that person has a bunch of thoughts to put out online, always seems able and willing to argue and is quite good at it?
they had to spend the time to do that. what does that mean? what does it represent about someone if they seemingly always are embroiled in some controversy even if they always come out seeming smart and charming? they sought this out, they're actively engaging with this swill instead of living.
Hell, i'm sitting here typing this manically at 2 in the goddamn morning, I'm no different than any of these bozos.
and maybe that's the gist of it. We should reflexively not trust any set of social media paragraphs that seem too slick, anyone who's too good at this, and who's able to put out a high volume of thoughts.
because how the fuck do you get good at doing that, what do you sacrifice elsewhere to become good at the internet, what life experiences might that preclude you from?
and if you met the type of person who matches that description in person, might there be a good deal of signifiers telling you that no matter how convincing their argument is, it may not be wise to listen to them?
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These birds are dimorphic, males have a bright red tail and solid black feathers while females have barred red-to-yellow tails with yellow spots and bars on their bodies and heads. That said juveniles are very similar looking to females, just with paler yellow bars on their undersides. It takes around four years for a male to gain his stunning bright red tail!
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