bump

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bump s8

Barnes and Noble ❌
Best Buy ❌
Home Depot ❌
Walmart ❌
the stock market ❌
Congress ❌
Recharge Gaming League ✔️

a new jump_competitive map would be cool

jump_sink
jump_bear not too bad

if you know how to wallpogo there are lots of free completions there

-decrease radius of airblast cone by 25%
-decrease strength of airblast the more times it is used in a row
-make it so that you have to actually aim the flamethrower, instead of the optimal strategy being to fling your mouse
-make it so that players can airstrafe after being airblasted

Result: pyro is now significantly less annoying, while still being able to act as a training wheels class to new players.

I think reducing the amount of overheal you have works too. So instead of doing hurtme -10000000, you could just do hurtme -10000 for less choppiness.

Your presumption about me is incorrect.

The difference between charity and taxation is that with charity, I can choose where my money goes and what it gets used for. As an added bonus, charity is also voluntary.

This in contrast to taxes, where I don't get to choose where my money is spent ("just vote harder!"). I don't want my money going to abortions, for example.

Where is the personal responsibility? I am against entitlement. People have forgotten that before government medical care programs existed in the United States, it was common for private doctors to treat impoverished patients, and medical charity was booming. Many charities for healthcare (and other things) are still operating today, despite the government's best wishes to crowd out the private sector.

No one has responded to my central argument: If this is truly a point of concern for you all, which I'm not disputing, then go ahead and invest in high speed rail companies, and go ahead and donate to charity. I will donate to charity myself, by my own volition, and without the fiat of a government official. People aren't as selfish as you think.

"To heal the breach between the rich and the poor, it is necessary to distinguish between justice and charity." -- Pope Pius X

“As a matter of fact, however, merely naturally good works are only a counterfeit of virtue since they are neither permanent nor sufficient for salvation.” -- Pope Pius X

I thought I'd never see the day when not wanting to spend 500 billion dollars on trains is called "propagating human suffering."

The principle is that if I work to make money, then that's my money. I don't think a politician can decide how to spend my money better than me.

I don't really like cupcakes, so I don't have to spend any of my money on cupcakes. Those who do like cupcakes can spend it on them if they so choose, and it doesn't affect me. Similarly, if I really like ramen noodles, I don't expect other people to pay for my ramen. Other people's money belongs to them, and my money belongs to me. Those who have no intention of eating ramen shouldn't have to pay for it. It goes both ways.

Again, if you or others think trains are useful to you, then by all means, vote with your dollars by investing in high speed rail companies, or even just using America's passenger trains. There are other countries with private rail systems that are doing quite well (kind of like the private freight rail system in the US), and I'm not saying it's impossible to work. My only claim is that every public rail system in US history has gone down the hole in debt, but especially the large scale ones like the transcontinental railways and Amtrack.

The prices for passenger and freight rail were about the same in America up until 1980, but then freight railways were privatized. Now, the price for hauling by freight rail is lower than before and supports a massive trucking industry. Conversely, the price for public passenger rail rates have not decreased since 1980, and have actually increased when compared with freight rail.

I have no intention of ever boarding a train, so I shouldn't have to pay for it. I'm all for removing the regulations on trains, but that doesn't mean I want my money to go to something I'll never ever use. If high speed rail were so good, and those pesky regulations were removed, then it would stand or fall on the free market. People forget that the NYC subway system was created by a private company. Maybe, just maybe, there's a reason that Amtrack is billions in the hole.

Public projects are not about success or failure (see: the longest American war). Do we really want to see more of the same, but with railroads? America once had massive, transcontinental, government-funded railways. They were terribly unprofitable on the net (although the elites walked away with quite a bit of taxpayer money), and most of the railway companies behind them went bankrupt even with their massive government support.

The cool thing about private companies is that if I don't want or use what they're selling, then I don't have to pay for it. If high speed rails are so great and truly would improve the lives of millions of people, then let those people vote with their own dollars, and not mine.

I hate the United States government. Who are you arguing with?

Within the current infrastructure in America, they are mutually exclusive.
1. There are no passing lanes on long stretches of railway.
2. High speed rail cars wouldn't even be able to function on the current railroad tracks in America, because they use special tracks.
3. Therefore, a whole new rail infrastructure would need to be built to support high speed rail.

There are some conclusions that can be drawn from this.

The reason big-shipment railroading is so cheap is because it goes through the middle of nowhere, where land is cheap. High speed rail attempts to bring people to dense areas, where land can become 10x, 100x, or 1000x more expensive.

To build one mile of high speed rail in America costs about 87 million dollars. To build one high speed rail track from NYC to LA would cost over 243 billion dollars. That's an extreme example, but you can see how the cost balloons and why no entrepreneur has attempted to do this, especially since America is more "spread out" in general than other countries.

Fun fact: Trains in America run slower today than they did in the 1920s. One reason for this is because of government weight regulations on train cars that make them slower.

That being said, China is in an infrastructure bubble right now. That's why there are vacant cities*. Debt spending on infrastructure like railroads and entire cities makes up a larger part of the Chinese economy than the American economy.

Europe's far higher population density than America might explain why there are more transport railroads there. Europe has around 111.739 people per square kilometer, whereas the US has around 33.27 people per square kilometer.

Despite its history and lack of high speed rail, I think the system in America right now is pretty decent. America has the most miles of railroad out of any country in the world*. There are lots of railroads in use in America today, just not high speed ones. Railroad companies here simply make more money by shipping hundreds of transport containers on one train at a slow speed, than by shipping a small amount of passenger carriages at a high speed.

* https://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-chinese-ghost-cities-2010-12?slop=1#heres-chinas-biggest-ghost-city-zhengzhou-new-district-4
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size#cite_note-3