Jump to content

Samson's Wig

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    2001
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Samson's Wig

  1. 2 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

    I’ve never met a person who wanted to send their kids to HISD. It’s either private or move to the suburbs. Tons of people in Austin send their kids to AISD. In fact, it’s the norm In Austin 

    It's the norm in part of Austin.  The East side has seen a major decline in enrollment over the last ten years, due in part to gentrification, in larger part due to charter schools, and all because of the failed operation of the school district.  Other pockets of AISD are overcrowded, as they are seen as the "good" public schools.  Those neighborhoods have already priced out most middle class folks, and many who are left can (and will) send their kids to private school if they deem the public schools are falling apart.  Those who can't afford private school will follow the time honored tradition of moving to the suburbs.  If bussing actually happens, which was brought up again this year as a solution to the district's woes, you will see enrollment numbers on the west side of town plummet just like the east side.  It's a house of cards at this point, and the breeze is picking up.  It's nothing unique, and just following the same pattern other large cities went through as they grew.  If there were an obvious solution, I think some city would have implemented it by now.

  2. 2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Like a lot of things of a political or governmental nature, I think the districts, and their constituencies, are too large.

    But, reducing their size will tend to introduce segregation.  I think some degree of segregation, at first based on the cares vs. don't cares and rapidly devolving into haves and have nots, which will also include some racial segregation, is almost inevitable.

    Educational inequity has certainly happened in most major metro areas, without shrinking the constituencies.  I agree that shrinking them might make this worse.  I wish I knew a solution.  But I think a truly equitable system is a pipe dream when so much of a student's success is based on parental involvement.  Some parents just won't (and more often just can't due to scratching out a living) do it. 

    Austin has followed the standard protocol of other cities, however.  The school board and other stakes holders make sure the public is screaming at each other about race, class, etc. instead of pointing the fingers at the administration for screwing it up in the first place (or failing to manage the district out of a mess created by past leadership).  Funding problems could be cured almost instantly by laying off 70% of administrative staff at the district level.  No one would notice a difference where it matters.  Yet, these folks somehow skate by completely unscathed while local media ensures the public is at their neighbor's throats.  The end result is AISD, like most major city districts, will continue to shrink until the only thing left is a shell of a system barely getting by while having to educate the most vulnerable students.

     

  3. AISD isn't too far behind.  As I recall, one more F rating for Burnet Middle School and the state can take over that school and/or the entire district.  Politically, this would be gravy for Abbott. I have no direct knowledge as to whether the state would do a better job running AISD, but they couldn't really do any worse.  I'm sorry to hear that Houston's schools are in even worse shape, although I'm not surprised.  Big city schools suck pretty much everywhere in America.

  4. 5 hours ago, Axiom of Choice said:

    There are numerous problems with categorizing folks into 15-20 year generational groups for the purposes of generalizing behaviors and assigning traits.  For one, the generational dividing lines are completely arbitrary.  You can be lumped into a group with a person 15 years older than you while a person born two years later is in another group with a separate list of stereotypes.  This makes no sense.  As for where we decide to draw these lines, we can put them wherever we like (similar to zodiac signs in that regard) supported with nothing more than remotely plausible sounding justification.  The reason we can do this is that these lines are not real divisions.  For some reason people talk about them as if they were real, presumably because they are repeated frequently so they seem real.  Secondly, we are talking about tens of millions of people in these generational groups with massive diversity within them.  Whatever vague trend we think we can find is not likely to apply to any given individual.  But they frequently do get applied to given individuals, which is what happened in the origin of the “ok, boomer” meme.  We recognize that searching for loosely correlated trends with groups of millions of people and assigning them to individuals is unethical, but for some reason people think that this basic ethical rule doesn’t apply in this case.  

    Ugh.

  5. 1 hour ago, Axiom of Choice said:

    I was born on a generational cusp, so it takes a bit more work to calculate my personality traits.  It's still doable, though.  Just like when one is born on a zodiac cusp and they take on astrological traits of both.  Another contributing factor to who I am is the number type of the year I was born, which happens to be semi prime.  This makes it difficult for me to make decisions.  My brother, on the other hand, was born in a prime number year and so obviously he is a real black and white type of guy.   

    lol.  Given your username, and prior posts, you at least seem like a sharp guy - so I assume this is all shtick.  If not, you definitely share the common millennial and boomer trait of being too egocentric to see the forest for the trees.  Of course an individual, especially one as unique as yourself, cannot be pigeonholed based on year of birth.   When discussing general behavior patterns of large groups, however, year of birth is an excellent indicator.  Equating that to astrology or palm reading is intellectually dishonest at best.  I'm sorry you don't like whatever it is people say about folks your age.  I've never met anybody who says, "Yep, those stereotypes about my generation are spot on and describe me perfectly!"   

  6. 2 hours ago, Axiom of Choice said:

    Categorizing groups into arbitrary generational divides for the purposes of generalizing and assigning stereotypes is silly pseudoscientific bullshit.  We recognize that it's useless and even unethical to do so with ethnicity, nationality, horoscope sign, and other criteria outside of one's control.  But year of birth within a 10 year radius?  We can plumb the depths of one's psyche and know their thoughts and motives with that information.  

    Millennial or boomer?

  7. 3 hours ago, Rougarou said:

    I'm a millennial and I have kids. What interests me more than rehashing the same generational cool contests that have been going on for literally a decade now, is to look at how the younger generations are changing or trending. Just my perspective, but I see the millennial's as being more dynamic than GenX who have largely became who they are and stayed that way (for good, bad or indifferent). Millennial's, maybe by necessity (recession, etc.), seem to have adapted and are more flexible and prone to evolving (or devolving, as it were) over time.

    This interests me in a political way too because I can see millennial's taking on the persona of Boomers the older they get, the more status and wealth they achieve, and youthful idealism gets passed down further the supply chain to their children's generation.

    I guess my thesis is that Millennial's are baby Baby Boomers and just don't know it yet. 

    I think you're spot on.  Millennials and Boomers are way more alike than they are different.  Watching them argue with each other would be funny for GenXers if we didn't know we were watching the authors of our doom try to outblame one another.  

    • Like 3
    • Haha 1
  8. 6 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Weirdly enough, Texas Dairy Queens got to be a separate outfit from the Minnesota or Illinois bunch.  And that provoked a load of trademark litigation in Texas from the 50s-80s approximately.  Some cases that still get cited.

    And Pig Stands had a bunch of trademark litigation too.  Apparently a lot of knockoffs.  Most recently suing Hard Rock Cafe over the "pig sandwich"TM.

    Texas franchise laws had a lot to do with why most Texas DQ's went to complete shit a long time ago (but also why a handful remained really good, relatively speaking).  Basically, individual stores didn't have to do a damn thing that corporate told them to do. This is why you could walk into a DQ in Houston and order Chinese food right alongside your Hunger Buster.  It's why quality of ingredients, cleanliness of locations, etc. was all over the map.  Perhaps most annoyingly, it's why the DQ in most small towns turned into a half hour wait for food.  No one gave a shit and there was no one to hold them accountable.  This did also allow some of the owners who actually cared to run their stores quite well (the guy who owns Wally's in Austin owns the DQ on Burnet Road (and maybe a couple of other locations).  He always ran his stores well.

  9. On 10/31/2019 at 6:10 PM, jimmyjazz said:

    My allergy to soy is almost as bad as it is to nuts, which is to say "near fatal".  I went to my wife's sister's house (no pics, not her either) for a dinner party once when she served what I assumed was veggie lasagna.  I mean, she knew all about my dietary restrictions.  I took a big bite, realized it was probably soy and asked "is this tofu lasagna?"

    "No, it's TVP lasagna.  Said so right on the package."

    Uhhh . . . <head to bathroom to puke up what little I had eaten>

    I looked up "TVP" as I had no clue.  I wish I hadn't.

  10. When people keep electing folks with ties (directly or indirectly) to development/construction, this is the shit you get.  It's not unique to Austin.  Even in the rare moments when they are truly acting out of a sense of what they think is right, they still see the world through the lens of a developer.  This is why so many cities' big fix for homelessness/crime/[insert any other problem here] is little more than real estate transactions.  Pockets are lined, the pols move on, and the next round of self serving jackwagons get in line for their piece.  The shame of it is how rare someone that isn't a developer, married to a developer, or in some way financially tied to a developer runs for local office.  Fuck all of them.  If we need to be inhumane towards a group of people, let's start with local officials (followed closely by developers).  The homeless should be way down near or at the bottom of the list.

  11. Yeesh.  I have young ones and this stuff scares the hell out of me.  Even walking them to school people drive too fast and don't pay attention when they just dropped off their own kids.   I can't imagine what a horrible scene that was and here's hoping your buddy can find his way to peace.

    • Like 1
  12. Asswipes on all sides of this one.  Although, anyone who's dealt with a public school system as a parent knows there's at least a half decent chance this is the first time many of these parents heard about owing any money (and it seems like the majority of them owe for their kid grabbing a candy bar or two and putting it on their "account" (yes public schools have these).  School administrators tend to assume everyone outside is just as heavily involved and aware of what goes on inside the building as they are, which is ridiculous. Sending home a note in a nine year old's backpack and just assuming the parents receive it just isn't going to get it done.  I have a hard time believing a bunch of middle class (i.e. working class) didn't pay a $20 bill because they were trying to get away with something.  The two outliers owing $450 may be another story.

  13. "Hay says Shuman once told him they’d targeted him for signing an open letter in late 2014 calling for more due process in Harvard’s Title IX proceedings. (Shuman denies ever saying this.) “I don’t know if that’s the real reason or something she made up later,” says Hay. In May 2018, Hay received a barrage of text messages from an unknown number: “Find a way to connect if you want a chance to take the last exit before HELL … Take my word, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I promise. Oh and as to your quest for motives? Don’t bother. I just really hate the patriarchy, that’s it.”

     

    This is the portion that really should have been in the first paragraph (or the headline), and not buried in the last paragraph of a longwinded article.  Crazy bitches wanted attention.  This shit gets more attention than anything else right now.  Targeted an idiot with mental health issues.  They should be in prison.

  14. 1 hour ago, JimmyHoffa said:

    The wintertime was bleak for Bird. In this year’s first quarter, the electric scooter operator lost nearly $100 million while revenue shrank sharply to only about $15 million, people familiar with the matter said. In the spring, it told people it was down to about $100 million in cash, even after raising more than $700 million over a year and a half. 

    https://www.theinformation.com/articles/hit-by-big-loss-bird-seeks-300m-in-new-funds

     

    I don't see a problem here at all.............

     

    It's shocking that this is a failing business model.  Kudos to them for sucking investor money out of idiots, I guess.  That's the modern way of "earning" a living now.

    • Like 1
  15. "He also alleges that the incident has caused him to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and has caused loss of income for his family. As a result, his wife has suffered loss of consortium damages due to her husband's injuries."

     

    Holy shit.  I didn't know people still threw that claim in there these days.  That poor woman.   His being rendered impotent by the scooter should have been the headline.

×
×
  • Create New...