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wild_turkey

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Everything posted by wild_turkey

  1. Is this even true? If so, what is your source? I have done extensive contract work for 2 different Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities in Texas, and at no time did I encounter guards who I would think are non-U.S. citizens. On top of that, the security check to become a BOP employee (or contractor, in my case) is fairly rigorous.
  2. Turns out a dog died. We originally thought all the dogs got out and ran away, but they found out this morning that one got stuck in the house. Sad stuff.
  3. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cv2W9zYrKKw/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
  4. Crestwood
  5. A few houses in our neighborhood caught fire last night. The fire started about 11:30 pm in a house that’s being built, just finished the framing. No electrical to the house yet and no one seemed to immediately know the cause, but of course the fire department will investigate. It spread to both neighboring houses. One got burned pretty bad, beyond livable at this point. The other neighbor got a wall and attic damage, smoke and water damage, and their truck caught fire. Thankfully, all people and pets were safe. Embers from the main fire landed down the street and started another spot fire. Appears to be minimal damage from that one.
  6. The thing about Hijack is that it should’ve never had an A-list actor as a main character. I realize they got Idris Elba for the star power to attract viewers, but that then means they wrote the script around his character, and it shouldn’t be that type of script. Potentially, a hijacking story could be decent for 6-7 hours, but not when it has a single protagonist who is present in every scene. People who hijack planes don’t allow good guys to freely roam about the plane and insert themselves into every situation. If you want to write this story and make it somewhat decent, get a committee of B-listers to play various antagonists that each contribute a little bit in their own way.
  7. This where I’m at. I love being outside and I love the idea of summer, but every summer here is fucking miserable and they seem to be getting worse. It’s depressing. My wife and I have both lived our entire lives in various parts of Texas, currently in DFW. Most of our family and friends are here, all within 2-4 hours driving distance. We have a young child and it would be nice for her to grow up near grandparents and cousins. Our parents will soon enter that age in life where health problems will be more of a concern and it would be nice to be near them when serious stuff inevitably occurs. It’s hard to walk away from all of that, not to mention building a new social network from scratch. But every summer I think “Am I really going to endure this shit for the rest of my life? Why subject myself to that level of misery?” I love the beach and I love the mountains. Texas has neither. All we have is an inferno every summer. It’s fantastic to spend all day inside for 2 months straight, hoping like hell the AC doesn’t give up. Colorado appeals to me because of the mountains, skiing, and hiking. I think I would quickly bitch about the long cold winters though. Southern California seems close to perfect, other than it’s crowded af and cost of living is crazy. Also kinda far from St. Barth and Europe, both of which I like to frequent. North Carolina seems nice. Don’t particularly care for the east coast but I think that’s more the wankers that live in New England. Maybe a place like Wilmington would be a happy medium. I feel stuck.
  8. They have a pretty good lineup but they’ve also put out their share of duds - Invasion, Extrapolations, Surface, Hijack, Physical, The Mosquito Coast. Although with HBO struggling under their new ownership, I probably have more confidence in Apple to deliver a quality series than anyone else.
  9. This is heartbreaking. We spent our honeymoon in Kaanapali and a good deal of time in Lahaina. I have fond memories of that area and the entire island of Maui. The loss of property was devastating but the loss of life is just horrific.
  10. I like going to the movies, when there’s a good movie to see. I’ve seen Mission Impossible, Oppenheimer, and Barbie in the last month. Happy to have some good stuff to watch lately. Had a great experience each time. We don’t have Alamo where I live, but there is a pretty nice AMC that is clean, has comfortable reclining seats, and serves adult beverages. It’s on par or dare I say slightly nicer than the franchised Alamo location where I previously lived. Some of you need to get nicer theaters. Or maybe you’re in that phase of life where you prefer everything inside your home versus going out in public. Which is fine, I guess.
  11. I've been to Cinque Terre twice, in June 2011 and July 2017, and really enjoyed it both times. It was peak summer on both occasions and there were definitely crowds during the day, but it was still nothing compared to crowds encountered in European cities. I can tolerate crowds much easier in a small coastal town when my day is spent on the beach or hiking. I also stayed multiple nights on both occasions, and found that the crowds thinned out significantly in the late afternoon when a lot of the day trippers returned to wherever they came from. If you only visit for a day, you're kind of depriving yourself of the better side of it.
  12. Just saw it. Loved it. Lots of great moments, the social commentary was on point, and I got the feeling that Gosling’s entire career has been building to this role.
  13. This is not new and pretty low down the list of things in life to be outraged about. When I was at UT about 18 years ago (fuck, I’m getting old), they charged an extra fee for paying tuition by credit card. It made sense. One of my insurance companies is that way currently. I can pay cash or card, but the fee for paying with a card outweighs the points benefit, so I pay cash. Certain businesses flat out reject Amex because of the high fees. Doesn’t Costco do this or did that change? Specs offers a cash or debit card discount, which is essentially a markup for people paying with a credit card. I use a credit card whenever I can for the benefits, but I have no problem with a place that incentivizes cash payments.
  14. Just watched Hijack and it’s got to be the worst series I’ve watched in some time. The writing is awful. It’s a show full of stupid people doing stupid things and it’s insulting to the viewer’s intelligence. I’m pretty sure The Walking Dead season 37 had better writing. I’m mad at myself for watching it. I expected better from Stringer Bell and Apple+. If I was a nicer person, I would spoil it for the rest of you to remove any temptation you have to watch it. But I won’t, so you’ve been warned.
  15. Saw it last night and thought it was great. Not perfect and probably not a top 3 Nolan movie for me, but it lived up to my expectations. I did not have a problem with the volume of the score or understanding the dialogue. I suppose I noticed the score being loud a few times, but not in the sense that it detracted from what was happening on screen.
  16. Sure, but that assumes that: A) the aliens came from the next closest solar system B) they are traveling close to light speed We have no idea if either of those are true. It’s equally possible they come from farther away and travel slower, which could easily explain why their tech doesn’t update quickly to match our tech.
  17. I lean in the direction that aliens have NOT visited earth, but if they had, I think a simple answer to your question is that interstellar travel takes a very long time. Suppose they originally sent visitors to scout Earth 100 years ago. Whatever tech they had in 1923 would have been easily able to evade our detection capabilities at that time. Our tech significantly improved over the past 100 years, and the aliens would not be able to instantly upgrade their hardware over a distance of light years to counter the advances we made. It could take them hundreds or thousands of years to send new shit here. Or maybe it’s not a priority for them at all because they’ve long since found more important stuff to focus on, and they’re fine leaving their old shit here to confuse us, because honestly, wtf are we gonna do? Go after them? But again, I’m in the camp that aliens exist somewhere in the universe but probably not anywhere near us.
  18. I'm not trying to bust your balls or single you out, but I have honest questions about the logic here. The suggestion by the bolded part is that you feel they deserve a tip because they are underpaid for the job they are doing. How do you make the determination that they are underpaid, and do you also extend that same financial gratuity to other people in life who are potentially underpaid? Suppose you walk into Torchy's and your meal comes out to $20, the iPad suggests you tip 20%, 22%, or 25%, you pick the middle number for simplicity and give them $4.40 because they don't make a lot of money. How do you know what their hourly wage is and whether or not that's a fair wage for the work they do? Are they making less than other people with similar qualifications in similar jobs? Suppose they are making $15/hr. Is that a fair wage for ringing up food orders? If you knew they made $20/hr would you be less inclined to tip? If you think back to 10 years ago before iPads prompted you for a tip on every transaction, would you have still tipped that same employee? It's not like Torchy's employees in 2013 were making a lot of money, so what made them less deserving of a tip then, or more deserving of a tip now? How you apply that to every other industry you interact with? Do you tip employees in a retail clothing store? the guys that pick up your trash? Your mail person? The Amazon delivery guy? Your kids' teachers? The school lunch ladies or janitors? Flight attendants? The receptionist at your doctor or dentist office? Do you tip the person at Target or HEB that guides you to the next available self-check kiosk? The people who carry out groceries if you do drive-up? Many of those people also don't make a lot of money, yet they aren't getting tips. Is it simply because they work in a situation where it isn't customary to stick an iPad in your face and have the audacity to ask for more money? Should we be rewarding fast food establishments for crossing that line? Is the person at Torchy's more deserving of a tip than the guy on the trash truck in 108F heat? All honest questions, not trying to be obtuse, but it seems like tipping has expanded arbitrarily and it doesn't seem entirely rational to me.
  19. 5 years ago, it seems lots of places that didn’t normally receive tips had started adding a tip line to the credit card receipt. It annoyed me, but I realized it cost them nothing to add that line and it might pressure 5-10% of customers into tipping. In the past 2-3 years, that’s mostly changed to the POS tablets which also allows the business to add a tip option at no cost to them. The difference is that leaving a tip is now the default option at many places, and often times the 3 preselected options are fairly high percentages. I personally think it’s ridiculous for counter service places. It’s nothing more than the business owner passing on their labor costs to the customer. I realize margins are thin in the restaurant industry, but if a place like Torchy’s or Chipotle can’t pay their employees a fair wage without incorporating tips, then maybe they should raise menu prices. I get guilted into occasionally leaving a tip in these situations, but typically more at local businesses that I feel a stronger need to support. I hardly ever leave the default 20% or more. I typically lower it to $2-3 unless I feel the counter employee is busting their ass or doing something beyond the ordinary expectations. On the barber tangent, I tip my girl $8-10 for my haircut every 3-4 weeks. It’s a $40 haircut, takes her ~25 minutes, and she has 3 kids. I give a little more around the holidays. I also tip my mail lady at the holidays.
  20. I’m in the camp that thinks it’s statistically likely that intelligent life exists other places in the universe. Perhaps thousand (millions, I don’t even know how to quantify it?) of unique and separate civilizations exist or have existed in the history of the universe. I think the likelihood that an alien life form has physically visited Earth is pretty low, but I think there’s at least a 50% chance that an alien species has sent unmanned drones to scout Earth, or perhaps some other surveying/monitoring technology that’s different from anything we use. Thinking about it from a human perspective, it seems entirely possible that over the next 50-100 years we will begin sending large amounts of drones into the Milky Way galaxy, as our own technology advances. We will likely have pressure to explore in hopes of finding alternate habitable planets due to deteriorating conditions on Earth - climate change, disease, nuclear war, etc. By extension, other alien species may face a similar existential threat on their own planets (part of the Fermi paradox), prompting them to explore the universe by whatever means possible. It seems logical to me that sending massive amounts of drones into the nearby universe is an effective means of exploration, much easier than manned space flight to unknown planets, and possibly some of those drones have reached Earth. I sort of doubt there’s any imminent threat to humanity in all of this, because I suspect one of the following scenarios: 1. They have observed Earth and didn’t think our planet is useful to them and not worth their effort to actually come here. 2. They have observed Earth and decided visiting Earth is too risky due to them not fully understanding our capabilities, concern for our diseases, fear of our technology which is foreign to them. 3. Their ability to engage in manned interstellar travel lags hundreds or thousands of years behind their ability to perform unmanned surveillance.
  21. The finale of Succession was the last show I watched on HBO, which was almost 2 months ago. This is a pretty long drought for them to not have a good weekly series, and I don’t think they can blame it on the writers’ strike yet. Winning Time season 2 comes out August 6. Beyond that, I’m not optimistic.
  22. I got a 1/2 lb cheeseburger at the original location. Maybe it was the cheese. But your original point stands that $17 at M+O seems a little bit high for a burger, fries, and a drink. That price point seems more in line with Rodeo Goat, Hopdoddy, etc.
  23. We went to Musume last night. It’s the second location of a Dallas based Japanese restaurant, located in the Sandman hotel that took over the XTO building. Our table wasn’t ready when we arrived, so we had a drink in the lobby bar which was nice. The restaurant is in the basement and the seating layout was a little odd, which is my only complaint since our table was in this small area that felt a little claustrophobic. We are mainly sushi and it was good but nothing spectacular. It was priced similar to other sushi restaurants. I would go back if friends picked it, but not sure I would pick it on my own. Hatsuyuki remains my go-to sushi spot, just wish they took reservations.
  24. Fwiw, I had Kincaid’s this week and it was $13.31 for a burger, fries, and a drink.
  25. Saw it last night and loved it. That’s how you make an action movie, and Tom Cruise does it as well as anyone. We rewatched the other MI movies leading up to this and I was happy I did, but definitely not necessary and Dead Reckoning can stand on its own. I loved the Venice scenes, especially the fight on the bridge. The entire train sequence was fantastic as well. Lots of gorgeous women in this movie and they each played their roles very well. Looking forward to seeing more of Atwell, but also bummed about…you know. For being 2h43m, it never dragged for me. I didn’t want it to end.
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