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Brisketexan

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Everything posted by Brisketexan

  1. Man, that's some rainbows and unicorns walking through a field of wildflowers stuff. Sigh.
  2. This goes into the "shit I'm going to cook this weekend" file: Thomas Keller's scrambled eggs. I make very, very good scrambled eggs. Like, people we have over for brunch rave about them. Not complicated: low heat, eggs well-whisked, cooked in lots of butter. Fluffy, delicious. BUT....yesterday, we had brunch at Bouchon in Vegas, and my plate had scrambled eggs that were the best I've ever had. The only thing different is the addition of creme fraiche right before the eggs set, but holy shit....what a difference. Ingredients: 4 eggs 1 tsp. kosher salt 2 Tbs. unsalted butter 1 1/2 Tbs. crème fraîche Directions: In a small bowl, beat the eggs with the salt until they are homogenous. Heat a 2-quart (2-l) saucier over medium-low heat and add the butter. When the butter has melted, strain the beaten eggs through a sieve into the pan. Cook, continually whisking the eggs, until they thicken yet are still very creamy and not completely set. Whisk in the crème fraîche and cook for a few seconds longer. Spoon the eggs onto warm serving plates and serve immediately. Serves 2. I'll see if I can pull it off this weekend and will report. But jesus, such a simple thing, and they were so good.
  3. You used that term with respect to doctors. Dude. You and I both know that docs are often idiot savants with dunning kruger: smart about exactly one thing, but they then extrapolate that to believing they're geniuses about EVERYTHING: medical issues outside of their field of expertise and experience, issues entirely outside medical field, etc. What do those assholes think they are, lawyers? I respect and have genuine empathy for your experience, and yes, this doc's timing and language were shit. But in the end, what makes me most ragey is 1) stacks of dead Texans created by a culture and governance that leads to body counts (El Paso, Uvalde, Uri, Kerrville) that either didn't need to happen at all or didn't need to be that large, and 2) the knowledge, with dead-solid certainty, that we're going to continue with more of the same. We will demonize "the other," we will denigrate anything and everything that might help the common good as evil communism ripped from the pages of Obama's Kenyan birth certificate file, and more shit like this - and deaths - will follow. "How dare we politicize" this from the exact same crowd that attacked California and its officials while an uncontrollable fire was still raging pisses me off (then, layer on the fact that the "failures" they tried to point to were nonsensical -- there was no massive spigot of magical water that could or would have gone to Pacific Palisades, for example). Every disaster needs real, open, failure analysis after-the-fact. What went wrong, what could have gone better. Sometimes, the answer is "well, this thing here and there could have been done better, but in the end, this outcome was largely unavoidable." Other times, the answer is "the flood/winter storm would have happened no matter what, but several things could have been done to reduce the hell out of the body count." Not only will we not get that, we won't change our approach in general to, you know, maybe plan for such things in advance.
  4. Fucking this. And I can guarantee you that Doctor will face more consequences, and is more likely to change, than ANY of our leadership/power structures/culture. We will continue to charge full speed-ahead down the "fuck the common good, always and all the time" path, against all evidence and reasoning to the contrary. And we will not just not punish leadership for their decisions that lead to suffering and death, we'll REWARD them with re-election. A doctor who made a shitty comment will suffer consequences (and she should). Elected officials who decided not to install flood warning systems because "treasonous communism" will suffer zero consequences, and will actually be rewarded for their decision.
  5. This. While the full story is complicated, parts of it are pretty simple. Society as a whole had a great increase in opportunity post-WWII. For around 30 years, almost all of that expanded opportunity was provided to white males (women weren't in play, minorities were kept as second-class at best). So, relatively mediocre white dude could get a college degree and get a job that provided a path to a good life, even prosperity. Then, the economic opportunity stagnated and even contracted some. AND.....mediocre white guys had competition for those good jobs. Smart, well-educated women jumped in the pool. Smart, well-educated minorities jumped in the pool. Used to be, there were 100,000 good jobs out there, and 95,000 went to white dudes. Now, there are 90,000 good jobs out there, and 40,000 go to women, and 20,000 go to minorities.....leaving 30,000 jobs for white dudes (yeah, the numbers are totally made up to illustrate the point). These numbers aren't exact proportions, the point is that a pool of good jobs and prosperity that used to be 95% for white dudes is now a much smaller percentage for white dudes. And.....having lost a historical advantage that was NEVER rightly theirs to begin with (sorry, it wasn't exactly fair to have largely frozen black men out of the professional world for over a fucking century after we ended slavery)....white dudes are PISSED. They want it all back. And, if they can't have it....better to destroy it, so nobody else can have it.
  6. You can't ensure that "disasters never happen." You CAN ensure that areas and communities are 1) properly warned, and 2) as well prepared as they can be for when they happen. Katrina: warning was good. Preparation was shit. Levees were shit, in large part due to local corruption, due to entrenched power structures that existed for generations (sound familiar? Leadership getting locked in place, with no changes or challenges, is usually bad news). Helene: better warnings would have been good. Shit, I recall Inka and I looking at the forecast rainfall, and commenting 24-48 hours beforehand "that shit is going to be really bad in the mountains." California wildfires, Maui fires: wildfires are often really tough. Step 1 in many cases is "avoid building a lot of structures in areas that really, really want to burn," but that ship has usually sailed. Having resources available, with a game plan to use them, is key. In both of those cases, weather conditions were such that the resources at hand either couldn't be deployed or were just overwhelmed. Interestingly, just last week, I spent an hour watching California respond to a local wildfire in an area of hills and canyons. It was a spectacle. They fucking know what they are doing, and they pour resources onto a fire early, to make sure it doesn't get bigger. Truly, it was pro squad level work. So, believe it or not, for wildfire fighting, I'd say "learn from California," and even then, we know there's only so much they can do. Texas Winter Storm outage disaster: who should you vote for? Maybe people who didn't purposefully design a grid set up to fail, starting with SB-7 in 1997 and continuing for decades. The Uri outage was a predictable, natural result of policy choices made by our leadership. And not much meaningful has been done to change that state of affairs. Kerrville floods: read the meeting minutes of Kerr County rejecting flood warning systems. We'll learn plenty more, but that's a pretty good start. Disasters are inevitable. The full measure of human and economic costs of same often are not inevitable. Things are better when you act instead of react. Shit, in the current environment, if we didn't already have the Highland Lakes system built (which prevents Austin from being hammered by river floods), there is a 0% chance they would be built today. Because fuck doing something that provides benefit to the public.
  7. Yeah....I expect that a lot of the bodies are never going to be found. And others, or parts of others, will be found months or years from now at random times and places. Just gruesome, shitty stuff. Nature is a mean bitch, and she gives no fucks.
  8. This true fact is what convinces me that our society is beyond saving. We have glorified and sanctified a culture that doesn't just eschew any belief or action in furtherance of the common good: we have turned such things into hallmarks of pure evil. See, e.g., Kerr County officials and their constituents not just refusing, but RAILING AGAINST, flood warning measures and funding because the funding arose under "treasonous, communist" administrations of Obama and Biden. We do everything we can to AVOID taking measures that would help the public at large, and then....we suffer the consequences. And we have seen what happens in the aftermath. Stonewalling, denial of responsibility by those who directly acted (or failed to act) to prevent tragedy....and then nothing done to meaningfully change things to prevent future tragedy. So, yeah....calling out our total and complete social and political failure is not just okay, it's fucking imperative. If you care about a single one of the lives lost, then you should make it your mission to ensure that not another life, not a single one, is unnecessarily lost due to the same causes: demonization of the common good. Instead, we know -- with 100% certainty -- we'll get more of the same. And what is more of the same? The political leadership that has set policy, and driven the tone of society and our policies, for over a generation....will deny and avoid ALL responsibility, will continue down the same path, and will ensure that we get another Uvalde, Mystic, Uri power failure, etc.....in the coming months/years. So, none of y'all who are upset about that gal's comments need to worry your pretty little heads about it another second. All will be well, there will be no true accountability, no true consequences for those who made choices that cost lives, and no meaningful changes on either the micro or macro level will happen.
  9. I never had it till I married into a super white girl family. A spread of celery sticks stuffed with that, and the counterpart jar of pimento cheese spread, was a standard part of the Xmas day pre-dinner spread. And I kinda dig it.
  10. Correct. He appeals to people with intelligence and human decency. In other words, the most irrelevant constituency of the current era. He might as well appeal to left-handed Slovenian pearl merchants.
  11. Yep. ElonEnterprises are flying high, they are unstoppable. Reminds me of this memento I found when going through my dad’s stuff. He kept this as a wry nod to history. And then a coupla years later…well, we all saw it happen.
  12. Texas Latinos are garbage. Signed, an embarrassed Texas Latino
  13. A story straight from the pages of “DUH: A Journal of the Totally Fucking Obvious.” Treat people like shit, they will find a way to deal with you as little as they possibly can. “Hey Brisket, I’m gonna charge you $50 every time you walk into my store” is a sure fire way to get me to avoid shopping at your store.
  14. What you’ll do is buy some sweet property at rock-bottom prices because the MAGAts who live there will all be in deep financial holes because they are relentlessly voting for self-destruction. Once the leopards have eaten enough of their faces, you can offer them pennies an d they’ll take it out of desperation. Fuck em.
  15. Goddammit. Now I want some hamburger helper AND some brisket stroganoff.
  16. Well, honestly, they shouldn’t have manufactured those robots in Italy, where the primary programming edict was “take a dive to try to draw a foul.”
  17. Finally, a new gig for this dude: translator.
  18. I mean…..there’s probably a LOT of things you come do to screw up an orgy. “Hey, I spiked all the lube with jalapeño juice!” for example.
  19. I was counting on you to stop me from going down the Albanian amputee porn rabbit hole, you asshole.
  20. But…and this is important….it doesn’t fucking matter, he won’t lose a single vote over it. Because cult.
  21. Yeah…I don’t think yall understand how much of a lock he is to win the primary, and just the general. Everything we loathe about him? All of those things make him MORE attractive to GQP voters and Texas voters. We LIKE criminal, crooked, cheating, utter fucksticks. If he buttfucked a puppy to death on live TV, he’d gain 1-2% because of all the sweet lib tears it would cause. You all know this.
  22. Spent some time this week with someone who visited just last week with senior people in the Japanese trade delegation. While the advice to them is “give him meaningless concessions that you don’t intend to keep,” the japanese can’t work that way. They’re mostly counting on TACO.
  23. I’ll go ahead and get out of your way…cuz ain’t nuthin’ gonna happen. El Paso. Uvalde. The freeze. The flood. The dead Texans are what tell you the GQP policies are WORKING. Every one of those events isn’t a GQP policy failure, it’s a policy success. And their voters, who are irredeemable evil ghouls, like it and want more of it. A few angry dads? Bitch please. They’ll be dismissed as treasonous RINOs, and eventually, subjected to legal sanction and perhaps imprisonment in the camps that are literally being built as we speak. Evil has won. Completely, totally, and with so few shreds of good remaining they aren’t even worth counting. Every leader who supported and helped this along will be reelected. In a landslide.
  24. The wild thing is that we are now fully, 100%, in the “they’re just saying all the quiet parts out loud” now. All officials must follow all orders from Dear Leader, no independent adherence to the law or ethics is tolerated. We must revoke the citizenship of natural born citizens because of their political beliefs. We must stop, detain, and imprison people based solely on their ethnicity/ethnic appearance. This is their American dream, and they are joyful and proud about it. They are…and this is important…pure fucking evil. And we are 100% going to have to shoot our way out of this when all is said and done. If you aren’t a member of a favored group (and even if you are…maybe don’t count on staying there, this sort of regime needs enemies, and they won’t look hard to find them, they’ll just turn to whoever is convenient and close), and you do not have legitimate weapons for personal defense, you’re way behind. The regime just funded the world’s third largest military (homeland security), entirely for INTERNAL use. You build something that massive, you WILL use it. It’s coming. We can’t stop what’s coming. But we can meet it head-on, and when it all breaks down…as it will…kill it.
  25. Having a pleasant cup of coffee 1:50 before our flight departs. Walked in, did bag drop in 5 mins (have a checked bag because we schlepped a bunch of bbq to our family trip), nobody in TSA line…from getting off the rental shuttle to having. A cup of coffee, maybe 20 mins? Super easy. Of course, the girl is flying international out of terminal 4…and is already at HER gate. About as easy an airport experience as you can have.
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