#I've got a massive spot for kids and lonely characters | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

skellybonesandtrees · 1 year

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Top 5-10 favorite video games?

Preamble to say the only consoles I ever owned were a Sega Genesis, as a kid, and I played a shit out of that with my sister. And an X-Box 360, where I mostly played one game I also owned on PC. I'm a PC gamer.

Going from how much play and replay time I got out of them

10. Bloons TD6 - A simple tower defense game, you can even play this on mobile. It's a fun time killer. Like most games, I feel like, if you're good at math, you'll do better at it. I'm not good at math. But I have fun. I always go back to it when nothing else works.

9. Darkest Dungeon - I actually only have 82.6 hours in this game but the only reason I don't play it more, is, again, I'm bad at math, and not good at it, but I really like it. It is the type of game where suffering is the point tho, so if you're into that, I recommend. Turn based RPG game. Really cool art too.

8. Orcs Must Die 2 - Another tower defense game, but this one is a blend with a shooter. It's quick paced and fun and the characters and orcs are funny. I love this one.

7. Frostpunk - Dystopian ice age city builder. The art is also amazing. Again...math...so...I do what I can...which usually means turning down difficulty but I still love it. It's a bit depressing but...I like that.

6. Banished - Medieval/Cononial periods inspired city builder. The base game is good enough, but I admit I can no longer play without one of he handful of massive mods that make it a lot more involved and rewarding. Also, I like going all agricultural age all over the map. Playing it right now in a borrowed laptop and enjoying it still.

5. Stardew Valley - At first glance I didn't think I'd enjoy it so much but I played the heck out of this during the first leg of the pandemic. There's a lot to do in this game, farming, animal husbandry, mining and killing monsters, making friends with locals, choosing one of the handful of dull villagers to tie the knots with, having babies who never grow up, meeting the wizard, finding the witch hut, sailing to an island with more crap to do. It's a lot of fun. One of the games I miss playing since my laptop broke again.

4. Don't Starve [Together] - Survival games have a special spot in my introvert, lonely heart and DS is one of the first I got into. It's got beautiful Tim Burton-esque art and funny characters and music and it was very spooky to me when I first played it. I probably played the co-op version, Don't Starve Together, longer, because I played it with friends as well as alone because it's doable and DST offers thing you don't have in the regular game.

3. Dark Souls - I actually only managed to get my hands on (it was a gift) this game and try it recently. I gave up multiple times because it's more than challenging. It's hard. Probably not for "pro gamers" but it was for me and I beat it the first time only with the help of a cheaty mod that let me turn down difficulty. I have played it the normal way several times since and it's definitely taught me to play defensively and to actually think about my moves more than any other game. I know it's an oldie, but I love it and miss it since the pooter when poof.

2. The Long Dark - Another survival game and possibly my favorite. You're alone in Great Bear Island (Canada). Probably alone in the world after a geomagnetic storm that took out electricity and nothing works anymore and the world is getting colder. There's a story mode but I actually never played it much, I play survival mode. You can make it as difficult or as easy as you want. It's challenging and you can die from hunger, from cold, from predators, all that good stuff! I am currently playing it in my borrowed pooter.

1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - This one gets the first spot because I've played it, A LOT, in both PC and x-box 360. The replayability for me was great. I played it many times, trying different builds. And yes the game is buggy and glitchy as hell and it's got many issues, but I love it. I love the freedom it gave me to do what I wanted. It countered all of its weaknesses for me. I never had a beefy enough computer to play it with all the best mods, but I dream of the day I winthe lottery and buy the best PC to really beef up this game and play it all over again.

#thegayhimbo #ama #tumblr asks

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scripthistory · 7 years

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Hello! I'm not sure how much you know about the 1848-50 California gold rush, but as a native Californian, I've always been fascinated by the topic. My question is multifaceted. For one: how big would miners plots of land along the various rivers be, and would people actually live on the same plots that they mined for gold? Also, what would it be like for a young woman and/or young men and children in an area like this?

Hello there! Well, aren’t you in luck because we have the Archivist from @scriptlibrarian answering this one! The Archivist has also studied history and has got your back so just read on!

There is gold in them darn hills!

Quick history of the California Gold Rush. In 1848, John Marshal found flecks of gold in the American River, just below the Sierra Nevadas, in Coloma California, while building a water powered sawmill for John Sutter.

Just days after he discovered the gold, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War, giving California to the United States and essentially the gold.

The discovery of Gold shaped California into the state is today. California saw the largest migration influx in the history of the United States. In 1848 there was roughly 157,000 people in California (150,000 Natives, 6,500 Spanish/Mexican, 700 American/Non-Native). Within 20 months the Non-Native Population soared to 100,000 and by the mid 1850’s was past 300,000. This massive population influx put California on fast track to Statehood, and with the Compromise of 1850 California was allowed into the Union, just two years after the land was acquired, as a Free State - leading a imbalance in Free vs Slave States.

So now that we got background history established let’s look at your questions.

How big would miner’s plots of land along the various rivers be…

I admit, I dug around for this information and beyond going into deep dark storage and digging out (pun intended) my books from school … the best answer I could find is - depends.

Yeah I hate that also.

A miner would first have to Staking a Claim, which involves first the discovery of a valuable mineral in quantities that a “prudent man” would invest time and expenses to recover them. Then mark the claim boundaries, with wooden posts, capped steel posts, both of which must be four feet tall, or stone cairns, which must be three feet tall. Then filing a claim with the land management agency (USFS or BLM), and the local county registrar.

There are four types of Land Claims, a miner could make:

Placer (minerals free of the local bedrock, and deposited in benches or streams) - This would be your typical visual of Gold Miners. Bent over a stream with a pan, looking for flexs or small nuggets of gold.

Lode (minerals in place in the mother rock) - next stage up. The Miner has a section off shoot of the river, and is breaking up the rocks looking for veins of gold.

Tunnel (a location for a proposed tunnel which claims all veins discovered during the driving of it) - This would be someone with enough capital to start mining operation looking for gold, and could hire workers.

Millsite (a maximum five acre site for processing ore) - This is a full on organization, that is mining not just gold, but other minerals as well. Has a team of miners, and likely a full town surrounding it to supplement the miners.

So if your character would need to find the gold, stake out his claim, then register it. Depending on how much gold found, expense to work the land, and fees for the register - would determine the size of his land claim.

Would your character live in the same spot as they mine?

Yes, they would have a camp with a tent and supplies near by, so they could work their claim dawn to dusk. They did this for a variety of reasons:

Ease of access to the claim. The last thing anyone wanted to do was hike in and out of the area, wasting precious time traveling when they could be mining.

Protecting their assets. If they are away from their claim, someone could sneak in and mine the area, or re stake the claim stating it was abandoned.

Also, what would it be like for a young woman and/or young men and children in an area like this?

The Gold Rush was not really a place for children. It was a brutal work, and a very lonely existence. Many men left their families behind in hopes of making it rich to bring back the gold to them.

That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t women in the camps.

At one point there was a call out to women to go to California, because there was a fear men would do ‘untold’ things without the calm and stable influence of a woman (not many headed the call).

There were wives that worked the claims with their husbands, and likely even a few who took over the claim after he died. Though this was dangerous as she would be on her own, and had very little rights to the land.

Most of the women seen in or around the camps were washers, cooks, those seeking out a living for their family. These women came with their husbands, fathers, brothers and ended up making the money for the family to survive, while the men panned for gold.

By the 1850’s there were roughly 1000 women working in and around the mines, but they were still a small part of the population, and by the 1860’s they were less than 19% of the population of California.

A good resource to look into the role women played in the Gold Rush would be They Saw the Elephant: Woman in the Gold Rush by JoAnn Levy.

Now as for young men, it would depend on what you mean by young men?

There were many teenage boys out in the fields, either they came with their father or ran away from home. The Gold Rush was an opportunity to make it rich fast, and men from all walks of life, old and young found their way to California.

Children were less likely in the mines or panning for gold. If the whole family was in the gold fields, the younger kids would be with mom, helping with cooking, washing, etc. Older boys maybe 12ish would be with dad. There are not many accounts, but it didn’t mean they weren’t there.

William Tecumseh Sherman - the future Civil War General, worked in San Francisco during the Gold Rush as a banker, and had his two young sons with him during the time, while his wife and daughter stayed back East. Now this was in the city and not the gold fields. Women, kids and families were very common in San Francisco.

In contrast Ulysses S. Grant was in the Army at the time, stationed in the gold fields and had left his family behind. This also led to him being discharged from the Army, because of his drinking problem, as he had never done well being away from his wife, Julia.

Irony both men would come together a decade later, a friendship that some say changed the world. But that is another essay.

Some interesting facts about the Gold Rush that could be helpful.

The Gold Rush attracted immigrants from around the world, by 1850 more than 25 percent of California’s population had been born outside the United States. As the amount of available gold began to dwindle, miners increasingly fought one another for profits and anti-immigrant tensions soared. In 1850 California’s legislature passed a Foreign Miner’s tax, which levied a monthly fee of $20 on non-citizens, the equivalent of more than $500 in today’s money. That bill was eventually repealed, but was replaced with another in 1852 that expressly singled out Chinese miners, charging them $2 ($80 today) a month. Violence against foreign miners increased as well, and beatings, rapes and even murders became commonplace. However no ethnic group suffered more than California’s Native Americans. Before the Gold Rush, its native population numbered roughly 300,000. Within 20 years, more than 100,000 would be dead. Most died from disease or mining-related accidents, but more than 4,000 were murdered by enraged miners.

Early sections of San Francisco were built out of ships abandoned by prospectors. The Gold Rush conjures up images of thousands of “’49ers” heading west in wagons to strike it rich in California, but many of the first prospectors actually arrived by ship. Within months, San Francisco’s port was teeming with boats that had been abandoned after their passengers, and crew headed inland to hunt for gold. As the formerly tiny town began to boom, demand for lumber increased dramatically, and the ships were dismantled and sold as construction material. Hundreds of houses, banks, saloons, hotels, jails and other structures were built out of the abandoned ships, while others were used as landfill. Today, more than 150 years after the Gold Rush began, archeologists and preservations continue to find relics, sometimes even entire ships, beneath the streets of the City by the Bay. Map of where ships can be found in San Francisco

Mining wasn’t cheap! Most of the men who flocked to northern California arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs. Once there, they needed to buy food and supplies, which San Francisco’s merchants were all too willing to provide for a cost. Stuck in a remote region, far from home, many prospectors coughed up most of their hard-earned money for the most basic supplies. At the height of the boom in 1849, prospectors could expect prices sure to cause sticker shock: A single egg could cost the equivalent of $25 in today’s money, coffee went for more than $100 per pound and replacing a pair of worn out boots could set you back more than $2,500.

The merchant’s made the money not the miners. As the boom continued, more and more men got out of the gold-hunting business and began to open businesses catering to newly arrived prospectors. In fact, some of America’s greatest industrialists got their start in the Gold Rush. Philip Armour, who would later found a meatpacking empire in Chicago, made a fortune operating the sluices that controlled the flow of water into the rivers being mined. Before John Studebaker built one of America’s great automobile fortunes, he manufactured wheelbarrows for Gold Rush miners. And two entrepreneurial bankers named Henry Wells and William Fargo moved west to open an office in San Francisco, an enterprise that soon grew to become one of America’s premier banking institutions. One of the biggest mercantile success stories was that of Levi Strauss. A German-born tailor, Strauss arrived in San Francisco in 1850 with plans to open a store selling canvas tarps and wagon coverings to the miners. After hearing that sturdy work pants, ones that could withstand the punishing 16-hour days regularly put in by miners, were more in demand, he shifted gears, opening a store in downtown San Francisco that would eventually become a manufacturing empire, producing Levi’s denim jeans.

And to prove how fate is fickle - the man who’s name will always be associated with the California Gold Rush - John Sutter - died in poverty. As news had spread about the discovery of gold on his property, within months, most of his workers had abandoned him to search for gold themselves, while thousands of other prospectors overran and destroyed much of his land and equipment. Faced with mounting debts, Sutter was forced to deed his land to one of his sons, who used it to create a new settlement called Sacramento. Sutter Sr. was furious—he had hoped the town would be named after him—but he had more pressing concerns. Nearly bankrupt, he began a decades-long campaign to have the U.S. government reimburse him for his financial losses, to no avail. While thousands became rich off his former land, a bitter Sutter retired to Pennsylvania and died.

I hope this information is helpful, and will give you some insight of the world during the California Gold Rush.

Some great sources to check out:

Women in the Gold Rush

Summary of Gold Mining Techniques

Articles on the Gold Rush

History Channel’s Gold Rush

#history #california #gold rush #california gold rush #1850s #not captain #consultants

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