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wild_turkey

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Everything posted by wild_turkey

  1. I’m having a hard time processing SB 8. Can someone explain all of this to me like I’m 5? Just to recap my very limited understanding, which is probably flawed: pre-1973 - Abortion illegal in Texas 1973 Roe v. Wade - It is unconstitutional to have a total ban on abortion. Women have the right to choose in the first trimester but restrictions can be made for the second trimester. 1973-present - Conservative states implement measures to make abortion more difficult, i.e. needing an ultrasound first, but never anything that directly violates Roe v. Wade. 2021 SB 8 - Private citizens deputized to sue any person who has an abortion or anyone who aids and abets an abortion after 6 weeks. This can happen an unlimited number of times to the tune of $10k a pop. Time will tell if these lawsuits will be successful, but the threat of extreme legal repercussions will likely be a deterrent to anyone performing an abortion moving forward. What I don’t understand is this… 1. How can the State of Texas allow (encourage?) anyone to sue someone else for an action that is already protected by a U.S. Supreme Court decision? It’s like saying “Alright, we agree that Brown vs. Board of Education ruled that racial segregation in schools is unconstitutional, so we’re not going to pass a law to authorize segregation per se, but we’re going to pass a law to allow random people to sue anyone involved with black people attending a white school.” I don’t understand the basis for being able to sue someone for something that isn’t illegal in the first place. 2. If this can be done to effectively eliminate Roe v. Wade, then can’t it be used for any state to invalidate almost any SCOTUS decision the state disagrees with? What’s the power of the SCOTUS then? 3. What stops states from using this tactic to pass other absurd laws to target groups of people or prohibit activities they don’t agree with? Conservative states could do the same thing to prohibit gay marriage or eliminate healthcare for transgender people. Liberal states could allow citizens to sue each other for having a handgun. Chaos ensues? 4. Is there any legal precedent to deputizing private citizens to sue each other for the sake of enforcing a “law”, however sensible or irrational that law may be? 5. Is there any legal precedent to allowing one person to sue another person for an action that did not directly harm the plaintiff? Sorry for the long post and for asking questions that have likely been hashed out somewhere in this thread. I’ve been trying to read and understand this but my pea brain is failing me on this topic and I need help.
  2. Been watching it. Not great, not terrible. Nicole Kidman’s Russian accent is distracting. Most of the other characters seem pretty cliche. The premise has me thinking “That’s it?” so far, but I’ll see how the rest of the plot unfolds.
  3. Headed back in December. It will be our 4th trip since Covid started. The curfew is going away but they are implementing a health pass to take its place. Fine by me.
  4. I’ll do you a favor and message you if it gets better so you don’t have to keep checking this thread.
  5. By your own admission, you quit watching as of 9/4. In your art analogy, you are now the guy standing outside a museum telling everyone else who goes in and out that the art inside sucks, even though you haven’t seen all of the art in the museum. You will keep proclaiming the museum is full of shitty art, hoping people will agree with you, despite the fact that the museum keeps adding new exhibits that you have no intention of viewing. It sounds like a miserable way to spend your time. If you hate this show so much, why not move onto something you actually enjoy? Isn’t life better when you focus on things you like instead of things you don’t like? I’m sure there’s an FBoy Island thread somewhere.
  6. Ted Lasso season 1 was one of the greatest seasons of comedy television ever. Unique premise, unique characters, and anchored by Ted’s eternal optimism at a time when the world desperately needed something to be happy about. That’s an incredibly high bar to replicate in subsequent seasons. Season 2 is still very good in my opinion, even if it falls short of season 1. It has plenty of funny moments and I look forward to watching it more than any other active show on TV right now. That doesn’t make me a Ted Lasso fanboy who is blind to its flaws. It just makes me someone who likes to laugh for about 30 minutes a week. There are about 3 posters here who seem insistent on convincing everyone else that Ted Lasso season 2 sucks. I guess y’all are very binary people - it would either be the same as season 1 or it would suck. There couldn’t possibly be an in between. It’s fine to express your opinions but y’all keep repeating the same shit as if you’re expecting to convince the rest of us to agree with your negativity.
  7. Based on the book by Sally Rooney. I read the book on a whim, which is a very quick and easy read. Then stumbled across the series on Hulu by accident. It’s only 1 season, 12 episodes, about 25-30 min each. I thought it was really well done. It’s a romance story with a serious tone, not your average romcom cliches. The characters are well written and the lead actors (Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal) were both excellent in their roles. Plenty of sex and they weren’t shy about filming those scenes. I didn’t see it mentioned here so wanted to recommend it or curious others’ reactions if you have already seen it.
  8. I have a standard LiftMaster garage door opener with no smart features built in. I would like to add smart capabilities so I can access it from my phone, open it remotely if someone else needs to get in, and most importantly, set a schedule to auto-close it in the evening to avoid the rare occasions where we forget to close it and it stays open all night long. From what I can tell, this can be accomplished doing a retrofit which requires a new wall control and a gateway/bridge. I think these are the 2 specific products I would need for my setup: https://www.amazon.com/Liftmaster-Security-Control-Upgrades-Previous/dp/B00B8BFG0O https://www.amazon.com/LiftMaster-MYQ-819LMB-Home-Bridge/dp/B075RQVSY7 Does anyone have experience doing this? Anything else I should be aware of before ordering and installing it?
  9. This thread is a good reminder of why I don’t enter CR very often. As someone who doesn’t identify with either political party, it amazes me how much adults will absolve their own party/candidates of any wrongdoing and vehemently attack the other side for all the evils in the world. Can’t we just agree that both sides of the political aisle, including 2 R presidents and 2 D presidents, have fucked up Afghanistan for the past ~20 years? Bush - Invaded in response to 9/11, hung around to what, build a democracy in the Middle East? Obama - Killed Bin Laden, hung around to what, continue building that democracy? Trump - Freed some Taliban prisoners, hung around because leaving in his first term was political suicide, although that was a moot point. Biden - Initiated a withdrawal that most people agree is needed, but handled it in a way that appears to be mostly chaos, resulting in American and Afghan deaths, and poorly communicating with our ally countries that makes the U.S. look like a bunch of selfish and incompetent jackasses. From where I’m sitting, it looks terribly managed by all of the above actors. Biden’s current failures are partly due to the 3 guys that came before him and partly due to his own leadership. Quit trying to separate them. I also get the sense that some Republicans want the Afghanistan withdrawal to be a bloody affair just to point the finger at Biden. Much like a year ago I got the sense that some Democrats wanted Covid to be worse to point the finger at Trump. It’s pretty shitty to want the world to be a worse place because you didn’t vote for the guy in the White House.
  10. I went to the rooftop bar at Wicked Butcher over the weekend. Service was a little slow so I just ordered drinks from the bar, but otherwise I liked it. Nice atmosphere and there was a decent breeze so it wasn’t hot, although it was ~11 pm.
  11. This show is great every week. I'm struggling to understand how anyone could not thoroughly enjoy it. "Jamie Tartt is a muppet, and I hope he dies of the incurable condition of being a little bitch."
  12. It doesn’t matter that much. I walked into my Walgreens and they gave me a paper asking if I’m immunocompromised. It’s pretty loosely defined and I checked YES and got the shot. They don’t care what your condition is or what meds you take. They only care that you check YES on their paper.
  13. Got my 3rd Moderna shot today from a nearby Walgreens. My 2nd dose was late January. I’m technically immunocompromised due to an autoimmune condition and due to the immunosuppressant I take for it, although it’s not nearly as bad as having cancer or an organ transplant. I’m also a physician and see ~140 people a week, many of whom are elderly and many of whom are undoubtedly unvaccinated, so I figured it was a good time to get the 3rd shot and hopefully reduce my chances of getting or spreading Delta. There were 4 other people there, all getting their first shot. It made me somewhat happy to see there is still a small trickle of people choosing the vaccine. I wonder if part of the September 20 date for boosters was chosen to allow unvaccinated people ~1 month to finally get 1st and 2nd doses before there is a new rush of already vaccinated people getting 3rd doses.
  14. I thought Lenovo was loaded with Chinese spyware or something like that. I’m surprised anyone in the U.S. would buy one.
  15. Did you give them your original vaccine card so they could write the 3rd dose below the other 2 doses? Did they say anything about the fact that you were already vaccinated? I'm interested in doing this. Seems like an official recommendation could be given at any time, but then I wonder if it will be chaos all over again trying to get an appointment.
  16. I liked the show overall and don’t take it too seriously. The ending was fine but it was more about the build-up for me. If I wanted to nitpick, it would be odd details like this: -Shane’s suite had a queen bed. -The Mossbachers went on a family vacation to an expensive resort, stayed in a fancy suite with a kitchen, but the suite only had 1 bedroom and their game plan was apparently for their teenage daughter and friend to share a sleeper sofa and their teenage son to sleep where exactly? -The White Lotus (Four Seasons) is totally cool with people sleeping overnight on the beach and has zero security. -The Four Seasons Maui has shitty pool and beach furniture, like something I would expect at a Galveston condo. Unless the film crew brought that in, which I’m not sure why they would intentionally make it look less swanky. -The guests arrived by boat to a hotel in Maui. I guess it’s a fictional location, but those same guests left by plane. -Olivia sleeps with a bra on. But none of that stuff truly bothers me with this type of show. Well, maybe the last one.
  17. I expect that it will be endemic for a long time. I’m wondering how likely it is that a new variant eventually comes along that is more transmissible than Delta, including infecting vaccinated people at a higher rate, and that the end point is for this future variant to rapidly burn through the world’s entire population (regardless of vax status) and we finally achieve herd immunity through that wave? Would that be such a bad thing to hope for, if you knew it would occur in such a way that vaccines and other therapeutics could limit the worldwide mortality? Otherwise, I’m growing increasingly concerned that in 2030 we are still going to be arguing about masks and vaccines, avoiding mass events like concerts and sports, limiting school attendance, canceling vacations at the last minute, working from home, etc. That’s a pretty shitty future if 2021-life is our status quo for the next 5-10 years.
  18. Really enjoyed the show. Armand was the most entertaining character and I’m sad to see him be the one who was killed. I’m slightly confused why his body was being loaded on a plane back to the U.S., although I guess we were never explicitly told that’s where the plane is headed. Quinn was my favorite character and his transformation was perfect. Sad to see Rachel accept Shane back so easily. I guess she made a Faustian bargain after all and it means all characters minus Quinn returned to their former selves.
  19. It’s such a Ted Lasso thing to do to air a Christmas episode in August. And it was great. And it will be an instant classic that we watch each year while having Sexy Christmas.
  20. I was in disbelief as well. That’s why at first I thought it must be a scam or a simple mistake, because surely a tech savvy auto company with the highest market cap in the world would not accidentally approve a loan and hand over a $56k car to a new owner without all the financial stuff resolved. How does that even happen? Very sloppy on their part. We finally received some communication from various Tesla people in the past 24 hours, which I think is due to increased intensity of phone calls and emails on our part. Still no resolution but at least a few people are now acknowledging that we do exist and that we did receive a car from them and that some stuff needs to be fixed. They are “working on it” and we should expect a call in 1-2 days. Wife also got a temporary tag exemption that is good until Sept 9 so at least she can legally drive the car now. At least the car itself has been great.
  21. When we ordered our Model Y in April, we used the Tesla financing program because the interest rate was lower than our mortgage so why the hell not. The Tesla application said financing was instantly approved with Wells Fargo who we currently bank with. Ok cool, easy enough. We took delivery of the vehicle on June 2. On July 9, over a month after having the vehicle, I received an email from fundingresolution@tesla.com saying there was a problem with the financing. Apparently the car was ordered under my wife's name (her car) and the loan application was under my name (higher income), so the SSN didn't match up. I'm not sure how they didn't catch this on the application when they initially said the loan was approved. The email correspondence was kind of sketchy and at first I thought it might be a phishing attempt, but I tried to work with them to figure it out. Then, that person stopped responding to all of my emails as of July 14. Nothing at all past that point despite multiple emails from me. Since that point, I have called Tesla multiple times at both the local store and at their main "Tesla Finance" number with very little help. None of them seem to have any visibility of the problem and simply say "they are working on it" (they as in the mysterious Royal They which is a department deep within Tesla that you cannot actually speak with directly). No one ever returns my calls and it's been going on a month. I then called Wells Fargo since Tesla gave me an approved loan agreement for Wells Fargo as the lender. Turns out, Wells Fargo had record of an application being submitted but never gave a decision due to the SSN discrepancy mentioned above. So there was never a loan to begin with. Wells Fargo has offered to do the loan application again, but that would circumvent Tesla and might mess things up even worse. At least Wells Fargo is trying to help. They also call me back about once a week to check the status, which is more than Tesla has ever done. Ok fine, I pretty much decided to quit worrying about it and figured Tesla will eventually contact me if they want to get paid for the remainder of the vehicle. Except there is now one major problem - the temporary dealer tags were good for only 2 months, so they expired on August 2 and we can no longer drive the car legally. The full registration is apparently being held up by the funding problem which no one is attempting to fix. Great, so we "bought" a car from them that we can't drive. I have explained this multiple times to the Tesla and the local store says they don't know what to do but that someone will contact me soon, which no one ever does. I called my local tax assessor office to explain the problem about the tags. They said I could file a formal complaint against Tesla as a dealer, except that the Tesla dealership is in Washington and a complaint in Texas will probably be worthless. I guess I'll file a complaint anyways. They said I can also go pay $29 for a temporary 30-day tag exemption, which can only be done 3 times in the life of a vehicle, and Tesla actually burned the first 2 times when they gave me "dealer plates" that weren't actually dealer plates. Great, so I can do that 1 more time which buys me until September 2nd if they get their shit together by then. I could write them a check for the rest of the car but no one will ever respond. This shit is absolutely ridiculous and by far the worst customer service I have ever received from anyone, which includes AT&T and American Airlines. /rant TLDR: if you are considering financing a Tesla through Tesla, please do yourself a huge favor and go directly to your lender of choice.
  22. Anyone have a rec for a lawn care service? I’m in central FW and need someone to do weekly mowing plus someone to do fertilizing and weed control.
  23. This thread is full of a bunch of “get off my lawn” old men who seem to have a negative worldview about everything. This Olympics was held under the worst possible circumstances - once in a lifetime pandemic causing a year delay, no fans - yet it still had amazing competitions, amazing athletes, and amazing stories. Simone Biles story gets you down? Umm.. she was sexually abused by Larry Nassar and she self reports mental health issues. She’s also the greatest gymnast of all time and she returned to competition to win a bronze medal with a great beam performance. Sorry if that triggers you. American athletes should really learn to internalize their sexual abuse and mental health. Athletes look like they don’t want to be there? Are you fucking kidding me?! Are those of you saying this actually watching or are you merely projecting your own shitty worldview onto Olympic athletes? I’ve seen a bunch of athletes who look completely pumped to be there, and that’s without fans to increase the excitement. Not enough star power? Do you only enjoy the Olympics if you are watching Carl Lewis or Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt? Do you only watch UT football if VY is taking snaps? Come on.. Alysson Felix became the most decorated U.S. track and field Olympic athlete in history. Caeleb Dressel won 5 medals in the pool. The men’s and women’s basketball teams both continued their dominance, the men being led by a particular star who has now scored more points than anyone in Olympics basketball history. The women’s 400m hurdles featured 2 amazing runners - McLaughlin and Muhammad - who BOTH broke the world record in the same race, only to go on to destroy the competition in the 400 relay. Simone Biles withdrew from competition and then we get to see Suni Lee rise to the challenge. There’s plenty of star power, what more do you want? Don’t forget the ton of other cool stories like Molly Seidel winning a bronze medal in her 3rd ever marathon. Yes, I get the time difference. It’s annoying but the internet and smartphone are both here to stay and we can’t turn technology back to 1992 to maintain suspense on the outcome of competitions. That isn’t going away. Deal with it. I think we’re lucky to have even had Olympics, and given the worldwide circumstances of the last 17 months, this year was pretty damn good. Our athletes represented the U.S. very well and we walk away the overall medal leader with a lot to be proud of and plenty to be entertained about.
  24. They are all incredible. So happy to watch them dominate the competition.
  25. NYT The Daily podcast has an episode about unvaccinated people. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000531193097 They interviewed a few people and the reasons for not vaccinating were pretty much what you would expect: -I’m not an early adopter of anything so I’m waiting to see how this plays out. -Waiting for a more effective vaccine that will prevent infection from all future variants. -I don’t like any vaccines and my child is unvaccinated and I plan to keep him that way. -I don’t trust the government putting something in my body. -It’s still experimental and hasn’t been fully tested or FDA approved. -Vaccinated people can still get sick so what’s the point? -Vaccinated people still have to wear masks so what’s the point?
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