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Samson's Wig

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Posts posted by Samson's Wig

  1. The closest competitor to HEB in Texas in terms of quality was United.  Like HEB, it was a family business and the Snells ran a tight ship.  They have/had a premium brand, Market Street, akin to Central Market.   However, they sold out to Albertsons, of all the shit-tastic companies, a few years ago.  I've only been in a couple of times when visiting family, and the quality, selection, and diversity of items went to shit.  They're just a collection of shitty Albertsons now.  

    HEB and United had a longstanding agreement, supposedly, to stay out of each other's markets.  After the sale of the United company, HEB promptly bought land in Lubbock and opened up a store a few months ago.  I hear it's doing quite well, and I suspect Albertsons/United will be suffering greatly before too long.

  2. Just now, TwiceHorn said:

    My word.  Sorry to hear.  What made it fatal?  The battery itself?

    Button batteries are activated by saliva.  So if they get stuck in the throat they start emitting electricity.  If you don't get it out quickly it's not good.  In her case, it burned a whole through her trachea and esophagus, creating a fistula between the two.   It happened around Halloween and she fought until right before Christmas before passing. 17 months old.  It's sadly a very common thing to happen. 

    It manifests a lot like croup in the initial hours, which is what my niece was misdiagnosed with.  The result is that the battery sits in there for a day or two and has time to damage things beyond repair.

    • Rage+1 6
  3. 15 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

    So- when my daughter swallowed a battery we got a bill for $36k from the experience. 
    Insurance said they’d pay for $6500 or some such and the hospital said-sure, why not. We ended up getting stuck paying like 95% of the bill bc it pretty much maxed out our deductible. 
    All the hospital stays were the same story. 
    I’m convinced literally the only point in having insurance is bc hospitals and docs charge 10x their going rate and then the insurance negotiates down the cost to what is logical to be paid in the real world. 
    this shit makes me ragey if I think about it too much. 

    I'm glad your daughter was okay.  My niece died in December after having swallowed a button battery.  If you have young ones in the house, keep those button batteries out.

    • Rage+1 2
  4. 19 hours ago, Wheatsiebat said:

    I worked with Matt Novanty at Clean Water Action when this happened. (and was a housemate) I had forgotten about the spending spree but I do remember coming home with my bf one evening to a kitchen full of cakes, meat, etc like a party had just happened. The next day he and Jason disappeared. It turns out they had stolen the company van and tried to go to Mexico. Could not get across the border so they flew to LA. 
    I didn’t know he had told anyone that he murdered her. 
    I am pretty sure they had planned it out because I had found a weird detailed list of supplies they had written up weeks earlier. I tried to tell people something was wrong but no one listened to me. 
    He had previously cut his wrists in front of my bf who took him to the hospital. 
     

    Thank you for providing yet another reason to run off any Clean Water Action person who shows up skulking around the neighborhood.

  5. 6 minutes ago, bolverk said:

    My one big win was keeping the starter house in the divorce settlement that the ex-wife and I bought together early on in our careers. She received zero compensation on her half of the value and is now living in an apartment in Lubbock. Meanwhile, this modest South Austin abode has tripled in price in the years since and will likely make up a big part of my retirement nest egg, and I got to keep all my shit.

    Super Troopers Good Job GIF by Searchlight Pictures

    • Hook 'Em 2
    • Like 1
  6. 1 hour ago, Viper said:

    well if they're in a hospice it's not like they're leaving on their feet...

    I know.  I didn't want to write that.  But yeah.  It's still bizarre, and wrong.  No need to speed things along with a case of Covid.  (and a small percentage of people do leave hospice on their feet).   She had access to vaccinations before any of the rest of us and chose to go work in a medical facility everyday unvaccinated.  And it clearly wasn't based on some misguided principles, as she has now finally received a shot.  I even understand, sort of, that she was hesitant and wanted to wait and see.  It was how proud she was of being vaccinated this late in the game that was odd.

  7. 30 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

    this list was ready to go before the vote.  this is all in the plan to delay.  present 45. take another month to pare it down to 35. another month to 25, etc.

    these people aren't moving until state govt does the work, which will be sued by ACLU, CoA, etc to.............suprise!   Delay.

    It's sad how many things the state is about to have to step in and do for this city.  Schools, law enforcement, enforcing voter initiatives.  Is it too much to ask that we find some folks somewhere in the middle of the nutbags running the state and the nutbags running this city that we can put in charge for a little while?

    • Hook 'Em 7
  8. 25 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

    wouldn't the bull creek area be in a potential flood zone?

    Yes, one of the most common areas to flood in the county.  They were never going to put a homeless camp there, or at the entrance to River Place.  That was nothing but a fuck you to the people they supposedly work for.

     

  9. The city has already let asshole dog owners and weekend sojourners come in and ruin bull creek, so I guess why not let the homeless finish the job?  As someone who lives right up the hill from there and already deals with the occasional vagrant poking around, this won't end well for anybody.  Police are already down there frequently due to weekend drunks hanging around.  A homeless camp will make things interesting to be sure.  

    But why protect a beautiful natural resource when you can use it for political maneuvering?  I honestly don't even know what they're trying to accomplish at this point other than give voters a big middle finger.  

    • Like 1
  10. 4 minutes ago, BrazilHorn said:

    The other thing is the lower income schools have reading and math specialists funded outside of the PTA. This is just a direct "fuck you" to parents in schools where PTAs have been the ones funding these positions. It is so crazy.

    Doesn't seem crazy to me.  Seems exactly like what the people who are being put in charge have preached.  When bussing (the most failed experiment of all failed experiments) didn't get rammed through a couple of years ago, this was the next logical step.  No one gives a shit about improving the poorly performing schools.  The agenda is about punishing the successful ones.  I don't understand it, but it's the people that Austin keeps electing.  Lupo ran on a platform of this bullshit, and has never hidden her hatred from anyone not from her neighborhood.  This is exactly what they've been working towards.  I guess the joke will be on them when there are even fewer students, and therefore way less money, in AISD in the long run. 

    I won't be surprised if the state takes over the district, frankly.  Right before Covid hit AISD was one bad grade away from this happening anyway, and they're just doubling down on nonsense that will make things worse.  I assume everyone will get a do-over due to the pandemic, but if this is what leadership believes passes for running a school district it's only a matter of time.

    The most insane part to me is that none of this happened before they slashed budgets back in 2011.  And the things being funded by the PTAs are often things that are mandated by federal law be provided by the district, e.g. reading intervention instructors for dyslexic kids.  Fuck them for not paying for this shit in the first place.  Somedays it feels like the twilight zone in this town.

  11. 46 minutes ago, Ollie Slatt said:

    One of the articles I read on this mentioned that one west side elementary had a PTA funded ESL teacher.  So wealthy parents were paying to help less fortunate students in a very direct way, and AISD is stopping it in the name of equality.  This is so colossally stupid.  

    Austin is working hard to push every single family out of town, or at least to private school.  Between cost of housing, Robin Hood (recapture) and the colossally stupid way AISD is run, sticking with AISD is becoming a more and more difficult choice.  I have no idea what they're going to do with the insane budget shortfalls coming thanks to all the kids who already bailed during Covid.  Moves like this one certainly won't help to draw any of them back.

  12. 28 minutes ago, Pasken said:

    good lord. Can we move this thread to the 6th Street Journal? The amount of old white man anger in the DT is just too much. Why the fuck are you trying to make a culture war fight in a thread about transportation projects? 

    Why are you scared of discussing why Austin roads are systemically racist?  What are you trying to hide?  You probably think "All Drivers Matter", don't you?  

    • Haha 2
  13. 5 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

    This sent me down a WikiRabbitHole back to the Defenestrations of Prague. I'd thought there was only one, but it turns out tossing people off high buildings is an ancient Czech custom, or maybe more widely Slavic, as the Russians seem fond of the practice even today. 

    Anyway, per Wiki, the two earliest mass defenestrations of Prague involved outraged citizens rounding up certain members of the Prague town council and chunking them out of the highest windows of town hall.

    1024px-Prague_Praha_2014_Holmstad_-_Det_

     

    On advice of counsel, we offer this disclaimer: this is merely a historical account, not an instigation to the citizens of Austin nor a suggested course of action of any kind. Additionally, Austin City Hall is not a particularly defenestration-friendly structure so for maximum effect in following the course of action we are not suggesting, we would theoretically propose using the Texas tower.

    Shark Tank Writing GIF

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  14. I think it's cute that some of you think the homeless will just hang out in other areas of town because it will make some of you feel better to stick it to the man.  The homeless will migrate to where services, panhandling, and easily available drugs can be found - just like they always have.   That isn't the hills west of town.   Why not just buy the city of Llano for a few bucks and tell them all to move there?  I'm sure it would work great and no one would make their way back to downtown.

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