Paul Wesley

I'm sure this has been covered in this thread... but the aggies just cannot fucking decide if the LHN is a death-star-level advantage for UT that gives us an unfair monetary and recruiting edge (they consistently named the LHN as a primary reason for leaving the Big 12), or if the LHN is a national embarrassment, a financial disaster, and a punchline within the world of sports media ("dumpster fire" in that thread title).

Exactly. So Tech is going to do what's best for Tech. Crazy concept.

Agreed Every school does what's best for themselves.... Arkansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Aggies, Missouri, Notre Dame, TCU, West Virginia, etc.... they left/joined/stayed in various leagues over the last 30 years -- basically they were all self-interested. Except when Texas even hints that when this TV deal is done in five years, then we might be acting in our own best interest, and then suddenly there's this deafening chorus about how we're bullies, or impossible to live with, or how totally unfair we are. It's silly.

Yeah, I've been clueless and wrong so many times in the last 5 years in my understanding about who we are as a nation. I didn't think evangelical christians would lustily endorse a man who is so obviously and profoundly immoral, and vote for him even after hearing him brag about sexual assault. I didn't think they'd take his side during the election when he repeatedly insulted the parents of an American soldier who died for this country. I didn't think we'd have an American president publicly kneeling before Putin while dismissing our allies. I didn't think an American president would find it impossible to denounce David Duke (pretending not to know who he was after speaking about him in numerous interviews) or be so visibly angry when forced to denounce the Nazi who killed someone in Charlottesville ("Both sides!"). I didn't think those same American white people would take the side of the pro-authoritarian mob who broke into the Capitol instead of supporting the officers who they killed or the democracy they wanted to overthrow. But it turns out that your pro-Trump consultant understood America much better than you or me. I'm still kind of in shock, to be honest.

100% this.

I know exactly what you quoted, and that argument about the superiority of "natural immunity" -- which the anti-vaxxers love, and which you are parroting here -- is totally wrong. That's MY point. Above that, you claimed that the "medical community" was "starting to come around" that multiple doses of vaccine were wasteful and unnecessary, which is also wrong.

You understand that none of this is an argument against vaccines, right? I mean, let's consider an outcome where the whole world gets vaccinated. There would likely be a handful of deaths from cavernous sinus thrombosis or DVT or anaphylaxis. Maybe. AND THEN ALMOST NO ONE ON THE PLANET DIES FROM COVID-19 (you know, in EXACTLY the same way that we don't die from polio and we don't die from smallpox). Furthermore, even if a vaccinated person passes the delta variant to another vaccinated person (which is unlikely), no one dies from that either. Contrast that to a world where no one gets vaccinated, and we continue to suffer socially and economically with years and years of masks and distancing and "hey, kids, don't go near Grandma!" Sporting events and religious ceremonies are life-threatening endeavors. Educating an entire generation is problematic to say the least. Healthcare workers leave the field in droves (which is already happening). And we'll have TENS OF MILLIONS OF MORE DEATHS. But hey, everyone, look at the bright side! THOSE OF US WHO SURVIVE OUR COVID INFECTIONS AND HAVE ANTIBODIES MIGHT BE LESS LIKELY TO GET THE DELTA VARIANT! AS IF THAT WOULD BE A MEANINGFUL FUCKING METRIC. And it also ignores the fact that in an unvaccinated world, there is going to be a lot more delta variant and every other variant bouncing around for generations to come. Your post is an excellent example of how anti-vaxxers will always find conspiracies, half-truths, and fallacious arguments, and they'll repeat all of them to anyone who will listen... despite overwhelming evidence that they're wrong. Apologies to the board for engaging the obvious troll, but there might be a few people out there on the fence of whether to take the vaccine, and I wouldn't want those people to mistake GRHorn's nonsense for a meaningful argument. Thank God we got smallpox off the table a few decades before the trolls got broadband. We'll never do anything like that again.

Yeah, I have a good friend who is a big sports fan... MLB, NFL, NHL... everything except for NBA basketball. He says the randomness and inconsistency of officiating ruins the game for him. This game would certainly bolster his argument. Oh... and he's from Milwaukee.

Booker jumping up looking for the call... I don't have the words.

Crowder is getting calls like he's Jordan. Three very iffy calls in the past few minutes, and he got them all.

And for decades, I’m pretty sure that what the conservatives cement into textbooks in this state— that spills widely into other states, because Texas is a 500-pound gorilla when it comes to ordering textbooks.

Ambitious and cool. Keep chopping.

nice job, ztejas.

Then it wasn't fentanyl. You really shouldn't argue this.

I rarely dive into these debates, but this right-wing talking point about George Floyd is 100% fucking horse shit. Fentanyl is a very short-acting drug. If you overdose on it, you *immediately* go unconscious and stop breathing. That's it. It doesn't sneak up on you an hour later. The idea that Floyd took a "lethal amount," and was walking around a convenience store, then arguing with officers, then resisting getting into a police car with such force that numerous officers were unable to shove him in there, then just suddenly died from fentanyl (while an officer was kneeling on his neck)... it's just profoundly stupid. If someone is gasping "I can't breathe," then you can be 100% sure they are not dying from fucking fentanyl.

Agreed. And they look more like years of commando-style raids and terroristic violence. There's a podcast called "It could happen here" that lays out some plausible scenarios. I would say one (of many) step we could take is to stop using bullshit flags (Blue Lives Matter or the Confederate battle flag) like we saw on January 6. Do we agree to live in and support an American democracy? Great, then we can debate policy and decide what we want our country to look like, but that's the only fucking flag anyone needs.

sounds great, sidis.

"Indoctrinate?" Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, don't "indoctrinate" them with science while they're enrolled in a University that prides itself on research prowess.

All day I've been trying to wrap my head around choosing to *not* vaccinating a bunch of 21-year olds who are going to bars/parties/practices/classes/etc.... while trying to win a national championship. I mean, it's just profoundly stupid. Out of curiosity - and because maybe I'm an asshole - I looked at a map of their campus to see how hard it would have been. There's a CVS about 500 feet from their stadium, giving FREE VACCINES WITH NO APPOINTMENT. So now I gotta either root for those fucking idiots to overcome Darwin's attempt to take them out of the gene pool *OR* the SEC!SEC!SEC! team that's going to fail upwards into the finals. Just as an aside here... as of about a month ago, the covid rate among unvaccinated people was roughly the same as some of the worst months of 2020. In other words, the numbers look really good, because the vaccinated people are still in the denominator, but they're overwhelmingly not getting sick, or they're getting very mild cases. Take them out, and the numbers suddenly don't look so great. Somebody send this screenshot to the NC State coaches:

That stat kills me. And Greg Bown, whatever his faults are, is a very aggressive rebounder, and one of the most athletic guys on the court (I mean, the five minutes or so he was on the court).

Good post, but this last part sounded really familiar. Any chance that in some other lifetime you were Bill in Sinton?

Yeah, that was my first reaction. I've seen both Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo separately, but 2 hours of that band would have been pretty bad ass. I saw the Joshua Tree tour in Austin that year. Great show. I saw the Cars on the tour before this one (Heartbeat City), and like everyone else pointed out, it was a pretty low-energy show. Several of these acts I've seen multiple times (Petty, Clapton). The two hall-of-famer acts on there that I never saw live are Bowie and Rush. My sleeper would be the double bill of Billy Idol (who I think is an underrated songwriter) and the Cult (who wrote a lot of great rock songs in the 80's). In fact, I might put that one above Rush.

That's cool.