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wild_turkey

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Posts posted by wild_turkey

  1. 2 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

     

     

    What a colossal waste of taxpayer money. Elon is using DOGE to go after his political enemies government waste, blanket firing thousands of Americans from their jobs because he claims they are wasteful, and meanwhile, Trump spends $200MM to proclaim to Americans that he did something good. That money would've paid 2,000 of the people fired a salary of $100K for a year. How in any way is that remotely justifiable? Even if you do believe his bullshit, wouldn't a tweet or a truth or a press conference or something have sufficed?

    I realize I'm asking stupid questions at this point, but it's maddening to see this unfolding. Telling everyone how much waste there is, then using massive tax dollars to publicly suck his own dick.

    • Hook 'Em 3
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  2. I hope Uncle Rico catches a stray.


    I think it would be hilarious if they keep him as a background character with no relevance to this season’s plot and no dialogue, then he gets accidentally killed in the crossfire.
  3. “No President – Republican or Democrat – can withhold Federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by Maine taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will. It is a violation of our Constitution and of our laws, which I took an oath to uphold. Maine may be one of the first states to undergo an investigation by his Administration, but we won’t be the last. Today, the President of the United States has targeted one particular group on one particular issue which Maine law has addressed. But you must ask yourself: who and what will he target next, and what will he do? Will it be you? Will it be because of your race or your religion? Will it be because you look different or think differently? Where does it end? In America, the President is neither a King nor a dictator, as much as this one tries to act like it – and it is the rule of law that prevents him from being so.


    We need more people like this.
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  4. 13 minutes ago, elfenix said:

    The GOP pledged to plant a trillion trees to combat climate change. There's currently about 3 trillion trees on earth. Where the fuck are they going to find the space to plant an additional trillion? It's not a serious solution, it's just a side show that they never plan on following through on, much like Hyperloop and the 1994 GOP health plan.

    https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-we-need-offset-our-carbon-emissions

  5. I understand all of the objections to vouchers (I'm in that camp), but can someone please provide the rationale for vouchers from those that support them? I'm struggling to see the upside for the vast majority of Texans.

    1. From the standpoint of Greg Abbott or one of our other elected state or local officials who is pushing for this, what is the sales pitch in favor of it? Are they saying that private schools are inherently better equipped to provide education than public schools? Isn't that an admission of failure on the part of The State of Texas that they are in control of? How does someone rationalize that? Are they acknowledging that only a small percentage of students will even receive a voucher? What do they claim will be the benefit for everyone else who doesn't receive or qualify for a voucher? Are they at least giving lipspeak to efforts to simultaneously put more money into public schools, or are they just admitting that public schools are failing and nothing can be done?

    2. From the standpoint of Tim Dunn or the Wilks brothers or other billionaires who are pushing for these changes, what are they proposing as the upside? Why do they want this?

    3. For the families living in any rural or semi-rural community with few or no private school options, what do they get out of it? What good does a private school voucher do for a family with no available private schools? What is Greg Abbott claiming their upside will be? Creation of new private schools to fill that gap? Will anything also be done to help their struggling small town school districts? Surely, many of these communities are filled with Republican voters who support this guy, but this shift seems to directly harm his voter base.

    4. For the families who already send their kids to private school, or who plan to in the future, but make too much money to qualify for a voucher, what is the upside? Additional applicants to their existing private school so the rates go up or their kid may not get accepted? How is the state claiming this will benefit them?

    Sorry, I know that's a ton of questions, but this entire situation is really hard to understand. If I saw a friend lighting money on fire or cutting off their own finger, I would have a similar list of ridiculous questions.

  6. 21 minutes ago, PTINS said:

    Every work colleague that anybody in my family ever met was praised and respected by my family. Two weeks out of college, and everybody blamed me for oil and gas prices quadrupling after Three Mile Island and the Iranian Revolution. Together, as the O&G industry, we were the scum of the earth.  

    One thing we were guilty of was efficiently and safely supplying what was demanded, 24/7/365.

    Hired into a Management Development Program, with a specific goal of identifying individuals who could run the company, I knew I worked with some of the best and the brightest in a company that emphasized safety and innovation, that pioneered change, and rewarded judgement and decision making.

    I also realized 90+% of the population would disagree with whatever I said or did, and it was a waste of time to try to help them understand. That would be one of the reasons I never posted in this thread til last week.

    We were not Academia, bathed in theory and righteousness.  Our stuff had to work. We were a for-profit, publicly traded, oil & gas company. One that was the focal point of everything that was wrong in the world, tangled in a web of hostility, layers and layers of laws, regulations and guidelines, and ignorance, both inside and outside the industry. 

    This is the climate thread but your post reads more like an explanation or a justification of your career in O&G, like maybe you are speaking to an O&G interest group or your family or a therapist, trying to explain your history. I'm not trying to be a dick. The world's understanding of these things was a lot different for most of your career, but we have learned a lot since then. There's a lot of shit we still do today that future generations may not look upon favorably. That's great that your family respected you and your colleagues; I just don't see what those past feelings have to do with climate change today and our path forward. 

    28 minutes ago, PTINS said:

    Makes every effort to prevent change? Other than efforts to enhance and improve safety, I cannot remember a single instance where that was ever the case.

    I never suggested that you, PTINS, personally stood in the way of progress to fight climate change. What I'm saying is that the O&G industry as a whole spends millions of dollars on lobbyists to prevent change. That seems pretty indisputable but someone please correct me if that is somehow inaccurate.

    44 minutes ago, PTINS said:

    There should be a balance between the hydrocarbons (oil & gas) and carbohydrates (potatoes) that are consumed for fuel and converted into carbon dioxide needs to be balanced with the consumption of CO2 that plants convert to oxygen.  You cannot have one without the other.

    We should plant more plants.

    We should plant more trees, but please tell me you don't seriously think that is the solution. Nothing to do with shifting away from fossil fuels, but simply plant more trees to restore the balance?

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  7. Listen to the Texas Take podcast from a couple weeks ago. They go into a 30 min deep dive, one thing brought up is a gop party leader in Fort Worth calling out this bill/setup as a vendor bill that’s being set up to benefit those hand picked management companies. They get a cut of the ~8% total admin overhead. If this grows to 5Bn as planned that means there’s $400M in admin fee less whatever the comptroller needs. 

    Someone should alert Elon and DOGE to go after this FRAUD!!! that is happening in his own state.
  8. People see me as their punching bag and I picked the absolute wrong thread to argue my case. Carry on. 


    In fairness to you, fossils fuels are very necessary for you to be able to dip on an airplane in 2025.

    Some of us are just hoping for a future in which people don’t dip on airplanes and fossils fuels comprise a much smaller percentage of global energy consumption.
  9. 14 hours ago, PTINS said:

    Human nature being what it is, putting free money, venture capitalists, "scientists" with an agenda, and politicians in the same room, is never a good idea.

    Interesting how you put "scientists" in quotation marks as if broadly scientists are suspect and untrustworthy, and then explain that they have an agenda. Maybe we should try that with everyone else as well:

    "Free money" with an agenda

    "Venture capitalists" with an agenda

    "Politicians" with an agenda

    "Midstream commercial developers" with an agenda

    "Oil and gas executives" with an agenda

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  10. How will the world function without fossil fuels?


    How will we ever find out if the O&G industry makes every effort to prevent change? People would rather bury their heads in the sand and condemn future generations if it means their current income and retirement plans are protected.

    The world today would not function without fossil fuels, but no one is suggesting we immediately stop using them overnight. That’s a ridiculous strawman argument and you know it.

    We need to reduce consumption and make progress towards better technologies, but we just elected a president who pulled out of the Paris Agreement because it “imposes unfair burdens on the American economy” (O&G lobbyists want him to help their stocks), and we are instead going to “Drill, baby, drill.”
  11. Very few public companies, if any, would make capital investments on those economics.
    Most large renewable projects have government support (subsidies). The absence of large scale commercial projects constructed with private equity is an indicator that those economics are challenging at best. 


    While that may be true, perhaps the future of the planet should not be left entirely up to public companies and capitalism. Those same public companies have done a shitload of damage to get us here today, and continue to lobby against efforts to shift away from fossil fuels.

    I would assume that any hope of solving this problem will involve a massive economic loss by governments around the world. This thread has suddenly painted government subsidies in a negative light, as if anything that receives a subsidy is an impractical technology, but these are all pieces of the puzzle and we can’t approach this problem from the standpoint of what is the most profitable.

    Is it profitable for multiple large hurricanes to hit the east coast and wildfires to destroy Hawaii and California? Imagine 50 years from now. How big of a government investment will be needed to build seawalls around Miami and New Orleans?
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  12. You’re correct. Because without government subsidies, because of its very low EROI, renewables wouldn’t comprise the mix they do. 

    Can you explain this last comment in more detail? I was under the impression that renewables, or at least wind energy, has a better EROI than sources like oil and natural gas.

    It looks like solar is considerably worse, but I assume a number of factors go into that with highly variable results.
  13. Watched The Gorge and thought it was mediocre at best. It felt like a cheap Netflix movie of the week and a notch below what I normally expect from Apple+.

    I liked Miles Teller in Top Gun and The Offer but his acting felt very flat in this, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to be in the movie or not. The supposed chemistry between him and ATJ was nonexistent.

    I wasn’t expecting much from the plot, just a popcorn action flick, but it somehow fell short of that.

  14. Did Musk really take over The Oval today, or are haters just being hyperbolic?

    It would appear so:

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/11/us/president-trump-news

    https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/11/politics/musk-trump-conflicts-of-interest/index.html

    What in the fuck is happening? When has a private citizen ever stood behind the POTUS desk in the Oval Office to address the media?

    We are so helplessly fucked and we have 1/3 of the country cheering this on and another 1/3 of the country oblivious and wondering why eggs are still expensive. And our entire government has been reduced to 2-3 lunatics wielding unprecedented and unchecked power.
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  15. I keep my cars as long as possible (my personal car is a 21 year old 4Runner with 225k miles and only the second car I’ve ever owned) and my wife’s Model 3 is a 2018 model (first year available, before Elon went completely batshit) that is paid off and I plan on keeping at least another 10 years if possible. So yeah, I’m going to keep it. And it’s a great car. But fuck that guy. The richest man in the world doesn’t care about my one car. 

    Very similar situation here. I had a 4Runner that was 19 years old before replacing it with a new 4Runner that I currently drive. Wife had a 4Runner that was 14 years old before replacing it with a Tesla Model Y, which was the best EV option we could find at the time of purchase in 2021.

    Due to Elon’s bullshit, I would very much like to replace her Model Y with a Rivian or other non-Tesla EV, but we are also considering moving houses in the near future, so that’s the financial priority. Switching her car now would be a dumb financial decision, but it is definitely on our list of things to do.

    There is no way in hell I would buy a Tesla now.
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  16. Makes zero sense. An embryo or zygote may have full rights, but that does not include the right to be inside a woman’s uterus. That is her choice because it’s her uterus. That goes for those fertilized outside and inside of an embryo.  
     
    we should all have the right to remove any foreign body from inside us. 

    If that bill were to pass, it would not only shut down IVF to future couples who need it, but it could create some significant legal problems for people who have already used it.

    Destroying an embryo would be considered murder. Suppose you’ve already been through IVF and you have unused embryos that are still frozen. What if you don’t have plans to use them? They will force implantation of all embryos or donate to another couple? What if the mother dies and only the father is left alive with embryos that he cannot biologically carry? Would he be legally required to find a surrogate mother?

    I guess you could say this is too radical to actually ever happen but look around at the radical shit happening lately.

    If I hypothetically had frozen embryos right now, perhaps I would hypothetically consider transferring them to another state, but Ken Paxton has previously indicated he would go after Texan women who leave the state for an abortion, so why should this be any different?
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