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Everything posted by Ghost of LL
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2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
No, they're not. You'll see ticket-splitting between a federal and a state election. Someone might vote for the Republican candidate for president and then the Democratic candidate for governor. But for two federal offices? That has never been that common, and it has become downright rare. The idea that 10% of voters in Arizona are going to split their ticket is downright absurd--I don't care how good or bad the Senate candidates are. The only explanation that I can come up with is that these are polls of registered voters. There's no likely-voter screen on these polls. And so you have a bunch of people saying "Trump" on the presidential election but "I don't know" on the Senate election because they're (1) disengaged and (2) uninterested in the Senate race because they know goddamned well they're not going to vote. That's just a hypothesis. But regardless of the reason for it, I don't for a minute believe that the Democrats are going to sweep these Senate seats and then turn around and get swept in the presidential election in those states. It's just impossible. -
We got done last month with a three-week cruise on Silversea from San Francisco to New York via the Panama Canal. It was definitely not trashy. And we got to see @Pescado_Rojo in Cabo, so that was fun. We were traveling with the kids, and we had two suites (all of the rooms on Silversea are suites), but they weren't connecting and were a bit down the hall from one another. So about two weeks before the cruise, the agent calls me up and says, "Hey, Mr. GOLL, good news--there's an upgrade available to the two-bedroom Owners' suite for a price of just eleventy trillion dollars." And, I mean--why not? So at this point in the review, may I suggest you cue up the Vivaldi to play in the background as you read further: So here's the deal with Silversea: everything is included. Ok--pretty much everything. The drinks are included, the gratuities are included, one shore excursion at each stop is included. There are certain premium drinks that cost extra. If you want a cigar in the cigar bar, those are extra. There is one restaurant that has a $60 pp cover charge. But yeah--pretty much once you step on that boat, you can throw your wallet in the safe and never touch it again. Another thing with Silversea is the service. On our ship, the Silver Shadow, there are about 350 passengers and 300 crew members, so you have close to a 1-1 passenger-to-crew ratio. Each suite has its own butler, of whom you can ask the most absurd requests. I asked for caviar service and a fresh bottle of champagne in the room every evening at 6:00--I mean, it's included, after all--and it was done. And with so few passengers, the crew pretty quickly figures out your name and what your preferences are. It took them about two days to figure out that I was going to want a dirty Grey Goose martini with three blue cheese olives at the beginning of every dinner. By the end of the first week, they just stopped asking--it just appeared a few minutes after I sat down. As you can imagine, all this comes at a price. So yeah--that's another deal with Silversea: it's fantastically expensive. A by-product of that is that it attracts an older crowd. My kids were the only kids on the ship. And they were kind of a novelty--that ship obviously doesn't see a lot of kids. The passengers ranged from about 45 to 75, with most being between probably 55 and 70. It was about a third Americans/Canadians, a third British, and a third various other countries (a fair number of Germans and Swiss, a handful of Australians, probably six French, and a couple of Finns--the Finns were a fucking blast). With that kind of crowd--i.e., an international crowd that can afford that type of cruise--it's kind of the opposite of other cruises I've been on, where you kind of put your head down and try to avoid interacting with any of these people. On this cruise, the other passengers were fascinating. I mean, some of them were fucking wild. Olga the rich tech widow from Monterey was one of the more interesting people I've ever met. So yeah--all y'all fancy Surly-ites who don't want to deal with trashy cruise lines, . . . maybe check that out.
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2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
Yep. And if the end result is that the Muslims in Michigan get Trump elected, then I hope they enjoy being deported to Palestine. I mean, for the few minutes they'll have to enjoy it before Israel fucking levels the place. I mean, Jesus--what a bunch of absolute fucking dolts. -
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
I don't imagine that list to be very long. Unlike my Johnson. [/Slider] So here's the thing about astronauts--kinda nobody idolizes astronauts anymore. At least not like we did in the Mercury and Apollo days. Except in Florida. Astronaut-worship is still a thing in Florida--particularly in that triangle between Orlando, Daytona Beach, and Vero Beach (Dodgertown!). And I don't know how many votes that gets you. Maybe none. But I do think it means that there is a penalty in Florida for going hard after Kelly in a way that there wouldn't be for going hard against, for example, Andy Basheer. -
Elon Musk: Nazi traitor piece of shit [Confirmed]
Ghost of LL replied to MaybeACoordinator's topic in Daily Texan
And here's the other problem with the robotaxi idea--I mean, apart from the fact that TSLA isn't close to getting the "robo" part right--Uber and Lyft already have the software to dominate the actual "taxi" part of that equation. There's no opening for TSLA to implement any kind of operation of its own. And to the extent it thinks it's going to sell cars to Uber/Lyft, . . . why would they do that when Ford et al. is going to make them the same/better offer? -
I will go further--having Platinum status on AA and having access to the AAdmirals Club is really nice. The ladies at the Austin AAdmirals Club know me. On the occasion where I had a problem with a flight, I can go to them and they take care of the rebooking. So my experience isn't exactly standard, but I have been pretty pleased with AA.
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2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
You know my favorite part? It's that somewhere here in Austin on Sunday early afternoon, a certain attorney general who knows he is about to be under federal indictment saw a news alert. And almost immediately he recognized that his likelihood of spending a significant amount of time in a federal prison increased by at least a factor of ten. That had to make for quite a downer at brunch. -
Years ago, I had this same experience on DL connecting through ATL. It's infuriating. And obviously by no means unique to AA. It isn't just metrics. There are other scheduling considerations, including crew time (as @Your Mom points out above). And if they run over crew time and have to cancel a flight, the DOT now makes the airline refund everyone. And I think the traveling public favors that rule, even if the consequence is that people are from time to time going to get left behind at the gate.
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Travis is already up nearly a foot over this time yesterday, and none of that Llano water has even made it to LBJ, much less Travis. I don't know, and it's really unknowable without running a model. It's going to take different amounts of time depending on the size of the flood (broadly speaking, it takes a larger flood more time to flow downstream). But just looking at a map and being vaguely familiar with the topography, I would guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 36 hours.
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Elon Musk: Nazi traitor piece of shit [Confirmed]
Ghost of LL replied to MaybeACoordinator's topic in Daily Texan
The earnings call was incredible. He answered a question on the EV credit by saying that the value of Tesla is not from making EVs, but instead in automation. And if you thought that Tesla wouldn't be first to market with an automated car, then you ought to sell the stock. This is from a guy who famously overpromises and underdelivers (if he delivers at all). They're already being beaten on the automation front. And apart from being behind, Tesla is not even on the right road because of their refusal to use anything other than visual inputs. So their cars are too frequently--and all too literally--off the road entirely. That call made pretty clear that Elon Musk is just a huckster. That's all he ever has been. And likely that's all he's ever going to be. But he failed to get out of the scam while it was still going good. And now he's completely stuck. -
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
I remember my first presidential campaign in 1992. I worked hard for George Bush, but I was a kid who didn't know anything about jack shit. I really thought Bush was going to win. But then one day in mid-October as I was driving around putting up yard signs--I think it was while waiting at the stoplight at Mockingbird and Central--I for the first time had the conscious thought, "but hey--if Bill Clinton wins, the country would be just fine." And before I got across Central--in those days, getting across Central could take several hours, so I'm not crediting myself with a particularly speedy thought process, just to be clear--it occurred to me that if other Republicans were having the same thought, then our turnout was going to be depressed and we were going to be fucked. And it was. And we were. And ever since that experience, I have kept a weather eye for expressions of such sentiment. When people who you know are voting D or R start having the thought "well, if the other party's candidate wins, it won't be the end of the world," then that party's fucked. -
And to expand on this just a bit--that was only from Johnson Branch. Travis is going to be getting a whole lot of water from a whole lot of sources. And rain continues to be in the forecast throughout the rest of the week. Oh, and this is July. This isn't even the rainy season.
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2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
In complete fairness, the Quinnipiac poll's crosstab was of 18-34 year-olds. So the math works since 30-34 year-olds are going for Trump by a margin of about 125-(-25). And don't forget the Olympics, my brother. What--the Olympics are apolitical? Bullshit. Not in a country in which one of the candidates is actively cheering against our women's teams. Not in a country in which the challenger wants you to think America isn't currently great and shit is in crisis. Perhaps you missed the memo, my dude--we're not going back! -
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
Not just that, but he can also speak credibly as a border-state senator on the issue of immigration. I don't mean that the Democrats can take that issue back. But he can talk about how Trump sabotaged the legislation that Arizona and the other border states need to address immigration. Beyond that--every fucking poll coming out today was in the field before Biden withdrew. It doesn't reflect the present reality. They're polling a purely hypothetical matchup, which we've seen in other circumstances is very different from an actual matchup. No poll of consequence is going to come out before Thursday. -
Yeah--it's now up over 60k cfs, and there's no sign that the rain is going to stop over the next couple hours. For the moment, it looks like it may be intensifying a bit right there over Rocksprings.
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Absolute prodigious amounts of rainfall along the upper Llano River watershed, with Johnson Fork of the Llano now running at 28K cfs. And it is still coming down out there, all along the Llano. We're going to see some wild streamflows along that river by the end of the day heading down to Lake LBJ.
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2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
I'm not shocked (or even surprised) at all. Because the one great motivating issue for Democrats is beating Trump. Even when you saw people disagreeing on this or other threads about whether Biden should drop out, the question was only ever about who is best positioned to beat Trump. Nobody was arguing that we should rally around Biden because of some overriding loyalty to Biden; nobody was arguing to ditch Biden out of any animosity toward him. It was only ever about whether he could beat Trump. Now that the die is cast, it's very clear that Harris puts us in better position to beat Trump than would any kind of open convention with multiple candidates. So that's how it's going to go. And doesn't take any puppet-master to coordinate the Party coming together to support Harris; it's plainly apparent to anybody with the least little bit of political sensibility that that's what needs to happen. I'm really skeptical about that, because (1) young people--and tipped workers are disproportionately young--are incredibly skeptical of political promises, and (2) I'm not sure how many tipped workers think they're going to continue being tipped workers in two or three years. -
Joe Biden 2024 thread - Dark Brandon Where Art Thou?
Ghost of LL replied to StassneyHorn's topic in Cloak Room
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2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
These polls poll a hypothetical. Now that it's real, I think you're going to see real movement. If I were a betting man, I would wager that the polls that come out Thursday are going to look a lot like the final results from 2020. And this is why Nancy Pelosi is the GOAT. Back when I was a Republican, I fucking hated Nancy Pelosi. But I hated Nancy Pelosi in that way that, as a Cowboys fan, I hated Joe Montana. Call it a "coup" if you want. Fine. Whatever. Then give Nancy her due--Nancy Pelosi pulled off a coup. Donald couldn't, despite being the sitting POTUS. All he got was indicated for it. I don't know who came up with January 1, 1965 as the cut-off. But I don't think there's universal agreement on that. For one thing, the guy who first coined the term "Generation X" defined it as beginning in 1961. Personally, I think if you were born after the Kennedy Assassination, you're GenX. -
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
I’m just going to predict right now that when the first real polls come out around Thursday, a lot of people are going to be shocked. -
Joe Biden 2024 thread - Dark Brandon Where Art Thou?
Ghost of LL replied to StassneyHorn's topic in Cloak Room
I’ve long said Joe Biden is the best president of my lifetime. An infrastructure bill; the CHIPS Act, insulin, eliminating bank fees—most presidents would be happy with any one of those accomplishments. But now—an act of Washingtonian selflessness. If Harris can beat Trump and save the Republic, he goes down as one of the best presidents ever.- 3482 replies
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Just a straight line of rain from the edge of the rain dome straight up the Colorado River all the way to San Angelo. It’s beautiful.
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2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
Ha—it’s like you think this country was founded 7 years ago. -
2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.
Ghost of LL replied to bolverk's topic in Cloak Room
Just talking to people who are partisan Dems, but who were very dispirited—that’s all over now. They’re super-energized and ready to go. Including , and especially, Mrs.LL. In related happy news, I am so getting laid tonight.
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