arch_8ngel

You are making a lot of assumptions. I don't care for either Clinton, so I have no interest in defending them. You could at least read the link I provided earlier, along with doing a similar search for the predominantly economic reasons for coal's decline. There were strong (apolitical) economic forces (both from efficiency gains reducing the job count, and more recently from the rise of cheap and plentiful natural gas being favored for power generation over coal both for cost and technical/efficiency reasons). Coal isn't some magical awesome thing compared to other power sources that was only on the way out because greenies hate it

I get a sense that you have a very specific bias that is causing you to ignore alternate explanations that are far less political in nature and purely economic...you do you, I guess.

The VAST majority were due to other causes over the preceding decades. Dems might have used coal as a talking point, but process improvements eliminated way more coal jobs than they ever did.

You're missing the point of the post. You referenced the massive job declines over the last 40 years in the coal industry. They didn't go away because of the EPA or green initiatives. They went away because they weren't needed due to productivity gains. The vast majority of jobs in that industry were long gone by the time Hillary Clinton made that statement.

Coal is a bad example for making a point about "the left" killing their jobs, since coal mining jobs were in considerable decline for a long time, purely due to economic forces and changes in the industry. https://siepr.stanford.edu/research/publications/what-killing-us-coal-industry Coal jobs mostly went away because of productivity gains making them unnecessary to meet demand, coupled with a surge in natural gas production.

There is a sci-fi crawler in the vein of Grimrock that scratches that itch...

DoomRL is one of the best games of the last 20 years.

Crypt of the NecroDANCER... (which is another fun example of a permadeath-based Roguelike with layers actual reflex practice/skill on top of learning how the tactical situations work in-game)

If it doesn't have permadeath it could be considered rogue-LITE at best. There is no "memorization" to speak of... that is the point of a rogue-like -- every playthrough is different. And once you've learned the mechanics of the game, it is about devising strategy and managing resources and tactics so that you can hedge against an unfavorable RNG. *though something like Darkest Dungeon walks a fine line of giving individual characters permadeath within your larger growing town* Games like DoomRL and ADOM, rogue-like-to-the-core, can be beaten on hardest settings with essentially no blessing from the RNG... IF YOU ARE GOOD. They just aren't particularly forgiving if you do something careless. But when the RNG DOES favor you... you get that little tickle of gambler's high They are a really satisfying genre when you manage to learn the games well enough to win once in awhile. But VERY similar to Tetris -- you need to go in expect to lose, a lot.

With true Roguelikes, the only "permanent" upgrades are to your own skills and knowledge as a player. They don't have anything persistent, other than maybe unlocked content being accessible in-game (though still needing to be acquired in a new game by the player) They are a genre that isn't about cumulative progress. It is about having a playthrough that threads the needle of a favorable RNG coupled with your cumulative experience helping you better manage risk. EDIT: I haven't played Rogue Legacy, but the description is "platformer with roguelike ELEMENTS". Typically, that just means shorter coffee-break play sessions with procedurally generated content. That is quite a bit different than BEING a "Roguelike" (i.e. permadeath is a staple of the core genre)

Iconic part of many of our childhoods. And even my kids get a kick out of seeing Captain Lou in her music videos after having watched Super Mario Supershow on Netflix.

Do you not play Roguelikes? When you die in a real Roguelike, you typically lose EVERYTHING...

Sometimes you want to challenge yourself by playing more minimalist... sometimes you want to engage in the power fantasy of epic destruction.

Did home-made meatball bahn mi with fresh bread last night. Worked out well. Planning to modify what has become a weekly pretzel bake, on Saturdays, to be brats done as pretzel-dogs this week. Really getting the hang of prepping bread dough with the Kitchen Aid. EDIT: just finished off the quick-pickled fixings for the bahn mi as a chicken-based salad at lunch with ginger dressing and wontons for croutons. Worked well enough that I'd do it again.

If you will play stuff on the PC you'll have a lot more options for this genre. PS1 has some version of the original XCom, though. Not really an RPG, in the strictest sense, but has an awful lot of RPG elements with how you build up your team, your base, and your organization.

So would that promote the idea that a "quarantini" is a fishbowl martini with 40 oz of vodka?

There is probably also the dual fact that (1) people would revolt and (2) serious alcoholics can die from quitting cold turkey...

Stay safe. This seems like an especially rough time to be in that situation. And glad to see you around.

The reality of the future economy and the ability to attract employers (though on that front, having an actual hospital is a more pressing concern, since if a major employer moved into an area they'd probably drop their own broadband infrastructure into place). So while I don't doubt there are plenty of rural middle-aged-and-older that "don't really need it", not having that access in their area is a major deprivation of opportunity to their kids, relative to the rest of the country, and gives them essentially no ability to combat brain-drain. Trying to spin this as "just the opinion of city folk" is a bit absurd, since it is an objective reality that there is a clear loss of relative competitiveness and economic opportunity.

According to reality. Older adults out there might not understand what they are missing, but their kids are being solidified as exiles from the modern world and the potential income that comes from themselves and local employers having real broadband access.

Exactly. It is a critical utility, not an entertainment luxury.

At some point, just like with rural last mile shipping, you need non commercial involvement if those people are going to ever get meaningful services. Doesn't necessarily require government installing and operating the service, but likely at least necessitates some level of subsidy that allows commercial entities to operate infrastructure in those areas. What we are all going through right now is going to severely highlight the haves and have nots of broadband infrastructure, and how much worse off rural Americans really are in the digital world.

It is actually kind of surprising that no one has ever decided to leverage this mandate into the digital space for rural broadband.

So you place NO BLAME on ANY country's leadership for ANY of their fuck-ups in the past 3 months, related to handling of the pandemic, because you place 100% of any and all blame on China/WHO? That is a little hard to take seriously.

Is Tedros the elected leader of my country? Are Americans getting daily briefings from him at the white house? He may be to blame for setting events in motion, but he doesn't have his hand up Trump's ass moving his mouth like a muppet every day. But right... Trump says "he doesn't accept any blame for anything" about any of this.