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Paper_jam

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Posts posted by Paper_jam

  1. I keep hearing suggestions that high energy prices are because environmental nuts have killed production of fossil fuels. But based on the data I can find, domestic oil production is only a few percent down from it's high (2019): 
    2018: 5,588,101,000 barrels of crude oil + petroleum products  
    2019: 6,246,598,000 barrels of crude oil + petroleum products 
    2020: 6,023,457,000 barrels of crude oil + petroleum products  
    2021: 6,052,509,000 barrels of crude oil + petroleum products 

    The EIA says 2022 oil production is running above 2021, and forecasts that 2023 will set a record for US crude oil production.

    https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/us_oil.php

    When it comes to natural gas, the story is about the same--steadily increasing US production with a peak in 2019, a slight decline in 2020, and we are now nearly back up to 2019 production levels.

    So at least for oil & gas, the numbers I can find don't support the theory that we've slashed production. Whether current production is enough to keep up with demand is another matter.

    Now coal production in the US has indeed fallen off a cliff in the last 10 years. I'm not too broken up about that as coal is nasty and I'd prefer it only be used in situations where natural gas isn't available in sufficient quantities.

     

     

     

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  2. It looks to me like Travis County new cases are creeping up to (very roughly) 200+/day, where we were more like 100/day a month ago. That's based on the DSHS data in the lower left panel of the site linked below. I hate to see the trend inching up, but I'm certainly not surprised given that so many people, including me, are back in the office, starting to dine out, travel, etc.

    https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/39e4f8d4acb0433baae6d15a931fa984

     

     

  3. 2 hours ago, longhornmatt said:

    I just want to say I’m on the side of the guy who used a BOGO coupon on a first date and not the stuck up girl who can’t appreciate a frugal partner.  Also, my thoughts on this matter may or may not be influenced by the amount of purchases my wife made on our AMEX last month.

    Using a BOGO is fine with me; the even more pro move would be to get her to pay for the "buy one" part.

    Yeah I'm still single why do you ask?

     

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  4. I can see a point not too far off where my property taxes will equal or exceed my federal income tax liability, unless my income goes up a lot unexpectedly. (And I only own one home.) Glad I bought when I did--despite a higher salary now than in 2002, I couldn't buy my own house again based on it's current value and my current salary.

  5. Let's say I live in Austin and want to watch Astros games this season. I have Youtube TV as my provider. What channel(s) are going to carry the Astros?

    (This is where you tell me, silly boy, the Astros games won't be on any regular basic cable network, they're only on some AT&T-exclusive bullshit. And even if an Astros game happens to fall onto a basic cable channel, it's going to be blacked out in Austin for reasons.)

     

     

  6. I hope it's OK to start a thread on this; I ran a search and found threads for prior tax years, but not for TY 2021.

    To start things off, I'll ask about something that happened to my TY 2020 return, which may affect my filing for TY 2021. This is a 1041 return for a family trust. For TY 2020, when preparing the 1041 I calculated that I had overpaid by (approximately) $2000. Instead of requesting a refund, I selected the choice to have that overpayment credited to my future 2021 return.

    A few months after filing the 2020 return, I received a terse notice from IRS stating that I owed an additional $700 (roughly), which I paid promptly by check. The notice did not indicate how the IRS arrived at the additional amount due, or what it meant for the amount that I had previously requested be applied to my 2021 taxes. So now I'm uncertain if I can still claim that full $2000 amount as a credit towards my 2021 taxes, as intended, or if some or all of it was actually "consumed" by the IRS towards my 2020 tax liability, which was apparently more than I had calculated.

    When a taxpayer indicates the choice for an overpayment to be credited to next year's return, does IRS "lock it in" for only that purpose, or can IRS apply some or all of that "overpayment" amount to the current-year tax due, if additional tax liability is discovered? Thanks for any feedback.

  7. If shit were to hit the fan,  what are the most likely targets (in Central Texas) for a strike? Warhead counts are not as high now as they were 30-40 years ago, so I don't know if we'd just have one or two bombs coming to our fair city, or a whole slew of them. I'm not a Russian war planner but off the top of my head, the following come to mind:  

    Downtown Austin & Capitol area

    UT area

    ABIA

    Pickle Research/IBM area

    Decker power plant

    Fayette power plant

    Samsung plant

    Fort Hood

    Mansfield Dam?

    Cedar Park & Round Rock?

    and lots of military stuff in/around San Antonio

     

  8. On 3/6/2022 at 12:33 PM, synoptic said:

    This is correct.  The most accurate and reliable Russian ballistic missiles are the Bulava SLBM and the Yars ICBM.  That is what they will likely lead with and what a given city has the greatest chance of getting hit with.  Both of these have 100 - 200 kT war heads.  A 200 kT warhead has a fireball/instant vaporization radius of less than half a mile.  The kill radius is much larger than that, but if you aren't within half a mile of a strike, chances are you won't be vaporized.

    https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/  

    What concerns me is that if you're far enough away from potential targets that you don't get vaporized immediately, but still within 10 miles or so, it may take some time (a number of seconds anyway) for the blast wave to reach you...during which time you will be literally roasting alive from the radiant heat of the fireball. It would be anything but a quick, painless death.

  9. Too much teal in that Mercedes livery for my tastes. I know its a Petronas thing but Merc should tell them to go pound sand, it's not a racy color. Would look better if all the teal areas were done in red.

     

  10. Austin trash collection is seriously fucking with me. If I have a small item or small extra bag of garbage in the trash can, they always leave it or put it back in the can. I don't know how they actually empty the cans, I thought they use a mechanical arm that turns the can over and shakes everything out, but however they do it, is not fucking working. Today I had a small second bag on top of a kitchen-size bag underneath it. Somehow the large bag (on the bottom) is gone but the small bag of shit is still in the can. That's impossible unless one of their workers put it back in my can instead of throwing it in the truck. Do they have an official policy of refusing to collect trash in "nonstandard" bags or containers? If this was a one-off I wouldn't care, but it's happening almost every week now. Next time I'm going to stand on the fucking curb all day and scream at them "TAKE MY SHIT. TAKE IT ALL."

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  11. I'm glad the state has good medical and pension, because otherwise I look back at my career (specifically salary and lack of regular COLA) and get really depressed about what I made/make compared to seemingly everyone else in this city (considering education, etc.). If you had told me 25 years ago what my salary would be in 2022, I'd probably say "hey that sounds OK" but back then I didn't know a house in Austin was going to cost a million fucking dollars (more or less).

     

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  12. I don't know WTF happened at Ullrich, but if unclean water did enter the citywide distribution system, as was my understanding, how does me running my cold water taps for 1-5 minutes flush all that out? It seems like there could be a huge volume of potentially-tainted water still lingering in the system. Even if certain locations tested clean, how do we know whether those samples are representative of conditions along the whole system?

    Or should I just be quiet and have faith that our municipal leaders and institutions have really fixed it?

     

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  13. 10 minutes ago, TXSG8R said:

    So my mom’s flight from ATL to Austin still hasn’t been cancelled. Are the roads still fucked down there?  

    Anything elevated (flyovers, upper decks, etc.) is probably iced, although they might be sanded by now. In my area (NE Austin) the neighborhood surface roads are still drivable but there are icy spots, Concrete sidewalks and driveways have ice & sleet.  Anything still wet is likely to freeze as it gets colder tonight.  It's really borderline and may even depend on the part of town (N. side, south, etc.). 

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