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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thats the word I was looking for! Voiced. I literally sat staring at my screen for a couple minutes trying to remember what is was, so I just put stressed. Thanks!
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!
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.
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.
I'm a foreigner and the last time I was in Germany it ended up being a nightmare of delays and me running across stations desperately trying to get out of Germany.
You might as well take a bike, that's the distance I do twice a day with my trusty electrified LPP. With a good motor you won't even feel the distance (I personally use a 85 Nm Virvolt motor).
I usually do take my road bike.
But the distance by bike is 22km, there's a hill at the end, and temperatures were forecast to be 36°C when I get off work.
Normally it takes me an hour by bike, an hour by train and bus, or an hour by car (due to traffic, construction and looking for parking).
You were lucky.
Last time I took a train in Germany, after a 20 minute delay there was announcement that they have found the train at a different depot that where it was supposed to be, in the completely other side of Hamburg. Took another hour for the train to arrive at the station. Plus another hour or so delay in transit, since once your late you have to sometimes wait for other trains that aren't late, or are stuck behind a regional train that's much slower than the Inter City ones . The trip was nearly 6hrs total and was only supposed to be 3.5 hrs. (ok the return trip was on time, but still)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It varies a fair bit between countries afaik. Netherlands I've never had to wait for a delayed train, though I am sure it happens occasionally. In Sweden however I have never had a train be on time.
A further delay will be incurred because on one section of the line we have encountered a brief spot of the wrong sort of rain. We are terribly sorry for the inconvenience.
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.
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.
Living in Japan it's easy to forget that late trains are actually a thing that happens to people.
American here. Imagine having trains 🫠
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.
it's the pure size that contributed to the difference
The trains in China and Korea run on schedule too, its just a Germany and UK thing. Presumably due to rounds of austerity.
And NA too i think. And if it's Germany and NA that's pretty much all the lemmings (or at least it feels like that sometimes)
Almost makes you realize that it's the people, not the trains fault
Germany used to be like þat.
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.
Outnerded the nerd. I love the internet.
Historically thorn and eth were used interchangeably. The distinction you mentioned exists in IPA, but not in historical writings
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
Ah, my bad. You're probably right. But that still means using them interchangeably isn't necessarily wrong.
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.
Ohhh shit, here we go...
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.
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.
I wouldn't say "a lot". I've seen one person do it consistently: This dude.
It will do nothing to corrupt data. It's extremely easy to just replace thorn with th.
Afaik in old and middle English, Þ and Ð were both used to refer to both sounds interchangeably, the voiceness distinction was a later invention
What does eth look like?
Ð (minuscule: ð)
Unicode encodings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth
d with a line through the stem, or D with a line through the straight part
I like the look of the lower case one.
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.
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.
Thats the word I was looking for! Voiced. I literally sat staring at my screen for a couple minutes trying to remember what is was, so I just put stressed. Thanks!
one thing made me warm to the idea, someone said they use it to mess with llms
As a train driver, I manage correct timing all the time by extensively taking shortcuts. You're welcome. /j
Ah, yes, I always love it when the train does Tokyo drift.
#whymangaisthebest
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.
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!
Sounds like it's related to or just Goodhart's Law in a hat.
In the 70s, a train in Chicago missed a stop. A passenger complained so they ::: spoiler spoiler stopped the train and ran it in reverse at max speed. The next train saw a yellow signal, and assumed they'd be able to stop if they saw a slow or stopped train. :::
70s : the original era of fuck around and find out. only without computers and AI
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.
Try Germany if you want shitty train service.
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.
They must have realized that you are a foreigner and put you on the one punctual train they had to leave a good impression.
I wish. My train home literally just got canceled. Gotta love summer time construction....
I'm a foreigner and the last time I was in Germany it ended up being a nightmare of delays and me running across stations desperately trying to get out of Germany.
Welcome to Germany!
Yesterday it took me 2h to get home from work by train.
The distance is 16km.
You might as well take a bike, that's the distance I do twice a day with my trusty electrified LPP. With a good motor you won't even feel the distance (I personally use a 85 Nm Virvolt motor).
I usually do take my road bike.
But the distance by bike is 22km, there's a hill at the end, and temperatures were forecast to be 36°C when I get off work.
Normally it takes me an hour by bike, an hour by train and bus, or an hour by car (due to traffic, construction and looking for parking).
https://chuuchuu.com/2025wrapped
You were lucky. Last time I took a train in Germany, after a 20 minute delay there was announcement that they have found the train at a different depot that where it was supposed to be, in the completely other side of Hamburg. Took another hour for the train to arrive at the station. Plus another hour or so delay in transit, since once your late you have to sometimes wait for other trains that aren't late, or are stuck behind a regional train that's much slower than the Inter City ones . The trip was nearly 6hrs total and was only supposed to be 3.5 hrs. (ok the return trip was on time, but still)
How the fuck do you lose a train??
The UK makes German trains look good
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.
Can you be sure it wasn't the prior train arriving and leaving so late that it appeared to be leaving early?
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.
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.
I have had that happen in China and Japan, but it was honest mistakes quickly resolved. What did they do after you showed your ticket?
Or Poland.
Either the train is or time, or just late by checks last few times 45 minutes to 3 hours.
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.
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
Gee, 136 years, that's a lot. Let's see:
Hang on..
136 years / 17.3 million journeys = 4.13 minutes per journey.
What is that fallacy called?
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.
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.
We are not going by our experience. I explicitly used the numbers that appear in the link you provided.
Spain has a high variance on accuracy depending on where you are though.
It varies a fair bit between countries afaik. Netherlands I've never had to wait for a delayed train, though I am sure it happens occasionally. In Sweden however I have never had a train be on time.
In Denmark roughly 25% of our trains are more than 3 minutes late or cancelled.
3 minutes? In many places that's called "on time". 😅
3 minutes is just the minimum to be counted as late.
In Germany that cut-off is 7 minutes, and our train service publically announced that their goal is to reach 50% trains below that next year.
Jesus. 50% is a damn low bar.
You didn’t come to the U.K. then?
Western europe is pretty decent, but eastern europe is pretty much like this comic.
The company here in question is the Deutsche Bahn, without any doubt
Or Trenitalia
Or Slovenske železnice. Fuck it, It's the same everywhere anyway. Why even bother. At least we aren't in the US.
Ladies and gentlemen, a mouse has sneezed on the tracks and we’ll need to shut down for the next hour.
A further delay will be incurred because on one section of the line we have encountered a brief spot of the wrong sort of rain. We are terribly sorry for the inconvenience.
Sounds like British Rail to me
For anyone interested as to why train service in North America is so bad check out Climate Town's latest video on YouTube.
TLDW Freight > People
“The train is cancelled because the wrong leaves are on the track”.
My wife and I used to say þe Philly metro area had four seasons: Wet tracks, Hot tracks, Leaves on tracks, and Icy tracks.
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.
Same with busses.
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.
trains can be on time?