London civil servant's bus odyssey sparks Twitter storm | Hacker News Reader

London civil servant's bus odyssey sparks Twitter storm

bbc.co.uk

48 pointsKaibeezy10 comments

Thats a terribly named, click-baity title (though the post itself is good, and already discussed on HN)

Why click-baity? The word "Twitter storm" gives the impression people are getting angry and offended (which is what we usually see on Twitter, which is why I quit 5-6 years ago and never miss it).

But the "storm" in this case is people enjoying his article, which is not what I got from the title.

Way more often than I ever expect, BBC headlines can be clueless, dopey, archaic, unintelligible (I find these especially funny) and/or just plain wrong. "Twitter storm" is at least a couple of those.

Yes, the trip itself was discussed here. This follows up by diving into the unexpectedly robust response. Cheers.

HN Comments from the original thread yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28262194

And if you want to read the original Twitter thread, try this as it avoids the auth-wall and also covers his story to it's completion:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1428438081871433731.html

I was going through the thread reader page and thought "What an interesting blog post, it's very multimedia with lots of pics and clips of 10 second videos". I then realized it was a scraping of all his Twitter posts, but damn, that presentation was so much better than the @#!^@!! that is Twitter.

Completely agree. This would make for a good travel blog format / page template.

> Mr Kibble's planning, as intricate and precise as a well-played game of chess, was nearly derailed once he left Northampton.

> "I was on a seriously delayed bus. The X7 from Northampton to Leicester got delayed due to roadworks and attempted fare dodgers.

> "The bus driver also stopped to speak fluent Italian to some tourists struggling to buy a ticket, which was frankly incredible public service."

I laughed out loud reading this last quote. I love this person's honest admiration of public service, even if it's something I don't particularly share.

> "I also really like timetables and I like the logistics of putting things together."

I enjoy that too. It's also essential if you don't have a car. I think it's a shame that Amtrak no longer has timetables for download. Maybe it's to hide the sad fact that there are only 10-15 trains per day in one direction on the northeast corridor.

Funny terminology in the headline, what are the meteorological conditions of a Twitter storm?

lots of hot air (m)asses moving across the channels, generating lots of static, reaching thunderous applause, or raging responses with downpour of support. not enough cold air to even things out. it's basically a runaway atmosphere and meterological environment not unlike that of Venus.

If you want to read more about this kind of thing, there's a book named "Move Along, Please" by Mark Mason, who travelled from Land's End to John O'Groats (i.e, from one end of Great Britain to the other) using only buses. Took more than 24 hours, though.

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