6 ms·
I just got back from a visit with family in Cumberland. It's the epitome of rust belt. What used to be a thriving manufacturing area has become an abandoned ser
by j_m_b 2y ago
I just got back from a visit with family in Cumberland. It's the epitome of rust belt. What used to be a thriving manufacturing area has become an abandoned service-sector economy with low-wage jobs. Property values are dirt cheap, even for nice houses. There isn't much nearby, you have to travel hours from Pittsburgh to even get there by plane. Tales of theft of items like power tools from relatively remote farms are common. It doesn't look quite as bad as videos I've seen of poorer parts of Appalachia, but it's pretty close. I don't know how they will be able to afford this as the tax base has all but left and Cumberland is trying to pinch every penny they can to afford their over-compensated government staff. It's a pretty sad state of affairs, this seems more like a last-ditch marketing effort.
- martinald 2y agoSeems like its 2hrs drive from Pittsburg and IAD airports?
- robotnikman 2y agoSounds like a place I wouldn't mind working if I can find a remote position again. I'm a big introvert, and I would like to move somewhere more greener (getting tired of living in the middle of a bland hot dessert)
- ghaff 2y agoAt some point, many people start thinking about things like access to good healthcare, various types of trades, ability to travel without it being a huge hassle, etc. Doesn't mean you need to live right around a big city but I doubt I would want every task or appointment to be a big undertaking.
- iancmceachern 2y agoHealthcare is huge. It's amazing how terrible access to good care is in many rural areas. It's something people often overlook but it's just so important.
- jen729w 2y agoHere in Australia people retire ‘down the coast’. For us that’s the stunning south of NSW. Look up Eden (yes, really, Eden). And then … they come back to the city. Because the older you are the more medical care you need, and there just aren’t enough doctors down there, or in any other regional area.
- killingtime74 2y agoMy parents are going to retire on the Gold coast for this reason. Quieter life but several big hospitals and Brisbane nearby
- whiterknight 2y agoAll the doctors want to live in LA and NY. This problem only gets worse as medical school, etc becomes more competitive and costly.
- browningstreet 2y agoHave you seen the medical offices in Scottsdale?
- KennyBlanken 2y agoThe problem is a mix of people leaving rural areas which increases per patient overhead at facilities, plus mergers and private equity takeovers. Hospital chains and healthcare systems have been consolidating like crazy for decades and it's still going strong - 80 or so hospitals merge every year. PE has also been snapping up private practices like crazy, too. https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/ten-things-to-know-about-consolidation-in-health-care-provider-markets/ https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/ten-things-to-k...
- ghaff 2y agoThough the consolidation is something of a mixed bag. My community hospital network had some pretty good docs but lab work, appointments, and so forth was pretty much faxes and phone calls which sometimes worked. Now they're on Mass General Brigham's electronic records system and it's a lot better.
- codersfocus 2y agoTelemedicine / remote surgery should solve this.
- ghaff 2y agoI doubt it. Physicians (and nurse practitioners, etc. at urgent care clinics) could arguably do more remotely but I'm not convinced that reducing the involvement of trained humans would be a positive move.
- tom_vidal 2y agoThink you missed the implied /s here :-)
- ghaff 2y agoI think a lot of people actually believe that kind of thing. I was rather impressed with the nurse practitioner at a CVS Instant Clinic a couple of months back. I could have tried to get an appointment with my primary care when I got home. But when I actually saw her a few weeks later for a scheduled appointment, she basically shrugged and said she'd have done exactly the same thing the nurse practitioner did. (Keep taking Tussin and there's a prescription for an inhaler at the pharmacy counter.) Pre-COVID (and the test I took was negative for what little that was worth), it would have been eh you have a virus. Which ended up basically the diagnosis.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- davkan 2y agoIf you’d suggested LLMs in some way I probably would have caught it.
- codersfocus 2y agoNo sarcasm implied. There needs to be programs at medical schools (or ideally, new schools in the first place) that teach robotic surgery only. Why would you think this is sarcasm? The availability of capable surgeons is already limited; when looking geographically, they are extremely limited. You would have surgical assistants and nurses on the ground, but the actual expertise for surgery shouldn't be location dependent.
- j_m_b 2y agoThis is actually a very good point. The family I visited travel 1hr+ to get healthcare services because the local ones are pretty bad. They're not elderly per se, only a few years into retirement but they definitely have health issues that come with old age. They're relatively well-off and live in the nicer section of Cumberland where doctors and lawyers lived. I can't imagine how bad it is for people who are just getting by.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deagle50 2y agoDon't fall for it. I had family in Cumberland for 20 years and I know it well. It's a very dark place, most people there barely finished high school and drug abuse is really bad.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoAnd live every day as a mark for a robbery? No thanks.
- scythe 2y agoThe area around Cumberland, mostly to the south towards Moorefield and Petersburg, WV, has a somewhat similar climate to the Tokaj region of Hungary, known for growing rare botrytized wines that sell for a fortune. I found this one day when I looked at the map of precipitation activity the US and saw an unexpected dry(ish) spot in northeastern West Virginia.
- alephnerd 2y agoThere's a decently sized saffron industry in that general region of the Appalachia and southern PA for the same reason.
- thelastparadise 2y agoNot to mention "incest" is a real word there. It is most definitely Appalachia, part of the dark underbelly. Drive down any number of the "hollars," and you'll see an active smokehouse, yard litter, and an (often abused) wife sitting on the porch. There are neighborhood kids endlessly circling the streets. An otherwise innocuous occurrence, however in this case the child is pushing 30 years old.
- dccoolgai 2y agoWhen the railroad was the internet, it was really the Silicon Valley of its day. Really makes you think.
- hosh 2y agoI had been thinking about looking at history from the lens of information technology. China is an interesting example, in that it was so well ahead of the curve until around 1700s. In the 1800s, when telegraphs were connecting the Western world together, the Qing dynasty China would not have been able to participate unless pictographs could be encoded as easily as letters (let alone the century of uprisings, rebellions, and civil war). But look at Tang Dynasty China. The Silk Road was a part of a global trade network reaching through the Middle East, and into Africa, along with maritime routes from India. It wasn’t just trade goods that travelled. Ideas — religious, cultural, technological, flowed along the network. But they travelled only as fast as trade goods. I think it is when information is able to flow faster than the physical items that, we might find some insights about what is going on now.
- dfedbeef 2y agoI have good news re: information flow rates
- thephyber 2y agoCategorical mistake. A rural community based on a single industry is always high risk for economic sustainability. Silicon Valley is has cities older than the USA, was grown by the gold rush, the early movie studios, the defense industry (plus some world class universities), NASA contractors, microelectronics, etc. The most recent iteration is software startups. Cities are always more resilient than isolated rural communities because they are inherently more diversified in both economy and workforce.
- mturmon 2y agoExcellent point. Longnow.org has a lot of material about the resilience of cities over very long time scales (like, millennia). Here’s an example on the resilience of cities versus corporations: https://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-growing-corporations-always-die-and-life-gets-faster/ https://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-gr... Another example, from a longnow podcast, is the tendency of people to think of themselves as citizens of a particular city (I’m from San Francisco, I’m from Venice, I’m from Helsinki), perhaps even more so than a state/province or a nationality in some cases.
- rjsw 2y agoHow good is internet access there?
- tunesmith 2y agoThe brochure says "95% broadband", whatever that means.
- bee_rider 2y agoPresumably the last 5% is the bit that connects to your computer.
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoThat generally means most properties will have decent broadband/>25mbps internet, some will have ADSL <25mbps, and a few won't have internet or you'll have to run it to the property (costs a few thousand USD generally).
- speed_spread 2y agoThe missing 5% was stolen by copper thieves.
- reducesuffering 2y ago70% of households in the county have internet speeds >25 Mbps. Is that metric meaningful to you? What would ideally mean "good internet access?" I'm working on a project[0] where I sourced this from the FCC Broadband data and am curious about what people are looking for in that respect. [0] https://www.exoroad.com/us/Maryland/Allegany-County/housing https://www.exoroad.com/us/Maryland/Allegany-County/housing
- Barrin92 2y ago> What would ideally mean "good internet access?" For someone who relies on a internet connection for their professional work I'd say 100 Mbps is the floor of "good" in 2024. I think that's what the FCC updated their definition of broadband to earlier this year.
- dfc 2y agoCumberland is equidistant (~2 hours) between Pittsburgh airport and Dulles.
- abduhl 2y agoI think this would be equitemporal rather than equidistant? Maybe isochronic? Isochronal? One of those…
- mdp2021 2y agoEquidistant in time. Edit: speak up, annoyant... "Distance" is "standing apart". It is not confined to space - in fact, the original meaning is that of "diverging in stances" (i.e. a quarrel), and the geometric one comes one century later. And there exist languages where speaking of "distance in time" is language in use - so, if in your neighborhood they don't speak this way, it is a problem of your neighborhood.
- klingoff 2y agoThey sound about the same, but "2 Hours to Dulles" would be the better name for the M Night Shyamalan movie.
- fragmede 2y ago2 Hours from Allegheny County would be a David Fincher flic.
- ApolloFortyNine 2y ago2 hours from a central hub I'd actually consider a plus. If you travel for work it's bad, but for any personal trip, skipping a connection is pretty valuable. Not just in time, but generally international / longer flights are higher priority, and are less likely to be randomly delayed or canceled.
- ghaff 2y agoI was on the far edge of relatively convenient airport access when I was working and traveling a lot (and, at some point, decided my employer was just going to pay for a private car whether they complained or not, which they didn't). Now I travel somewhat less but take fewer discrete trips so just pay my own transportation out of pocket.