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Samson's Wig

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Samson's Wig

  1. 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

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  2. 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.

  3. 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?

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  4. 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.

     

  5. 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.  

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  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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?  

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  9. 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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  10. 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.

  11. 13 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

    The “if true” part is the key. It’s not. 

    I'm sorry that reality doesn't line up with your perception.  Happens to the best of us.  The numbers are readily available all over the place.  Someone above already posted a link to some basic data.  Being too obtuse to perform a quick google search, and having a strong feeling about something, doesn't make you an authority figure.  As also noted above, it's hard to nail down exact numbers on homeless populations, which should come as a shock to no one.

    The point was not the specific numbers anyway.  The point is that nations of all types are dealing with this issue, including those with more pervasive and generous safety nets.  Anyone who discusses this issue from the lens of America's failure to provide proper social safety nets is completely full of shit and agenda driven.  That's the point. We need to resolve this problem.  Social safety nets don't and won't do it.   I'm personally all for expanding our social safety nets for all kinds of reasons, but solving the homelessness problem isn't one of them because that's clearly a fantasy.  Capitalism isn't the problem either, as nations with communist forms of government also deal with large homeless populations.  Maybe if we can set aside these ridiculous notions that do nothing but self-serve political notions we can work on coming up with an actual way to help these people.

    I also agree with you regarding the wealth of this nation and how it's controlled by too few.  But I'm not convinced throwing more money at this problem is going to solve it. It certainly hasn't worked anywhere else.

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  12. 19 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

    I wish I had some kind of shield on my car or force field. I rearrange the garage so two cars will fit. It just drizzles. I leave my car outside it’s quarter size hail. I park in the garage and golf balls of ice rain from the sky. I’m not doing shit. Lol. 

    image.thumb.png.75a2a54156f750a22a0d945729c9a1c7.png

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  13. On 5/7/2021 at 9:32 AM, Hagbard Celine said:

    10 rant on

    20 title REMOVE THE CHOICE

    +++

    the move away from the new deal and the great society really got going when the soviet union collapsed and the right needed an opponent, so they pivoted to waging war on their citizens by disassembling the entire social safety net beyond individual entitlements, while simultaneously accelerating the widening wealth disparity that now sees 1% own everything,.  end result: bottom dwellers are flushed out of the system.

    the homeless are the bottom dwellers.  this is a structural, macroeconomic program of american society that will never be solved unless the 1% choose to solve it, and the only thing for the rest of us to do is kick the can down the road.  per cajun et.al. any enablement whatsoever for both the innocent and the scumbags only extends the eventual day of reckoning for the 1%.  this problem does not exist in the rest of the western world because there is a social safety net.  the 1% are going to have to decide to have their media reprogram the drones and sheeple to believe that compassion is not communist, and then choose to divert 1 tenth of 1 percent of their hoard to the good of humanity.  that's enough money to put EVERYONE that needs it in to 4 walls with 3 square meals, hot water, a shower and access to basic hygiene (clean clothes) per the dude in the vice video.  the biggest truth in the video spoken by said dude was "they will only go where they have access to what they want and therefore will only go where they want to go.   That is the biggest problem with the grifterticians who can't solve it, but are happy to exploit it.  The use of the word "experiencing" implies no choice.  The consensus in this thread is that somewhere between 40% & 60% are CHOOSING to shit on sidewalks.  Wheels on down to Adler can fund the basics in the middle of nowhere, and REMOVE THE CHOICE, even if they can't cure the disease.  Camp Mabry.

    adler can go fuck himself.  "not a mistake when you're trying to be disruptive".  he needs to be forcibly interned in a camp for a week and tasked with cleaning human shit from sidewalks.

    +++

    30 /rant off

     

    While I agree with much of what you're saying here, I always find it interesting when the myth of this issue not existing in other western countries gets tossed about like it's a fact.  It's not a fact. Not even a little bit.  And it undercuts any argument being made alongside it.  I've got a self avowed Marxist buddy I chat with every Saturday who spews this every week in his rant about how the homelessness problem in Austin is the natural result of capitalism.  I'll briefly  touch on that nonsense later.

    Here's a partial list of "western" countries with a higher rate of homelessness than the United States:  United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany, Ukraine, Australia, CANADA, SWEDEN, Netherlands, France, Czech Republic, Ireland, Greece, Austria.  Of note, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Spain, and Italy are not far behind us.

    And for good measure, you know which nation also has a higher rate of homelessness than the U.S.?  China.  Fucking China.  And that's the stats they're willing to share, which are undoubtedly complete bullshit. No check in the pro column for the communists.  It should be noted that Cuba claims to have no homelessness.  I don't believe it but they claim it.  So I guess they win this one.

    Social safety nets are clearly not the solution to the homelessness issue (unless you're a small Latin island with low population and badass music), even if they have a great deal of value otherwise.  The large number of homelessness in nations with the most supportive social safety nets adds a bit of weight to the argument that enabling only makes it worse.  The U.S. can do much better on this issue, to be sure, but looking to nations like Canada or Sweden for answers to this issue is no better than Adler looking to LA or Seattle.

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  14. Anyone know when they're going to start tearing up 360 to build the overpasses?  TxDot site doesn't say shit (at not that I can find).  Was supposed to start last year.

    I just want to know when I need to start adding an extra 45 min each way before I go anywhere.

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