Hey, how about any old ultimate online lurkers? That’s a blast from the past too.

I didn't know there was a doc about it. Thanks I'll give it a watch.

You mentioning the Doc reminded me, there is also the Tar Creek Superfund site just a few hours over on the Oklahoma Kansas border. That place is very interesting to drive around and look at.

Also all of the buildings are demolished now, but it's one of the most polluted sites on earth, deemed by the EPA to be permanently unfit for human habitation, essentially for the rest of time. The whole town was bought out and relocated like a decade ago, with the exception of two families that refused to move and are now the only inhabitants.

There is also a doc about it that watch after visiting the place.

Agree with the other guy. This is an interesting addition to the topic. Thanks.

Turns out that inheriting a mountain of apartheid blood money allows you to hire and invest in very smart people, you don’t actually have to be all that smart or insightful yourself.

I don’t want to say Elon musk never did anything right, he did recognize what a great investment PayPal would be, and he recognized what a great investment tesla would be, so he’s not void of any insight, but being an OK investor, who started off already rich to begin with, is the extent of his personal merit.

Meritocracy is somewhat a myth. Not totally a myth, being better and smarter than your peers can get you ahead, but only to a certain degree.

We all know extremely hard working disciplined people who slaved their lives away in poverty.

Also thanks to Elon, the idea of the uber rich being better and smarter and deserving of their wealth has been completely rebuked, since we all now know that Elon is a fucking idiot who’s genius was in making a handful of great investments in other people’s good ideas.

Not really directly or specifically related to Springfield. But with a lot of discussions and topics that many of us deal with, I think it's useful and information to let everyone one know that when we hear "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" as the solution to personal or societal issues, what we are really being told is

"If you are not able to achieve incredible near impossible personal effort and dedication and pseudo perfection in dealing with your struggles, then you don't deserve help, your problem is your personal failing or lack of quality."

I don't get Dark Tourism. Like.....go to any major city. Stand on any random spot on the sidewalk. There you go, you are within a hundred feet or so of where someone has died. Once of those building adjacent to you, probably more than one of them, someone has died in it.

Throw a dart at the map. Unless you are in a very very remote area, where ever that dart hit, some one lived there, died there, or very close by. Something fucked up and spooky or bad happened either right exactly there or very close to there at some point to someone.

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Seems to me like pretty much any random spot could be "dark tourism" depending on how much research you are able to do and how detailed the records are.

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Unless you are talking about specifically like old prisons or abandoned orphanages or psych wards or whatever, that I do get, that's pretty cool, but if dark tourism is just "someone died here" or "something fucked up happened here".....well that's pretty much everywhere that people have been.

What a bizarrely aggressive projection of malice into tech issues with a theater’s food order online function.

You doing ok?

I saw that group and thought it might be funny. Joined. Within about a week I started to realize “ohhhh, this is mostly a bunch of conservatives and boomers shitting on the less fortunate, with just a smattering of actually funny stuff here and there.”

I’m still in it, but I really should leave.

It sucks, wallow in it, embrace the suck, feel the pain, wail and pound fist at the loss of a young love.

But ultimately you'll get over it, and once you are older you'll look back on it a bit wistfully and kinda laugh at yourself for being so attached to someone you barely knew, but also kinda sad that the ability to fall in love that easily evaporates with age.

Bitter sweet man, that's life. you'll be ok.

Sorry, but by “right kind of people” I meant “people who have the financial resources to maintain that neighborhood in the condition it’s it”

Cause if you’ve got these big empty houses that the wealthy folks have moved out of, and you insist that is can only be a single family dwelling and you can’t tear it down and build lower income housing, then you are left with only two courses: either they stay empty and eventually fall into ruin, or the cost goes down down down until eventually you get a lower income buyer who cannot afford to maintain these grand old manicured properties and they fall into disrepair anyway.

I under stand their concern. But I don’t understand their solution. What on earth do they want? They want the “right” kind of people to buy the houses and live in them and keep them pretty. Right?

But it seems like Those buyers just aren’t there. Wasn’t that house on the corner for sale of ages?

Excuse me, albino axe murdering groundskeepers, you fool. Get it right. (Teasing in case that isn’t clear)

So I feel like I have a clear understanding here of what the people in that community DON’T want, which is for homes in this neighborhood to be anything other than single family dwellings, and presumably single family dwellings owned by the “right” kind of people, with the money to maintain them in a snazzy well manicured upper middle class kind of way.

So then what I don’t get is….what DO they want then? If you’ve got a big fancy house, an old, expensive, kinda a money pit, type of house, and it’s on the market for years and years, nobody wants to own it as a primary single family dwelling….well what then? I mean eventually someone has to do something with it or it will become derelict and fall into ruin and be full of squatters. So what do they want? I mean I know what they want, for these houses to be bought by doctors and lawyers to keep the neighborhood like it is, but most people with the kind of money to buy a big century old money pit are instead buying McMansions out by the river, they don’t wanna live in the middle of town anymore. So if the houses aren’t being bought….then what?

There are many other neighborhoods in town full of what we’re once grand of upper middle class or rich person houses, that are now in terrible shape or are trap houses. If someone doesn’t do something with them, isn’t the the fate they are inviting?

I have no idea, but it does make me wonder. Native lawn landscaping has only really come into vouge recently. I can't imagine there all that many people in down that practice is. I do a LOT of driving around time scoping out yards for my metal detecting hobby and I only see a handful, like maybe 5 or 6, although I'm sure there are others I'm not aware of.

Anyway, a company that prioritizes an incredibly niche interest with a small customer base would, I assume, have to charge a very heavy premium for that service, in order to make up for having such a limited customer base?

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But yeah sorry, no idea.

There are many. Almost too many to practically list here. But here are my go-tos when I just have a hankering to get out there and haven’t really planned anything.

Immediately in/around town, trails that may be partially paved but have substantial unpaved areas as well. Relatively short, usually only takes about an hour.

Ritter Springs

Nature Center

Lake Springfield

Little further out, totally unpaved, much greater trail length, can spend a whole afternoon easily. Within about 30 mins of town

Busiek wildlife management area

Sac Woods Conservation Area

Big wild rough full day or multi day hikes, hour to two hours away.

Hercules Glade

Glade Top Scenic Trail

Lol, thanks shartsvilledestroyer. You’re a real mensch.

Yep, it was found! All is well.

She reached out. I’m gonna go try to find it today after work. Fingers crossed.

I was about to say “another great example of a few jaggovs ruining it for the rest of us.”

But let’s be fair, it’s many more than just a few.

I have literally never been inconvenienced by any of the increasingly frequent Tesla drivers.

Maybe I’m just lucky?

When you say they “act privileged” and “act like they own the road” what do you mean? Like….not letting you merge? Or what?

Edit: I guess is should say I have never been inconvenienced by Teslas in particular, like I don’t notice bad behavior from teslas any more than just what you expect from traffic in general.

I also dislike seeing an old historic home get demolished, but it's an unfortunate reality that the kind of the people with the money to buy and upkeep a big grand old Victorian in town aren't the kind of people who wanna live at the corner of two major road ways between across the street from a hospital and a half mile away from a bunch of partying college housing.

The people with that kind of money go buy some river front acreage south of town and build a McMansion.

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And a house nobody wants to live in, especially old ones, well what else is gonna happen?

Screed? My first response was 3 sentences. Hardly a screed. The longer response was only cause you asked and I was trying to be respectful and give you a real answer instead of some dismissive one liner. And even my longer response would be difficult to accurately call a "screed".

But whatever, that really doesn't matter that much.

If you want to know why I made assumptions instead of asking probing questions, I thought I explained it quite well before. Because the statement was the kind of thing only someone with the confidence of only a little knowledge would say.

That's not the kind of person you go to for insights or to enlighten yourself. That's not the knee you sit at to gain wisdom. That's the kind of person you tease and then go about your day. I only engaged further cause you asked what I chose to interpret as a good faith question about WHY they got teased, and I tried to give you a decent answer.

Also, I have no idea if you're a redneck. I wasn't "picturing" a redneck in my head for what it's worth.

I will give you an honest and not snarky answer.

There are some things that a person can say that instantly lets you know that they have only enough knowledge to be confident in what they want to believe, and not enough knowledge to actually know what they are talking about or have to arrived at earnest insight. I will give some examples of things you and I probably (I hope) agree on.

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Example: The earth is flat.

Example: Vaccines cause autism.

Example: The civil war was about state's rights not slavery.

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There are many many others, but those are just three easy ones you hopefully agree with. The kind of thing someone says cause they have done some selective research of sources that already agree with them, enough, to feel confident and informed, but don't actually have a good understanding of the subject.

"You're only getting downvoted cause you're speaking the truth (implied: about how liberals ruin the area they live in and then invade other parts of the country)."

Is also a very good example of such a statement. Obviously you don't agree with me, otherwise you wouldn't have said it, but hey, all of the flat earthers out there have extreme confidence in their position too, that's why they say the things they do.

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Also, while it's not quite the same as being in the Dunning-Kruger valley, as a general rule, any time someone applies a broad statement with a clear and distinct ideological angle to a large scale and complex scenario, they are probably an idiot who doesn't know what they are talking about. Not always, there are some rare exceptions, but generally that is the case.

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So there ya go, that's why I said what I did. Cheers.

Ah, the confidence of a little knowledge. Not enough to actually know what you’re talking about, but just enough knowledge to feel confident you do.

The Dunning-Kruger is strong with you.

You are correct. But that’s also been a true statement at literally any given moment for the last 150 years. Springfield has never seen a sustained population decline, just slow steady growth over time.

I think the only time we ever saw a brief marked decline was back when Springfield went racism insane and lynched 3 black people in the square and ran almost the entire black population out of town.