Jump to content

Nice Guy Eddie

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    14666
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Nice Guy Eddie

  1. If weather permits, I’m looking to go to Waco. Sounds like the small towns are freaking out and will most likely make the traffic problems worse.

    of course I’m quickly losing faith that the weather will work out for most. I’m sure that some spots in Texas will get lucky with last second clear views which will be impossible to predict.

  2. 6 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

    The bigger impact will be rural areas.  There’s probably 100-150 counties (or more) that would dry up and blow away if their schools are wrecked,

    School issues aside, there are counties in Texas that could be consolidated. No one can justify Loving county with 50 residents.

  3. 2 hours ago, immamac said:

    apathy in general is setting in at a societal level. If it isn't quick brain tingles it's just not happening. People can't be bothered to read anymore, can't be bothered to do anything. 

    I seriously have no idea what people think they are doing to be productive or additive to society with their work, school feels the same way - why the fuck does it actually take a full semester to learn what they are trying to teach? I don't think it does, it has more to do with kids need to go somewhere that is away from their parents than it is about the curriculum needing that much time to set in. The access to information and ability to test for comprehension is such a short cycle now that traditional school learning is actually pretty fucking stupid at this point if you have a competent person driving accountability and outcome based learning. 

     

    I fail to comprehend where some of these high school kids are going to land in the future in terms of a job or career, but as a 55 year old without kids, I guess it's not really my problem. I do think we've been failing our kids the last couple of decades and letting them slide in school doesn't seem to be a good solution. If someone has a good solution, I'm happy to do my part including higher taxes if it actually helps the future.

    I understand the opinion that some knowledge/info workers don't need an university degree full of unnecessary classes, but a degree represents more than sum of the individual classes. It shows completion of a long term commitment. For some of us, that commitment was shaky at times but we got through it. Personally I wouldn't hire someone today that showed up with a handful of online classes and a certification that may or may not have value.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  4. Seems crazy to me to think that rules, competency and morals are to be followed in a war, especially now that we can kill people in a way where the operator is more detached than they if they were playing a video game.

    I imagine that there is a small percentage of the heroes in Arlington Cemetery that were killed accidentally by fellow Americans. And in the same wars, innocent civilians are killed at a higher rate.

    I'm very much a pacifist but also a realist when it comes to how war operates. What is occurring in Gaza has been occurring for centuries or thousands of years.

  5. 22 minutes ago, immamac said:

    Would you have let her take the exam early with no penalty? 

     

    11 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

    And have her sell the test questions?  

    That's a no for me, dog.

    I know of a similar story that occurred with an Astronomy 301 final in the late 80s. 

  6. 6 minutes ago, F250 said:

    This has always been a thing. It was when I was a kid and I did it when my kids were in school. In elementary and middle school, by high school students have a lot more commitments that they can't miss out on.

    An unexcused absence doesn't lower your grade.

    Wasn't a thing when I went to school in the 70s and 80s. Of course then again I went to a relatively poor school. Hell my parents did well, and our only annual vacation was 2 weeks in August.

    And yes, unexcused absences definitely lowered your grade after a certain point. 

  7. 4 minutes ago, Pancho said:

    in higher ed, we’re noticing students come to class for the first 6-7 weeks then just stop coming. This is nationwide. And they still expect a passing grade in the class even when they’ve missed the last 9-10 weeks of the course. 

    I assume that many kids got a pass for barely participating in the pandemic, and some parents noticed that the sky didn't fall. Of course being a dumbass kid with no ambition/plans is not really felt until a few years down the road after you can't earn a living. 

    On @Pancho note about online influencers, I've watched a few clips where kids are being told by their peers, that school is a waste of time. While this peer is flashing money, cars, girls, etc. My viewing was other channels reacting poorly or laughing at these clips.

  8. I'm not saying the good ol' school days were better, but I only recall missing 1-2 days of school (K-12) due to reason other than illness. It was my grandmother's death when I was in 3rd grade.  Admittedly I did have a problem pretending to be sick because I wanted a break.

    As mentioned above, I regularly hear my friends talk about pulling their kids out of school for vacation because flights are cheaper on some days. Personally I could care less but that didn't seem allowable when I was in school. It was an unexcused absence that lowered your grade, and in theory could hold you back if it occurred too often.

    • Hook 'Em 3
  9. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/29/us/chronic-absences.html no paywall but ads: https://archive.is/91mrf

    Nationwide absences (edit: chronic absenteeism) have doubled to 26% from before the pandemic.  Quotes on the reasons

    Quote

    some families now go on ski trips during the school year, or take advantage of off-peak travel deals to vacation

    often have to stay home to care for younger siblings... On days they miss the bus, their parents are busy working or do not have a car to take them to school.

    teachers are still expected to post class work online, often nothing more than a skeleton version of an assignment, families incorrectly think students are keeping up

    And more students are struggling with their mental health... Because many parents can work remotely, their children can also stay home.

     I can understand why parents aren't always worried about a kid missing a day of school but this feels like a drastic change where we don't know the outcome.

    School.JPG

  10. 19 minutes ago, texasdago said:

    Seems like the forecast chances are not improving, especially for those who have made expensive or long-distance plans.

    Stories about people booking multiple hotels/AirBnBs across the country to mitigate weather issues. I imagine Texas hotels and hosts are being hit when cancellations which is painful if they had customer-friendly cancellation rates. 

    Shame that Texas is looking so poor across the board. You would have thought either south or north Texas would have been clear. I've planned to take off Monday from work to drive from Houston but doubtful I will do that now unless the weather offers better chances somewhere in Texas. 

  11. One more piece of advice that I recommend for anyone dealing with parent who is entering assisted living, hospice, dementia care, etc: talk to a consultant. There are people who can answer almost any question you have. In my experience they get paid from the living facilities/services that they recommend. Obviously keep that in mind.

    In Houston, I found that Lori at the following was invaluable teaching me about everything senior care/living related. http://www.seniorlivingspecialistshouston.com/

    I never asked her about the Medicaid lookback but I would assume that consultants understand that very well.

    • Hook 'Em 3
  12. My mom had LTC insurance that was a blessing in allowing her to stay in assisted living near me (central.) If she didn't have the LTC, she would have had to stay in a place that was further (suburbs) from me. I found that Genworth Ins was awesome with my mom's LTC. They didn't have a problem qualifying her. They were inconsistent in payment dates so I made sure my mom's bank account wasn't dependent on the payment being received on the exact same date each month. I padded her account by a month's expenses.

    As for getting LTC for us younger folks, I would love to but I worry about the benefit time coverage and the uncertainty of rising premiums while waiting to someday use the benefit. 

    On note of utilizing hospice care, the answer is 100% yes assuming that the person is effectively done with curative care. And even with that, you can opt out of hospice whenever you want, and re-apply.

    • Hook 'Em 4
    • Like 1
  13. 2 hours ago, Pancho said:

    More evident of LSU/Iowa Race War 2.0:

    right wing social media are now dogging LSU for not being out there during the national anthem while Iowa was. 

    Let me be clear—there was a change to the pre-game situation in NCAAW basketball about 4-5 years ago. The pre-game stuff (announcements, playing of school songs, playing of national anthem) starts at the 15:00 mark on the pregame clock. Nearly all teams go back inside until around 3 min remaining on the clock, and at that time, all announcements are done. Teams wanted to do this because they’d rather have more time to stretch and go over final game notes and stuff without the distraction of the crowd/announcer. 

    I’m not sure if Iowa has done this all season, but it was actually abnormal for Iowa to stay out there for the anthem and not go in. 

    Conservative LSU fans must be at a loss on how to react. They must simultaneously love Mulkey while hating the team. 

  14. 7 hours ago, royiv said:

    If the unlikely happens and we end up with a Speaker Jeffries, it will be one of the most satisfying instance of finding out ever. Do it, GQP.

    Wouldn’t it only take 1 or 2 of the GOP reps to announce that they’ve had enough and will caucus with the democrats? Seems like Jeffries could offer up some committee chairs to make that happen.

  15. I would guess that for some of the cases when the convicted are getting a low or no prison sentence, it’s due to the prosecutor having evidence or testimony problems. The children or parents of the children, may not want to testify even in a closed court. At least with a guilty plea, the convicted will be on offender registries.

    the real tragedies are when they are allowed to plead guilty to lesser crimes.

  16. One thing I took away from the article is that Mulkey is anti-LGBT which is odd considering her sport. It’s most likely tied to her background and beliefs and potentially even politics.

    She has gay players on her teams so she’s not anti in the sense that she wants a gay person shunned from society. However her don’t ask-don’t tell attitude is anti LGBT. Ex-players spoke up that they were told to be discrete and that Mulkey didn’t want to know their personal life. I have to wonder that she would have said the same if a straight player mentioned a boyfriend.

    as for the Post pulling punches, they may have given the article more scrutiny given Mulkeys threats. Perhaps downplay a single sourced anonymous story or quote. Flip that into implications or let the reader read between the lines. But to think that the Post was afraid of Mulkey is laughable.

    finally perhaps outside of her relationship with her children I’m unsure if anyone likes her, or is she has ever been nice to anyone.

  17. Inactive wallets are impossible to fully categorize in terms of why are they inactive. Recently there was a story that an inactive wallet moved its entire balance (1,000 BTC?) for the first time in over a decade. Previously those 1,000 BTC would have been considered lost by many.

    "Satoshi" is estimated to have between 600K and 1.1m in BTC. There is a range because of the uncertainty of whether all of the potential wallets are his.  That range equates to $44-73B USD.

    If there was a withdrawal from those wallets, it would destabilize the price. The lost coins are effectively built into the current price.

     

    • Hook 'Em 1
  18. 3 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

    Some may hit their limits.  Yass clearly didn't.  Trump is worth billions more this week than last week.  I would not assume that's the end of the gravy train.  (Accessing that "wealth" may prove difficult in the short term, but it's still his.)

    Let’s see what Trump’s company is worth on the stock market when most of the shares, including his,  are tradeable. I’m unsure there has ever been a company having this type of valuation with so few customers/users and such low revenue.  It lost $49mm on $3mm revenue. That itself isn’t unheard of with startups but those startups are not valued at $9b on the public market.

    my assumption is that this is some combination of GameStop/short squeeze and relatively few shares available for trading. But we’ll see. Regardless trump can’t sell today and I can’t imagine anyone letting him borrow much on his stake.

     

    • Hook 'Em 2
  19. 14 hours ago, Guadaloopy said:

    Yes.  The reasoning for that method of “attack” is more thoroughly fleshed out in the book

    I only gotten 1/2 thru book 1 so almost everything in the series is new to me. This part of the episode made little sense to me because there was little context.

  20. 7 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

    ha. I was more curious what your verbal response/conversation was when he told you that, as well as whether or not you believed him or thought he was just fucking with you becuase 18-22 year old kid. 

    I bet that many young men are likely to encounter peer pressure to vote for Trump. At least in the sense that the vocal minority in a friend/acquaintance group are the ones who bring up Biden's senility and that only betas or losers vote Dem.

    In an extended friend group, I recently encountered a guy who went on how he wasn't friends with liberals. I mentioned that I frequently vote Democrat. He folded like a cheap suit. "I was only joking bro." My attitude and actual thought was that his opinion meant nothing to me.

    • Hook 'Em 7
  21. 10 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

    I think Yass's bet is that if he can get Trump re-elected he can kill or severely downgrade the Dept of Education and make bank in charter schools or becoming the "subcontractor" that provides education. 

    I doubt that Trump is asking very little at this point to enact whatever the donor wants. Saudis - you want to develop nuclear weapons? Hell, I will give you nuclear weapons if you get me elected.

  22. With the RNC and Trump broke for this election cycle, I can't wait (and simultaneously dread) to see their lawyers and spokespeople especially with the inevitable election fraud claims. The future tv appearances will make the Rudy post-election press conferences look like a MENSA debate.

    As for some right wing billionaires willing to prop up the RNC and Trump, even some of them may hit their limits. It's one thing to put $1m into Abbott's campaign but something else to give $500m to Trump.

     

×
×
  • Create New...