bolverk

I've got a great lifelong friend who works at the VA there, and he makes a quick trip to Trinidad and back once a month. Last year, I drove over to Hobbs once and was paranoid as hell that there'd be cameras at the state line taking photos. There weren't any then, but now there are tons of Flock cameras at the state line just east of Hobbs, according to this site (they've got a cool mapping function to help map out routes to avoid them): DeFlock MapsDeFlock Maps | ALPR Camera Map & Privacy RoutesExplore ALPR camera locations and plan privacy-optimized routes across the United States.You can zoom all the way in to Amarillo. If you zoom in enough, it'll show you which direction the cameras point toward. In the DT thread, there's an article about a guy getting stopped and searched by cops after making a few trips to Michigan from Milwaukee after being tracked by Flock cameras - disturbing surveillance state stuff.

@BigHorn'13 This is now another issue. I'm only about a 1 1/2 drive from New Mexico but have only been over there once for the real deal stuff since THCA has been just fine for my needs. Although when I drove over there, I was paranoid as hell about traffic cameras (this was almost a year ago, and I'd never heard of Flock cameras before). Anyway, a couple of months ago, there weren't any at the stateline. But I checked again, and now there are. Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social Police in Wisconsin used Flock to track a man who traveled to Michigan, where marijuana is legal, then back to Wisc., where it is illegal They then used his travel as part of the probable cause justification to search his car for weed and he eventually was arrested 12:58 AM · Aug 6, 2026 Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines to Create Pretext to Search His Car for Weed "The vehicle travels to Michigan frequently which is a known source state for marijuana as it is legal there," a probable cause justification reads. 404media.co

I'm no lawyer and could well be wrong, but isn't this called a SLAPP case?

Friendly reminder that Junior is a "strategic advisor" for BOTH Kalshi and their main competitor, Polimarket. Funny how that worked out.

I honestly think it might've been a matter of confusion. Your statement read: I think the him there is referring to AES, but I'd bet @wildcat09 was reading that him as a reference to Stevens. Clearly, AIPAC will do things to win votes for Stevens, but they won't do anything to win AES votes. Is that a correct reading of the intent of your statement?

@NotActuallyALonghorn Too late to edit my last post, but consider this quote from Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” This is my greater point. We've been trading away our essential liberties for the last 10 years for "safety." We're scared of "criminals," so we take away due process and privacy rights, or change the law and make more people "criminals." We're scared of immigrants and the non-threat of them voting, so we strip away citizenship rights and voting rights. Hell, we're scared of anyone browner and blacker than us, even citizens, so we attack their voting rights. We're scared of Muslims and Sharia Law, so we impose Christian Law. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point.

Limousine liberals

Again, you're making my point for me. These are the two sentences we could spend some time contemplating: They consistently looked the other way on every other single issue that mattered, including basic civil rights for their fellow humans and even their fellow Americans. Maybe folks should look more closely at the overall basket of rights here and start seeing what they've traded away for that single precious egg they've so obsessed over for so long while allowing all the others to spoil and go bad. What good is this 2nd Amendment right that's supposed to protect all our other rights when folks are happily trading all those others in favor of that one? And don't get me wrong. I emphatically do support your 2nd Amendment right to own guns to protect your life, your family, and your property. That fundamental right has never seriously been in question or at risk. It's all been scare tactics, primarily coming from the gun lobby. In fact, they've been expanded. In the meantime, our 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendment rights have come increasingly under attack and diminished. Shit, they're even after the 19th now.

I seem to recall posters in the DT thread saying that Iran wasn't being smart, logical, or strategic but was instead "lashing out" wildly and indiscriminately. Hmm, maybe, just maybe, Iran knew its enemy better than we did and judged that the 80,000 or so cheap missiles they had would eventually deplete what we had to defend ourselves and our allies.

I haven't yet stepped into the Ted Lasso thread after last night's season premiere, but it'll be "fun" monitoring it throughout the season.

Again, I know. And to further the point, RPoT is trying to get rid of our current open primary system in this state since so many nominal Democrats already vote in theirs. Asking US to reform THEIR party FOR THEM is too steep a mountain to climb.

Oh, I know, but I was playing along with his theory to demonstrate why that's essentially the case now. Anyone could look through the last several Republican primaries in this state and struggle to find a single nominally moderate Republican at the statewide level. Like you said, they practically don't exist. If we really wanted to fix the primaries, we'd go the California route and do ones where all parties participate. Better yet, go ranked voting in those jungle primaries to get the two with the broadest overall support who then go on to compete in the general election. Edit: Guess which party would be most opposed to jungle primaries in this state? The Republican Party of Texas, the very one he's asking everyone to support. The Texas Democratic Party would totally go for it.

A whole shitload of folks already cross over to vote in the Republican primaries because of the lack of Dem candidates down ballot. If you're asking more to do so, then we might as well not even have a Democratic Party in this state, which certainly is almost already the reality at the statewide level, and look at what happens over time when you have one-party rule in a state for so long: endemic corruption within that party because of having to play along with the game. I suspect what really consolidated Republican power in this state is because of two single-issue voter groups: the staunch "shall not be infringed" folks and the anti-abortion-in-all-cases crowd. They consistently looked the other way on every other single issue that mattered, including basic civil rights for their fellow humans and even their fellow Americans. I'm talking about those inalienable ones that Republicans have been gleefully stripping away since SCOTUS decided the Voting Rights Act was negotiable in the early 2010s. Well, guess what? Basic citizenship rights are the areas where I draw the line. Just about every single other issue out there, I will negotiate with anyone on. Maybe folks should look more closely at the overall basket of rights here and start seeing what they've traded away for that single precious egg they've so obsessed over for so long while allowing all the others to spoil and go bad.

For quite a few months, I could get THCA vape liquid sold to me in a syringe, which I could then put into a vape. I don't know what happened to that stuff, except that it was suddenly no longer available, though still legal. After that is when I switched to gummies only in January. So, under current law, I'm still good, though the number of THC stores in town have halved and now supplies and selection are greatly diminished. I expect we'll lose a couple more stores if all they can sell are D9 gummies now.

You've got it more or less correct, but it was a widiculous and winding path to get to this place, though, which could be said for a lot of the other bullshit, too.

One thought I had was that maybe moderate Republicans and right-leaning independents could place party over country and stop caucusing with and voting for Christofastists and white nationalists. Crazy, I know. Back when the GOP was a little more rational, they cynically looked the other way, tolerated, and invited in the very forces that have taken over their party and our country. When Robert Byrd was still alive, his presence unfortunately gave cover to the assholes who'd prop him up as someone who was once, in the past, racist as a fucking excuse to continue to align with or support complete pieces of shit who were actively trying to reverse every single gain minorities had made following the Civil Rights movement. I mean, when some of the leading voices in your party are Jesse fucking Helms, Pat Buchanan, and Rush "bone in the nose" Limbaugh, and you attract dicks like David fucking Duke, the writing was on the wall 40 gotdam years ago. So, why the fuck should I or any progressive/liberal/moderate Dem engage with an organization that, in better and more moderate times, used malign forces to take hold of and consolidate their power? That is an organization which can never, ever be trusted. "Hey, everybody, let's all join the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei  and steer it in a more moderate direction!" Not gonna happen. Wouldn't be prudent. Back when I was a kid, a whole lot of conservative, Blue Dog Dems switched parties because they thought the Democrats had "gone too far," so I don't understand why they can't do the same thing again and switch back when the Dems consistently have a moderate voice in their primaries. Just pay a little attention during primary season and listen to the obsessive internal discussions and concerns Democrats have about the "electability" of their candidates at each and every turn. They do this because they want to appeal to the middle. Meanwhile, the GOP has had no such concerns as it weeded out all the "RINOs." On this very site, a buncha former Republicans and right-leaning independents have woken up over the last decade to the true nature of the GOP and switched over to the Democratic side, some permanently and some temporarily. One starting point might be to consider what differentiates them from the rest of today's GOP base and start working strategies from there.

You should post this in the "Flight Disrupting Assholes" thread.

Biggest difference now is that the mods have more or less given up moderating, so the dwindling numbers of those assholes don't have a thumb placed on the scale for them anymore.

Hit the nail on the head. Look no further than how the Daily Texan was used for years by conservative board members to bitch and moan about in threads like: "What the fuck is wrong with you, Austin?", "Houston?", "Dallas?", etc., or a myriad other social issues like crime, homelessness, drug use, and so on. It's all a reflexive deflection to avoid accountability for outcomes that result from the state's policies they voted for, whether they realize it or not. That's why it got so fucking frustrating to post in DT during those years, because our mods/site owners either played along with it or were too stupid to realize what was going on. Try to talk about root causes and get angrily accused of bringing politics into shit, because those assholes don't want to accept any blame for their racism, misogyny, or simple short-sighted stupidity. I'm guessing our tech-lord mods didn't take too many humanities-related classes.

When you put it that way, the show seems to capture the current Zeitgeist quite well.

Their base hasn't had to concern themselves over the "electability" of their candidate in Texas since ol' lay-back-and-enjoy-it Claytie Williams.

I've read you eventually end up with about 1 FTE after construction for every 5-10,000 sf. Broad range, but the rules of thumb for other comaparisons I've seen are 150 sf for each typical office worker and 300 sf for each factory/warehouse worker as broad rules of thumb when it comes to commercial construction projects.

Microplastics Found in Barton Springs, Blue Hole, and Lady Bird Lake

Yup. They're granting themselves the liberty to express their religious beliefs in public, but not to anyone else. Just look at all the Sharia Law bullshit and how they refused Islamic private schools access to vouchers as an immediate example that they only believe in the First Amendment for themselves. I don't see them forcing other sacred edicts into the classroom to promote other beliefs. They only want public money to go to one religion, which is granting government favor and a violation of the Establishment Clause. Tearing down the wall separating government and religion eventually gets you a state-based religion, something that our Founding Fathers certainly knew the dangers of, as all the religious wars that raged across Europe were still a fresh memory to their generation, along with the fact that many of the colonies had their own various state-supported religions. The issue was a real fucking concern, not an abstract one. So, just like every goddam thing happening around us is that we're all condemned to suffer the consequences of actions while these pre-Enlightenment Christofascists have to relearn the lessons from the past. The pawns like our buddy jkates might THINK they're doing good, but this won't lead to devotion, only division, which is why the billionaires support them. We serfs have to fight each other over our fundamental freedoms, while our overlords rob us blind and steal a decent future for our kids. Because, after all, that's what Jesus was all about in the end: abuse of power to gain more and more wealth.

You make a compelling case for Game Day to open with Iron Butterfly.