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Paper_jam

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Everything posted by Paper_jam

  1. I live within the projected zone of totality, but very near (~3 miles) to the eastern edge. In a situation like that, if I look to the east, will I see terrain in that direction which is still illuminated by the sun, while I'm in (relative) darkness? Will the eastern part of the sky remain lit like a sunrise? With the cloud cover it's probably moot, but I'd like to know what I'm missing.
  2. That's how you end up with a Damien.
  3. Waiting for our intrepid AG to uncover the real truth--those power lines fell down because DEI.
  4. What if ESPN and partner networks decided not to televise games in these states?
  5. It's so beautiful. I'm not crying, I just got something in my eye.
  6. To clear the skies along the centerline of the eclipse we could airburst a chain of high yield nukes at 10,000 feet or whatever, to burn off the cloud cover. Or just call the USAF and get them to use HAARP.
  7. Do these people know that you can see this event just as well from a Waco or Dallas hotel parking lot as you can from Enchanted Rock or Dripping Springs?
  8. This fucking city just wants to make driving anywhere in your own car (and parking, once you get there) completely intolerable. We need infrastructure that completely segregates cars from bikes, not infrastructure that tries to force two fundamentally incompatible modes of transport together.
  9. I love the rain but it'd be nice if my 'hood didn't lose power seemingly every time lightning strikes within a mile of my house. It's like Bluebonnet Electric put up lightning rods that, instead of grounding the strike, feed it directly into critical transformers or switches or something.
  10. I'm a fiftysomething white male so it's ludicrous for me to even be suggesting a course of action to people affected by this shit--but if I was, for example, a promising young athlete of color being recruited to play in major college athletics (hell, even pro athletics) I'd make it a point to say fuck off to any schools or teams in states doing this shit.
  11. Yesterday I saw a silver Mercedes with a completely smashed front end driving with no front or rear plates whatsoever (not even a paper tag). How does a car like that not get pulled over immediately? Do the police have to wait until they see a moving violation?
  12. Seems to me the Mizzou kid is getting way more national media coverage than the CC A&M kid.
  13. You could strap a Saturn V booster to a 787 and it still wouldn't gain ~200 mph in one second. Granted, the cited data is groundspeed not airspeed but still.
  14. They'll find his body in Town Lake.
  15. I'd probably be OK with (or, at worst, apathetic about) Garza having a position on city council or as a state rep. I agree with those above that the office of DA isn't really where I want policy to be made. The DA's job is to prosecute criminals. I doubt some of the sensational negative claims about Garza are true, and Austin's overall crime statistics still compare favorably with almost any other city of equal size. But I don't want the general public (including the criminal segment) even having a perception that Austin is "soft on crime." My tolerance level is lower now that recently me, and people close to me, have been victims of mail theft, hit and run, bank jugging, vehicle break-ins, cat converter theft, etc. It seems like those kinds of crimes are rarely investigated or prosecuted. I've been fortunate to live almost all of my 50+ years, without being a victim of crime. But the last few years have been different, and not in a good way.
  16. They just want Seal to come out and play!
  17. Recent Boeing management looking about as good as Sears or Enron.
  18. I dunno, Luling used to have a pretty sharp little bowling alley. Don't know if it's still there.
  19. Old timey train >> new boring train Who's idea was it to make the new one look like a utilitarian modern freight train engine.
  20. Breaking Alabama Supreme Court ruling: If human fetuses have microplastics, and fetuses are people, then microplastics are people too.
  21. Who the fuck decided narrow lanes was the way to go? If anything, cars and trucks are bigger than they used to be, not smaller. I swear modern road/highway designers make me want to murder people. How about nice wide roads with good sightlines, an adequate hard shoulder, and well-placed signage and road markings? "Oh no, that's old thinking. We want to make driving as miserable and stressful as possible."
  22. Is it too late for Dallas to trade in Zimmer for Wilks? Edit: beaten by AUS-97
  23. I don't have kids, so I can't offer anything from the perspective of a parent. But I do have the experience of being the child of highly educated, intelligent parents who put a lot of pressure on me to succeed academically. My dad was a literal genius. I was merely a good student, considerably above average in most subjects, but not a genius or 1600 SAT material. My recollections and suggestions follow. (A lot of this is Parenting 101, but as smart as they were, my parent's weren't always great at this.) 1) While helping your kids study or do homework, try not to show impatience or anger if they are slow to catch on to something. My dad tried to be patient with me, but still there was enough of a gulf between us that it was apparent that he was frustrated that I wasn't getting it. It made me feel, well, dumb. Which, in comparison to him, I was. But he had at least 40 IQ points on me. 2) Don't push your kids into advanced classes or grades that they aren't prepared for. In middle school my parents lobbied hard to get me into "GT"-level classes for English, math, science, etc. Which was OK in the case of English and science subjects, I did well at those. But I was not, and still am not, adept at math, especially abstract math. I was hopelessly lost in that math class, and it was frustrating and embarrassing, and led to further problems described in my point 3 below. 3) If you put too much pressure on a kid to excel with grades, it can have counterproductive results. For example, I was failing the aforementioned math class. The right thing to do would have been to tell my parents/teacher that I couldn't do it, or that I needed extra help, or something along those lines. But I was much too afraid about my parent's reaction to handle it that way. Instead, I tried to cover up my poor grades as long as I could. (I altered my report card.) Giving my parents a report card with a D or F on it was just unthinkable. Of course I eventually got caught, and I even knew I was pretty likely to get caught--but at the time I didn't really feel like I had much to lose.
  24. That was a big letdown, at least in North Austin. And it looks like the heavy stuff mostly missed the Travis watershed.
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