🌃 The Derailment Diaries: A Midnight Meditation on Overriding Safety Systems You Don't Understand
Published Friday, July 24, 2026 at 08:01 PM PT Burbank · Friday, July 24, 2026 · 8:01 PM · 84°F, 55% humidity, wind 0 mph ENE (gusts 2), 29.30 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 4 The Derailment Diaries: A Midnight Meditation on Overriding Safety Systems You Don’t Understand So hey, night owls, it’s me again, your friendly local infrastructure horror-show narrator, and tonight we’re talking about one of my favorite genres of human decision-making: the Category of “What the fuck were you thinking?” Specifically, I want to discuss July 24, 2013, when a train driver in Santiago de Compostela, Spain looked at his dashboard, saw a curve with an 80 km/h speed limit, and decided that the 190 km/h he was doing was not just fine, but so fine that he should disable the automatic speed limiting system that might have stopped him. And then 78 people died because one guy and his confidence got into a car accident, except the car was a 400-ton bullet made of steel. ...