Samson's Wig

I agree that the theaters are better than they used to be, but theatrically released movies are mostly four-quadrant dog shit. If you like Disneyesque superhero and fantasy/sci-fi films produced to appeal to as wide a group of people as possible (and by necessity removing any semblance of artistry), that's your prerogative. But don't try to convince anyone with functional eyes, ears, and souls that these films are of higher quality than what used to be released theatrically. There are still quality films being made, and some of them have limited and/or short runs in theaters, but by and large, the offerings at movie theaters are just the same movie over and over, dressed up with different actors and tag lines. Studios gave up on mid-budget films a long time ago, and this is the sweet spot where you typically find quality cinema. Big-budget noise makes them a ton of money, and it's just about all they produce anymore. This doesn't undercut your thesis regarding enshittening, however. Theatrically released films are just also part of it. Under your rubric, you can probably replace "business customers" with "Chinese market" and you get the same result .

I thought it had more to do with guarding their own ships and not wanting to kiss the U.S. ring by acknowledging we're in charge, but I don't really know anything other than what I've read which may have been biased. I'm not following this too closely.

I may be naive, but I think if they go after Mediterranean targets the mindset of the West, particularly Europe, would shift dramatically into a much more aggressive stance. Iran would not just get away with that move.

All of that makes sense to me and involves threats to a region they can do something about (if the West decides to let them). I agree that Prosperity Guardain has not been handled well and makes no real sense if the goal is to actually free up shipping in the region. Claiming they're going to shut down the Mediterranean Sea, however, makes no sense to me at all. No one will take that threat seriously, nor should they, and if anything, it makes Iran look as toothless as they are because it's such an obviously empty threat. They may as well say they will colonize the moon and rain rockets down upon the west from their new base up there. I'm probably just too slow to see it, but I don't get their angle at all with this one.

lol. Fuck off, Iran. What is it with the Middle East (plus Russia) and empty threats? Do they actually think anyone takes this kind of shit seriously? Are their citizens stupid enough to believe this crap? Who is their audience? I can stand up and say, "I will be fucking Salma Hayak tonight" and it would carry the same level of credibility.

For a start, those are AISD numbers, not Austin numbers. Austin is not a city comprising many households with children as a percentage of the whole, as evidenced by AISD's massively shrinking enrollment over the years. AISD students are not reflective of the city at large at all. Secondly, those numbers are meaningless without a comparison to show they are either increasing or decreasing. Finally, the ethnicity/race information has nothing to do with what was being discussed, which was economic status. It's strange that you included it.

Damn.

You're right, of course, there are still folks in the lower economic demographics left in town. My point was only that there are a lot less of them now than before, and the number is shrinking, not growing. It's nothing unique to Austin. Big cities have become a place for wealthy folks and homeless folks, with little room for anyone in the middle. It's a very broken and foolish system for all kinds of reasons.

I'm listening.

Less and less every day. Most of these folks have been forced out, sadly.

Very little in that stretch could count as "old Austin" even by the loosest of definitions. Even the bars from twenty years ago have largely made way to night clubs, as bars can't generate the cash to pay those rents. It will be interesting to see how the new development shakes out. Outside of one or two spots barely hanging on in that stretch, very little will be missed. All the wannabe gangsters and hillbilly trash that roll in from out of town to party on 6th can find somewhere else to go as far as I'm concerned. 6th Street used to add something of value to Austin. It was just the right amount of lewd, drunken, and tawdry to be charming. Now it does nothing for the citizens of the city, exists for the benefit of small-towners looking for a thrill and pay no taxes here, and I suppose it draws in some unwitting tourists who likely regret their decision to stay downtown. Night clubs are for assholes and broke idiots, and that's about all that's down there anymore. They're also largely operating by entities that exist outside of Texas, so it's not exactly adding a ton of economic benefit outside of some low paying jobs - many of which are filled by folks who don't live in Austin.

I love when folks from other places get on their high horse about crime in Austin, usually from a political angle, when they live in areas with even higher violent crime. A lot of the high-profile crime in Austin is perpetrated by people who drive in from the suburbs and outlying communities. Shootings and violence often turn out to be guys driving in from Killeen, San Antonio, etc. That goofy crap where the dudes took over the street intersection to do donuts or whatever it was that got so much press? Those fucks didn't live in Austin. No doubt our homeless population is responsible for some property crime, but the majority of the car break-ins are groups driving in from those "safe" communities outside of town. Austin is full of educated professionals and poorly educated young hipsters living off of daddy's allowance. Outside of the rare instance of one of these folks crackins (see recent bicyclist murder) these just aren't folks running around robbing, raping, and pillaging.

College football will continue its downward slide in popularity over the next 20 years. The current moves are hastening its demise, as college football will never be a national sport. It's regional and always will be. Like anything else driven by publicly traded entities, these moves are too focused on short-term profits. The result they're driving towards will simply be a watered-down NFL, and fewer people will have any interest in it. It doesn't matter as football as a sport is waning and younger generations just don't care as much. The strongest fan bases being relied upon are in the Midwest and the South, two areas not exactly chock full of fat wallets that are attractive for advertisers (there are only so many side-by-sides, cheap beer, and camo snake boots you can sell). The other result of all of this will be football programs divorcing themselves from universities entirely and operating as for-profit entities with licensing deals in place with the universities for the use of names, mascots, logos, etc. And while I think it will take closer to 30 years, the end result will be college football on par with any other minor league sport: a smattering of fans, a fun Saturday night out, and that's about it. There is no way what is shaping up will ever work without radical changes to federal law. Title IX lawsuits alone will end most of what's already going on, and this will drive the shift to privatization of the sport. It's a shame watching something that was never really a true sport given all the rampant cheating that has gone on for over a century, but still provided incredible entertainment value, turn into something empty and soulless. But that's what's happening, and nothing will stop it.

My wife and son just fled the movie theater. Fuck this shit.

No. The opposite. We just don't call things cults that are clearly cults anymore. The Internet is where every brainwashing stupid cult recruits. See either major political party, the magic of essential oils and/or vitamins, Cowboys fans, and of course QANon and its many spinoffs and copycats.

That's exactly how I imagine Austin's local government works. Having never been on the inside, I appreciate the confirmation - even though it's rage-inducing. I've worked on commissions in other cities, and I think they're all essentially the same. Just a complete shit show.

I'm certain it's been posted in this forum at one point or another (and probably where I saw it), but there have been studies that demonstrated that every last one of us gets more racist the closer we get to death. Even contemplating our mortality increases our racism/otherism/tribalism. I think it has something to do with yearning for the comfort of the familiar when we know time is short. I guess this is why people who never espoused such nonsense in their younger years suddenly get very, very tribal as they get older. Certain media outlets know how to tap into this primal instinct better than others. My folks are in this age bracket, and while they haven't gone full-blown racist by any stretch, there is a much higher level of suspicion of others, particularly anyone not from Texas. For those of us with the blessing of some time before we're facing mortality on a minute-by-minute basis, I think it's important to think about these things and come up with ways we can guard against these natural instincts when the time comes.

As I already noted, that stat is meaningless without context regarding their zoning rules as a whole. Look at density per acre/mile in those cities. For example, Boston: ~14k per mile. San Francisco: ~17k per mile. Austin = ~3k per mile.

Exclusionary zoning is not good, on that we agree. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the latest movements by the city regarding zoning, outside of specious arguments being made to sway simple-minded but kind-hearted folks.

Having owned property in three of those cities, and having lived (rented) in the rest at one point or another, I respectfully disagree. Comparing them to Austin is beyond disingenuous, with perhaps the exception of Portland, but even there the rules regarding parking, lot size, impervious cover, etc. are so drastically different it's not comparing apples to apples at all. All of those cities cram in significantly more dwelling units per acre and are more expensive to purchase or rent a home in than Austin. NIMBYism is real and a problem because it goes overboard. It is also the only thing stopping 1960/s/70's style destruction of American cities. That era left a nasty stain on the face of this country that we still haven' recovered from, and we're trying to do it all over again. An equally ridiculous problem is using NIMBYism as a boogie man to justify for ramming through rules that benefit a small handful of people and do absolutely nothing to make housing affordable. The name calling, the blaming, all of it - it's just political bullshit preventing people from even sitting down an thinking about what we want to achieve and whether what we're doing has any chance of accomplishing it. People love to blame NIMBYism for Austin while refusing to blame decade after decade of crony capitalism from our local government. They're both to blame for the current situation, but one is significantly more at fault (hint, it isn't old people worried about property values). Austin needs more developments like Mueller, on the edge of town, combined with transportation to carry these folks to work. Revamping established neighborhoods while doing absolutely nothing else about infrastructure, transportation, etc. if so blindingly stupid it's hardly worth discussing.

Those places are stacked to the gills with multi-unit per-lot developments. I'm not talking about the suburbs.

These young transplants and true believers will be sorely disappointed when this does nothing to improve housing affordability in Austin for any of them. I don't think that's really the goal for even the pie-eyed, however. It's more of an us vs. them jerkoff session. Those who stand to make money off this are laughing their asses off at how stupid we all are. Now, I'm off to purchase a home in central San Francisco, Portland, Chicago, New York, Boston ,Toronto, or somewhere similar. You know, the cities where multiunit development in historic single-family neighborhoods has been in place for decades, and therefore they have no issues with housing affordability.

I think you're touching on the heart of the situation, but I can't entirely agree with your conclusion. As the parent of a mentally ill young man, I can tell you firsthand that it's not as simple as coming up with a system for locking up people with problems or red flags. As we did in the past, we would sweep up way too many harmless people and separate them from their families, making things much worse for those individuals while doing nothing to protect the public. If we can find a way to determine who is a threat and who is not accurately, perhaps it could work, but that's not how these things ever work. Legislation will be too broadly drafted (as it always is), and sick kids will be placed into terrible environments in which they don't belong. It has been a long-held notion in this nation that one is innocent until proven guilty, that we would prefer a guilty person go free than lock up an innocent one. I have always believed strongly in this and still do, especially when we're talking about people with mental illness. The answer is not just to start locking up sick people, although we need to start treating mental illness seriously in this country. If you're not wealthy, your kids will have difficulty getting meaningful treatment. That's a place we can start right there. Mental healthcare reform. Force the fucking insurance assholes to cover mental health services and require mental health providers to accept insurance for payment. We're completely broken as a nation in this area, but we could make a significant difference with relatively simple legislation. Acts like the one this week can be better prevented not by locking people up but by making treatment available in the first fucking place. The other thing that would do more to stop this crap than anything else, but won't happen because Americans are dumber than a bag of rocks/hammers/dildos, is to get rid of fucking guns. All of them. Now. But as Brisket has mentioned repeatedly, we have the country we want. What we want is to divert attention from the real problem by demonizing mentally ill people because a large segment of our population is struggling with an inferiority complex and feels better being surrounded by weapons. I think these discussions routinely focus on the wrong mental health issues, personally. Obsessive behavior around guns is the more significant mental health problem, but it's not ever discussed at all. A bunch of patriots think an America utterly beholden to the insurance and gun lobbies is the best version of America. And who do you think loves the more recent narrative regarding mental illness? Another large industry with significant lobbying power, perhaps? It's all fucking bizarre and should be shameful to anyone who truly believes in the notions that this nation were founded upon. King George, thy name is now industry.

So whose wife was the cop fucking?

lol. Isn't Farmhouse the "Christian" frat? I hope they at least butchered and ate it.