Samson's Wig

If we're being honest, the same thing is true with most real doctors as well.

If we can't manage to ban them altogether, there should at least be a one-bite, and you're done policy with pits. Fuck pit defenders. Everyone loves their dog. That's not a justification. I respect the restraint of the father above whose daughter was attacked. I don't think that dog would still be breathing if I were in his shoes, and I'd be in jail and paying some hefty fines. Where I grew up, if a loose dog killed anyone's livestock or family pet, that dog was dead. If it bit a person unprovoked? Dead. No questions asked, and rarely much pushback from the dog owner either. It was just the understood way of things.

Thank you for presenting, much more intelligently, what I was trying to get at with my post above. This situation should never have been allowed to get this far, and we'll all be impacted by people on both sides of the negotiation acting foolishly.

iPhone 12 Pro Max here (yeah I know), and no issues today for me in Austin.

Greed is shitty when executives wield it, and it's just as shitty when a bunch of low-skill assclowns wield it. The Biden administration should have been on top of this, and there is no reason for the rest of the country to be impacted because a bunch of fucksticks who are already significantly overpaid decide to say "fuck 'em" to millions of people who work harder for less money. Unions are great, until they're not.

I look forward to the higher rates, or most likely just the continued made up usage numbers, to cover what is almost certainly a negligence-related incident. I know that some here believe that city employees are warm hearted geniuses and we should all just get out of their way so they can make Austin a modern marvel, but at the moment I'm just hoping they can keep pumping water to my house. You should run for office.

Every now and then the crazy voters here get it right.

I always assumed TEMU was Chinese spyware of some kind. Do people actually buy things from that site?

This is about as moronic a response to this topic as I can think of, but okay. No one blamed teachers for school shootings. And if you don't realize that there are lots of shitty teachers out there, which is one of many things kids have to deal with, you live in a bubble of willful ignorance.

Looked and could not find a discussion on this. Apologies if I missed it. Just in the last week, there has been a threat to Hill Elementary from an unmedicated schizophrenic: https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/austin-police-make-an-arrest-linked-to-austin-isd-elementary-school-threat A kid was pulled out of class at Lamar Middle School by police for threatening gun violence (no article on this one, but I have spoken to the school principal about it personally). Another threat to Lamar Middle school happened over the weekend, which now appears to have been middle school girls from another middle school (so hopefully not a credible threat). Just in case anyone mistakenly thinks this is isolated to AISD, here's just a handful of similar instances happening out in the burbs. https://www.kvue.com/article/news/crime/social-media-threat-response-school-districts-central-texas-list-of-arrests/269-ec879603-9371-45f0-8c53-c5c38edc35ab Tons of kids are being kept home today due to all this shit, although we sent ours as there doesn't seem to be any active danger. I don't really have much to add other than I hate that kids are growing up with this as a baseline reality. I have 12 year old twins, and it's difficult to explain to them why the adults (myself included) can't create a safe environment for them. Getting kids motivated to go to school and put up with all the bullshit that involves (shitty teachers, boring lessons, misguided romantic entanglements, asshole bullies, etc. etc.) gets even tougher when you have to add "oh, and you might get shot and die" to the list of crappy things that come with middle school and high school life. These kids are growing up in some genuinely shitty times, but the adults haven't done a damn thing about it other than complain about how millennials and Gen Z are so dysfunctional as adults. Well, we made them that way.

I'm sorry, but I can't wrap my head around your view of this city, other than I think you may be too close to how the sausage is made to have an objective opinion. You're way off lumping me into the group you are, which is what you do with anyone who doesn't see the city through your oddly tinted lens. And yes, while I was being (only mildly) hyperbolic about voters here rubber-stamping bonds without understanding what they're even voting for, let's not be disingenuous and act like we don't pass damn near every tax hike or bond in this town just because a couple of items haven't gone through over the decades. And none of that has anything to do with management of the airport, which is what was being discussed. I suppose you thought the handling of the imminent domain move on the south terminal was managed with skill and grace. I agree that voters here suck, as do the elected officials. But I also think you moved somewhere hoping for a world class city, and that is not something Austin ever was and likely ever will be, regardless of what voters do or don't want. It's just what it is. You live in a fairy tale. Detroit has the highest taxes of any city in America. How's that working for them? Throwing more money at bad leadership isn't going to solve anything, but it will continue the tradition of graft in this city quite well. You've managed to label just about everyone as dumb or incompent, whether it's the majority voters, the minority voters, or the city leadership. Who does that leave that knows what they're doing and can implement this magical world class city experience you are looking for? You? If you're the only genius who knows what's best for Austin, and if everyone else would just stay out of the way and do things your way, we'd be living in a modern marvel of a city? Sign me up, seriously. Maybe we should elect you Emporer of Austin, and all our problems will be solved. Just let me know how much to make the check out for. If you can deliver that I'm all in. Hell, if you could just deliver a functional light rail system for a reasonable cost and without funneling millions to your buddies I'll fully support your dictatorship. But I think you're just another naive idealist with an authoritarian streak who wants to live in a magical fairy tale city that suits your specific needs and wants everyone else to pay for it, just like most Austin voters. No offense, though.

No one else wants to tell me, so I guess we're all in the dark. What did I miss? If we rejected a public improvement bond related to the airport (or anything else) in the last fifteen years or so, I was definitely in a coma that week. While that's certainly possible, it would be highly out of character for the voters in Austin, which was my point. I thought the vast majority of the funding for most of the current improvements is coming from state and federal grants, so I don't understand your blaming voters for any of it outside of your tendency to carry water for city leadership no matter the topic. I'm sure you have your personal reasons for doing so, but how anyone can think this city has been well-managed over the decades is mind-bottling.

The same naive voters that pass every single bond put in front of them? I don't know, man.

The train was always nothing more than a graft project. The airport, though, is in desperate need of expansion and a complete rethinking of how they move people in and out of there. I can't think of another North American airport that is a bigger pain in the ass to pick someone up at, and the city allows for more flights in and out of there than they should. I don't fully understand how the FAA has allowed it.

Why would they do any of that when they have LCRA in their back pocket? May as well drain all the current resources and then look for alternatives.

Fuck the rice farmers. They and the bitcoin miners should both GTFO of Texas altogether.

and =

Same when it comes to hunting and fishing. I'll still happily wake up at 3:30 AM if the missus needs some attention. But I'm not setting an alarm for it.

The only extracurricular activity I've enjoyed enough to go through all of that effort is fucking. I definitely don't need to golf that badly. Good on you for having a passion.

You're on to something here. If I could build a soundproof bubble around it and listen to music while riding up and down the stairs for fifteen minutes, that might just do the trick.

Are we getting dumber as a society, or is the stupidity just more apparent than it used to be? Sometimes, I talk to older folks and think, "Thank God kids are better educated these days." And then I read stories like this one and think, "Fuck, kids are dumber than a steaming pile of shit with a homeschool education from evangelical parents."

Well, if AI says so it must be true.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also more productive at home (although everyone thinks that, and most people are wrong, perhaps me as well). But you also have somewhere to go two days a week, which would completely take care of what I'm talking about, which is simply being a bit stir crazy living 90% of my life inside a single building. If I wanted to work out of the house I could easily go get an office, but I choose not to. While the lack of transition time can be bothersome, I still prefer to be here and see my kids and wife more than I would working out of the house.

I've primarily been working from home since around 2008. I miss a commute all the time, as it provides a dividing space between work and home. Time to decompress a bit, listen to music or a podcast, and generally shift your mood before spending time with your family. Now, I walk downstairs from a stressful day in my office, and I'm immediately bombarded with all of the family's problems, household chores, etc., with no opportunity to decompress or simply shift gears before diving into them. I'm not saying I want to commute for an hour each way, but I wouldn't mind a little something in there, and I understand why some people don't mind a commute.