Ah yes, the 80s, when corporations like the Union Pacific Corporation realised that for over 100 years they had actually been run by the state in secret, and became privatized by chanting "Reaganomics" until they became publicly traded companies.

The Amish are way ahead of you.

"I have no intention of ever going to school, so I shouldn't have to pay for it."

You're also paying for a lot of federal highways you'll never use, just like others will pay for highways they won't use. It evens out.

#40
If you want the actual reasons why it can't happen, it's very simple:
Step 1: Try and fail to regulate the railway companies into some semblance of usefulness, because if they are allowed to abandon any route that is mildly unprofitable or even just not profitable enough, and price gouge on any route with no competition, the system will quickly implode.
Step 2: Wait until everyone is bankrupt before stepping in.
Step 3: Consolidate that mess into a quasi-public corporation and operate it as for-profit. Hint: It was never going to become profitable over night.
Step 4: Let the real estate market become a cancerous price inflation machine because "the stock market demands it"
Step 5: You have now ensured that no one can ever build a HSR network anywhere near a population center without paying ridiculous sums for just the land, and that the only one still in the business of passenger railway will never have any money to spare to even consider it.

For comparison, here's a look at Spain:
The most expensive project is going to cost 12.5 billion euros, which works out to a bit under 25 million USD per mile at current exchange rates.
The last bit towards the Pyrenees (not even in the mountains, just to reach them) cost them 52 million USD per mile. The actual mountain part ended up slightly cheaper at 47 million.
They did it anyway, because connecting the rest of the European HSR network was worth it.
Yes, on other routes it's more around 20 million, but it's still a lot. The trick is to not whine about it and build it anyway.

#41
Yes, HSR is more of a midrange thing. If you need to travel 1000 miles you'd need a maglev or hyperloop or something else to come closer to the speeds of a plane.

Time for boarding/security checks, start, landing and all that even out with the lower speed of a train compared to a plane, so the two real advantages of HSR are that you can put a train station right in the middle of a city and even multiple, which drastically cuts down on detours to and from airports, and the sheer volume you can push through.
Both are only really relevant for reasonably densely populated regions, not for a section of a cross-continental route through North Dakota.

#14
1. Did you know you can build those?
2. That's not how it works. HSR cars will work on any track of the right gauge. The quality of the track only determines the maximum safe speed. And you can replace those, since tracks need to be replace regularly anyway. There's machines that can that in-place and even change the track ballast. They come on rails.
3. Did you know that is exactly how most countries did it?

The northeastern US is slightly smaller than Spain, with slightly higher population, and accounts for about 20% of the USA's GDP, which is a hell of a lot more than Spain got in its entirety.
Spain even decided to use the same gauge as the rest of Europe for their HSR network, which is different from their standard (Iberian) gauge, so they really had to built it entirely new from the ground up. They now have the largest HSR network in Europe, used to be the largest in the world until China overtook them.

How did they do it? Probably black magic, catholicism, communism, The Spanish Inquisition, or all of them.

Valve going from selling their own games, to selling hats and others' games, to selling hats made by others for their own games and now finally possibly selling their own games, but made by others, is the peak of "work smarter, not harder."

Honestly the most upsetting part about market gardener isn't the supposedly guaranteed med pick that no one can do anything to prevent apparently, but that a soldier can reload one rocket and suddenly do as much damage as if he had reloaded and hit 3.

I'm saying scouts who manage to be in the correct position and still miss their shots should take the hit. It's what they deserve.

Also yes, if a roamer hits the right trajectory and lands directly in someone's face and isn't killed then he tends to get a pick. I think that's how it works.

Hide behind your pocket soldier.

For real, medics are upset about spoon because you can't surf it. It moves counterplay almost entirely to your team, giving them even more opportunities to screw you over, and there's nothing you can do about it. It doesn't matter what the skill required to counter it vs the skill required to pull it off is, the medic becomes essentially a bystander who has to hope his team doesn't choke and misses 5 shots on a 30 hp roamer like they always do.
I can't count how many times I've seen scouts jumping into an incoming memespooner's face for the denial shot, only to miss it, then jump out of the way because their life as 0 dpm scout is more important than the medic's.

I worry about the consistency of your brain, OP.

Granary is the traditional quality cut-off map. Constant calls to remove it from the pool because they think it's the worst map in the pool, and once it's been removed most want it back in because surely it's at least better than the current worst map in the pool.

It would make the GFs longer and this one was already too long according to some, so I think it's relevant?
Can't remove map advantage if you don't have a plan to deal with the longer match.

This GF was scheduled on a thursday, despite scheduling it on the weekkend apparently being the easiest thing in the world and the best for everyone involved.

So instead debating which is a valid excuse for not scheduling a grand final on the weekend, ranging from HL scrims to nothing short of work or death, does anyone have any possible solutions to the "grand finals take too long" problem apart from "just play it on the weekend 4head"?

You still don't see the difference between suggesting something, and suggesting something that is nice when it works, being aware of the problems, then immediately appending "if you can't make this work you don't care about the game enough".

Man quits game to play different game for money, then comes back years later to post walls of text about how today's youth isn't dedicated to the game enough.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure you're deliberately misreading everything I write.

You pretty much wrote "If you have to work on the weekend, sucks to be you, no playoffs for you, but if you've got any other reason for not wanting to spend that entire weekend playing TF2 you might as well quit the game".
Am I really the only one who finds this unreasonable?