Interesting perspective in the video:
3 Likes
This YouTube channel is well known for generating AI slop from social media inputs. Even so, having worked on Brightline and other first gen Chargers, thereās nothing too egregious in this piece.
Good info but here is my response to the slight criticism of the postā¦
Find a better source on the same topic and post it. I am never emotionally attached with what I post hereā¦perfectly fine with me if someone wants to post a better source.
As long as the post is not pushing an obvious agenda that has nothing really to do with Trains. I posted this because I see these posts in other social media venues about people stating that the Siemens Charger is crapā¦without any supporting evidence. Just a railfan opinion.
āSlopā is just a generic term for mass produced content usually using AI and parroting press releases, news blurbs, etc. without any original viewpoints. That said, whatās better for the industry? AI generated slop regurgitating whatās already been repeated a hundred times or foamers pontificating about stuff they have never laid a wrench on? Ultimately, if it gets views from the great unwashed masses that otherwise know nothing about my (former) stock in trade it grows the conversation.
The answer, of course, is āneitherā.
The last actually-informed technical criticism I remember reading about Chargers involved their battery-box location (and the types of battery to be provided). I am still waiting ā and suspect it will be a while ā to get a dispassionate discussion of the Siemens (and Cummins) response to the EMD attempt to āproveā the locomotives as designed could not reach 125mph with a loaded train as originally specified. That was when, exactly?
For that matter, I am still waiting for the Metrolink article describing how they addressed the problems with SCR/DEF on their Spirits. We had commenters galore on here (including me) when the engines were failing ā but it has been a decade or more since then, with the engines in frequent and certainly regular service, andā¦ not a peep. I actually think there was more provided by RĆ”pido Trains than the whole of the technical press. Of course the recent policy change away from āderating to zeroā when there is some problem with the SCR/DEF system probably addressed any real concernsā¦ but that was recent (and went unremarked as far as I could see in the trade press).
My suspicion there is because these types of issues are kept between the clients and the locomotive manufacturer. Perhaps Rapido trains knows because they asked the manufacturer directly or worked with the manufacturer for their models?
Though once could ask TRAINS staff why they have never done a piece on this business vs letting it linger.
1 Like
https://youtu.be/784ZfG4LS04
I would juxtapose the slop with the above, a youngster who has discovered the train and the āpassenger railā advocacy bunch. A very well-made piece but it trots out the same people spouting the same old arguments.
^^^^ It was a good effort but I think he made two mistakes with that you tube video. The first was interviewing someone wearing a Great Northern T-Shirt that was on the Amtrak train he was riding. The second was not taking the time to dig a little deeper at various railroad historical groups and museums. Nice backgrounds at IRM but they also have a historical documents collection there or so I thought.
I watch a lot of You Tube videos and some are funded by the Chinese government, some by the Russian government, etc, etc. The state actor videos are easy to spot as are their various paid social influencers. Yes, they go into the rail area in regards to third party foreign countriesā¦so I donāt think I am being political by bringing this up.
I really think Americans as a whole should seriously consider a mandatory critical thinking course in High School so they are better equipped to discern the superficial stuff from the well researched. Went off on a tangent here but wanted to interject my personal opinion on You Tube videos and their impact on social media.
I would rate the video well done with visuals but fairly superficial on the research end. I did rail research long ago on the Houston and Texas Central railroad abandoned ROW that runs near my home. There was a lot of documentation on it and what traffic they carried and why. I have to say that passengers were not their first priority it was always secondary to freight from the very start.
I went halfway there with my expanded āhow to lie with statisticsā course. There were more and better examples by the late '70s than there were in Huffās time, and ever so many more to draw from ā on āboth sides of the aisleā ā now. The first point is to recognize the machinery and tools involved, how to use them, and not incidentally how not to let them be used on you without consent. The second point is to recognize patterns of manipulation by those who lie with statistics, and attempt to analyze what their intent or agenda (planned or not) might be ā whether you agree with the manipulation or not.
One of the points of a college liberal-arts education was to learn Western critical thinking. Even by the time I was in school, much of it had devolved into high-school-plus-two-years followed by two years of grad-school-minus-two-years, both with a hefty dose of then-academic inculcation. Iād like to think we could āgo backā, but Iād bet thereās not a real ābackā to go to, especially pedagogically. On the other hand, people like C. Lowell Harriss who āgot itā were extremely good at communicating āitā to students with the wit and patience to listenā¦
1 Like
The one thing to remember about Brightline. It was not founded as a passenger operation for profit. It was created as a Real Estate development project that needed access and transportation and thus passenger trains. Has Brightline turned fare box profits covering all the costs yet? Does the fare box revenues cover the operational costs?
1 Like
Iāve participated in conversations with these content creators directing them to Amtrak OIG reports and first hand accounts of how things actually happened. Some appreciate it. Others are just looking for clicks.
1 Like
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, University of Rochester Medical Center, Missouri Department of Mental Health, and MITās Young Adult Development Project, as examples, the prefrontal cortex, which controls critical thinking, planning, and decision-making, doesnāt fully mature in most people until around age 25. While this part of the brain is functional earlier, its development, including its ability to connect with other parts of the brain, continues into young adulthood.
If the portion of the brain that controls critical thinking does not fully mature until we are into our mid-20s, courses on critical thinking in high school would only produce marginal outcomes. But parents, teachers, counselors, etc. can help young peopleās mental development through structured activities during their teens and early 20s.
We are way off in the weeds in this one but I co-moderated Military dot com with an Army Brain Surgeon. We had lots of interesting medical discussions. One of them was why I scored higher on the ASVAB tow years after first taking it with no additional schooling in between. She went over the above in part. Another interesting topic of discussion was do we really feel all the pain that we think we do. My personal experiment within the confines of an Army training accident. The brain seemed to shutoff the external stimulus and I just did not feel pain or panic, was in a kind of la-la land, almost like built in anthesia. She stated that could be a preservation mechanism to protect the brainā¦she went into details on studies there with TBI. Very interesting the human brain and there is a lot we do not know about it.
Yeah. The click bait people, you have to wonder about them. I understand the greed motivation but if you put your real name and face to something that is going up on the internet. People remember you if you waste their time.