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Samson's Wig

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Samson's Wig

  1. They're armed and ready to ensure every neighborhood becomes a soulless clone of walkable, yet still unaffordable, communities across the country. With enough vigilance, we'll all be living in an undifferentiated hellscape of brightly painted cheap building materials stretching from one coast to the other. This nine-fingered hero is doing us all a service, really.
  2. It's the epicenter of where people who didn't grow up in Texas (and therefore are less likely to learn how to handle firearms growing up) live around these parts. Makes sense to me as a self-inflicted wound story. If she had shot someone else, then yeah, I would be surprised.
  3. duplicate
  4. It's helpful when you hear a solid lament about Rainey Street changing. It reveals a great deal about the person. I love this analogy.
  5. I can at least somewhat understand the appeal of Trump to certain people, even if it's lost on me. He says what they want to hear, has a certain kind of confidence, and has been a public figure for a long time, which carries weight for some people for whatever reason. In short, he's a populist. It doesn't do it for me, but I can understand it and the tactic has been used successfully throughout the history of democracies. What I will never understand is how these same folks are not concerned that someone like RFK Jr. has his hands in anything meaningful. That man couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag if you gave him a knife. How is this shit even possible? Outside of the absolute dumbest motherfuckers alive, who listens to this man and thinks, "Yep, that's the guy for the job!" I just can't wrap my head around it. Anyway, back on topic. Fuck AI, fuck tech bros, fuck private equity, and fuck anyone who profits from any of it. Go find work that actually means something before your humanity is completely lost. A fry cook adds more value to society for fucks sake.
  6. White collar uprisings, historically speaking, are what we more commonly refer to as actual revolutions. The idiots in charge, along with the tech bro asswipes, should be doing everything they can to steer away from that situation. It hasn't ended well for their kind in the past.
  7. I agree with both of these statements, so I'm simply adding to this with no intention of being contrary. Setting aside the ethics of the death penalty in general, the notion that it is what's best for the survivors/families has been largely debunked. There's plenty of data out there that victims' loved ones, even those who support the death penalty and want it for the perpetrator, find no solace in it once it's done. Most of the time, it merely drags the case out for years, or even decades, delaying any closure and extending the grieving process for an insanely long time. I know I would likely want the death penalty were I ever in those shoes, and I completely understand the impulse. Still, I hope that I would be able to find a sliver of rationality about it in the moment and recognize that the death penalty is ultimately just further punishment for the surviving victims than it is anything else. The main reason we have the death penalty at all is to satisfy the vengeance lust of the community at large. We know it doesn't deter crime, it doesn't bring peace to the victims' families, and it doesn't serve the state's needs from a financial perspective or any other perspective. Setting aside any moral/ethical discussion, there aren't any rational arguments for the death penalty that hold water. The nations in red on this map are the ones with an active death penalty. We can draw some pretty obvious conclusions from it in terms of what factors drive the desire for the death penalty, both from the perspective of the state and its citizens.
  8. This is sustainable so long as we allow grifters to dominate our economy. This is nothing new, as we've been gobbling up shitty tech for decades now with little to show for it outside of PE jags laughing all the way to the bank. Profitability? What does that have to do with anything anymore?
  9. Evangelicals are every bit as weird as Mormons, but lack the introspection to see it. Indoctrination of the young works.
  10. That's a lot of work to get rid of a mediocre QB at a football program that isn't exactly miles ahead of Utah. Not to mention, that even if BYU suddenly sucked this seaon Utah still has almost no chance of finishing in the top third (or even half) of their conference. Every fan base is delusional.
  11. I understand what you're saying. My wife was here for decades as a permanent resident, but after the first Trump term ended, we quickly got her naturalized. While I'm relieved about it with everything going on now, I also wonder if we've just trapped her on a sinking ship.
  12. I don't want to create an account to read them. Are they threatening not to vote for Patrick or Abbott?
  13. Southern Baptists, and evangelicals in general, hate Catholics so much that they were pro-choice up until the 90s or so, to make sure no one thought they were in alignment with the Catholics on any issue whatsoever. Most of the brainwashed cult members of today seem to be operating in ignorance of that reality. They are a political cult, not a religion.
  14. We'll allow only one religion to proselytize in public schools, and there will be nothing anyone can do about it. That's the American way of doing things.
  15. The USA is a better place to live than Iran, and no one has stated otherwise. However, if you can't see how Iran and Texas have more in common culturally than Texas does with European nations, or even most U.S. states, I don't know what to tell you. Death penalty infatuation, dominance of politics by religious fanatics, subjugating women, actively working to keep the citizenry poorly educated, etc. There are more similarities than differences, thanks to a minority faction in both Texas and Iran who are still living in the Middle Ages and have managed to seize control of the populace. Texas mostly has an edge because it's easier to leave (for now).
  16. How did we get to the point where the dumbest motherfuckers among us control the vote? If I wanted to live in Iran, I would have moved there.
  17. I completely agree that there are council members who are genuinely pro-affordability. That isn't what I was saying. My point was that they don't do anything about it, in large part because they can't. No city council can, but in every growing city, they all run on some version of promising it. It's like a kid running for student council on a platform of extending recess by three hours. They genuinely want it to happen, but there isn't a damn thing they can do about it, and they know it. This is why the campaign ads are bullshit, not because they don't believe it, but because they know they can't do anything about it but make the promises anyway (you know, like politicians do). They've been campaigning on this in Austin for decades with zero success once in office. You can blame NIMBYS for everything, like bozo does, and perhaps that's correct. The end result is that the city leadership has never and will never do anything meaningful about it, and I'm astounded anyone is still buying the pitch.
  18. I haven't listened to terrestrial radio in over fifteen years outside of public radio, and was never an AM radio guy outside of Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell when I found myself driving late at night on road trips. Still, I appreciate your consistency in pigeonholing anyone you perceive as disagreeing with your take on this subject. As LCHorn already pointed out, the discussion was about the politics of the message, not the realities of property taxation or how to improve housing affordability. "Let the market build more housing" is simply restating the affordability message into your preferred talking point on the subject, but it ignores the blatant appeal to the "eat the rich" crowd in Austin. Perhaps I'm too cynical, or you're too naive, or most likely a bit of both. Getting elected in this town isn't complicated. The playbook hasn't changed much for a long time. It's also why not much has changed in Austin for a long time. No elected official in this city will do a damn thing to make things more affordable, because there simply isn't much they can do to make that happen. It's empty language, but it works. You hear it in political campaigns in every major city in this country, and it's as empty in every other city as it is here. You know all this, but chose to be rude because you think I fit some NIMBY boogieman mold or something. Sorry to disappoint. In principle, I agree with your "build more housing" mantra. I'm admittedly a bit skeptical about developers executing the idea in a manner that improves anything for working-class Austinites, or restated, I'm unconvinced that city leadersrhip has the means to control the developers through the process in a manner that results in a benefit to the working class, but the core concept is sound. Agreed.
  19. "Affordability" is 100% not about lower taxes in an Austin political ad (or any other big city political ad). It is code for "I promise to tax "rich" people more and then pretend to give free shit to poor people while endorsing policies that make things more expensive for everyone." It's bait for burnouts and bottom dwellers. It's lower than buying votes, as it is just an empty promise to buy votes.
  20. Turns out there are some rednecks who haven't yet been gentrified out of North Carolina.
  21. There it is again. Until we collectively stop giving evangelicals a pass as being "regular christians", this shit will keep getting worse. There is nothing regular about that cult, and they need to be treated like the fucked up mouth-breathing dumbasses they are. These aren't your grandma's born-again christians. These people are evil and convinced they're righteous. That's a bad combination, and for some reason Americans can only recognize it for what it is when it comes wrapped in the flag of islam rather than christianity.
  22. I sincerely hope we are setting the bar significantly higher than the average licensed human driver. The average licensed human driver shouldn't be licensed at all.
  23. The heart of it is the violent cult of evangelicalism. Social media is just a means of spreading the message of hate to dummies faster than in the old days.
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