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    Brisketexan

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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/27/22 in all areas

  1. My teacher wife's day is, up at 5:00a to be at work by 6:30a to have an hour without the kids. After the kids leave at 2:45p she has team meetings and planning until 5-5:30p. She leaves school at 5-5:30p and comes home to be with her family for about about 1.5 hours before picking up her planning/grading/testing result dissemination for parents/kids. Once she does that she gets to all of the emails the parents and admin send her. She finishes/quits around 11-11:30p to go to bed. Her schedule on the weekends is similar, without the going to school and teaching portion. Like you, my idea of teaching when my wife first mentioned she was going to quit her job 12 years ago, was that she would be home by 3p everyday and dinner would be ready and waiting on me and our daughter when she got home. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've finally convinced her to leave her job after this year and hope to hell she does. The amount of bullshit from the admin and parents is enough to drive someone crazy, and she is a prime example. Don't believe me? Go sit in any classroom for a week and watch how a teacher spends her day. Also, the "Summer" that teachers get is filled with required training classes, workshops, and planning groups, oh and a team building exercise with their school. Ignorant people are ignorant. Are there shitty teachers? Yes, and they make the other 95% of teachers look bad. Rant over. PS - It wouldn't surprise me if Demas left, but don't think it will happen this year. Next year though... PPS - moar nurse sloots
    28 points
  2. UPDATE: so my uncle died. His service will be in 2 weeks…so what is that side of the family doing between now and then? If you guessed going on a Disney cruise you win the prize. We are living in a simulation.
    18 points
  3. Bolded is absolutely wrong. I talked to one of the park rangers there about it. He said that Kareem called them up out of the blue and said that he had a huge interest in the buffalo soldiers and that he'd like work on the project. They said, "We'd love to have you, but we can't pay you." He said No big deal, bought his own plane ticket to El Paso, rented his own car, and spent a week living in the Hotel Limpia on his own dime.
    14 points
  4. Clemson 247 reporting that Arch informed Dabo and co that they're out of the running
    13 points
  5. I broadly agree with this. Russian propaganda drastically overstates the numbers of actual neo-nazis in the Ukrainian military. One of our best “intel for hire” agencies that we use puts the size of Azov as approx 3,500 now, as they have grown in recent years, but either way, it is certainly no more than that. But their existence is much more complicated than a few hundred neo-nazis standing on the front lines of the Donbass. Let’s go back to the article from the National Post in Canada. The Canadian military actively - a full year in advance of training activities - plotted and formulated a way to directly train Azov - a group that their own records show they considered to be neo-nazis, while keeping said training from Canadian/Western media, and even going so far as to generate a protocol to diffuse the situation if the press ever DID get wind of it. A year in advance. If Azov was merely a bit-player in the overall Ukrainian military, then Canada would not have made such efforts - essentially abandoning their moral convictions - to work with them. The payoff in doing so had to be significant. Same goes for the US…if Azov was insignificant and just some bit-player, the US Congress wouldn’t have risked the political fallout of removing them from the designated terrorist list, as military victory over Russia would be just as likely by arming the remaining 90-someodd percent of the Ukrainian military. The reason this type of politically risky behavior has occurred is because while indeed smaller in number, they are the key to any type of organized resistance in Ukraine. They are the “tip of the spear”, and no one disputes this. So, therefore, they are the ones who will be getting the high-tech weapons, they will have access and control over local populations as a result, and they are the ones who will be completely unmanageable if Ukraine collapses internally. Which, mark my words, it will. But stepping away from the discussion on their value to the Ukrainian military to the much more important issue to the Germans: let’s look at the internal, domestic impact of these neo-nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine right now, which is largely fueled by these exact same groups. Over the last five years, some of the shit that has gone on in Ukraine - if widely circulated in the US - would destroy any semblance of optimism that this country is anywhere even close to becoming a functional democracy. The Right Sector, Azov, C14, The National Militia - which let’s face it, are all just different branding for the larger neo-nazi fascist network in Ukraine - and others have systemically asserted what can only be described as brown-shirtism across large swathes of Ukraine, particularly in large population centers like Kiev and Lviv. In short, in an effort to placate these groups, the Ukrainian state has completely surrendered its monopoly on violence, even going so far as to literally sign agreements with them for the creation of a “Municipal Guard’ that can legally patrol the streets...patrols which frequently result in atrocious acts of violent, neo-nazi rage. This is not good. And while it is known abroad, albeit not adequately discussed IMO, when the natural progression towards Ukraine’s internal “troubles” occurs, these groups are poised to inflict absolute hell on the Ukrainian populace. This is 1930s brown-shirtism in its absolute, replicative form. For a comprehenisve, detailed view of this, I highly recommend the Atlantic Council's piece on this - the most pro-NATO/EU of all think tanks: "Ukraine's Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn't Write this Headline)" https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-s-got-a-real-problem-with-far-right-violence-and-no-rt-didn-t-write-this-headline/ Also, this Reuters article from 2018 has a very accurate section on this. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary/commentary-ukraines-neo-nazi-problem-idUSKBN1GV2TY I am separating out the most damning sentence from behind the Quote function: C14 and Kiev's city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a "municipal guard" to patrol the streets; three such militia-run guard forces are already registered in Kiev, and at least 21 operate in other cities." This is complete insanity. Human Rights Watch has also recently written about how out of control these street patrols are: https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/29/radicals-target-roma-people-ukraine And while Poroshenko is now gone (although my estimation is that he is primed to return to power when the fallout of the current situation plays out), current president Zelensky has not taken any meaningful steps to resolve this out of fear for his own presidency. In fact, this “reformist” Zelensky even continued the notorius fascist Avakov’s tenure until Avakov resigned a few months ago out of his own volition, setting the stage for what many see as the early stages of an organized coup in league with the ascendant Poroshenko. Regardless, the fascist right still exerts massive levels of control at the street level in Ukraine, they still exert massive control within the hierarchy of the Interior Ministry - and thusly, the Ukrainian military - and no Ukrainian Govt can govern without at least their tacit acquiescence. So when one simply applies Occam’s Razor to the question: “If these groups cause such massive, massive PR obstacles for Ukraine in the eyes of critical European states like Germany in gaining acceptance and political support, and if their influence is simply an overstatement generated by Russian propaganda, then why does the Ukrainian state continue to allow them to effectively act as extrajudicial paramilitary groups operating with complete impunity across the country, along with actual, legally-recognized, formal ties with the Ukrainian intelligence services, and why - at least until his voluntary departure - was the Interior Ministry for years headed by one of their most notorious allies? If they were weak, then why not end their access to power?” The only reasonable answer is that they are, in fact, not weak and inconsequential…in fact, in a domestic sense, they are very, very powerful in the overall clusterfuck that constitute Ukrainian domestic politics. That Reuters article said it all: Presidents fear their administrations can't withstand getting cross with them. Furthermore, the sanctuary that Ukraine passivity/deference creates re neo-nazism is very dangerous to the larger world. I point to a 2022 article in Newsweek, where even the western media is beginning to acknowledge openly what Germans have long known: Ukraine has become a training ground for foreign neo-nazis, many from the US, to come and learn the tricks of the trade, including the very groups that have designs on our own institutions in the US. From that article a few weeks ago, which I highly, highly recommend everyone read if you would like to see a great dissection of the ties between the extreme right movements that we see in the US and the neo-nazis in Ukraine: https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-war-draws-us-far-right-fight-russia-violence-home-1665027 At the risk of being Debbie Downer, the true position of the German government, which they can’t really come out and say, is that the idea of providing weapons to Ukraine is akin to pointing a garden hose at a raging industrial fire and is currently nothing more than a PR stunt by western allies for their own domestic consumption. It is far too little, far too late. The Russian air superiority is so massive, and so designed for this exact conflict, that Russia is simply going to rain hell down upon the Ukrainian front lines with essentially no deterrence capable of diminishing Russian air superiority, potentially inflicting damage from the air deeper into the area east of the Dnieper. The Russians have no incentive to actually expend any energy slogging through ground invasion until the Ukrainian resistance are completely demoralized or obliterated. So none of these weapons are going to make much of a difference, because the Germans do not see the Russians as preparing for an actual occupation. But what the German government DOES see, and which I also agree with, is that whether a Russian attack comes or not, the state of Ukraine OUTSIDE of the breakaways is primed to descend into civil war with one another. In fact, its foundation is shaking right now without so much as a shot being fired and I would put this likelihood at a probability, not just a possibility. And it is THAT which the Germans are trying to inoculate themselves against. The PR catastrophe of these notorious right wing militias gunning down innocent protestors with Hechler and Koch arms or Krause-Maffei self-propelled artillery would be incomprehensible here. Zelensky’s indictment of former president Poroshenko for treason, and Poroshenko’s in-your-face, defiant return to Kiev to face the charges last week, has set the stage for the Pro-EU/Pro-NATO/Pro-Western wings to turn on each other, which will be carried out to a very large extent by the neo-nazi /far-right street gangs that patrol certain urban areas of the major cities. These noises are already being made in local statements and increasingly hostile rhetoric…all at the precise time Ukraine SHOULD be uniting against a common enemy. But they are so dysfunctional that they can’t even do that.People in the West suffer from this great delusion that two political parties who hate Russia must, therefore, be aligned and friendly. Well, these two movements are not. At all. And there are smatterings of lesser parties that will be in the mix, as well, with questionable moral tendencies and massive predispositions to corruption. I will leave it with this: we looked at expanding operations into Ukraine two years ago as part of a German Federal Government incentive program to bring certain types of industry to Ukraine to help wean Ukraine from their ever-expanding dependency on the German tit. We were looking at multiple spots in the west of the country. It would have been a great financial move for us if we could nail down the operational hurdles. We hired our standard, well-known consultants who specialize in analyzing risks for large corporations seeking to expand into new countries. I have personally overseen over a dozen of these types of analyses over the years and I can say I have never seen one come back essentially saying, “y’all motherfuckers are insane if you do this.” The results were essentially: 
 1) Terrible governance; 2) Massive culture of corruption, specficially supply chain ops will be unable to perform without violating German and American anti-corruption laws 3) Failing infrastructure with little chance of modernization, with or without western investment at the governmental level 4) High potential for domestic unrest fueled by extensive far-right elements. We didn’t even move to secondary explorations of the proposed expansion. C-Suite killed it the same day that they read the findings. It was terrible. So just to be clear, I do not believe the existence of these groups warrants a hands-off policy, per se. But I do think that the West needs to seriously contemplate the long-term fallout of arming these groups to the teeth in the dead center of Europe.
    13 points
  6. well fuckin' A. file this one under DID THAT JUST HAPPEN? So I'm all horned up for a vintage moon watch, have tried to make something happen on a couple from my birth year, can't get the deal done. last night i'm up scouring the web and find a 1969 pre-moon for a price that is just too good to be true. guy has been trying to sell it on there for months but has no seller history. i'm asking him questions through the site but you can't get any contact info through mercado libre. everything on the watch looks legit, but he put weird Serial Numbers and 'Adjustable Clasp' number on the description. it doesn't make any sense...then i realize if i combine the numbers, it's a phone number in monterrey. so i message the number on whatsapp and sure enough it's the dude. so i have a friend from monterrey who happens to be there right now. i call him and ask if he knows a really good watchmaker in monterrey. turns out he does, puts me in touch with that guy, i call him and tell him i need him to check out a watch. i give his info to the seller, seller drops the watch off, watchmaker calls me and tells me it's all original in perfect condition. i can't even say what i paid for it. i can't believe that just happened.
    12 points
  7. Which is literally the worst of all possible worlds. This should be a bipartisan no-brainer. 1 -- we agree that people shouldn't die, locked out of a hospital when they need acute care. We have set up our system at every turn to make sure that doesn't happen - in every state, etc. 2 -- so, we have a system that takes care of them.....in the worst, "after-the-fact," most expensive way. I'ma suggest a new item..... 3 -- since 1 is a universal goal, how about we address it with a system that is NOT the worst, after-the-fact, most expensive way? Like, you know, a uniform, baseline system of care, including preventative care and basic primary care, accessible to all? But we won't. Because SOCIALISM! Even though we already HAVE the functional equivalent, so long as you walk through the ER door. Dumbest. Fucking. Timeline.
    12 points
  8. The majority of increasing tuition costs at public college/universities is directly attributable to cuts in state funding. This is well documented but for some reason people still want to pedal the student loan money or nice dorm narrative. It’s just not even worth arguing about.
    12 points
  9. Finished up a deposition and not much at the house for lunch, so here’s three fried eggs and a lone leftover meatball, with Parmesan and Crystal.
    11 points
  10. Not really HS, but awesomely cool find.
    11 points
  11. Except you've bought into a lie with that. Poor people pay taxes. Lots of them. They pay government fees -- lots of them. AND, as a percentage of their total income/wealth, they can be rather large. Functionally every poor person DOES have skin in the game. And shit, as a top earner, I want poor and middle class folks to have a decent healthcare system. Why? Three big fucking reasons: 1 -- in this country/economy at this time, our greatest capital asset is our people. It's a really counterproductive approach to burn through that asset and not maintain it. Things like decent healthcare and education do that. 2 -- Investing smarter dollars (preventative and primary healthcare, decent education) is better and cheaper than spending reactive dollars (healthcare through the ER, incarcerating people who didn't get a decent education to put them in the honest workforce, etc.). Those are MY dollars. I'd rather spend $1,000 of my tax payments on smart dollars, than $2,000 of my tax dollars on reactive dollars. Spending more for worse results is.....a bad idea. 3 -- if you want a society where people give a shit about each other and feel some sense of responsibility to each other, and to society as a whole, then you have to build a society that actually and actively reflects that. You get mad at Poor Boy Smith because he doesn't care about you, and all the hard work you do, and all the taxes you pay. Well, why should he? You clearly don't give a shit about him. You tell him so directly, and you tell him so by insisting on policies that treat him as worthless. When you don't shit on people, and actually treat them like human beings worthy of being in our society, you get a whole lot more feedback of those people acting like they are treated. This isn't some fringe-y idea. It's humanity 101. No, nothing's perfect. No matter what we do, we'll still have someone at the bottom who is a psychopath and would rather steal from you than earn an honest living. We will ALSO still have sociopaths at the top who make millions off of victimizing people (maybe legally, maybe illegally) en masse. But "perfect" isn't achievable in any human world, and "if we can't make it perfect, we shouldn't do it" is no counter-argument at all. I'm a capitalist. I believe in investing in and maintaining our biggest capital asset. That should resonate with every purported capitalist.
    11 points
  12. This one just makes my heart hurt. I know what it's like to not be able to tell anyone about yourself. I know what it's like to always hold a little back, so you can't just be a genuine person to the people who you call friends or even loved ones. I know what it's like to avoid certain things you like because of what you are afraid it might say about you. I know what it's like to pretend like everything is a-ok when things are actually pretty fucking dire. None of those are things that anyone should have to feel on a non-stop basis for years and years, and for the last decade or so, kids were getting much closer to not having to know what any of that was like. Enter this legislature, which has decided that no, we should bring all of that back. It's like they all got together and decided, "If we can't create another generation of self loathing, scared homosexuals then what good are we as a legislating body?" It's some bullshit, and I don't understand why Republicans put up with that nonsense. If this country is in as bad a shape as they say it is, shouldn't there be more important things to be focused on?
    10 points
  13. I believe the name of the periodical in question is "You're Too Poor Monthly."
    9 points
  14. Doh c'mon now! When was the last time arming an extremist group to be our proxy belligerents against Russia blown up in our face? I'm sure it'll be fine! /s
    9 points
  15. Yeah, my wife is a teacher and her sister teaches at an international school in Vietnam. Give any American public school teacher the discipline of a classroom full of students in Japan and they'd gladly work another an extra two months a year. That's like comparing a combat veteran whose done multiple tours in Afghanistan to a member of the aggy band.
    8 points
  16. 8 points
  17. They managed to pack quite a bit of misleading bullshit into the original. "QUAD VAXXED" - oh, 6% of the population. "HUGE CASE SPIKE, WAY BIGGER THAN U.S." - oh, lower positive test rate than U.S. "VAXX NO WORKY!" - oh 1/10 of death rate of U.S. "MOST VAXXED COUNTRY" - oh, also not true So fucking tired of the deliberate lies and manipulation. SO. FUCKING. TIRED.
    8 points
  18. It’s game day. LFG
    8 points
  19. Chump change compared to the billions of dollars in increased farm subsidies that had to be paid because China never paid for the tariffs. Let farmers engage in trade on the free market? "Nah fuck that, the mobility of goods and services on the free market is Socialism. Let's just take tax payer money and toss billions in hand outs at Big Agriculture." - Republicans
    8 points
  20. My kid got his acceptance email tonight! It’s pretty amazing because I honestly didn’t think he had that great of a chance to get in considering his situation. He goes to a high school with 50 kids in it, 11 in his class, and he won’t be the valedictorian. I guess a 1400 on the SAT, being involved in every extra curricular activity offered under the sun and a solid essay got him in.
    8 points
  21. Lawyer, but been in an in-house govt relations role for quite a while now. I help formulate and manage government relations strategy for a large German multinational in a highly regulated industry. Basically get paid to read political/regulatory tea leaves in Germany and Europe in an industry that is very exposed to this fallout from this conflict. Not in one of the immediately identifiable industries like Energy or Defense, but in one very exposed nevertheless. I have direct reports scattered around European capitals with a few in Moscow, so I get a lot of local, informed insight from very capable former ex-govt people as part of the job. Happy to contribute in a small way to the interesting content on this site...God knows I have a karmic duty to do so given how much entertainment Surly and TOS provided me over the last decade or so. Plus, I don't get a chance to interact with other Americans on this subject very often, so it is nice to be able to do that.
    8 points
  22. What I know is that IF this Republic survives, it will likely be because 1/6 was a turning point. And Goodman almost single-handedly saved senior members of Congress, so that they could perform their constitutional duty and stave off a claim that "sorry they were murdered, but because they didn't certify in time, throw it to the house and make Trump POTUS for life." He can and should get a gotdamn statue. I'm not kidding.
    7 points
  23. you cannot convince me that you're not a bot that was forced to watch thousands of hours of fox news and now randomly generates words and phrases based on that experience.
    7 points
  24. Man, I've hated the Lakers with every ounce of my being ever since I started watching NBA basketball in the mid/late 70's but damned if Kareem isn't an absolute rock star of a human being.
    7 points
  25. Reading the back and forth (well, the quoted parts because reasons) It's clear to me that it all boils down to hate. Republicans hate other people. They hate they have to pay property taxes that might benefit some fucking poor person. Even when presented with evidence that poor people actually do pay taxes, a good amount for their income level, even when presented with evidence that we all pay our share for the roads we use, the military that protects us, the IP laws that protect their businesses. They don't care. They're spoiled. Fuck other people. They don't want to pay money out of their pocket. They want the benefits of our society with none of the costs. The blame others for the costs. Poor people use resources, not me. Immigrants use resources, not me. It's one big fucking lie they tell themselves so they don't have to face the simple truth. That they're a selfish piece of shit. I'm tired of pretending it's about anything else.
    7 points
  26. Teaching is a thankless, underpaid job... ESPECIALLY for the good teachers. My ex (no pics) was 3x teacher of the year... I hated her job... she had me grading papers on NFL Sundays... (Of course, I figured out how to be a shitty grader...) We spent hundreds, if not more, every year to buy supplies... she made $40k... which is why she left, went to law school and become an attorney. My sons's teachers are bailing out for industry jobs this year... can't blame'em.
    7 points
  27. not sure if it was on FB but my wife just texted me this
    7 points
  28. “Do my own research.” Common right wing parlance for “here’s an opinion I pulled out of my ass and searched the seediest underbelly of Google for someone else to have that same whacked out opinion, and even though I had to skip past like ten thousand links saying I was full of shit, this one random dude living in his moms basement in Cincinnati confirms I’m right. Look at me, I am smart.”
    6 points
  29. Made tomato bisque and white cheddar grilled cheese on sourdough. Added some fresh dill to the grilled cheese and as a topper on the soup, which worked out really well.
    6 points
  30. My daughter got hers last night too! Very proud of her...she did the application herself and didn't submit SAT or ACT so must have been a good essay. To add to the anecdotal statistics, she's AISD, top 10% but not top 6%, as mentioned no scores submitted, and accepted to college of Education.
    6 points
  31. If I have to pay for healthcare for everyone, I'll just make sure that Viagra is banned and flaccid penises stay flaccid. The state takes control of healthcare, I better control the state.
    6 points
  32. I would take whatever Ohio State is doing over what we are doing based on about 12 years of evidence.
    6 points
  33. already regretting quoting this, but here is the basic problem with the current gop. it's what i call "the leap", at least when i'm arguing with the wife. i'm sure there's a technical or clinical term for it. one side says x, we have a problem with x, we need to do x. the other side freaks out and says, omg, how could you possibly want to do y? too many shootings. we need to have a better background check system and go back to limiting certain types of assault rifles. response: they're coming to take all your guns. sigh. i get it. overreaction gets the big headline and riles up the base. but it's tired and reductive. nobody is calling for censorship here. this is a pretty honest big-picture discussion about what happens when a guy with a really big megaphone is not only allowing, but promoting dangerous behavior in the time of a pandemic that has killed a million people in this country and countless others around the globe. it's a problem, and problems call for solutions, or at the very least, open dialogue. stop making this binary. stop making it seem like we're all saying fuck joe rogan, let's censor his ass. i haven't read every post, but i've seen pretty much nobody calling for that. we're discussing x. get the fuck out of here with y.
    6 points
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