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Ghost of LL

Burnt Ends
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Ghost of LL last won the day on February 11 2021

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About Ghost of LL

  • Birthday 01/01/1975

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  1. Aggy roller coaster was late in arriving, but boy did it.
  2. But but but but—I thought Kyle Field was an impenetrable home field advantage. Was I misled?
  3. Jesus, finally.
  4. This is the worst football game I have ever seen, and I can’t forgive the committee for doing this to us.
  5. I also just realized how focused he is on Texas. He’s so perfect for aggy.
  6. I think the implication is that he very much wants to watch his wife.
  7. The essay is about GenX from the standpoint that it's writing about how GenX white males didn't pay any price in connection with the implementation of DEI hiring policies. The people who are in power among GenX are disproportionately white males. And we didn't throw ourselves out of power. That's a bit part of the thesis of the essay, and it's a part with which I strongly agree. I'm not even disagreeing with the author's observations about the impact on his cohort of Millenial white males. I'm just saying I don't care.
  8. Good--then I've expressed myself clearly. We have managed to carry out some significant societal changes. I think a lot more societal changes are needed. And I don't think we've carried out the changes that have been made with just a whole lot of grace or foresight. But we're fucking GenX, man. What do you expect from us?
  9. My take-away from this is that Brisket is just too lazy to be a swinger, and I just think that's about (1) the saddest, but also (2) most Mexican thing he's ever written on this board. And he writes a lot of (1) sad and (2) Mexican things on this board.
  10. As a GenX man, I think that's largely true. But it's also not something I'm going to apologize for. As someone noted up-top, white men are only 28% of the population. But as I look around my peer group, white men are waaaaaay more than 28% of the GenX lawyers in this town. Or any town, for that matter. At my firm at at others, we've tried to increase diversity among the firm's lawyers and within the profession more generally. We haven't done anything illegal--we have a very good employment-law section that makes sure of that. But we have done things like sponsor programs at UT and Houston-Tillotson that encourage undergrads who are from diverse backgrounds to consider the legal profession. After all--it's real tough to hire a diverse workforce if all of the lawyers graduating law school are white. And let's just be real clear--it makes good sense to have a diverse workforce. Because we have a diverse client base. And juries and judges are often not white men.* I'll tell you--our current cadre of associates is still well more than 28% white men. And the primary beneficiaries of a lot of those efforts in the legal profession have been white women, which doesn't really address all of the issues we were trying to deal with in our various DEI efforts. But still--I'm not going to be too concerned about the fact that white males are slightly less over-represented in the legal profession than they used to be. But the point is that it's a price that we--i.e., GenX males--didn't pay. I think that maybe dovetails with the other thread on population reduction. These decisions maybe hit a whole lot different when it's your sons that aren't getting the opportunities because of the decisions you're making. But a lot of GenX males (and elder Millenial males) who are in positions of power don't have sons. Or if they do have sons, they have one or two who are so well-off that they're not terribly concerned about them getting an entry-level position. In the high-investment/low-number model of childbearing in which you have a small number of children in whom you invest a greater amount, do you really care if white males have relatively fewer opportunities if you're in the class of people who are making the decisions about DEI hiring? Not really. If you're in that class of people, your son(s)--you probably don't have more than one or two--are going to be very well educated. They're ahead of the game, irrespective of who else is playing. It's not that white male Millenials were handicapped. It's that white male Millenials who didn't come from an upper-class background were handicapped. * I have been in a number of CLEs with various women judges--some white, others not--in which those judges explicitly state that they prefer to hear from lawyers who "look like me." The context is that they're encouraging us GenX white men to let our female (or female non-white) associates argue in court more frequently. And I will tell you that there have been a number of hearings or appellate arguments in which I have sat there at counsel table and let a female colleague make the argument because I had heard that speech from that very judge. On the one hand, I don't really care--I've had plenty of appellate oral arguments; I've argued dozens of summary-judgment motions. They're no longer new or exciting. On the other hand, I've had plenty of appellate oral arguments; I've argued dozens of summary-judgment motions. So I have a lot more experience and can probably make a better presentation (particularly if it's going to require some on-the-fly improvization). In a vacuum, the client might be better served to have me argue. But in front of a judge who doesn't want to hear from someone who doesn't look like her, we have to make a different tactical decision.
  11. Ok--and as someone who is another quarter Luxembourger (no shit--my maternal grandfather's four grandparents all emigrated together from Luxembourg in the mid-19th Century) . . . fuck you! Luxembourg doesn't have just a whole lot in common with those Dutch herring-eaters. Now if you want to combine those three countries into a Greater Luxembourg with its capital at Luxembourg--a "Grousslëbuergesche Räich," if you will--perhaps we can talk about that.
  12. I do not mean to imply that there was anything behind Trump's statement beyond the fact that Trump is a complete and total idiot who doesn't understand math. I do mean to say that from a purely communications standpoint, Luttnick is on to something. If prices were to go up from $100 to $1,000, we'd (correctly) say that prices have gone up 900%. And in a world with the inflation we've seen over the past half-decade, people are pretty used to hearing that prices have gone up by high-double- or even triple-digit percentages. But if prices go down from $1,000 to $100, that's just a 90% decrease. Anybody with the least little bit of understanding of math understands that the 900% increase and the 90% decrease both denote a difference of $900. But what percentage of the American people do you think have that least-little-bit level of mathematical knowledge? 50%? Not a chance. 33%? I mean, maybe if you're lucky. It's probably less than 20%, if we're being realistic. Remember that most Americans read at or below a sixth-grade level. So purely from a communications standpoint, it makes sense to communicate it has a "700% decrease," even though that makes no sense at all as a mathematical proposition. Because you're dealing with a nation populated by morons.
  13. That is honestly a really weird way to put this. Belgium wasn't a country until 1830. And even after 1830, it's hard to say that there was a coherent Belgian national identity. That didn't really come until World War I; but even now I know plenty of people would dispute that there can be a national identity in a country that low-key shouldn't really be a country. So the real question is this: are you a quarter Flemish or a quarter Walloon? This is an important question, because it determines whether I quarter-hate you. By the way--I kinda have the same conundruum. My grandmother would tell me that I was a quarter Czechoslovak--probably because it was easier to explain to a kid when Czechoslovakia was the political entity that had sovereignty over the village whence her grandparents came. But ummm--no. We're Czech. And if you want to get more accurate, we're Moravian.
  14. Oh my god yes.
  15. Honestly--and I mean no disrespect by this--but the fact that you've worked your whole career remotely answers so many questions about you and your posts.
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