Samson's Wig

Blood work a couple of weeks ago shows I still have no N antibodies. I'm at the point where I wonder if I should purposefully get Covid while I'm still relatively young so it isn't such a big thing when I inevitably catch it fifteen or twenty years from now.

Of course. I thought the tone and content of my post made it very clear that I know they have their fair share of dumbasses. You may have stopped reading after the part you bolded, which would certainly explain the confusion.

I already have Apple TV and still won't watch the Pac.

Blue sky laws used to mean something.

It was definitely "well-digger's ass". Colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra would have also been accepted.

As the husband of a Canadian woman, and the father of half-Canadian children, it pains me every time that I'm reminded that this fucker is also half-Canadian through his mother. An entire nation full of decent folk, but then you have this guy. But then there's Bieber. Oh, and Drake. Shit, and those Nickelback jags. I may need to rethink my position on this issue.

The tech industry has always been a bit of joke, especially when it comes to the way the companies market their products or speak of their lofty intentions. This statement might be one of the more ridiculous ones I've seen. How does anyone read this bullshit and actually buy into it? An entire industry built on empty air, it's just incredible. Musk is simply the natural end result of a generation of complete and utter make-believe enterprises that magically made money anyway thanks to financiers realizing they can milk idiots and "founders" realizing that they just have to pull off the grift long enough to sell to a bigger idiot (or in more recent years take the grift large and convince the idiot public to invest directly). Now we're seeing the industry start to look a lot like it did after the first wave of bullshit investments finally caught up with reality in the nineties. Tons of layoffs are already happening, with software companies in particular finding out really quickly how fragile businesses that aren't really businesses can be. Here's hoping we finally learn our lesson and start to build companies slowly based on a solid business strategy and a notion of existing beyond a fat payday in the near future when we pawn our bullshit off on someone else and retire to the hills. A successful company requires more than a neat idea and a nerd with a penchant for circumlocution, and I sure as fuck hope we can figure this out as a society soon as these fucksticks will take us all down with them.

Texas actually does a decent job, relatively speaking, of educating ESL students. We have a longer history of programs than other states, which must help. ESL by percentage. Mass: 10.2% Texas: 20.1% For 4th grade math, the top cities for ESL students in the country are in Texas (Dallas, Austin, Houston, Fort Worth) with Boston just behind in 5th. Things change a bit for 8th grade, with Dallas remaining in first, followed by Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston. For reading, Boston leads the country for grade 4 ESL students, followed by Austin. In 8th grade, Detroit of all places is in first. https://www2.ed.gov/datastory/el-outcomes/index.html#one The point is, ESL students are not why Texas sucks at education. That is one of the areas Texas actually handles better than most other states, and yet we're still miles behind overall.

Yes, and most of the hot takes are as obtuse and myopic as you would expect.

It's funny though, isn't it, that the conferences that either had unequal revenue sharing or argued over it significantly are falling apart while those that have been staunchly equal in their revenue for years are the two premiere conferences?

Still hurts. Sorry. Kinda.

Kliavkoff has effectively ended his career in the entertainment industry after the way he bungled this. No one will touch him.

Like any conference not as stupid as the SWC and Big12 would do anything involving Baylor, or TCU, or Houston. Holy crap.

George Kliavkoff may never be hired for another executive position again. What a fucking goob. Outside of USC, Oregon, and to a lesser degree WA and UCLA how much value is there in west coast football? Who the fuck is watching it if those four have gone to greener pastures? They'll be selling ads to local car dealers and class action attorneys . . . if they're lucky. Hard to see a deal that nets the remaining schools anything more than $10-15M a year (maybe).

This. Fox and ESPN are driving the bus here, with conferences and individual schools mistakenly believing they have some kind of control. That type of thinking is why Utah and ASU will be left in the wilderness (although I think ASU, despite being a sub-pedestrian program for its entire history will eventually end up in a major conference due to their market alone). Leadership at both schools talked shit, which was foolish and will cost them, at least in the short term. Utah brings nothing to anyone's table with a state hardly bigger than New Mexico now that BYU already has that small market sewn up. Their fans have an aggy level of delusion regarding their status. It's become evident that FOX/ESPN have come around to the notion of 3 super leagues, when they seemed content with two priorly. Yormark deserves some kind of special award for pulling the Big12 from the absolute depths of despair to the position it's in now.

And therein lies the problem with religion. EDIT TO ADD: and the child molestation. That's also the problem. Apologies for leaving that out before.

How anyone can get a proper legal education and end up on the far right is a mystery to me. After undergrad at UT, did they attend the Aggy School of Legal Witticisms and Assorted Questionry?

UT alumni of a certain age aren't exactly peaches. I'm sure most here remember the emails during the Eyes of Texas debacle. But aggies do seem to take it to an entirely different level. I will echo what others have stated here, that the current student body doesn't really look or act like what most of us think of when we think of mouth-breathing, sheep-humping idiots with jizz jars, speech impediments, and lift kits on their pickups. Times have changed, even though the alumni and admin haven't.

If Oregon and Washington follow suit, as is being aggressively rumored this evening, and AZ makes the logical move and follows CU, the Big12 will be fairly salty, and arguably as good or better than the Big10, which is so top-heavy in football it's ridiculous. BIg 12 already the better basketball conference. Could be a more interesting landscape with three top conferences instead of two.

FIFY

Are they still getting rid of frats/sororities? That seemed to be a trend a few years ago, with positive results regarding graduation rates and GPAs. I can't see it disappearing in southern schools anytime soon, as it's so intertwined with the culture. Not sure how the pandemic impacted things. I was in a fraternity and remain friends with some of the guys decades later, although I am closer to other friends from university that weren't in the fraternity. It was a positive experience, but I would have had just as good of a time without it. I'm hoping my kids avoid it, as it tends to be more of a distraction than anything else, and I don't really see a net positive for most folks unless your hope for your kids is a house in the burbs, a job in middle management, and a mediocre marriage. Some buck that trend, but it seems to be the default position (perhaps this is simply the case for all college grads). If my kids go the greek route, I'll support it, but I'm sure as hell not dropping $4k for consulting. It was always a form of purchasing a guaranteed social life, which has some merit if you're awkward and don't meet people easily, but paying a consultant is next level nonsense. Ultimate FOMO drives membership these days, imo, and especially now you're not really missing out on anything that can't happen outside of the system. In the old days it was a bit more of the only game in town. Good on anyone with a consulting business like this milking a generation of parents more involved with Facebook than their kids. It's a bit of a snake eating it's own tail situation, but more power to them.

While the grades may vary, you just described the experience of learning history for the majority of public-school-educated Americans under the age of 40 or so (and many over 40). Young people from every part of this country don't know history, as it has been slowly but surely culled from education for varying reasons. In well-intentioned school districts, it simply took a back seat to STEM classes (as foolish and misguided as that is), and in others, it was a blatant act of whitewashing and/or myth-building. Sometimes it comes down to the reality that the people who would be best suited to teaching history (or any other subject) to kids wouldn't come within 300 miles of the job due to pay and bullshit. Either way, many people in this country have a massive gap in their knowledge of history. Throw in the folks who went to religious schools and learned absolutely nothing of value beyond how to protect their cornhole from predatory religious leaders, and things get even scarier.

lol. Yes, one school district in MA did something like that in their middle schools I believe, which made national headlines (particularly among news outlets with a particular bent) but changed course very quickly thereafter as I recall. This is also the Massachusetts whose students outscore every other state's students in math by a wide margin. Massachusetts is the #1 state in math with a bullet (and #2 in overall education after New Jersey, go figure). Texas, by comparison, is #25 in math and #37 overall for k-12 That's higher than I would have guessed, to be honest, but still pathetic given the resources we could sink into educating our kids if we weren't more concerned with football and book bans. Even Florida does a much better job. Fucking Florida. The average Texan is significantly less educated than the average Floridian. Let that sink in. It wasn't always this way, but we've very purposefully chosen to make things worse. Because we're morons. Perhaps you were tongue in cheek with your comment, but there is absolutely no argument based on any objective measure that Massachusetts isn't by far the #1 state for math and in the top 2 for education overall, and it's not even close. The sad part is, even Massachusetts is mediocre compared to other OECD countries. As a nation, we are ensuring our populace remains stupid and sated. Some of this is budgetary (no excuse) and some of it is because it helps get certain folks elected. It is shortsighted and will end poorly for all of us. Recent trends show Texas trying to lead the charge to the bottom on this front. At least Massachusetts is carrying its own water. We can't say the same for our great state.

We've been hiding out in New Mexico mountains for the last few weeks to get out of the heat. I've been working on the back deck enjoying the fresh air more in the last few weeks than I have in the last ten years in Austin. Our kids were born in NM when we lived there for a stretch before we got the hell out, as it's an awful place to raise kids or earn a living (not bad for retirement so long as you're healthy). Turns out that returning to Austin may have been a terrible mistake as well. AISD has completely fallen apart, and the state is hell-bent on ensuring public schools get even worse. Private schools are fine, but it's not where we want them if we can help it. Wife works for a company in Boston, and this summer especially has us talking about making the move to at least somewhere on the East Coast (I'm pushing for NC). The thought of leaving my folks, who are in the panhandle, so far away when they're entering the years they really need help, is the big sticking point. I'm a drive away right now, and although they're not far from some form of assisted living, I don't think they'll be willing to move out of Texas to be close to us. Too scary for Texas lifers.