X-SOLDIER's Digital Neural Repository

Do not stop your car on train tracks, ever.

Unless you have a 1000000% guarantee that the tracks are never used, do not walk on train tracks.

Many places in the US are repairing their unused tracks for additional passenger lines. Tracks that have been abandoned for years or even decades may now have trains on them.

Do not walk on railroad bridges.

Do not play chicken with trains. They will win.

Trains are faster than your car is. You cannot outdrive a train.

Trains are faster than you are. You cannot outrun a train.

Trains are, in general, much faster than you think they are and the train operator cannot stop in time even if they see you.

If you think that you'll just know a train is coming, that you'll hear or see it in time to move, then you are wrong.

If your car is stalled on tracks or otherwise stuck and you can't move it after several tries, get out instead of spending more time trying. If a train is actively coming towards you, just get out. Move at an angle towards the train and away from the tracks so that you aren't in the path of the car getting pushed or at immediate risk of being hit by debris.

Most railroads have signage with emergency numbers; call the number about any obstructions or damage to the tracks.

People die from train collisions all the time, both in and out of vehicles. In the US, train-car collisions and fatalities have stayed pretty much the same since 2009, averaging at ~250 fatalities every year. This does not include people just walking on tracks; my area has had multiple fatalities from pedestrians being hit by trains in the last few years.

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

…relic…

Cover artwork for Ork by the late British artist Richard Clifton-Dey. Psygnosis released Ork in 1991 for the Amiga and Atari ST.

The artwork, entitled Behemoth's World, was flipped and zoomed in a bit when it was originally used a decade earlier for Blue Öyster Cult's 7th album Cultösaurus Erectus.