Nivek

HISD had its budget workshop yesterday, it is livestreamed to YouTube. A couple of take-aways: They decided to move the meeting up to 4 PM due to the number of speakers that have been showing up for their 60 seconds (an impossibly short time to talk about budget concerns) in order to limit the number of active participants (during school hours) and to try to get out of there early. With 200+ people regularly showing up pissed off, they just sit through it emotionless and often checked out until the end. Yesterday, one of the HISD board members started laughing as the last speaker started calling them out for being complicit in the corruption. Here is their presentation materials. The finance guy (Jim Terry) gets up there and starts talking about utter nonsense and generic statements about commitment to quality education but never goes into details what that means (because it is to lull people to sleep before he gets to the numbers, IMO). He talks about the potential taxable property value and exemptions as if this is relevant. Never getting to the point of what money is being allocated to HISD from property taxes of residents and what is being siphoned off (he did talk about how RobinHood took 1.1 billion from HISD in 2016-2017, but how is this fucking relevant?). He harps on about attendance and how attendance is linked to achievement, then shows a figure that indicates attendance is nearly 93%. Is he attempting to blame residents for this? Is this low? No follow up or context. He then makes a suggestion that May 5th 2023 was the perfect representation of student attendance and that should be the day in which the future budget should be based. Not some averaging which might make more sense. He is clearly a big thinker. He surprisingly shows something about how poorly funded Texas schools are relative to the nation and is completely tone deaf as to why and who created this. He remarked about other school districts also having funding issues, again without point to the cause. He talks about the decreasing enrollment in HISD schools by approximately 4000 students from last year. No context as to why provided. I know of families that have kids in SPED programs that left. They left in response to the shitty support service they were getting. As a reminder Miles fired the Autism Specialists in the district, 1 week before the start of the school year. The finance guy finally gets to the budget. From what I can tell, nearly 20% is going to administrative overhead but it is partitioned in smaller groups. There are facilities, food, bussing service included, but also nearly 77 million dollars put into something called "Payments to Tax Increments Fund" which from a quick google search appeared to be an HISD fund set up to build up infrastructure or development. Here is an older document which also talks about the threshold for how HISD is bound to this shitty agreement. There is one more thing to think about. With all of the decreasing enrollment (they harped on 14% over the past few years) why are class sizes getting larger? Ill stop here.

From what I was told those ratios were similar regardless of demographics/vocation and more about humanity.

He is going to get confused again and start jerking it.

Funny is not the word I would use.

I have heard this one cited a few times. 2% have no ethical limiters at all. 26% can and will persuade themselves of whatever. So in good times we have nearly 30% with a total moral failing. I bet those 370 pussies breaks down about the same. 2% were OK with the children dying. 26% went along with the 2%. And the rest didn't buck the chain of command.

There is hydrogen at 40.5 hertz bro. Low frequencies penetrate through solid media better brah. Something about South Austin's mom vibrating at all frequencies.

Worse yet, those were the tame photos.

Actually, retail's standards are higher. You cannot have person run the emotional gambit on an interview and expect to get a job in retail. Apparently, that is fine for the United States Big Beef Supreme Court.

Quite frankly, I think I can identify kids who will do well in sports already. Those kids who practice and ask for more and are focused throughout the game. Not necessarily emotional, but those who have an innate desire to get better.

There was an old Dennis Miller joke about the first half-dozen or so being nice, but after that wanting a real pro.

At one point being an asshole was an insult. Now it is a job description.

For those of you without kids in HISD. Miles directed them to tell parents at 9PM last night and no earlier if there would be school the following day. The Frank Black Middle School Principal (on her way out) did a decent thing and told everyone there would not be school. The Oak Forest Elm. Principal sent out a coded message letting parents know. Miles stringing along parents until 9PM the night before, just to be an asshole to parents, kids and Houston in general.

Robert’s is the one who told us we are all too stupid to comprehend their decisions and their conduct. He is just as shitty and corrupt. He is like the cop that covers for the more abusive cops.

I finally went out for a drive. Sinclair Elm had its portables crushed, and most of their big trees are down. Powerline down on the road and another being held up by a crane. Timbergrove smells like a sawmill. The strangest part to me are the trees that are just pruned from the top but otherwise still standing just fine. Also saw one fense blown out and 2 doors down another blown inward. Seems like Bob Stoops was in town.

Power restored at my home about an hour ago.

Obviously. The solution is to gather in groups, maybe like a flock and follow the seagulls prophets and run away. So far away.

30 years of republican rule, and our grid is shittier than ever, education is a political tool used to punish voters and their kids, fewer freedoms, a goon squad police force, and criminal AG’s.

Cenerpoint’s website is about as durable as our grid.

Can he come tour my street! I have a few dangling branches that might finish the job.

GOOF resident. Big tree down a few houses over, I have a few trees with dangling branches. I finally pulled out the generator and connected the fridge and Internet, phones were sometimes in SOS mode. Sitting with the wife and kids in the hall really underscored how shitty our preparation and communication was. We will need a drill in a week or two to try again.

Any older folks on here to talk about how their MGBs are better than Miatas?

Musk’s cyber clothes, so lithe and airy it feels like nothing at all. Only $3000 per custom tailor fitted suit. $500 for the best t-shirt you will ever know, and $1200 for industry disrupting jeans. These are in limited supply so order now, this fashion forward product won’t be available for long.

Its a holiday in Cambodia?

Disney World is fantastic. Having grown up down there I have been several times. I took my kids there a couple of years ago and they had a blast and so did my wife. A lot has changed since I was a kid (the Magic Shop on Main Street I missed). It was expensive but they got to have an experience like no other. It is not like they have Toys R US to go to.

Miles' puppet quoted their efforts to improve special education. I saw how with one of my kids. They simply made up numbers in his progress report. We asked them to provide evidence and they could not. One of his SPED teachers fakes grades for him. He has 100% and yet the dyslexia teacher can show ZERO work. An independent auditor told me the kid watches youtube and fucks off in that class. They also talked about their initiatives to identify more kids with special needs and what a great job they were doing. My other kid was not identified by the school or district for having dyslexia. I identified it. A fucking trained rock scientist. But they are doing great. So they tell us.