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Small-town America fights for its life

washingtonexaminer.com

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Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#61

Post by sizzzzlerz »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #56
toomuchtodo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support remote work and rural infra investment (shoutout to Bernie Sanders and his rural internet investment plan). I want to live in rural areas while still being able to work a job that isn't going to (needlessly) require me to be onsite in a downtown core (Disclaimer: I work remotely). > We need a new "small town culture" 100 percent. Community building is hard, not profitable, but necessary. It used to be churche…

I couldn't agree more. I'd love to live in deep rural but I really need at least 10 mbit/s duplex reliable (rare downtime, low ping/jitter) internet connection (at a reasonable price), Amazon/eBay/etc delivery and a train to get me to the city in no longer than a couple of hours on any day I need. Once these are available I'm movin'

No ISP is going to invest in high-speed internet to rural areas without a built-in base large enough and willing to pay for it. In any case, I'm pretty sure that they'd charge somewhere north of your reasonable price. As for trains, even less unlikely. Running a train is a massive expense in capital costs and maintenance. Any trains still remaining today are exclusively freight save for Amtrack which only follows its limited routes.

Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#62

Post by fnord77 »

Pigo wrote: post #54
blamestross wrote: post #36

Good. It needs to die and be replaced with something new. I grew up there and the only reason it has survived this long is encouraging teenage pregnancy.

Not every small town is like whatever place you were obviously abused in. I couldn't imagine having to move back to the city. It's exciting and fun to visit the city, but the indifference people display to each other is taxing on my soul. The drug addicts over-dosing, people with mental health issues wandering, the rent being too-damn-high, etc... People actually care about strangers, and go out of their way to be fr…

your small town does not sound like the typical, depressed American small town where despair is palpable, there's extreme poverty and drug addiction.

Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#63

Post by toomuchtodo »

sizzzzlerz wrote: post #61
qwerty456127 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. I'd love to live in deep rural but I really need at least 10 mbit/s duplex reliable (rare downtime, low ping/jitter) internet connection (at a reasonable price), Amazon/eBay/etc delivery and a train to get me to the city in no longer than a couple of hours on any day I need. Once these are available I'm movin'

No ISP is going to invest in high-speed internet to rural areas without a built-in base large enough and willing to pay for it. In any case, I'm pretty sure that they'd charge somewhere north of your reasonable price. As for trains, even less unlikely. Running a train is a massive expense in capital costs and maintenance. Any trains still remaining today are exclusively freight save for Amtrack which only follows its…

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-...

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3np4a/new-municipal-broa...

Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#64

Post by danaris »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #59
danaris wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They all plan to farm until they're physically unable to, and hope that the family farm will stay in the family for generations to come. And small family farms are an ever-decreasing share of where our food actually comes from. Over 70% of the farm acreage was held by the top 10% of the largest farms in the US in 2011[1]. Most of our agriculture today is not good old Farmer John and his wife and eight kids going ou…

> And small family farms are an ever-decreasing share of where our food actually comes from. Over 70% of the farm acreage was held by the top 10% of the largest farms in the US in 2011[1]. Those large farms are also small family farms. I know a guy who owns 15,000 acres but it's a 3 man operation: him, his wife and a single hired man. That's the norm in Saskatchewan. > as to it being "totally harmless" to humans, Of…

> Of course it's not "totally harmless". It's just better than the alternatives.

Not using herbicides is totally harmless to humans. It just reduces profits.

Personally, I'm for options that prioritize humans over money.

Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#65

Post by bryanlarsen »

danaris wrote: post #64
bryanlarsen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And small family farms are an ever-decreasing share of where our food actually comes from. Over 70% of the farm acreage was held by the top 10% of the largest farms in the US in 2011[1]. Those large farms are also small family farms. I know a guy who owns 15,000 acres but it's a 3 man operation: him, his wife and a single hired man. That's the norm in Saskatchewan. > as to it being "totally harmless" to humans, Of…

> Of course it's not "totally harmless". It's just better than the alternatives. Not using herbicides is totally harmless to humans. It just reduces profits. Personally, I'm for options that prioritize humans over money.

Not using herbicides destroys the land which is where this discussion started.

Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#66

Post by Pigo »

fnord77 wrote: post #62
Pigo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every small town is like whatever place you were obviously abused in. I couldn't imagine having to move back to the city. It's exciting and fun to visit the city, but the indifference people display to each other is taxing on my soul. The drug addicts over-dosing, people with mental health issues wandering, the rent being too-damn-high, etc... People actually care about strangers, and go out of their way to be fr…

your small town does not sound like the typical, depressed American small town where despair is palpable, there's extreme poverty and drug addiction.

You're correct that I haven't lived in every small town in America, thus having no direct experience, but I routinely enjoy the small towns more than cities. It rubs me the wrong way to see a comment about them only existing because of teen pregnancy.

Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#67

Post by pitt1980 »

zrail wrote: post #5

No judgement on this particular opinion piece, but just for sake of clarity in case people are unaware, the Washington Examiner has a rather pronounced conservative and Republican bias.

normally this comment would sort of annoy me,

but its not obvious what the point of this story actually is

------

looking on google

Imogene is about hour outside Omaha

is about 15 minutes away from the nearest Wal-Mart

Kids from Imogene appear to go to school https://www.greatschools.org/iowa/shenandoah/1244-Shenandoah... (which happens to be near the Wal Mart)

there does not appear to be an abandoned main street or factory in Imogene

from the article itself, unemployment is under 2%

what exactly is so terrible about life there?

--------

Imogene appears to be a small, somewhat out of the way place, and that appears to have always been the case

what exactly is so terrible about that fact?

Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#68

Post by twoquestions »

Pigo wrote: post #54
blamestross wrote: post #36

Good. It needs to die and be replaced with something new. I grew up there and the only reason it has survived this long is encouraging teenage pregnancy.

Not every small town is like whatever place you were obviously abused in. I couldn't imagine having to move back to the city. It's exciting and fun to visit the city, but the indifference people display to each other is taxing on my soul. The drug addicts over-dosing, people with mental health issues wandering, the rent being too-damn-high, etc... People actually care about strangers, and go out of their way to be fr…

Suburban gated communities != rural areas, no matter how well they cosplay rural culture.

blamestross's assessment of rural culture is the most accurate I've seen in this thread, it's mostly teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, property crime, and suicide. I don't see a good way out with our all-against-all culture where trust and cooperation make you a mark for exploitation.

It's not entirely their fault, I'd hate to see how NYC or San Francisco would fare if 70% of their industry picked up and moved out in 5 years.

(I'm also from small town rural America, if it matters)

Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#69

Post by dfsegoat »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #49
dfsegoat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neutral source: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-examiner/

> Neutral source: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-examiner/ Neutral, perhaps, but also poorly qualified: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check : > The Columbia Journalism Review describes Media Bias/Fact Check as an amateur attempt at categorizing media bias and Van Zandt as an "armchair media analyst."[2] Van Zandt describes himself as someone with "more than 20 years as an arm chair research…

Totally fair, thank you. But you left out some important bits from your response, including that several academic groups have used the site for building fake news classifiers:

> The site has been used by researchers at the University of Michigan to create a tool called the "Iffy Quotient", which draws data from Media Bias/Fact Check and NewsWhip to track the prevalence of 'fake news' and questionable sources on social media. The site was also used by a research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in initial training of an AI to fact check and detect the bias on a website. [3]

Despite publications in academia using the site, you may also note the following:

> In 2016, Kyle Pope, who had served as the editor in chief of The New York Observer, was announced as the new editor and publisher of [Columbia Journalism Review]. [1]

> In 2016, the New York Observer became notable for being one of only a handful of newspapers to officially endorse United States presidential candidate Donald Trump in the Republican Party presidential primaries.[18] The newspaper's owner and then publisher, Jared Kushner, is Donald Trump's son-in-law. [2]

...I'm not sure what to think of the above pedigree for CJR's editor, but IMO I suspect he either fell to one end of the political spectrum or the other.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Journalism_Review#Edi...

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Observer

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check

Re: Small-town America fights for its life

#70

Post by blamestross »

Pigo wrote: post #66
fnord77 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your small town does not sound like the typical, depressed American small town where despair is palpable, there's extreme poverty and drug addiction.

You're correct that I haven't lived in every small town in America, thus having no direct experience, but I routinely enjoy the small towns more than cities. It rubs me the wrong way to see a comment about them only existing because of teen pregnancy.

Yet it is true. Far fewer people would live there if they got the chance to get out. The normal pattern (as it has been for 200 years) is: 16 year olds get pregnant. They were never told any sex Ed other than "don't" and abortion isn't an option. They are informed that all goals for their life other than parenthood are waste and instead of leaving (for work or education) they join the local enconomy and make just barely enough to support their new "family". They proceed to struggle and fight to survive until their children are grown, by which point the cycle is repeating. It's a very stable pattern of behavior.

I've watched 3 generations of women berate the 4th for getting pregnant out of "wedlock" at 16 when all of them were conceived the same way.

I know it hurts to find out something you love is built from a horrible pattern. But it is worth enduring the pain and seeking understanding.

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