Samson's Wig

They actually prioritize educating their citizenry in Massachusetts. Other places prioritize football and Jesus. The end results speak for themselves.

Fuck the other states and fuck the blue hairs and fundies that allow for the continuation of these foolish policies. The morons just provide cover for the politicians taking bribes to keep everything illegal. If Abbott and co. really want to get rid of property taxes (they don't), the only way it's going to happen is to upset the uneducated and unwashed religious goobs who keep them in office by legalizing and taxing "sin".

I love how the most hypersensitive people on the planet, with absolutely zero self-awareness, are the ones most consistently bitching about how hypersensitive modern culture is. Sure, some of it's over the top, but would the young you really want the old you determining what is or isn't appropriate? It's not as if it's anything new that many people hit a certain age and slip into a rocking chair lifestyle where they smile while spewing uncomfortable and outdated things to their children and grandchildren. If that's where you're at, embrace it, but don't try to convince anyone that you have the moral high ground. You're just an old bigot like every other old bigot that existed in every generation before. The target of bigotry shifts over time, but the sentiment doesn't. The longer you live the more likely you are to end up there. I'm sure I'll get there someday myself (if I'm not already). Counterpoint: The guy who has demonstrated being more intellectually divergent than any other regular poster on this site complaining that he can't say the R-word may have a point when you consider the other comments regarding reclaiming slurs. Maybe that's what is actually happening here and we should be celebrating his mission.

It's viewed more in our house as they have Canadian content that my wife enjoys, but I don't take our personal usage as illustrative of any broader trend. Your list is essentially in order of the number of subscribers, so I take your point (although Prime is puffed up by users who never utilize the streaming service). Hulu's 50 million subscribers is nothing to sneeze at, however, which was all I was getting at. They're doing just fine.

Your personal experience is definitely the barometer we should use to judge such matters. I'll call Hulu and let them know to just shut it down.

Young GenXer = old. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Take care of your heart and be kind to your loved ones so they remember you fondly. You don't have a lot of time left to make a good impression.

No doubt he was a terrible defensive driver (assuming there wasn't someone right on his bumper) and likely could have avoided the accident, but that doesn't make it his fault that Ponytail forced his way into the lane and caused the accident in the first place. You don't have a right to merge whenever and wherever you want just because you put on a blinker. Most people don't drive, they aim. Both of these dorks seem to fall into that category.

Lol at ponytail boy. What a pussy. Hits the gym on occasion so thinks he can fight, I guess? This is a common mistake of many gym rats. He couldn't even land a sucker punch, and he's damn lucky he was picking on an aggy weatherman. Anyone with a lick of fighting sense would have destroyed his ass with evidence of self-defense on the dashcam. I don't really care who was at fault in the car accident (it was definitely Prius boy), but anyone who tries to throw a punch like that is less than half a man and deserves to get their shit dragged in county jail. He probably has a subscription to Andrew Tate's Hustler's University. Fuck that loser.

I see a ton of listings in the $1M - $1.5M range sitting on the market for months now in Austin. A lot of it is delusional sellers reaching retirement in older homes who missed their opportunity to sell during the pandemic and are still clinging to hope that they'll sell for a premium that doesn't exist anymore. Many of these properties are sub $1M in reality. Most buyers in that range will still be taking out a mortgage, and the prices aren't reflecting the reality of current interest rates. If you take all of those stupidly priced listings and bring them back to reality Austin might drop out of the top ten.

Texas public school admissions are fucked up, UT in particular. If you are good enough for engineering at GT, you're plenty good enough for UT.

There are all kinds of unqualified kids getting into most universities, for a variety of reasons. I don't think schools are doing anyone a favor by letting them in for legacy, affirmative action, economic, or any other reason beyond a demonstrated ability to thrive in an academic environment. When these types of factors are used as tie-breakers, it makes some sense, but if they become a deciding factor we've fucked up. Racking up student loan debt just to drop out because you weren't capable of succeeding in an academic environment isn't going to do you any favors or right any historical wrongs, even if it makes some of us feel better to attempt it. Graduation rates aren't pretty in general at around 65% for public and private non-profits, with private for-profit schools being at the bottom of the barrel at around 30%. Legacy students are an outlier in that they graduate at a higher rate than other students, but affirmative action students and socioeconomically disadvantaged students have a significantly lower graduation rate than other students. Simply granting a kid entry to the party isn't enough if they weren't prepared for the experience beforehand. Any programs like these should be combined with additional resources to help these kids overcome the deficit they're starting with. Or perhaps we should be doing a fuckton more to ensure kids are getting educated properly at the grade school level, as that's where the inequities truly lie and by the time college rolls around it's often much too late. Once vouchers get going at a significant rate, a bunch of white kids will be getting spoonfed Jesus bullshit all through grade school and their parents will have guaranteed they are disqualified from attending any school that isn't Oral Roberts or similar. That should open the floodgates of opportunity for others if our public schools don't completely collapse.

You know, if someone came out with an affordable fuck robot, I bet we'd see a significant drop in mass shootings (and probably a significant drop in public sightings of aggies). Maybe we should let Elon explore this one.

But what if you were like super attractive, a varsity athlete, worked four jobs (AT THE SAME TIME!) and the most popular guy in school? Did any of that factor in?

Little known fact: most divers are terrible swimmers. Have you noticed how quickly they skedaddle to the side of the pool after a dive? It's because they're scared shitless of drowning. It's kind of like track and field athletes who do shotput or discus. Ask them to run a lap and they'll laugh at you. I'll bet Louganis could out-dive any shark alive, though.

Well, sure. But it's not anywhere near as hot and disgusting as Texas at the same time, so still an improvement.

I wish that short-term rentals were going away, but they're not. The two quickest solution to affordable housing in most cities would be to ban short-term rentals and ban entity ownership of residential properties. Alas, neither will ever happen in most places.

Driving a BMW is already the equivalent of a giant flashing neon sign on your car stating "I'm an entitled piece of shit with no self-awareness!" (it's a big sign), but that paint job takes it to levels heretofore unseen.

What an incredible amount of joy that man has spread in the world. He had one of those instantly likable personalities. Alzheimer's is a bitch, and you hate to see anyone having to deal with it, but when it's someone as lovable as Jack Hanna it hits even harder.

Agree. Too much emphasis is placed on dating apps and just like social media apps, people dramatically overestimate their influence. Most people are still meeting the old-fashioned way (face-to-face, being introduced, etc.). For incels to essentially go postal because they don't have luck with a dating app is as stupid as people wringing their hands over Twitter's demise as if it is the downfall of modern society. This shit just isn't as important as people think it is.

I am astounded how often I get hit on when I'm out with the kids sans wife. Some of the women are shameless in their approach.

While the trial start date will almost certainly get pushed back, I'm still thinking about canceling that Miami trip we had planned in August.

If you don't have a son between 11 and 18 Tate may not have popped up on your radar. His bullshit, like most asswipes like him, is easy to manage if you're paying attention to your son and discussing things like this with him in a constructive way (and more importantly modeling what a real man acts like). Unfortunately, there are too many absentee fathers, even ones who still live in the same house, which is why young boys turn to doofuses on the Internet for guidance. When the only countervailing point of view presented to them is that of a disinterested and dismissive father, Andrew Tate's bullshit starts to sound good.

That's a fascinating list you put together, particularly the part where you didn't name a single living individual. You forgot to list Pol Pot, Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, Robespierre, Attila the Hun, Hirohito, Caligula, Jim Jones, Osama bin Laden, Chairman Mao, Elizabeth Bathory, and let's throw in Judas Iscariot for good measure. That list can go on forever. While I agree that Tate was largely an Internet shyster before it became clear that he's a rapist and sex trafficker, he symbolizes and promotes an ideology that allows for the rise of "strongmen" type leaders (all of whom were/are really piss-their-pants little babies). To name some living assholes, people like Putin, Erdogan, Orban, or even our homegrown wanker who shall not be named, don't rise to power without a large number of supporters who buy into philosophies similar to Tate's. Tate is not just a misogynist (although that term feels too weak for what that piece of shit actually is); he's also a racist, so he and Bandera have that in common. Tate and West have a bit in common as well, as they both enjoyed manipulating people, including children, for their own gain. Tate fits in quite well with your list (his views on women also line up fairly well with fundamentalists among the Abrahamic religions, although they'll hedge and deny it), he just had less political power than some of them and was undoubtedly dumber than any of them by orders of magnitude, but given the breadth of social media and his access to children, one could argue he had an even wider influence than any of them. And in today's world (not the past where your list of villains arises), someone with a loud voice on the Internet, especially when it's one that kids' ears perk up for, can do more damage than any world leader. We now have a young generation of boys who actually think women secretly want to be raped and that the measure of a man is how many pushups he can do and what kind of car he drives. The next couple of decades are going to be a blast as these boys become young men. I suspect you're just being contrary, which is fine by me and part of the fun around here, but if Tate's message actually resonates with you, I hope you take some time to sit down and really think it through.

It's almost as if Texas is large, and contains multitudes. At any given time there are going to be a few people doing the right thing, a few people doing the wrong thing, and most people doing what seems like the right thing at the time but turns out to be the wrong thing once younger, smarter, and more enlightened people come along to point it out. The best we can do is try not to take a small sample size of shit behavior and attribute it to everyone (GRhorn's bullshit post up-thread comes to mind), while also recognizing that we shouldnt' take a small sample size of good behavior and attribute it to everyone. There will always be work to do.