I showed this photo to my innocent work colleague this morning, I feel terrible.
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I think this is the right place for this story about…
…a high speed train in Florida which keeps killing people and no-one knows why.
Privately owned and operated and transporting about 250,000 passengers a month, the Brightline is only the second high-speed train in the United States and the first outside the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak operates the Acela. Its newness and sleekness make it a novelty in a country where trains are mostly old and ugly. Its existence shows that America can still build great things and that private industry can build them quickly and with style. If a beautiful high-speed train can work in Florida—whose former governor famously rejected more than $2 billion in federal funding for such a train—maybe it can work anywhere. But right now, something is very wrong.
What the Brightline is best known for is not that it reflects the gleam of the future but the fact that it keeps hitting people. According to Federal Railroad Administration data, the Brightline has been involved in at least 185 fatalities, 148 of which were believed not to be suicides, since it began operating, in December 2017.
The weird hauntological side of it is that it’s been culturally normalised:
Later that evening, I scrolled on my phone and came across an Instagram post about another Brightline accident, with a caption describing the person who had reportedly been hit as a “track snack.” People in the comments responded jubilantly, praising the train for chowing down on another soul. The beast was getting stronger, the commenters said with satisfaction. “As always sorry if this was your family member,” the account runner wrote dutifully in the replies.
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felt like i was losing my mind reading that article. wtf do you mean the track is on the same level as roads and pavements and stuff and there’s no fences and no one thinks they can do anything about it???
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Tbf the article does a good job of explaining why this is happening
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Who’d have thought that running a high speed train through a highly populated area on the level was a bad idea! If only they’d discovered grade separation in the US…
331 grade crossings in 235 miles! There are 4 in the 300 miles between Euston and Carlisle!
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Jfc 
I’ve ridden the death train!
It was great, they serve Cigar City Jai Alai IPA on board. It’s a wonderful concept, from Miami up to West Palm and beyond is one long urban sprawl and driving the length of it is excruciating. My father in law, who lives near West Palm, uses the Bright Line to go to concerts and stuff in Miami which is perfect for him.
But yeah, it just runs on the ground alongside (and over) the road.
Pretty sure Richard Branson and Virgin had a hand in building/operating it.
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guns don’t kill people, trains do
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You get this when you take the Amtraks out west as well, just level crossings without fences everywhere.
This is right through the middle of a town in Nebraska.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/WDqg8GAF4ZiRBpKY9
Difference is that the Amtrak trains are hulking old diesel things and they blast their horns constantly…
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had my obligatory Halloween relisten to Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults… last night
number one hauntology album
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New episode of British Cryptids!
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Rupert Murdoch looks well.
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Watched this last night…
A real time capsule, linking modern London to its Victorian past. Not just the last hurrah for a bunch of Victorian buildings before they are demolished, but also a living link to people who grew up in the Victorian age - there’s a section where he visits the site of one of the Jack The Ripper murders and mentions in passing that some locals can still remember when it happened 
The ‘unfashionable’ areas that they visit are really interesting too - Camden, Islington, Spitalfields. The latter was still something of a wasteland when I first started working in London in the late 90s.
Could only find it on DailyMotion to watch - don’t know if better sources are available.
A real counterpoint to the usual swinging 60s portrayals of London at the time.
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Creepy little short here:
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That was great!
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Glad you liked it - meant to post it in the horror thread but it works here as well! 
I’m assuming everyone who posts in here regularly is all over the Magnus Archives?
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That was genuinely unsettling. You should re-post it in the horror thread as that gets a bit more traffic than here…
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