Jump to content

Texas Jeff

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    1159
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Texas Jeff

  1. We've been to Maui and Kauai in the last few years and used the GyPSy guide as an audio tour book as we drove around the islands. They have them for most of the Hawaiian islands and also some mainland US and Canadian spots. It's a phone app that you connect to your car radio. As you drive around and pass GPS waypoints, the guide gives you some local information on what you are about to pass or see. The waypoints have direction, so if you do something like the road to Hana you hear one set of stories on the way out and another on the way back.
  2. Uh, try here: https://www.ranker.com/list/best-documentaries-on-hulu/ranker-streaming?l=2180325&collectionId=1198 "Free Solo" - dude clubs El Capitain without a rope "Too Funny to Fail" - Dana Carvey creates a comedy show but not an audience for said show "Fyre Fraud" - dude convinces wealthy young people to come to his festival but it sucks Hulu has tons and tons of SNL and every dang ole dang ole episode of King of the Hill ... which is kind of like a documentary for Texans.
  3. Matthew McConaughey makes a subtle entrance:
  4. The Biggest Little Farm is now up on Hulu. It is a documentary about a couple that moves from the city to the country to start an organic farm. They have some help from a guy who knows how to transform soil, but they have to troubleshoot along the way to figure out how to use the forces of nature to benefit the farm.
  5. Also from Federalist 65 (66 talks about the Senate two-thirds rule to convict) Hamilton was smart enough to realize that impeachment would always be partisan, but thought enough of the impartiality of the Senate to give them the power to convict, so long as two-thirds of the Senate was on board and the Chief Justice was empowered to see over the proceedings. He argued that it was tough to find any reasonable way to handle impeachments, but this system was reasonably sound and there were many other choices that were worse. If he were alive today he would think we were all morons.
  6. I agree that below ground transit can be pretty awesome if roads are just flat impossible to use. I've used BART, MARTA and the DC Metro to get around when I was in those towns and if it goes from where you are to where you need to go it's great. BART is incredibly noisy and I'm not sure I could take it every day. The old Austin monorail project pretty much proposed the "Orange Line" route about twenty years ago and that was grade separated. That project went nowhere but was a cool idea. It is possible that we are maybe 10-15 years away from a world where you push a button on your phone, a car shows up and takes you where you want to go ... and at much lower cost than owning a car. At that point, I think CapMetro will struggle to attract passengers even though our roads are likely to be more crowded than ever due the automated cars. Fewer people will care about their commute because it will suck a lot less as a rider than a driver. For the price of those tunnels we could fundamentally transform Austin ISD. Maybe it isn't the same money bucket, but if I had to pick I'd invest in the schools before transit.
  7. CapMetro is trying this idea today, kind of. They are running the 335 bus crosstown with the idea that people will transfer to another bus to move north south (or stay on the 335 and you can travel from Mueller to Tarrytown). I asked them for the data showing how many people are boarding the bus each day west of Mopac. The answer was about 100 people per day, although there was a spike for a few months in 2018 up to 200 people. They are running about 66 busses per day along this route. You could probably run the western part of this route with a Nissan Leaf on a loop. It's just too easy to get in a car and go directly to your destination, while wishing that everyone else was on the bus. Traffic will get worse once self-driving car services reduce the cost of travel by car.
  8. 1978, Barton Creek Mall site, looking north towards downtown. 360 under construction: A more recent photo: Could be a tad more crap in the aquifer now ... just a guess.
  9. I think they maxed out the tax rate this year because they know they are capped at a lower percentage increase starting next year. By maxing out the rate increase this year, they raised more revenue than they needed. The "surplus" ended up as a one-time resource to use on the homeless. Stuff will hit the fan over the next few years as the tax rate increases are slowed by the new legislation. Either city programs are going to fight each other for funding and/or we are going to have elections to raise the tax rate beyond the new legislation's limits.
  10. I plan to vote no on Austin Prop A and yes on Austin Prop B. I predict neither will win. The city council turned both of these petitions into word salad for the ballot that makes it impossible to understand what you're voting for or against. The wording is designed to convince you to vote against it. At some point a citizen proposition needs to make it past this city council or we need to give up on the idea that we have actual citizen petitions. For example, here's the wording that was used to create the 10-1 council, pretty easy to understand: Shall the city charter be amended to provide for the election of council members from 10 geographical single-member districts, with the mayor to be elected from the city at large, and to provide for an independent citizens redistricting commission? The city council is now asking you to vote on this Prop B wording: Shall an ordinance be adopted that prioritizes the use of Austin's Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue by continuing the City practice to spend 15% of the Austin Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue on cultural arts and 15% on historic preservation, limiting the City's spending to construct, operate, maintain, or promote the Austin Convention Center to 34% of Austin's Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue, and requiring all remaining Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue to support and enhance Austin's Cultural Tourism Industry to the potential exclusion of other allowable uses under the Tax code; and requires the City to obtain voter approval and public oversight for convention-center improvement and expansion costing more than $20,000,000? If you want to limit hotel tax used for the convention center to 34% of the HOT and require voter approval for an expansion that exceeds $20,000,000, then vote for Prop B. If you are OK with not requiring those limits, then vote against it. This is coming up now because the city is proposing to demolish the existing convention center and build a $1,200,000,000 larger replacement in the same area of town, on a bigger footprint, as part of an overall redo of that area.
  11. Alumni Band would love to have that empty wedge on the north side or sit just south of LHB in the student general admission section...
  12. Add in the payroll tax and things flatten out quite a bit. For federal income tax, the top 1% pay an average rate of about 27%, the top 10% pay an average rate of about 21%, the top 25% pay an average rate of about 18%. A minimum wage worker will pay around 15% in payroll tax, if you include the employer and employee portion. Those top 25% folks pay payroll tax too, but the social security portion rolls off after the limit, which really decreases their marginal tax rates.
  13. Texas Jeff

    SNL 45

    From the Oct 12 show, SNL's pitch for a movie telling the origin story of Oscar the Grouch:
  14. During Watergate, the Justice Dept considered the possibility that the Nixon might try to pardon himself. They answered no, he couldn't, but it really has never been tried. So the President can probably pardon anyone except the President. If the Trump trusts Pence, Trump could use the 25th amendment to write a letter saying he's not OK that temporarily hands over power to Pence ... this is sometimes done when the President has to undergo a medical procedure. Pence could then pardon Trump. A now pardoned Trump could then retake power by writing a second letter saying that he's OK now.
  15. Trump has tossed Rick under the bus, saying it was Rick's idea to have the Ukraine call Here is a purported quote from Trump. Trump here is talking about the call to Ukraine where he asked for a favor relating to the Bidens: C'mon Donald...
  16. I remember the Rams from my childhood like this, seems like they could match it pretty well at the time:
  17. The Austin High band will be offering ACL parking at Austin High this Saturday for $40 per car. You can park in the west teacher lot or the east student lot. All funds will be used to support the band students. For those that do not know, Austin High is on the north shore of the lake, across from ACL. To get to Austin High, exit Cesar Chavez from Mopac and take the first right as you approach downtown. To get to the festival from Austin High, walk down to the pedestrian bridge under Mopac, cross the lake, and then walk back to the festival site.
  18. BTW, for anyone new to Texas admissions, there are really three buckets for UT admission. Top 6% takes about 75% of the spots, out of state gets no more than 10% of the spots, and all of the other spots are Texas kids who were not top 6%. There are about 9,000 spots. So you are really competing for admission spots against the other people in your bucket. If you are top 6% you are in. Admission to a major is different and I don't know how or if they manage how many from each bucket get into each major. A portion of the incoming class does not get into a major right away. Instead, they start in the School of Undergraduate Studies and apply for a transfer to a major after they have the basic core classes complete. The others are enrolled in another college or school and have a major from the beginning.
  19. That's above the 75th percentile for UT, so 1450 seems like a good chance. Math is not as competitive as Computer Science or Biology.
  20. I think this is exactly what will happen ... so long as McConnell wants Trump to run for a second term. Either McConnell is going to try to delay and delay so that no trial is held, or at some point he is going to decide that his best chance of keeping power is to flip on Trump and go with Pence. If that happens, it will happen pretty fast as senate members jump off the train. Flipping on Trump would create a wide open 2020 Republican primary and allow all of the R's who flipped to say that they had taken the moral high ground. Within a month of Trump's removal, Cruz and Rubio would be back in the 2020 mix, along with 15 other R's who want to be president. This benefits Fox News by attracting millions of eyeballs during the trial and during a contested 2020 primary. If Fox turns on Trump, Trump's approval rating will tank and McConnell will allow a trial.
  21. It'd be a lot cooler if he did.
×
×
  • Create New...