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wild_turkey

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Everything posted by wild_turkey

  1. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-we-need-offset-our-carbon-emissions
  2. I understand all of the objections to vouchers (I'm in that camp), but can someone please provide the rationale for vouchers from those that support them? I'm struggling to see the upside for the vast majority of Texans. 1. From the standpoint of Greg Abbott or one of our other elected state or local officials who is pushing for this, what is the sales pitch in favor of it? Are they saying that private schools are inherently better equipped to provide education than public schools? Isn't that an admission of failure on the part of The State of Texas that they are in control of? How does someone rationalize that? Are they acknowledging that only a small percentage of students will even receive a voucher? What do they claim will be the benefit for everyone else who doesn't receive or qualify for a voucher? Are they at least giving lipspeak to efforts to simultaneously put more money into public schools, or are they just admitting that public schools are failing and nothing can be done? 2. From the standpoint of Tim Dunn or the Wilks brothers or other billionaires who are pushing for these changes, what are they proposing as the upside? Why do they want this? 3. For the families living in any rural or semi-rural community with few or no private school options, what do they get out of it? What good does a private school voucher do for a family with no available private schools? What is Greg Abbott claiming their upside will be? Creation of new private schools to fill that gap? Will anything also be done to help their struggling small town school districts? Surely, many of these communities are filled with Republican voters who support this guy, but this shift seems to directly harm his voter base. 4. For the families who already send their kids to private school, or who plan to in the future, but make too much money to qualify for a voucher, what is the upside? Additional applicants to their existing private school so the rates go up or their kid may not get accepted? How is the state claiming this will benefit them? Sorry, I know that's a ton of questions, but this entire situation is really hard to understand. If I saw a friend lighting money on fire or cutting off their own finger, I would have a similar list of ridiculous questions.
  3. This is the climate thread but your post reads more like an explanation or a justification of your career in O&G, like maybe you are speaking to an O&G interest group or your family or a therapist, trying to explain your history. I'm not trying to be a dick. The world's understanding of these things was a lot different for most of your career, but we have learned a lot since then. There's a lot of shit we still do today that future generations may not look upon favorably. That's great that your family respected you and your colleagues; I just don't see what those past feelings have to do with climate change today and our path forward. I never suggested that you, PTINS, personally stood in the way of progress to fight climate change. What I'm saying is that the O&G industry as a whole spends millions of dollars on lobbyists to prevent change. That seems pretty indisputable but someone please correct me if that is somehow inaccurate. We should plant more trees, but please tell me you don't seriously think that is the solution. Nothing to do with shifting away from fossil fuels, but simply plant more trees to restore the balance?
  4. Someone should alert Elon and DOGE to go after this FRAUD!!! that is happening in his own state.
  5. Okay, but even then, only a small percentage of rich families who may then see their education expenses rise by a similar number. What’s the point?
  6. Well, Congress was supposed to stop something like this from ever happening, but the Ds are outnumbered and the Rs are scared shitless to stand up to Trump. They are more concerned about their future political careers and the very real prospect of getting primaried in 2 years if they don’t support everything that Trump and Elon want. Elon has said he will contribute $100MM to primary people who aren’t team players. Look at how easily they bullied Senator Joni Ernst into confirming Pete Hegseth. She’s a sexual assault survivor and an outspoken advocate against sexual assault and was respected across the political aisle for that, but they threatened her and she flipped her stance to confirm a man accused of sexual assault and with a very poor history of treating women. That was a dress rehearsal for any future opposition within the Republican Party and the message was highly visible to the rest of Congress.
  7. In fairness to you, fossils fuels are very necessary for you to be able to dip on an airplane in 2025. Some of us are just hoping for a future in which people don’t dip on airplanes and fossils fuels comprise a much smaller percentage of global energy consumption.
  8. Interesting how you put "scientists" in quotation marks as if broadly scientists are suspect and untrustworthy, and then explain that they have an agenda. Maybe we should try that with everyone else as well: "Free money" with an agenda "Venture capitalists" with an agenda "Politicians" with an agenda "Midstream commercial developers" with an agenda "Oil and gas executives" with an agenda
  9. How will we ever find out if the O&G industry makes every effort to prevent change? People would rather bury their heads in the sand and condemn future generations if it means their current income and retirement plans are protected. The world today would not function without fossil fuels, but no one is suggesting we immediately stop using them overnight. That’s a ridiculous strawman argument and you know it. We need to reduce consumption and make progress towards better technologies, but we just elected a president who pulled out of the Paris Agreement because it “imposes unfair burdens on the American economy” (O&G lobbyists want him to help their stocks), and we are instead going to “Drill, baby, drill.”
  10. While that may be true, perhaps the future of the planet should not be left entirely up to public companies and capitalism. Those same public companies have done a shitload of damage to get us here today, and continue to lobby against efforts to shift away from fossil fuels. I would assume that any hope of solving this problem will involve a massive economic loss by governments around the world. This thread has suddenly painted government subsidies in a negative light, as if anything that receives a subsidy is an impractical technology, but these are all pieces of the puzzle and we can’t approach this problem from the standpoint of what is the most profitable. Is it profitable for multiple large hurricanes to hit the east coast and wildfires to destroy Hawaii and California? Imagine 50 years from now. How big of a government investment will be needed to build seawalls around Miami and New Orleans?
  11. Specifically which fossil fuels compared to which renewables? Can you provide sources?
  12. I could give 3 dry fucks about his outie. He put the dick in contradiction.
  13. Can you explain this last comment in more detail? I was under the impression that renewables, or at least wind energy, has a better EROI than sources like oil and natural gas. It looks like solar is considerably worse, but I assume a number of factors go into that with highly variable results.
  14. Watched The Gorge and thought it was mediocre at best. It felt like a cheap Netflix movie of the week and a notch below what I normally expect from Apple+. I liked Miles Teller in Top Gun and The Offer but his acting felt very flat in this, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to be in the movie or not. The supposed chemistry between him and ATJ was nonexistent. I wasn’t expecting much from the plot, just a popcorn action flick, but it somehow fell short of that.
  15. Idiocracy is happening as we speak so it makes sense that Don’t Look Up will also happen.
  16. This is repulsive. I hate our country right now.
  17. It would appear so: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/11/us/president-trump-news https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/11/politics/musk-trump-conflicts-of-interest/index.html What in the fuck is happening? When has a private citizen ever stood behind the POTUS desk in the Oval Office to address the media? We are so helplessly fucked and we have 1/3 of the country cheering this on and another 1/3 of the country oblivious and wondering why eggs are still expensive. And our entire government has been reduced to 2-3 lunatics wielding unprecedented and unchecked power.
  18. Very similar situation here. I had a 4Runner that was 19 years old before replacing it with a new 4Runner that I currently drive. Wife had a 4Runner that was 14 years old before replacing it with a Tesla Model Y, which was the best EV option we could find at the time of purchase in 2021. Due to Elon’s bullshit, I would very much like to replace her Model Y with a Rivian or other non-Tesla EV, but we are also considering moving houses in the near future, so that’s the financial priority. Switching her car now would be a dumb financial decision, but it is definitely on our list of things to do. There is no way in hell I would buy a Tesla now.
  19. If that bill were to pass, it would not only shut down IVF to future couples who need it, but it could create some significant legal problems for people who have already used it. Destroying an embryo would be considered murder. Suppose you’ve already been through IVF and you have unused embryos that are still frozen. What if you don’t have plans to use them? They will force implantation of all embryos or donate to another couple? What if the mother dies and only the father is left alive with embryos that he cannot biologically carry? Would he be legally required to find a surrogate mother? I guess you could say this is too radical to actually ever happen but look around at the radical shit happening lately. If I hypothetically had frozen embryos right now, perhaps I would hypothetically consider transferring them to another state, but Ken Paxton has previously indicated he would go after Texan women who leave the state for an abortion, so why should this be any different?
  20. I feel like I read that in Project 2025, you know, the radical right wing agenda that Trump denounced and his supporters said would never happen.
  21. If this passes, wouldn’t it effectively end IVF in this state?
  22. I registered for the Cowtown full marathon (Feb 23) and my training has been going really well, had a great 20 miler last week and planned for a 21-22 miler today, and then I sprained my ankle during my run this morning. There was a car sticking out a little bit at an intersection and I ran slightly out of my path to go around it and my foot planted awkwardly where the asphalt met the curb. It was maybe a 1” lip but somehow my foot/ankle fully rolled over and now I can’t put any weight on it. It’s fairly painful and swollen so I’m doing the whole RICE thing. The Cowtown seems out of the question and I’m moderately concerned that my ski trip next weekend will be screwed. Nothing much I can do about it except let it heal and hopefully find another race later in the year. It sucks to feel marathon ready and not get to run the race.
  23. I would like to see The Brutalist but holy hell 3 hr 34 min is a long time to sit in a theater. That will have to wait for streaming for me, which probably means after the Oscars.
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