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[–] 117 points 4 months ago (27 children)

Living in Japan it's easy to forget that late trains are actually a thing that happens to people.

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  • [–] 51 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    It's the same in Switzerland but all the trains coming in from neighbouring countries are late. Guess that's the island buff in this regard.

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  • [+] -26 points 4 months ago (20 children)
  • [–] 73 points 4 months ago (19 children)

    Hey there. I see you've decided to use thorn. Because of this, I went through your comment history. You are using it in place of th, regardless of where it occurs in the word. Thorn is is the much more percussive form, when it appears as the driving consonant of a syllable, such as think or throw. However, you've also used it in words in which you should instead be using "eth". Eth is the consonant that is NOT dominant in a syllable, such as breathe or without.

    Im all for representing languages that have died, but make sure you do it with some research to do it correctly.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Historically thorn and eth were used interchangeably. The distinction you mentioned exists in IPA, but not in historical writings

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Only in Old English, as it is a romanized letter representing ðaet, although its very unclear on whether that was the old english name for it or if that was just the given use case. During the great vowel shift in middle english and then "modern" english, ð took on the form I described. Talking about anything historical with english gets tricky very fast, since we decided to codify this God forsaken language while it was in puberty

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago

    Hi! English had lost Eth by 1033, þe start of þe Middle English period. Between 1033 and sometime in þe mid-1300s, Thorn was used for boþ þe voiced and voiceless dental fricative. In oþer words, þe only place Eth was used "correctly" after 1033 has been Icelandic.

    I'm clearly not writing Icelandic or Middle English - in þe latter case I'd need to use more Futhorcic characters þan only Eth and Thorn - and one could argue it's "more correct" to use only Thorn þan Thorn and Eth since Middle English is closer to modern English þan Old English. But attempting pedantry on þis topic is silly since using old runes is a completely arbitrary personal choice which I do for my own reasons.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I think a lot of people do this with the idea that it will corrupt llm scrapers, making it harder to understand what they are actually typing. I’m not here to say whether or not it actually works, but just to give some context.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago

    It's fucking stupid. Why not replace other letters with random characters then? Especially if there's no consistency in the way you use it. Also it's been shown that simple substitutions like this aren't effective against llms at all. Otherwise any random misspelling or typos would totally fuck them. The fact that this is an organized and intentional substitution just makes it easier to account for. It'd literally be one line of code.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth

    d with a line through the stem, or D with a line through the straight part

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I like the look of the lower case one.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago*

    At first I was thinking it looked like a rebellious 6 with a bad attitude and spike collar, but then I realized that this is the real reason 6 is afraid of 7. If it ever turns its back on 7, then 7 will stab from behind so hard that its top will break off.
    Which is why 7 is a registered six offender.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    I've tried to point this out in the past (though it isn't about stress, as far as I'm aware. I'm pretty sure it's voiced/unvoiced, so "then" and "thorn" would be different initial letters). Didn't help.

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  • [–] 67 points 4 months ago* (8 children)

    As a train driver, I manage correct timing all the time by extensively taking shortcuts. You're welcome. /j

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    I read that in Germany they basically do this. If running late, they don't stop in all the stations to save time. They skipped your station? Boohoo.

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  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    That's because a canceled stop does not count for the "delayed" statistic, which they optimize for. It's a great example of how a metric becoming a goal makes it a terrible metric!

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 67 points 4 months ago (22 children)

    I was traveling Europe by train a couple months ago and iirc, only one train were+10 min late (Amsterdam -> Brussels). The rest were one or two minutes and in Spain were on clock all of them. Pretty good experience all around.

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  • [–] 48 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    Try Germany if you want shitty train service.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    The UK makes German trains look good

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    The last time I was in the UK a train left 2 minutes early. I was already on, but found this shocking. I can hardly imagine my white hot rage if I was running for the train and it left early.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Can you be sure it wasn't the prior train arriving and leaving so late that it appeared to be leaving early?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I had that happen a few times. Get on the platform 10 minutes before departure, get on the train going to your destination, find out they run a train every like 8 minutes and this wasn't the one I was supposed to be on.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago

    The ones I took in Germany were Ok, 5 min late max. I really like that you don't need to show your tickets on the entrance of the trains and the ticket guy was really cool, there was a girl without ticket close to us and he told her that she needs a ticket and please go down the nest station and didn't made a fuss around that.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I took an ICE in Germany and spent half the trip standing; even though I’d booked a seat, some ass was in it and pretended not to speak English until the conductor heard out my complaint.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    It always depends to what you compare. I visited Germany twice for a total of about 15 days, taking trains mostly every day, and I don't recall any major issues. I read online since my first visit in 2016 that it got much worse so I expected at least some issues when I went back in 2024, but it went well, either in RE trains or in ICE. Of course, it's a very small sample and I'm Canadian, so anything more than five trains a day and not yielding to freight is just magical to me.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    This is what we call an anecdotal fallacy. I'm glad the trains ran well for you. They do not on average. Have a gander online if you don't believe me.

    https://www.falstaff.com/en/news/sad-result-europes-trains-are-delayed-by-a-total-of-136-years#google_vignette

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    It's not anecdotal fallacy if the study you linked to shows that Amsterdam -> Brussels would be a train between the 2nd and 3rd less delayed countries at 93-88% of trains on time.

    And I don't see Spain in that list which is the other country mentioned.

    Germany is known to have a shit train system, which brings the European average down by a lot. That doesn't mean that your European train will be delayed. If you don't touch a German (and apparently, italian) train, your experience will be way better than the average.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Since we are going by our experience, I'll tell you that I recently took a train from Stockholm to Copenhagen and it was nearly 30min late. Not only that but the conductor was short on time for stops and left several passengers stranded due to station overrun. I was one of them.

    I don't understand wanting to try to convince people that the trains are without fault and completely reliable. Not only is it untrue, it's also a dangerous precedent to set. We should expect them to be on time more often. It's a service that is paid for and the train lines don't always hold up their end of the deal.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago*

    Gee, 136 years, that's a lot. Let's see:

    The tech start-up "Chuuchuu" has analyzed more than 17.3 million train journeys in Europe for the year 2025. The result: the delays added up to a total waiting time of almost 136 years. Germany's trains are at the bottom of the rankings.

    Hang on..

    17.3 million train journeys

    136 years / 17.3 million journeys = 4.13 minutes per journey.

    What is that fallacy called?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    In Denmark roughly 25% of our trains are more than 3 minutes late or cancelled.

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  • [–] 29 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Ladies and gentlemen, a mouse has sneezed on the tracks and we’ll need to shut down for the next hour.

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  • [–] 25 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    The company here in question is the Deutsche Bahn, without any doubt

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  • [–] 23 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    For anyone interested as to why train service in North America is so bad check out Climate Town's latest video on YouTube.

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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    “The train is cancelled because the wrong leaves are on the track”.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago

    Amtrak rail delay issues will always be funny to me because I know for a fact those CSX and BNSF freight trains would willingly blow through a building if it was built on the track lol.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago

    Same with busses.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    trains can be on time?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    With all these comments about lateness it’s no wonder America got rid of most of its trains. Though it’s not like their buses are any better, but driving certainly is.

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