> (The majority of the rurals are considered urban by the US census, btw.)

I wonder if there's some administrative reason the census considers huge cities and little villages both 'urban'?

It has to do with what the Census report is used for. Most people consider a small village 30 miles from the big town to be rural, but it has many services and supplies that an actual rural property won't.

Also remember when the Census was begun, the divide was much more stark between rural and urban as you couldn't travel quickly.

Certainly many books today are over-written, but I also wonder if the general reader today is less adept at reading. Skills like memorization and a person's depth and breadth of knowledge all play a part in what you get out of reading and I feel like one could make the case that the average educated reader 100 years ago was better at these things than people today.

Reading is like swimming or running. Everybody can do it, but levels of skills differ.

I don't know how the numbers would play out, but maybe higher average food prices would reduce global poverty if in general the global poor's income derives from food production?

Perhaps a build system with a very high kurtosis means the builds are usually the same.

Ahh this is the closest one to what we originally meant haha..(founder here). but the intent was to mitigate the impact of “kurtosis” on your system by enabling engineers to see how the whole environment worked in testing (and other parts of the development process). We also have a love for taleb’s books about excelling in uncertainty, in high “Kurtosis” environments, so going with the theme made sense for us.

But I see from the comments it is decently confusing!

It's the opposite, high (positive) kurtosis means fat tails.

I think high would actually mean more outliers and not good for managing a distributed system...

So where do folks get good x220 batteries? My x220 is still running well but mostly tethered to the power brick these days.

The question of who owns a product's externalities is not absurd at all, but pretty complicated, and unfortunately rarely responsibly accounted for.

Maybe we could just implement a carbon tax and let the problem sort itself out?

Is it complicated?

Whyy are not the externalities owned by the owner of the product?

I can think of only 2 reasons:

- the consumer was forced to purchase the product without an option with dire consequences. In this case, the dominator is responsible. This is pretty much anything your taxes buy.

- the producer lied or hid something about the product. In this case, the liar is responsible. E.g., the lies about recycling plastic, the outcome of using internal combustion engines, the safety of leaded gasoline. The list of that is simply enormous.

What other complications do you see?

The entire western economic system is structured in such a way that ethical consumption is difficult and expensive. While certainly I would agree that economically advantaged groups bear some responsibility to make ethical choices about what they consume, expecting someone on minimum wage to pay extra for a lower carbon product seems unreasonable (e.g. taking a train from london to paris is often significantly more expensive than flying).

Fixing the problem of climate change requires deep economic restructuring, and much of the responsibility there lies with those who have the most power to enact these changes (i.e. politicians, ceos, large shareholders). Treating climate change as an issue of individual consumer responsibility has been a long term tactic of large polluters (e.g. oil firms) to shift attention and blame from their damaging activities.

Why does the responsibility solely fall on the product owner? Is it because the product owner is using the product for their own benefit? Is it not true, though, that the product manufacturer is also benefiting from the product’s usage? Why does this benefit not confer any responsibility?

Because the consumer in many places have choices on how much pollution they create.

You can give up your trips to Bali and use the money to live closer to work, for example.

You can use a bicycle instead of a car for short trips.

You can decide not to eat food that it's been shipped halfway around the world unless that is the most responsible option available to you.

You can use the disposable grocery bags and not those environmentally damaging reusable ones.

And do on...

And manufacturers have many choices in what they produce. Your answer explains why consumers have responsibility for their actions. You haven’t explained why, in your opinion, manufacturers can benefit from CO2 emissions but have zero responsibility for their choices.

The author of the linked post wrote the (open access) Handmade Electronic Music, https://www.nicolascollins.com/handmade.htm, a really fun book to make projects from for anyone interested.

Cool to see Eskil Steenberg's name pop up, his game dev diary was a very interesting read back in the day.

Thanks! Mostly streaming and posting videos instead of writing now a days.

Ooh thought I recognised that name - is Love still online and being developed???

no its not. I am currently working on a new game.

Used to love this living in MN (Gyro pizza with tzatziki sauce!), interesting to hear it's 'a style' at all. It makes perfect sense it's a popular tavern style, the small pieces are great for sharing (and long drinking sessions).

At the risk of slightly embarrassing the lead dev of Evennia, Griatch, let me say that they are one of the best maintainers of an open source project I've ever seen, guiding the 15+ year old project with skill and grace (and also an amazing artist btw). It's nice to know there are projects like this out there whenever you see the latest open source dumpster fire in the headlines.

Thanks a lot, this is great and very encouraging to hear. :D That said, Evennia is, of course, a collaborative project, I couldn't do it without the help of the great Evennia community!