I could say a lot on this subject, but I'll stick to one point I think will be pretty contentious.

I watched a few seasons of West Wing with my parents on Netflix before they dropped it because my younger brothers couldn't get into it. So I never quite got far enough into the show to see Clark Gregg pop up.

Depends how you're measuring it. Even if you're only measuring the galaxy's width and length (and leaving out the height), our galaxy isn't perfectly round. At its widest point its about 120 kly (kilo-lightyears) while at its narrowest its about 100 kly. The height is about 1 kly.

"Trucks don't need electricity to work, oil, ethanol, even an optimized steam engine could make some work."

I still think we'd be screwed honestly. Cities are much more self-sufficient (both economically and skill-wise) than you think and rural communities much less so. Both would be on roughly equal planes (in industrialized countries), aside from the occasional traditionalist holdouts.

People wouldn't die because of the riots. They'd die because they'd starve.

I read the tumblr feed, but I think it's taking the entirely wrong track.

"It realistically wouldn't be so hard."

Sort of.

I was thinking more S.M. Stirling's Emberverse, which engages in plenty of medieval nostalgia itself, but is also extremely brutal and harsh, with most of Portland (which is the largest city within the area the series takes place in) dying off within a couple weeks and some local SCA guys imposing a militaristic…

I'm not exactly sure how a world where all electronic devices have failed can be upbeat, especially within the short timeframe of 10 years. You'd have mass starvation, people hooked up to life support dying, people struggling to adjust to their new lifestyle, and generally a lot of really, really unpleasant stuff.

I always try to give my ideological enemies the benefit of the doubt, rather than demonize them. That said, if the joke is funny enough, I'll laugh at it anyway.

I'm totally going to vote for Obama in November, but for fairness' sake I feel like there should be a GOP equivalent, presumably using one of the nicer folks on that side of the aisle.

It is a bit difficult to believe when you assume every gamer has about average income, but then I remember that this has attracted donations from some fairly high profile figures like Felicia Day and David Gaider.

Truth be told I actually prefer a third-person perspective as well. But then, I never played the Infinity Engine games when they originally came out; my first real RPG experience was KotOR, followed by Obsidian's follow up to that game.

Great news! I think the publisher model still has relevance, unlike some gamers, but I also believe that Kickstarter can be a powerful tool. Evidently one of the first Kickstarter-funded games (FTL) was recently released and I've heard almost naught but praise for it.

You're not. Obsidian says Linux and Mac versions are part of the plan, though lower priority.

No worries, they already said it wouldn't.

I think the most troubling issue is that (a minority of) people are so upset with the idea of evolution that simply using it comedically in advertising is reason alone to boycott the product.

They already list it as a Steam release (even though it isn't officially greenlit), so presumably they've already got an arrangement with Valve.