On this day in 1898, the Battle of Virden began when armed members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) surrounded a train full of strikebreakers and exchanged fire with company guards. 13 people were killed, dozens more wounded.

After a local chapter of the UMW began striking at a mine in Virden, Illinois, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company hired black strikebreakers from Birmingham, Alabama and shipped them to Virden by train.

The company hired armed detectives or security guards to accompany the strikebreakers, and an armed conflict broke out when armed miners surrounded the train as it arrived in town. A total of four detectives and seven striking mine workers were killed, with five guards, thirty miners, and an unrecorded number of strikebreakers wounded.

After this incident, Illinois Governor John Tanner ordered the National Guard to prevent any more strikebreakers from coming into the state by force. The next month, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company relented and allowed the unionization of its workers.

“When the last call comes for me to take my final rest, will the miners see that I get a resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives on the hills of Virden, Illinois…They are responsible for Illinois being the best organized labor state in America.”

Mother Jones

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  • FunkyStuff [he/him]English
    10•7 months ago

    Been a little bit since I was factory-gameposting here but @WhatDoYouMeanPodcast you should check out Dyson Sphere Program. It doesn’t have the same sense of personal scale and locality that Satisfactory does, it’s third person and just doesn’t really capture that vibe of building something larger than yourself, but it does capture the sense of scaling up and seeing your creation come alive. You start small, then make your way to harnessing the power of entire solar systems, easily taking all the resources a planet has to offer by deploying legions of drones and transport vessels. Then you’ll have entire planets covered in rocket factories, then launchpads.

    The best part is the one where it is the most like Satisfactory: slowly coming to see your custom Dyson Sphere designs take shape. It might take you several days, which makes the truly massive spheres slowly fading into existence and having each part of their form become visible so much more impressive and awesome. It’s the feeling from delivering a phase in Satisfactory, except it continuously happens over a longer period of time and is a much more massive process than piping items into an elevator. You can make some really, really neat sphere designs too.

    • Woly [any]English
      9•7 months ago

      tURNS OUT YOPU CAN TYPE REALLY FAST IF YOU DONT CORRECRT ANTHYRTHING

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]English
        7•7 months ago

        i replaced my phone and this is the first time using a non-physical keyboard and it takes all the joy out of typingM i really hate it but the only option left with a kb is the unihertz titan which just isn’t great.

        • Woly [any]English
          2•7 months ago

          They make Bluetooth keyboards that work with phones. I used to have a slick little one that folded up to the size of a cigarette case.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]English
            1•7 months ago

            I have a blackberry 20 keyboard packaged in to a nice printed case and fitted with a battery and a bluetooth module. The issue is figuring out how to join it with the phone so as to be useable. So it’s going t be a very weird cludge and I haven’t really figured out how to make it work. The result is going to be enormous. Ugh. I hate this all so much. Keyboards are so much better than touchscreens but people have forgotten as powerful marketing campaigns from Apple, Google, and Samsung have largely erased the memory of a time when pre-iphone smartphones were productivity tools and pocket computers.

  • heggs_bayer [he/him]English
    15•7 months ago

    I was listening to an old Citations Needed episode about thought terminating enemy epithets and heard that the term “hand-picked successor” started being used to refer to Maduro since he was Chavez’s vice president. Now I’m going to start referring to K-dolf Hitler as Genocide Joe’s handpicked successor.

  • @[email protected]English
    7•7 months ago

    Aww shit I’m listening to the RWBY soundtrack again someone stop me before I try watching the show and get really disappointed again

  • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]English
    13•7 months ago

    Even when I was in my edgy atheist phase and Bill Maher got on the bandwagon, and he was still more lib-coded, I hated that smug prick. Just absolutely the most grating human being alive. Idk how he has an audience, there should be more people who want to hunt him for game than people who want to watch his show.