Samson's Wig

Here's hoping we're smart enough to avoid it. I'd like to see quicker movement on getting manufacturing the fuck out of there, but we're all slaves to quarterly reporting and that will fuck us on this one.

When I lived in Chicago I had a buddy who would cook those fuckers up ni a number of different ways when the cicadas emerged. I was roped into his cicada feast a couple of times. It was fine. I don't recall shitting legs and wings, but I was drinking a lot back then.

Are there significant numbers of Americans who deny this? I thought it was widely accepted. Perhaps I live in a bubble.

Thank you. And fuck Prosper. If we can't get rid of recapture, the least that can be done is that hot women in these communities can come on down and service those of us who actually paid for their big-ass football stadium. It's only fair.

Zeihan has been singing that song for a long time. Hope he's right, so long as they don't drag the world down with them. Fuck China.

Something that should give every Texan pause is the fact that Florida has really good public schools while our system is a national laughing stock (even at the insanely overfunded suburban schools the education is shit). Recapture and a love affair with football are big reasons why. Fundagelicals are the other. But Florida. Fucking Florida. It's embarrassing.

How do they survive?

Harder to track that down than who pays. Wonder why? Even if a district doesn't receive funding, it may still be subsidized. Most of the affluent suburbs rig their tax structure to ensure they don't pay recapture themselves (after having been propped up by recapture for a couple of decades). While I don't blame them for playing by the extremely crooked and fucked up rules that are in place, it still sucks.

I don't have a list of schools that receive funds, although you can find information about who is paying in here: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.txsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-Total-Recapture-per-District-by-Amount.pdf (Not sure if this will work without a pdf reader built into your browser.). No shock as to who is on top, and with a bullet. The list is basically inner cities and rural areas, with a couple of suburban communities with small payments because they fucked up their math. Most suburban school districts rig the system (Allen is one of them) to ensure they don't pay recapture. You can bet your ass Allen received recapture money back when they built their own palatial football stadium (which now seems quaint compared to some of these disgusting projects being built today). You can't pull off a bond for a stadium if you don't have basic services covered, and recapture made that happen for these districts. Like other similarly grotesque suburban communities, once the growth pushed them into a potential recapture situation, they massaged their property taxes to ensure it didn't happen. So, while roundabout, the poor inner-city kids in Austin, Dallas, Houston, etc. are still propping up these absolutely stupid suburban districts so that upper-middle-class, mostly white, mostly evangelical, future frat and sorority kids can go to school in structures nicer than most universities while kids in the cities fight off raccoons and don't have air conditioning. This state is completely fucked, and the only people who don't seem to see it live in the suburbs around major cities. But it's easy to think things are peachy keen when your lifestyle is being subsidized by others and sanctioned by state leadership. It's going to be interesting to watch these communities lose their shit when vouchers get passed and there is no money for their overgrown systems. Half those suburban kids will end up in Jesus school. Welcome to the party.

Given that area's proclivity for generating aggies, I'm not surprised and also glad you made it out alive.

Do you remember when she mentioned she's surrounded by old people?

Damn. Looks like a lot of emergency personnel standing around in those pics, but no kids. Hope they're okay.

I wasn't directing my comments at you personally, I hope that came across. dcbc beat me to it providing the data. Covid is still (by far) the deadliest airborne pathogen. Whether flu or RSV "sucks" more than Covid is entirely a case-by-case basis. With any of them, you might have an easy go or a miserable one. As far as pediatrics, and entirely anecdotally, both of my kids have had Covid recently. One breezed through it like it was nothing and the other was knocked flat on his back for over a week, and came close to being hospitalized with a secondary infection. It's not something to take lightly, just as the flu and RSV shouldn't be taken lightly. I definitely don't think we need to be overwrought with concern, but taking these pathogens seriously is important.

Thanks for providing the data, as I noted above Covid is still the deadliest airborne pathogen.

Agree with most of your post, but the bolded part is misguided conjecture. Covid is still deadlier than the flu and hence gets special status. Some of the actions taken by the government are no doubt based on recency bias, but Covid-19 nonetheless remains the largest threat of death among common airborne pathogens. Being flippant about it is why assholes are already as casual about it as they are with the flu and other colds, which is why so many get so fucking sick every year. If pieces of shit would just stay home when sick (regardless of the cause) and piece of shit employers would make this more possible for most, these things would truly become a rare nuisance. Finding relief or even joy from the fact that Covid is now being thought of as insignificantly as the flu or other colds is a strange take that we see too often. If everyone treated all of these diseases with proper respect, along with respecting their coworkers, classmates, family members, etc. they would be much less of an issue every year. But mouth breathers gonna mouth breathe, even when they're pathogen-free.

Why does Gen X seem to be forgotten so often? I know we're a small generation, relatively speaking, but wtf?

I always make a point to keep ten oily virgins at the ready, personally. I haven't got over burying my money in the backyard, though. One step at a time.

Suburbs tend to be where scared white people live, with a higher concentration of fundagelicals than urban or even rural areas, and scared religious white people do some stupid tribal shit. Sometimes (like when paying property taxes) I think about moving to the suburbs, but then I remember who my kids will be surrounded by and we stay put.

I grew up in a rural community and attended a rural school run by morons like this aggie. Boys' hair above the ears and above the collar, girls' hair past the collar, girls' skirts no more than one inch above the knee, crap like that. I still remember our pervy assistant principal standing at the front of the school with a ruler to check the skirts. Sending my kids to an inner-city school district has definitely been eye-opening. There's barely even a dress code, and the principals are too busy calling around looking for portable air conditioners and/or a cheap plumber to give a shit how long someone's hair is. It's equal parts refreshing and depressing.

There's a lot of stupid in that article, which is essentially just parroting her team's spin on the issue, starting with the fact that revenge porn laws were not intended to and do not remotely apply in this situation. It is an excellent demonstration of why it is stupid to attack someone for this type of thing, however. Her response was complete and utter nonsense, but it's the type of nonsense voters will eat up. Flannigan was smart to leave Kelly's past alone or he would have been facing his own "how dare you" response. Gibson's reaction is still priceless, though. "How dare you try and hurt my family!" You're the one who fucked on camera for some extra cash and then decided you wanted to be a public leader, lady. You and your husband's choices did this to your family, not your opponent. I don't give a shit if someone sucked cock for money at one point or another and I don't think it should be a disqualifier for office on its own, but I'm not completely unmoved by the argument that it demonstrates a lack of basic decision-making and long term strategic thinking - both skills I would prefer my elected representatives to possess. I'm also not impressed with her victimhood response. If she had just owned it and told people to fuck off she would have my respect. But victimhood sells, baby.

That's about as American a story as a story can get.

It will be interesting to see if he sticks around after his kids are done. I kind of doubt it. He seems to be doing this for them, and more power to him!

Think about the types of folks who often blame "activist judges" for everything wrong in America. Now imagine what people who think this way would like to do to the judiciary if they were in power. Now imagine here is actually Israel.

My son (also ASD) and daughter also witnessed a fight in their first week of 6th grade in AISD. It was two girls and supposedly resulted in a broken nose and jaw for one of them. I was upset when I heard about it, but neither kid seemed remotely upset or bothered. I'm now concerned that we've raised a couple of violence-loving weirdos. I grew up in a rough community in West Texas. There were fights almost every day, and often I was involved. I would not let one fight derail you too much. Things are still so much better than they used to be on this front, and there's no school on earth that doesn't have fights between kids on occasion. As for the hostile syllabus, that really sucks and I'm curious to know more about what made it so awful. I'm glad the teacher tried to make things right.

As a parent of two special needs kids (one with dyslexia and dysgraphia, the other with autism), it fucking infuriates me. It's especially infuriating in AISD when the main issue is funding, despite paying out the ass in property taxes for education. Fuck those fucking fucks who use kids to score political points. Texas should be ashamed of itself. We're fortunate to have the means to get our kids the help they need outside of the school system. I really feel for those parents who can't.