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Samson's Wig

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Posts posted by Samson's Wig

  1. 58 minutes ago, Lobo said:

    Yeah, I don't think there was any Peikoff-Objectivism going out there on Lake Travis.  It was the older, fatter, dumber, more ignorant version of the 25 year old "got my dad's boat for the holiday weekend bros!" set but in larger numbers, going in the wrong direction...altogether.  

    Plenty of ways to dismantle that philosophy without incorrectly tying the average Trumper to it.  

  2. 1 hour ago, BradInATX said:

    Thought this was pretty interesting. @BrazilHorn posted a piece of this over on the football board, but I thought this was pretty interesting from a Kaiser Permanente study. The "risk ratio" is just how much more likely that group is to die from Covid, so someone >80 years old is 43.21 times more likely to die of it than someone 0-40 ("reference")

    Some of the most interesting ones for me are the "smoker" cohort which is actually less likely to die than former smokers or even never smokers. I know there was some other anecdotal evidence of this in other places. It's also interesting that when you control for other covariates, race isn't really a big mover of the needle. I know early on the New Orleans black community was hit really hard, and so was our hispanic population in Texas. It looks like that was more due to other risk factors, not race in a vaccum.

    The time-based risk at the very bottom also lends credence to the weakening impact of Covid. Whether or not that's because of summer, better treatment, a legitimately weakning virus, or some combination thereof, the danger of the virus is 1/3 of what it was in the beginning. 

    Anyway, interesting stuff. No real point I'm making, just thought some of you guys would be interested in it.

    The smoking thing is really bizarre.

     

     

    I knew I shouldn't have quit!

  3. Travis is a bit of nightmare on a holiday weekend as it is without the additional 200 boatfuls of yahoos on the water without any experience.  We're out on that lake almost every week from March to November, with the exception of holidays.   Any given weekend is bad enough after noon thanks to boat rental bros. 

  4. 12 hours ago, bolverk said:

    Can you provide a source demonstrating that "Austin is among the worst nationally for both violent and property crime"?

    Here's one: https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/tx/austin/crime#data

    "With a crime rate of 39 per one thousand residents, Austin has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 25. Within Texas, more than 94% of the communities have a lower crime rate than Austin."

    I don't think Austin is particularly bad when compared solely to cities of its size or larger, but its not great either.  And the numbers are trending in the wrong direction.  And there's simply no denying that Austin has one of the highest crime rates (violent and property) of your options of places to live in America.  To be clear, I don't think this has anything to do with defunding police or the BLM movement.  APD sucked long before any of these issues came up.  Here's hoping the reforms being implemented actually do some good, but I'm highly skeptical that they will. I'm equally skeptical of DPS taking over doing any good (not that it would happen anyway), although taking control from this particular city government over any issue may well be a good thing.  They've been an absolute joke for longer than most (save Armybrat perhaps) have been alive.  

    As things stand now, a car gets stolen in our neighborhood at a rate of one every other night or so.  This has escalated from the petty rifling through cars looking for cash that goes on everywhere.  The next step in the escalation has already started with a couple of home break ins.  The trend isn't hard to see.  There is absolutely no police presence in this city right now and the risk/reward ratio is way out of balance. It's going to take someone getting killed during one of these events for people to wake up, I suspect.

  5. On 8/28/2020 at 11:12 AM, Brisketexan said:

    We have committed to being a culture of 100% me, and 0% we, and this is how it ends up.  Utterly predictable, and totally self-destructive.

    Well, I guess we could go the completely opposite direction and be . . . Russia.  

    Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot, clearly, but I'm not sure how you maintain that or if it even makes sense to try. 

  6. 13 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    BMW 5 series.  High beam switch goes out.  I figure $20-40 replacement part, plug and play.  Nope....  Zee Germans connected the high beam with to the odometer for some very good reason I'm sure.  

    Only a dealer could install it because it was connected to the odometer at around $1,200 in parts, and labor...  Last BMW I ever owned.

    Well, at least you figured out what the underlying problem was.

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  7. 5 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

     

     

    I've always thought of ethnic groups as behaviors rather than genetic tests.  And it can't be superficial behavior, eg wrapping yourself in a checked tablecloth and listening to bagpipes doesn't make you Scottish, and slobbering over a waitress' titties at Oktoberfest doesn't make you German. On the other hand, inviting your neighbors to dinner and then slashing their throats, yo, that's VERY Scottish, and becoming a performance artist and slicing off your own nipples while screaming "Mutti, Muuuutti,", well I won't deny then that you're German.

    Same with Hispanic. You gotta earn that title. In Laredo they know what's up. In Austin, they tend to mail it in, just like the Czechs they think they're something because their grandaddy was that thing. Hell, my grandaddy was an electrician, want me to rewire your house? I am sure there are some super-duper Hispanics in Austin, but my scientific survey (follow a multi-generational family through Walmart, see what Gramama speaks, see if daughter or grandaughter answer in the same language) indicates that within a generation, Austin Hispanics will all be learning Norwegian while eating mayonnaise in the park, in Duluth.

    And you white motherfuckers in Austin, damn y'all some shrill kind of white too.

    This guy gets it.

  8. I agree there.  I just think the numbers have changed dramatically since the last census.  According to that old data, Austin is around 50% white (non-hispanic), basically on par with Houston and Dallas.  I think those numbers have shifted dramatically in the last decade, but we'll see when we get the numbers.

    Families, of all racial makeups, have been driven out of Austin in droves the last couple of decades.  The most recent ten years have seen this flight explode.  Minorities have almost certainly been disproportionately impacted.  But my initial assertion was based on nothing more than personal observation.  Will be interesting to see the numbers when they come out.

  9. 3 minutes ago, closetohumping said:

    Austin barely has a white plurality.

    Perhaps in the greater Austin area, but I don't know if I trust the old numbers regarding Austin proper.  It's the whitest place I've ever lived, and seems to be getting whiter every decade. 

    Q: But what do I know?  A: not much at all, really.

  10. 8 hours ago, dcar00 said:

    just wait until this shit hits Palm Springs.

    seriously though, google whitest city in America and guess what comes up....you guessed it, Portland

    I would have guessed Portland or Austin.  Bumfuck Wisconsin/Minnesota/etc. would have to be on that list as well, but I'm guessing we're talking about over a certain population size.

  11. 18 hours ago, Dr. Beeper said:

    Dude she would not garner more support for being a cam girl. Spare me feminism and slut shaming; it’d make her look really infantile and full of bad judgement - when she’s running on a family values platform. But that’s just the headline grabber. Then you get to the Lance ordeal, Romeo Rose deal, the showing her tits on Shaggy, and she looks like an attention whore. I don’t know or care about gamergate. 

    Are you saying that someone running for public office is an attention whore? 

     

    you dont say the big lebowski GIF

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    • Haha 1
  12. On 6/4/2019 at 2:00 PM, Asithappens said:

     

    How anybody can be a Catholic (or Southern Baptist) is beyond me. Atheists have a much better moral code. 

    Thanks for bringing up the Southern Baptists.  They have their own massive child sexual abuse scandal that doesn't seem to get near as much attention as the Catholic one.   But if Waco/Baylor has proven anything, it's that Baptists are slippery fuckers.

  13. 18 hours ago, DanRydell said:


    The City of Austin has a lower property tax rate than a lot of the suburbs, including Kyle, Bastrop, Cedar Park, Elgin, Hutto, Lago Vista, Leander, Liberty Hill, Lockhart, Manor, and Pflugerville.

    Yes, but as rapidly growing communities they can see where their tax dollars are going.  The net benefit is staring them in the face.  In Austin?  Shit just keeps getting worse. 

  14. 16 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

    If we want to take this seriously as a society then we need to put everything on the block from economic organization to educational methods to healthcare. It sucks that it's basically just become YET ANOTHER area in which people align with their political and ideological priors and just dig in and refuse to challenge themselves. They sift through incoming evidence and only accept interpretations that confirm their ideological bias.

    There HAVE to be kids for whom this model is better. Wouldn't it be great if we could identify those factors and carry them forward? There HAVE to be lessons to learn about checking in on vulnerable kids. There HAVE to be lessons for ensuring food security. and on and on and on

    But it seems like we have two camps:
    Camp #1 - Live exclusively in your nuclear group until we have a cure/vaccine and then ask no further questions.
    Camp #2 - Get back to "normal" as fast as possible and then ask no further questions.

    Both camps are operating on the same premise that the best thing is to get back to the way things were.  They're just on different timelines. 

    The amazing thing to me is the notion that "normal" is anything to aspire to.  Public education has been a dumpster fire in America for a long time. "Normal" public education is an embarrassment.  I had hopes, at first, that this might serve as a wake up call and an opportunity to truly rethink the system and work towards building something that actually functions once the pandemic has been managed, but it's clear that most parents in both camps really just want a babysitter once they're comfortable with the safety issue.  There are more parents worried about whether sports will be played than there are parents worried that their children are being educated in a manner that is conducive to functionality in 21st century life.  

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  15. 10 hours ago, bluto said:

    Talking to a friend who teaches in a blue collar area school district in suburban Dallas, said the school isn’t providing any sanitary supplies to teachers at all besides one mask. The school will have sanitation stations, but that’s it. Friend said every class of hers will be maxed out at ~30 kids. Already lost 3 teachers to resign/retire with a few more expected this week. Essentially almost zero action plan in place.

    Same school has had major sub shortages to where teachers would either have to cover classes in off periods or double up on students where a teacher took on 40-50 kids for the period.

    It's going to be so easy for some of these districts to get annihilated.  It will only take one sick person showing up in that environment.  I have a family member still teaching in her 70's who works for a sizable suburb school like this.  Superintendent is politically fully aligned with Morath/Paxton/Devos/et al, and the school is opening full bore face to face next week.  No measures taken outside of shuffling some desks around to spread them out a little in the rooms.  I wish she would just quit but she won't.  Like any other sizable public school in Texas, the football stadium will be filled every Friday night (it's no surprise that sports are the number one concern for many Texas families, but it still makes me shake my head).  I'm still hanging on to a delusional hope that the virus will magically disappear before we kill off a percentage of teachers, staff, students, and everyone they come into contact with around the state.

    We're still very much on the fence with AISD.  Glad to have a few extra weeks to come to a decision on whether or not to pull the kids, but it looks more and more like this entire school year is going to be a tug of war between the state and the district, with the end result being almost no actual learning going on (not that it was all that peachy prior to Covid) Leaning towards just sparing the kids the bullshit. 

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