Posts posted by SydneyCarton
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On 12/24/2025 at 2:36 PM, Nice Guy Eddie said: About a month ago I saw a Waymo car in the Heights with someone in the driver seat. I had read they were running tests in Houston. Last night I saw a Waymo car driving down Shepherd that looked to have no one in it. This apparently has become a thing over the last few weeks.
at some unpublicized date, they will flip a switch and allow paying customers like with Uber. I would have to guess that it’s soon if driverless cars are moving around without problems.
Anyway that was the first time I ran across a driverless car.
Funny you mention that, I saw my first driverless Waymo last week on Shepherd too. Guess they're getting close.
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6 hours ago, Steamboat1874 said:My god you guys are stupid.
You have no idea what my musical experience is but one thing for sure rap is not serious “music”.
Try listening to CSNY or the Byrds or god forbid The Beatles.
You know guys that could not only write great songs but could actually play instruments and sing like harmonies and shit.
Shut the fuck up, Grandpa. And you might want to try not being the most Aggie thing in the fucking aTm thread.
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3 minutes ago, chainsaw said:
Doesn't sound nearly painful and humiliating enough for what that piece of shit deserves.
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13 minutes ago, TexArcher said:
Eh, I would argue that atheism is not a belief system, but the lack of one particular belief. But Trump does not have the clarity of thought to be really pro- or anti- anything. He just wants to get the money.
Hmm, maybe he should be at the Christian table, next to Joel Osteen, etc? I mean, all it takes is a *professed* belief, right?
Either way, he can't sit near me. I can't go back to prison.
You see, I think of atheism more as a belief that there are no deities.
Hm. It is hard to argue with your Christian Table position. -
Edited by SydneyCarton
5 minutes ago, Js1 said:I'm not saying she's hot, but I've seen Indian women that are about 100x worse than that second lady. But good point, we're going to need some cultural pictures to debate here.
I visited Copenhagen about 15 years ago, in the middle of the wintertime. 20-30 degree weather. The river was frozen. And still a ton of hot AF tall blond women wearing sun-dresses and skirts peddling their asses to wherever the hell they were going. Fucking paradise. -
34 minutes ago, TexArcher said:
As an atheist, our table is full, sorry.
He can go stand by the anarchist table and see if a spot opens up. Maybe one of them will brain him with a skateboard.
I mean, you realize atheism is a belief system, while anarchism is a political philosophy, right? Apples Oranges.
I think he's yours (ours) unless maybe the Zoroastrian table will take him. -
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48 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:
What could possibly go wrong.
https://www.theverge.com/news/847159/trump-media-tae-technologies-merger-nuclear-fusion
Trump Media is merging with a nuclear fusion company
Now he's getting into green energy? I'm sure his followers would love that if they knew how to read.
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9 hours ago, Huckleberry said:
I haven't unfriended anyone on Facebook and have only unfollowed a couple from my feed who were nonstop MAGA posting. But I still have hundreds of "friends" on there who voted for Trump three times, guaranteed. I don't actually get on there much but usually after Trump does something and I check, there are dozens of posts about how great he is and how right he is and all that.
Not a single post from any friend about the speech tonight. He has no juice right now. There are going to be a LOT of migrant caravans massing at our border according to Fox News late summer 2026.
I don't think the Strong On Border Security squad is going to be pointing out migrant caravans this time. I think they'll need to find something else Biden could be responsible for...
5 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:More electable than an out atheist.
Trump is an atheist.
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10 hours ago, Rimbo said:
For reasons unrelated to anything, I was in a discussion today and learned that locally, preschools are struggling to get full enrollment. Which reminded me that I'm Gen X and that this can be a problem if kids aren't born. So I looked it up.
Kids aren't being born.
It's not as bad as that extreme low point, the nadir of Gen X when Nicole and I managed to scream our way out of our mothers' guts, but it's low.Note that this is the absolute number of births, not even the birth rate. Which is as you'd expect.
Anyway. Pretty dang interesting to me that the actual number of births is so low. This will have some pretty severe economic implications a quarter of a century from now.
But we're already seeing it affect preschools.
Well, I guess you've never watched a Peter Zeihan video on youtube. Every third one relates to various demographic catastrophes happening around the world, but particularly in Russia and China.
Long story short, there's almost nowhere in the world where births and birth rates AREN'T declining. It's not a US problem, is a worldwide problem. Now there's plenty of reasons. As many posters here have pointed out, there's a very large trend with the young here in the US where they don't feel they can afford a family, what with the housing costs, the cost of living, and the cost of health insurance, unsteady job market, etc. This is also reflected dual income households...both parents need to work. This has existed for awhile.Another relevant point is that...we're not an agrarian culture anymore. Families aren't having kids anymore because they don't need free labor. Then you've got the social ineptitude/disinterest things you're starting to see here in America, and which has exited in Japan for awhile. Kids don't want to fuck.
There's dozens of different reasons, and they're somewhat different in each country. But The last thing I read is that while America is in decline for births and birth rates, we're actually one of the countries declining the least rapidly compared to much of the rest of the world. Another interesting point is that, demographically, it also makes sense for America to increase immigration to combat this issue. Of course, we don't have any jobs or manufacturing to support that, but it's a thing to consider.
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
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44 minutes ago, Anastasis said:
What's a few hundred thousand force sterilized or some light regime destablization and torture training, right?
Humanitarian efforts need to be totally divorced from regime change and other front operations. Sorry that when you mix those things and roll them up under the same umbrella it is going to be to the detriment of the valuable humanitarian efforts.
These are not particularly outlandish thoughts, and would have been widely accepted on this board prior to the Orange Man.
Here's a NYT opinion piece from 2014 striking the same chords: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/04/15/when-is-foreign-aid-meddling/secret-programs-hurt-foreign-aid-efforts
There is a world of difference between American foreign assistance programs that openly support democratic development, human rights and socioeconomic progress, and the type of clandestine operations aimed at regime change that United States Agency for International Development has been running under the guise of a “democracy” promotion program in Cuba. Those programs are not only counterproductive, they are an abject violation of Cuba’s sovereignty, undermine American interests in Cuba’s slow but steady political and economic transition, and endanger the legitimate missions of U.S.A.I.D. around the world.
U.S.A.I.D. was created in 1961 to help the United States win the “hearts and minds” of citizens in poor countries through civic action, economic aid and humanitarian assistance. As a cold war policy tool, the agency was, at times, used as a front for C.I.A. operations and operatives. Among the most infamous examples was the Office of Public Safety, a U.S.A.I.D. police training program in the Southern Cone that also trained torturers.
In the 21st century, U.S.A.I.D. has overcome its tainted legacy and undertaken humanitarian, political and economic work around the globe. It runs democracy promotion efforts from Afghanistan to Kenya — building political leadership capacity, electoral education and registration programs, and judicial reform projects — with little controversy. It is when U.S.A.I.D. undertakes “discreet” regime change operations that it runs into trouble. Indeed, its Office of Transition Initiatives now seems to be competing with, or at least complementing, the C.I.A. on hi-tech propaganda and destabilization programs in Cuba, if not elsewhere as well.
Regime-change programs have a negative impact on larger U.S. foreign policy interests as well as on the legitimacy of U.S.A.I.D.’s own core missions to advance global health and economic welfare. At a Senate hearing on U.S.A.I.D.’s budget last week, Senator Patrick Leahy told the agency's administrator, Rajiv Shah, that his oversight committee was receiving “lots of emails” from aid workers around the world asking this question: “How could they do this and put us in such danger?” The solution is simple: ban U.S.A.I.D. from conducting such covert operations in the name of advancing democracy.
You’re anti forced sterilization? You know one might argue letting 600k die in one of the most long and painful ways possible is a form of sterilization.
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Edited by SydneyCarton
2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:I didn’t. That’s one of the shocking realities of brand loyalty. Loyalty is very durable and brand loyal people are, by and large, willing to put up with injury. Isn’t that weird? And yet it plays out that way over and over, at individual and population level scales.
You can hurt them, over and over, and then the sun shines, and people forget.
Not sure how I read your post twice before responding and still read insult as injury.
But I can’t agree. I do not believe 100% of the parents of camp mystic will be sending their other children back there. I’d be willing to wager the percentage is well under 50/50. Brands can be injured, despite the backfire effect.
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5 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:
Their economic status quo has been getting worse for five decades- that’s how brand loyalty works. It’s an elasticity killer. That’s literally how you measure the value of the brand: how much more loyal customers are willing to pay, just for the brand.
There are only a couple of things that can damage brand loyalty: insult, indifference, and incoherence.
What’s happening to the Republican Party right now is all three- they keep saying “we’re winning,” when they are losing, and they are speaking to their least loyal (ie most persuadable)customers in a way that ignores their concerns and tells them explicitly that their values don’t matter.
Democrats do that constantly of course, but at the moment, they aren’t in charge so they don’t have to defend themselves.Like a Frog in boiling water? Except what dies isn't the brand, it's just democracy. You know, the economic status quo has been getting worse in Russia/The USSR/Russian Federation for like...75 years. How's that working out for them and their brand?
I also reject your list of 3 things that can damage brand loyalty out of hand. But I'll play along. We'll go ahead and assign, for the purposes of this conversation, that removing a bunch of poor people's health care in red states, people who often don't even have any concept that their health is coming from the ACA and government subsidies, as Injury. As you said, injury can damage a brand. And here I am, cheering for maximum Injury. You're choosing for less Injury in favor of...I guess we'll call laughing at Mike Johnson Incoherence, I guess? -
Just now, Bozo_Casanova said:
I think you and I see the behaviors of the voting public differently. You’re describing voters as semi-rational actors making a direct connection between the tangible impact of policy and the messaging around it. I don’t think that’s how this works right now.
I see the voting public as a market where about 85% of the buyers have near-total brand loyalty, and the ability to take and hold share among the remaining 15% is a function of wholistic marketing execution and discipline that is maintained through consistency across all four Ps: relevant Product, at the right Price, with the right Promotion, for the right People. A fractured party is going to struggle with any of that.That's not how it works right now because no one, in great numbers, has truly had to face the reality of their decisions and see a real, hard impact on their day to day lives. It's all noise that they can choose to turn out and stay in their safe little tribal silos. A fractured party MIGHT struggle some with messaging, but messaging doesn't fucking matter nearly as much if the people can take the baseline and tune shit out, and if nothing really changes.
You want to shake things up and make people question their brand loyalty? Well, for starters, you've got to really change their day to day status quo for the worse. That's usually the pocketbook.

Quinn "La Joya" Ewers - The Man The Myth The Mullet, Now Starting for the Miami Dolphins
in Football
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Edited by SydneyCarton
OL and run game are about the only components I’d blame on Sark. And some of the OL was attributable to Ewers sacking himself and having happy feet.
I’m not sure I’d attribute footwork to Sark since at the end of the day, the player has to execute it in games. We don’t know whether he got coaching on that or not. Sark called plays to Ewers strengths, which we obviously saw in the change of playcalling to Arch, so I think that’s bullshit.
At the end of the day, Ewers is an extremely talented QB physically with some issues between the ears, but we’re all cheering for him. Except Derka. Also, let’s not pretend the OL for the dolphins isn’t dog shit, so the OL concerns ring hollow to me. Achane is a stud despite the weak OL, and if you disagree Tua’s mush brain would like a word.