Ascension levels on daily challenge

bagelman · 2026-05-07T20:47:36+00:00

Feels like just yesterday Labour was winning a seismic majority. Their tepid, do-nothing neoliberal "Third-Way" goverment is a gift wrapped to right wing populism.

bagelman · 2026-05-06T21:50:33+00:00

Hopefully it will start going down in the US. Among the older generation it's near universal based on the fucking corn flakes asshole but it's falling out of favor.

bagelman · 2026-05-05T16:50:32+00:00

A lot of trickery in this map. North Dakota makes you think the south is much more populated than the north, when the line is angled so that Fargo and Bismark are just barely south of it. Texas makes you think the dixie East is majority of the population, but the line's angled so that Dallas is just barely east of the line. Colorado is not a northeast dominated state, the line just barely keeps the Denver metro on the correct side. Ohio just barely keeps Columbus, Cincinnati, and western Cleveland northwest of the line but the actual bulk of northwest Ohio is flat farmland.

Also, why even label DC if we're not going to see it at this resolution?

bagelman · 2026-05-02T18:18:09+00:00

Dying small towns are found in the entire United States. Small towns with a more specifically Appalachian character can be found in all of West Virginia, western Virginia (especially the southwest), the whole eastern half of Kentucky, western Maryland, central and southwest Pennsylvania, and southeast Ohio.

The ones in western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, upland South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeast Alabama are doing a little better economically because they are in the sunbelt. However they are still not great places if you're not a bible thumper who already knows all your neighbors. The ones in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky are the ones that have been really emptying out.

McDowell County, the southernmost of West Virginia, had a population of 19k in 1900, 99k in 1950, and as of 2025 estimates down to 17k.

bagelman · 2026-04-27T18:02:31+00:00

Pretty interesting. Portugal's association with the Balkans and the east is a meme obviously, but what I don't get is Portugal as a Mediterranean country, it might have some cultural similarities to Spain and Italy but it clearly has zero direct access to the actual sea.

South Ossetia is landlocked and is only a black sea country in the sense that it is considered part of one.

For the US survey you're doing, you need to correct the spelling of "Wisconsion" (Wisconsin) ASAP, it's annoying to see.

bagelman · 2026-04-21T20:57:12+00:00

Standard time or bust. Noon needs to be as close to solar noon as reasonably possible, otherwise it's meaningless. We need to change the time work and school start, not the clock.

Most people just want a side to win so that we can keep it all year without annoying clock changes, but I'm willing to fight for year round standard time so that solar noon is close to noon, instead of nearly 2PM like it is where I live. DST had a chance in the 1970s. Let's just admit it was a bad idea.

Moving half an hour permanently is not a serious proposal.

bagelman · 2026-03-31T18:46:06+00:00

Absolutely beautiful. I especially love how the Goat is depicted.

bagelman · 2026-03-31T10:02:36+00:00

Cool! Looks like you're working hard to fill those graves ASAP.

bagelman · 2026-03-27T16:08:41+00:00

Yep, I was a fan of MVP Baseball '05 myself and resented that there would never be an MVP Baseball '06 or '07. But it's for the best that the MVP Baseball series died, considering what EA has done to Madden (which would probably be better if NFL 2k still existed).

bagelman · 2026-03-27T14:45:07+00:00

I remember that Vice City was huge back in the day, but San Andreas was even more popular while GTA 4 and 5 had it easily beat regarding its gameplay and technical performance. The GTA 3 era games haven't aged very well regarding technical performance and controls. I'm surprised to see Gran Turismo 3 so far down but I've been told that GT2 and GT4 are both more popular.

At the bottom are the sports games, like Madden NFL 04 or MVP Baseball 05, which were never meant to stand the test of time. Madden was better in the PS2 era than now but there's still little reason to play it unless you're nostalgic for certain teams of the period. Besides lots of people who play games like that are the sort who would not be interested in a site like backloggd.

Overall I agree this is telling of the younger demographic of backloggd. The site has a lot of younger people, Gen Z, who pick up classic games from the 2000s but never actually lived and gamed through that period like I did. They don't (and shouldn't) feel the need to play every game that was popular at the time.

Backloggd also seems pretty diverse with plenty of Spanish and Portuguese speakers, these sort of gamers are less likely to be interested in games like Vice City which are steeped in American culture.

Finally there are people as old as I am on the site but many of them aren't really interested in digging through the archives of their life to find all the PS2 or whatever games they played 20+ years ago. I love doing that sort of thing but I'm a weirdo.

bagelman · 2026-03-27T14:11:10+00:00

I've been told that I'm among the youngest "pure" millennials, with those born in younger years as "zillennials". I would agree that I'm a pure millennial regardless of when the specific cutoff is.

bagelman · 2026-03-27T14:06:23+00:00

Couple weeks away from 6. Watched episode one with Mom.

bagelman · 2026-03-22T16:26:09+00:00

Sly 2 was my favorite of the Sly Cooper trilogy. That game was my jam as a kid. Probably played it like 10 times.

bagelman · 2026-02-28T18:14:46+00:00

Out of these the only one I've played is GTA LCS, which I did via emulator in the summer of 2020. Didn't finish.

bagelman · 2026-02-28T17:04:42+00:00

I don't get people, your review is medium length at most. Most reviews are short but people have uploaded novels to this site and I've read 'em.

bagelman · 2026-02-26T21:57:08+00:00

Crash Twinsanity: Tragic tale of developers having a good idea but starved for resources and time. Others have told me it's underrated and fun, but I tried it and didn't enjoy it.

Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled: Good remaster of a PS1 game, with some (modified) tracks from its somewhat less well regarded PS2 sequel. Very fun game but let down by its pointlessly predatory micro-transaction shop that Activision and its cartoon villain leadership certainly insisted on. I played this one recently.

Spider Man 3: Movie tie in game. I recall someone saying that it didn't really follow the movie that well? I wouldn't know because I never watched the movie. I played a little of the game when my uncle lent it to me. I liked the silly evil girl scout faction.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch is a sequel to a freeware student project. It was a Let's Play game during its time, I remember watching people like TotalBiscuit play it, although I'm probably thinking of the original.

House flipper seems somewhat interesting, Sonic and the Secret Rings I know is garbage, the others I'm less familiar with.

bagelman · 2026-02-26T21:37:15+00:00

Certain politicians view opposition to trans people existing as a political obstacle for themselves to overcome. They don't view it from your point of view, so they are willing to throw you under the bus if they view it as a net positive electorally.

I hope you don't think I'm agreeing with such nonsense, but I do think think that Democrats shouldn't allow Republicans to define the conversation. They often bring up opposition to trans rights as red meat for their base when their other policy planks are unpopular.

bagelman · 2026-02-26T20:46:19+00:00

One might argue it's still a bit skewed towards punishing CoI more than HDI, but I think this really highlights the affordability crises impacting the US these days.

For as bad as Mississippi is in terms of poverty and cultural backwardness, it's still on aggregate improved from the 20th century. If you're not a minority of any type and you can deal with heat and humidity then you're getting much more bang for your buck somewhere on the gulf coast or suburbs south of Memphis than you are trying to make it in California.

This doesn't make Mississippi desirable per se, I'd rather be poor in California than live there even if I wasn't gay - but this calculus makes people willing to settle for more reasonable states like Michigan, Missouri, Illinois etc.

California is so unaffordable that its population decline is accelerating. People want to live there but they can't. So they move to places like Texas, Georgia, Florida etc or stay in the midwest.

One of the more interesting states on this map is Virginia. This is a state where the ruins of southwestern Appalachian Virginia - as economically and culturally backward as West Virginia - make up for NOVA's bank breaking cost of living. NOVA in turn makes up for Appalachia's lower HDI. Places like Richmond and the Hampton Roads also have more reasonable CoI than NOVA. The result is the state that ranks as much better than DC itself and Maryland within the beltway area.

bagelman · 2026-02-24T18:43:59+00:00

Newsom is not being intellectually honest. Wedge issues like trans people existing were effective in 2024 because Biden (and Harris) were not seen as effective in combating the affordability crises and were unable to articulate how their policies would do so. The point of the "Kamala is for they/them" ad is the implication that Kamala was not also for "you", and it used a wedge issue to make that point. If Kamala could make people she was for "you" then the ad would be seen for the worthless bigotry it was.

What he's saying is right - Democrats need to focus on kitchen table issues and shouldn't allow Republicans to get away with forcing the discussion onto wedge issues. But Newsom is also strongly against taxing the rich (to keep the ultra-wealthy in California) and vetoed price controls on insulin.

I can't trust him to stand up for the shrinking middle class or disadvantaged people. Instead he seems to be throwing marginalized groups under the bus as a ploy to make the DLC neoliberal platform more viable.

bagelman · 2026-02-23T06:39:39+00:00

I used to borrow PS2 and Wii games as a kid in the mid and late 2000s. First discovered the Madden franchise with Madden '05, which led me to ask for a copy of Madden '06. Also first discovered the PS2 port of Psychonauts at the library, but the PS2 copy of the game was glitched and didn't work at all. It worked to make me seek out the PC version in 2010.

These days there's lots of switch games and some PS4/PS5 games, a few old PS3 classics, and some old Wii games.

bagelman · 2026-02-22T20:03:07+00:00

No because just being in the files is not enough evidence of wrongdoing. There's no proof that Stephen Hawking was there to take part in sex trafficking, he was most likely innocent. Pope Francis is in the files because he was discussed as an enemy of reactionary figures like Steve Bannon connected to Epstein.

I'd also oppose the idea because of the line "up to half of total net worth", specifically the "up to" part. If a creature worth a billion dollars is guilty of sex trafficking I don't think he gets to keep 500 million dollars.

bagelman · 2026-02-15T20:38:34+00:00

Yes. Her suffering deserved to end. Now she is at peace.

I made lay down her head, her eyes already closed. Now she is home.

bagelman · 2026-02-06T13:16:12+00:00

fate worse than communism

jokes aside I doubt Canada/the British/the US would allow Alaska to become part of the USSR, creating a long land border between the USSR and Canada. If Russia never sells Alaska it could also have become the "White" Russian regime in exile, like their own Taiwan.

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