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DonkeyCigars

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Everything posted by DonkeyCigars

  1. @Longhorn_Fan68 was called out for being either enthusiastically stupid or lying a couple of weeks ago and did everything in his power to deflect and avoid. Now he is on a one-man band tour to try and get me crowd-sourced by literally going back and negging every post, no matter the context or content, in order to be rid of me. He won't stop until I'm gone because he is a coward and a liar and by censoring me, it seems he thinks he will be rid of me. But I will come back as Longhorn_Fan69 and every iteration and permutation after that and remind you that censorship never wins. Just wanted to go on record before I can't post here any longer.
  2. How does this: "Forbidden Courses" that invites top students from other universities to join us for a spirited discussion about the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities equate to: Promoting lies and attacking truth and a threat to democracy? Isn't a University supposed to be where a push-back on the status quo and a pressure test to the establishment is encouraged? For many years when the status quo and establishment was conservative, the university was a petri dish of liberal ideas and thoughts and "spirited discourse and provocative debate" and other weird clubs and investigations. Doesn't it make sense that when more and more of the status quo is liberal that the push back would be with more conservative thinking? Is the University's place to be a thought incubator for the anti-establishment and status quo?
  3. I'm here to be a constant reminder that you are a coward and a liar. When you see my name and avatar, you'll have to reckon with your deeply shameful character. You are Longhorn_Fan68. A fate worse than death.
  4. This is rich coming from you. Like, lobster bisque with extra butter, rich. Like Elon Musk rich.
  5. I don't think that is exactly what they are looking to accomplish, though sure, some of that is a driver. Question for you: why are you so against a new venture like this trying to exist? Why are you so opposed to people and money (none of which ask anything of or from you) trying to build something in the headwinds of what will be almost surely failure? Your posture here is "just buy an existing school!' or "this already exists!" when there are valid reasons to want to create your own institution from scratch and set your own strategy and vision/mission that will likely have variance from what already exists.
  6. 1) I said in my first post that I think there is a low-probability chance of success. I think this fails. 2) I don't go as far as you do in derision, but I am skeptical and hesitant and think that your bold is a good inflection point; if/when some folks leave their jobs at established schools or professions to join, I think that signals a better chance of success.
  7. I think you are spot-on that this is a great way to go about it, but I think you are being shortsighted, of maybe blindsided, in that there are a myriad of reasons why you'd want to take a different approach (e.g. in this case, build from scratch). There are various ways to get to the end state, to skin a cat, as it were.
  8. I think in all likelihood this venture fails and it fails pretty miserably and might even have an embarrassing or shameful component to it as it goes down in flames. But I also think it's too early to say for sure that this is a naked scam and pure grift and ready-made disaster. I think we need to give it some time to see what sort of faculty and students it attracts and, most importantly, what sort of output comes from this. This is less like a traditional school, it seems, and more like an incubator or silicon valley house where people are living and working on different projects but with the more-or-less same philosophical basis for doing their work. If you are really young you can equate this to a YouTube Influencer incubator where likeminded people go to work on disparate projects but with the same loosely coupled goals. And I think this will resonate with a) young people who live in a world where the above mentioned are not only acceptable but favorable (digital natives) and b) smart people who want to push back and make an impact sooner rather than later. If you get some heavy hitters involved (sounds like they have some with Palantir folks) and get some good PR and legitimate monied conservative or libertarian business folks (Peter Thiel-- also did Palantir I believe, Elon Musk, etc.) then you attract the next wave of strong conservative/libertarian minds and if these folks can leave the University of Austin and make an impact and money, it will create a flywheel. Again, odds are low of success; high for outright failure. Need more time and data to see how it plays out, but I for one will be rooting for them.
  9. Johnny and Penny sitting in a Tree. K-i-s-s-i-n-g.
  10. GRIFT! To quote from the last page:
  11. I am a hugger, tbh. Bring it in.
  12. I will never deny doing everything I can to be a reasonable person. I think that is part of what makes someone a good human good being. Would you prefer that folks on here try to be unreasonable?
  13. I'm not "aw shucks"'ing anything-- I presented an interesting article, in a reputable rag, which gave what I thought was a fair-and-balanced treatment of the ridiculous cultural moment of "Brandon" and it was germane to this thread. You disagreeing with the article won't hurt my feelings just as your agreeing won't flatter me. I hope you are doing okay, otherwise.
  14. Are you talking the writers of The Atlantic here?
  15. Rotten tomatoes score is bad and this is a rare critical panning, but even from earlier trailers and teasers we shouldn’t be surprised. It always felt like a movie DC would make.
  16. Good for these guys for trying this; if it works great, if not great. Don't see what the big deal is if you aren't interested.
  17. Ecobee might not be as big a player in smart homes as Google or Amazon, but it’s turning up the temperature on its efforts. Last week, the smart-thermostat company announced it will be acquired by Wisconsin–based Generac Holdings Inc., which specializes in backup generators and energy storage. The deal is worth $770 million and is expected to close by the end of the year. Why it matters: Ecobee hopes to use the acquisition to expand beyond smart thermostats and embrace a wider goal of creating products that enable “net-zero” homes that can run on renewable energy. Generac’s work on backup generators is essential to this goal, as they can help store solar power when it’s not daytime, which Ecobee’s products can then help distribute. Up until this point, the company’s key product was a smart thermostat that adjusted temperatures based on when users were home and away from home, and managed energy consumption to save customers money with their utility. In an additional push beyond smart thermostats, it recently announced a professionally monitored home-security service that integrates with its thermostats and sensors. “We get to take the best of what we put together, from our thermostats, our user experience, the relationships we have with grid operators, and [Generac’s] experience in backup generation, resiliency, solar, and storage,” he said. Ecobee, which will operate as a subsidiary of Generac, is based in Toronto and was founded in 2007. Between then and Generac’s acquisition, it has raised $149.4 million. Lombard told us the company boasts over 2 million customers across North America. For comparison, in 2018, Google said it had sold over 11 million Nest devices since 2011.
  18. If you are the defense and feel great about getting your verdict, you don't move for a mistrial.
  19. I'll bite, and I can see it as you are a lawyer and can approach this as a tradesman and a student of the craft: How has this trial gone so far in your estimation and review? Who is winning? Have you seen enough to make an educated guess on the outcome? Any surprises or gotchas?
  20. This. It's hard to cut through all the noise and get some unbiased playback of what is going on and how it is going. Has anyone in 13 pages here shown themselves capable of being disaffected and neutral?
  21. Yea it sounds like both sides are getting a kick out of it, for different reasons, but as the article suggests, there are more cultural shifts around language and how we use it which is also really interesting to read about.
  22. Interesting read about all the Brandon stuff, from The Atlantic: The Serendipity of ‘Let’s Go, Brandon’ The anti-Biden meme is meaner than your grandfather’s shoot or heck. It also offers a fascinating view of how language changes. I know how I am supposed to feel about “Let’s go, Brandon”: Mocking the president this way is uncivil, a sign of the collapse of once-routine public courtesy, etc., etc. How I really feel about it, though, is that it’s fascinatingly serendipitous, seriously funny, and intriguingly fecund. From that one meme, others are being born. Last month, an NBC reporter interviewing the victorious NASCAR driver Brandon Brown heard fans in the stands chanting “Fuck Joe Biden” in lustily contemptuous unison. The reporter insisted to viewers that the fans were in fact chanting “Let’s go, Brandon.” This improvisation made no sense. Brown had won, so why would anyone cheer him on by saying “Let’s go!” after he’d just accomplished quite a bit of going? Since then, Biden’s detractors have adopted “Let’s go, Brandon” as a kind of in-group salute—a coded way of saying, well, the other thing. The meme has found its way onto T-shirts, masks, signs at other sporting events, the House floor, and (reportedly) airplane intercoms, and was parodied this weekend in an online video from Saturday Night Live. Interestingly, despite its very American origins, the catchphrase is rather South African. Stay with me: In traditional societies there, such as in Zulu and Xhosa communities, a woman marrying into a family shows respect by refraining from using any words that sound like her husband’s or in-laws’ names and subbing in other words. Imagine if someone married William Green, the son of Robert Green, and instead of saying, “She will not eat green yogurt,” had to say, “She refuses to eat grass-colored yo-mix”—because will and green are her husband’s names and the second half of yogurt sounds like the end of Robert. The practice is called hlonipha, and “Let’s go, Brandon” is a coy substitution of the same kind. [Conor Friedersdorf: The fight against words that sound like, but are not, slurs] However, the anti-Biden euphemism is of a meaner tone. This is not your grandfather’s darn, heck, shoot, or fudge. Those are polite terms, expressed without the teeth-baring ardor of the words they stand in for, imaginable as things that characters played by Edie McClurg might say in ’80s movies such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. “Let’s go, Brandon” springs from the mangier, madder place of euphemisms such as snafu—which during World War II everyone in the American military knew was an acronym for “situation normal, all fucked up”—or right-wingers’ dismissal of conservatives who do not toe the party line as cuckservatives, rooted in the word cuckold. Those who dislike seeing President Biden’s name used disparagingly should welcome the latest development: People on the left are declaring “Thank you, Brandon” in praise of the administration’s accomplishments thus far. We are witnessing the birth of a diagonal reference to Biden that signals a defense of him from the slurs of the right. Brandon could well take its place as one of those bemusingly opaque code names such as Yeezy for Kanye West or Boz for Charles Dickens—or as one of those pseudonyms that some members of Congress direct their staff to use for them when talking about work in social settings. (A friend of mine who worked on Capitol Hill in the late 1980s referred to her boss as “Bubo,” lest eavesdroppers in public spaces pick up insider gossip about congressional business.) We might simply embrace that sentiments will differ about this Brandon person in exactly the same way as they do about, well, Biden. Calling him Brandon when dissing him could be seen as a kind of American hlonipha. And yet, in elite circles, one senses a bifurcation: Brandon is warm and wise when preceded by Thank you but an unacceptable epithet coming from Republicans. Few of the commentators who decried the supposed vitriol and vulgarity of “Let’s go, Brandon” appear to mind Democrats’ attempt to repurpose the race-car driver’s name. The tacit idea would seem to be that when the left throws shade, it counts as speaking truth to power and is thus okay. Until the late ’80s, some people on the left used politically correct unironically to suggest, without saying so, that right-wing views are inherently and incontestably wrong. The designation of conservatives outside Democratic enclaves as “deplorables” didn’t come from the right, either. [Read: When deplorability is no longer a dealbreaker] Overall, “Let’s go, Brandon” is simply fascinating. A time traveler from 2019 would have been mystified at the bewigged people going as Karen this Halloween (I saw two) as well as those in mustaches going as Ted Lasso (of which I also saw two). In the same way, think how utterly opaque “Let’s go, Brandon” would be to a time traveler from just Labor Day. The meme is a wild, woolly kink in the intersection of language, politics, wit, and creativity, and is a prime example of why language change is a spectator sport. Our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox. Sign up for The Atlantic Daily
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