Ghost of LL

I mean, not yet. But that’s not a bad suggestion.

Jesus—this Maryland-Oregon game may feature the best uniform matchup in the history of college football.

The Ole Miss student section not really helping their team out but keeping the bottles in the stands.

Wild holding there.

Mike Leach is so fucking lucky that he got to die before this shitshow came to pass.

@Brisketexan will tell you that I pour very good whisky out here on the ledge.

Holy shit--I caught up on this thread!

So yesterday I closed on the sale of a house. Very long story--was supposed to be Mrs.LL's dream house, but interest rates happened and the timing and shit and now it just makes more sense to renovate the current house. So today, I have quite a lot of money sitting in cash in my brokerage account. Here's the thing--Wall Street doesn't understand shit about politics. Mrs.LL was in finance for a long time, and ever since we've been together, I've always been shocked by how little Wall Street understands politics. So much of their business is dictated by what happens in Washington, but they understand fuck-all about it. And right now, Wall Street is expecting 1) a Trump win (and the inflationary and recessionary dangers that come with that) and 2) a period of uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the election as happened in 2020. Based on everything we know, I strongly expect neither of those things. And I think the market is going to react very favorably to 1) No Trump, and 2) certainty (irrespective of who wins) when the race is called shortly after midnight CST. So fuck your prediction thread--I'm putting my money where my mouth is. When the market goes up 5% tomorrow on the strength of a definitive Kamala win, the first round at Chili's is on me.

I have to tell you--I'm not particularly clued in on the SMU fanbase as a whole, and I certainly cannot speak to every contingent out there. But wouldn't it make sense for them to be focused on Texas right now? Texas is quite clearly the best team and the best program in the state. So I don't see it as fantasizing about some perceived rivalry as much as it is wanting to challenge for the top spot.

I mean, "can" is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. But if they were healthy (which is to say, with R.J. Maryland), it's not wrong to say that they could win a game against Texas. They wouldn't be favored to win. But if they played that game ten times, they might win three. And really--those aren't terrible odds.

Didn’t the Duke brothers settle this with their groundbreaking experiments in the 1980s?

Oh, yeah—this is the stuff.

The best thing about this game is seeing the stands completely full. This may be an attendance record for that stadium.

Oh my god, it’s amazing.

There's a piece published from Imperial College, London that humans feel empathy for robots that are bullied. And I thought about that this morning as I was driving in to work on MoPac. Going northbound on MoPac, there's one of the Waymo driverless cars in the second lane. It* wants to get over to exit at 5th Street/Cesar Chavez. So like a conscientious driver, it puts on its blinker and someone lets it merge in. And it immediately occurs to me--if that were a human driver, there's a high likelihood that the driver next to him would've sped up to prevent him from merging in. I followed the Waymo car a fair bit down Cesar Chavez, and it made several lane changes. Each time, it used its blinker, and each time the driver in the other lane let it merge in with no difficulty. In Austin! And it just really fucking bothers me--why the fuck are we more courteous to fucking robots than we are to other humans? Why do we take a car driven by a human wanting to merge into traffic in front of us as some sort of personal affront, but when a robot does it it's just fine? It's the first time I've really felt John Connor vibes: And weirdly, I notice as I type that I anthropomorphize the robots. In the first sentence, I initially typed "robots who are bullied" and then later initially typed "He wants to." Weird.

Jesus Christ--is this what a Yale education gets you these days? London hasn't felt like an English city in 300 years. It's an Imperial capital. It feels like an Imperial capital. It has felt like an Imperial capital for three centuries. When you land at Heathrow, you land alongside flights from the Subcontinent, from the Caribbean, and from the Antipodes. Then when you take the Elizabeth Line in, you're going to be next to people from right across the old Empire. And when you get into town, you'll get some kick-ass Chinese, Jamaican, and Pakistani food--all because many of those families came to London when London was still their capital, too. For its part, New York isn't "American." It was a Dutch colony. Actually, it was an enterprise of the Dutch East India Company. And the Company didn't give a fuck whether you came from the Netherlands or England or Italy. The Company didn't care whether you were Protestant or Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or nothing in particular. The Company cared that you would be economically beneficial for New Netherlands. These weren't religious zealots like you had up in Boston. New York has always been multicultural from the moment it was founded--intentionally so. Do they seriously not teach this shit at Yale anymore?

The Ponies are good, but goddamn—-with four fumbles inside the red zone it’s a miracle they have the lead.

Fucking game wasn't really that close. But jesus.

Thank you little baby Jesus.

Quinn finally stepped up.

Jeez--what a shit series this is.

Wait a minute--you want the City of Austin to build an elevated promenade so that the upper classes can jog along an elevated platform and literally look down on their social inferiors inhabiting the surface from their elevated perch? And you think that's not just a tad dystopian? Regardless . . . I really don't understand why you're chiming in on this thread. You never visit Downtown. You're too afraid, and you're too secure up in Williamson County to go visit a city. So what the fuck do you care what the City does with any stretch of Congress? And why do you care so much that you have to wildly misrepresent what the plan even is?

Would you care to expand on that? Why do you think this particular shit is stupid? I mean, seriously--what's the cost? It would close a road that very few vehicles use. I'm sorry--I really can't tell whether this is sarcasm. Are you not aware that Pennsylvania Avenue has been closed for decades? And it's kinda great. People are walking around and bicycling right out in front of the White House.

Let's just remember that for the first two weeks after the "grab them by the pussy" video came out, most Republicans were calling on Trump to withdraw from the race. And it was about this time in 2016 that Jim Comey had a little press conference. This is exactly the time when a race-determinative piece of news would come out. It gives little time for a campaign to react and rally. But still plenty of time for it to sink in with voters and have them be swayed in a way that is decisive.

I think you mean Chicago? Because the opening paragraphs describe how State Street (Madison) has succeeded and evolved. And @MAUFRAIS beat me to it in quoting the most important paragraph in your piece. It's like the authors are directly describing Austin. Ok, old man--we get it. You're not coming Downtown regardless because it's faaaar too scary and full of "street bums." Whatever. Just keep your wrinkled ass up in Williamson County and let those of us who live or work Downtown decide what to do with it.