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Snake Diggity

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Everything posted by Snake Diggity

  1. If the Astros traded Jeremy Pena, Jake Meyers, and Mauricio Dubon and came away from the offseason adding Luis Arraez, Drew Rasmussen, Merrill Kelly, Victor Caratini, and 2 really good (Cam Smith level) prospects, how would we feel? CF Smith 3B Paredes DH Alvarez SS Correa LF Altuve 2B Arraez 1B Walker C Diaz RF Sanchez bench: Urias, Caratini, Melton, Matthews SP: Brown, Rasmussen, Kelly, Javier, Arrighetti, Pearson RP: Hader, Abreu, Sousa, King, Okert, De Los Santos, McCullers
  2. I was lucky that back in 2007 I read The Art of the Deal when I was in a period where I was reading a shitload of biographies. At the time I remembered Trump from being on a segment of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”, and I figured “there’s got to be more to this guy”. Reading that book cured me of that notion, and so going into 2016 I knew Trump was nothing but a smarmy trust fund baby douchebag. So I’m proud that I never voted for him even though in 2016 I was still pretty conservative on quite a few issues. That said, I never in a million years would have guessed that Trump would do as much damage to our country as he has done and is trying to do. My experience with talking to MAGA or MAGA-adjacent friends has been wildly different from yours. I have found it to be a completely hopeless, depressing endeavor regardless of who I’m talking to and how delicately it is handled. For the most part, I’ve ended up just learning more and more shit about my friends that makes me question whether I can sustain our relationship at all. Even the friends of mine who I assumed were pretty level headed and intelligent and just voted for Trump because they were going along with the folks in their bubble turned about to be total shitbirds. Honestly one of the most depressing moments of my life over the last decade was when one of my best friends, a great guy who was a groomsman in my wedding, who has a masters degree and is not someone I would at all have considered a complete dumbfuck, suggested on our group text thread in all seriousness that Donald Trump Jr. might make a good GOP nominee in 2028. Fuck me running I still cringe when I think about that. Anyway, I’m glad you’re making headway with people in your circle but I’m not holding my breath for any kind of mass conversion short of an economic depression forcing everyone’s hand, which I don’t think is certain but is possible. Otherwise the best realistic case is that he dies and things slowly go back to “normal”, so all the MAGA/Trumper fucks just stop talking about it and we can hopefully forget that so many people close to us are morally bankrupt morons.
  3. I purchased 3 regular sized candy bars (Butterfinger, Reese’s Stix, Peanut Butter Snickers) at the Cstore last week. $11. wtf?!?!
  4. Demographic shifts and flight to suburbs. Lots of childless people moving into Austin and lots of families moving out to Dripping Springs, Lake Travis, Cedar Park, Leander, Round Rock, etc.
  5. As I transition into an old, futurism is something I have become very interested in. I’d love for this thread to revive and have regular dialogue. Anybody have any links/books for recommended reading on futurism? I have read The Next 100 Years by George Friedman; I think his prediction of Turkey as an increased regional power will come true. And depending on how the next 10-15 years go, I think his prediction of the US as a continued superpower will be correct. I’ve also read Homo Deus by Yuval Harari. It was very interesting but I dont know how much of it will actually happen. One thing I was looking at today via AI is what % of current workers/workhours we would need to sustain the standard of living of various points in the past given current technology. This is what it/we came up with: 1750: <1% 1950: 10-20% 1980: 15-30% 2000: 40-50%
  6. Winner Just got back from Disney World and they have a ride called Living With The Land, which takes you through their onsite farm. They had vertical farming there on a small scale that they use to supply some of the restaurants in the parks.
  7. I was wondering exactly what your theory was here, and it looks like “GOP CIA recruits Nazi to run as Democrat for Maine Senate”. That is fucking stupid. This guy got a stupid tattoo while drunk, didn’t know it was Nazi shit, found out, and is having it removed. Now, getting that tattoo in the first place was not good. And not finding out what it meant before now and having it removed was also not good. Both of those things are really stupid and enough reason for a lot of people not to vote for him. Nobody is “stanning” for him. We just aren’t flinging ourselves into conspiracy theory idiocy.
  8. I know the party didn’t have to approve him entering the race. But he didn’t come completely out of nowhere. Even if he did (he didn’t), the party should have immediately sniffed this out and called it out. “Whoa whoa whoa this dude is not one of us, he has a Nazi tattoo, errbody take a step back from this mf” is not that hard to do. It’s especially important because now the guy’s campaign has momentum and dollars that could have gone elsewhere. If the tattoo is affiliated with nazism and he didn’t get it removed immediately after finding that out, he is an epic dumbshit and should be out of the race, for being too stupid to be a Senator. But there is no reality where he is a secret Nazi.
  9. Nobody gives a fuck about info from Jewish Insider. The tattoo story got legs right before the podcast interview so the guy had to ask about it. They might’ve discussed it before the interview but it’s extremely unlikely that the Jewish Insider piece was why he went on the podcast. If the tattoo really does have nazi affiliation, and the dude was made aware of it anytime before 2 weeks ago, and didn’t get it removed, then he’s an epic dumbass, and that would be what would disqualify him as a candidate. And it’s damning of the Democratic Party leadership that this wasn’t sniffed out before he even announced his candidacy. But it’s really not plausible that the guy is some secret nazi or ever actually held nazi beliefs.
  10. Oh fuck off. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1601632024549399&surface_type=vod&referral_source=vod_deeplink_unit
  11. “The GOP controls the Senate, the House, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. Anything wrong with the function of the federal government is THEIR FAULT, and it’s not debatable. If folks want the way the government is operating to change, they should vote accordingly in November 2026.” - the fucking ONLY thing any democrat should be saying when asked about any current political issue Dems need to quit making any attempt to keep these dumb motherfuckers in charge from flying the fucking plane into the fucking mountain. An economic depression might be the only way to cure this shit.
  12. Astros prospects showing really well in the fall league. Janek has been one of the best overall players in the whole league so far. Sullivan is playing really well. Hicks and Brito have been extremely good thru 2 appearances each. I expect that Wohlgemuth and Leach will be like Danny Meszaros but overall Houston’s farm is looking good based on what we’ve seen in Arizona so far.
  13. I am probably just being cynical. But I looked around, and even though there were tens of thousands of people down there, I just saw a bunch of people who voted for Harris and Biden and Clinton. I didn’t see anyone acting nearly angry enough; people were acting happy and enthusiastic. And even though it’s millions of people across the country I don’t think any one in power on either side is going to really take any kind of positive action because of it. We’ll get a temperature check in 12.5 months with midterm results, but things just feel too far gone.
  14. I just got back from the one in Austin. It was my first political rally/protest of any kind. The crowd was very large, but to me it felt…ineffectual. Im glad I went but I think the time for that stuff was 2-10 years ago. I was surprised there weren’t more Trumpers out there. I still predict we don’t get out of this mess without a lot of violence and an economic depression.
  15. I don’t understand what he’s gunning for. He has zero chance of getting on the 2028 POTUS ticket. Is he aiming to be in the next cabinet? He really sold out quickly.
  16. You can’t be serious. Have you done ANY reading whatsoever on this topic? What evidence can you cite that shows vouchers improve outcomes for students in the lowest 50% of household incomes?
  17. Vouchers make the problems caused by recapture worse, not better. Incentivizing residents to pull their kids out of the system means less resources for the district. Not just the reduction in funding but also the reduction in other resources brought by families who can afford private schools. I pointed this out in my email to the decision makers in this current process; my 2 kids have a combined 18 years of schooling left, so pulling my kids out of AISD means a reduction of ~$270,000 in funding to the district over that time. On top of that, my wife and I have donated several thousand dollars per year to our kids’ public schools via fundraisers etc., and my wife volunteers a couple hundred hours per year at the school, and that all goes away as well. There’s a logical theory that vouchers could eventually improve an education system by having private enterprise build up to offer quality affordable options, but that’s only possible over a very long time frame and with a lot of luck. The guarantee is that in the short and medium term, poor urban kids get royally fucked even worse than they already are.
  18. We’ve been mostly satisfied with Baldwin elementary. We lost our really good principal to retirement this year and they’ve been bleeding good teachers like everywhere else, so I’m not all that happy about the trajectory. But when I researched private schools 5 years ago I was just not impressed with any of them. I just think our society has deprioritized education and so good schools are few and far between. We’ve kind of decided to just ride it out in AISD. If our kids become super unhappy or are just not progressing then we will be forced to do something but I don’t know what that would be. I really hope my oldest can go to LASA and that it’s still as good as it is now in 4 years. My youngest is not going to be able to go to LASA so if Bowie sucks then we will have to do private, but that’s still 6 years away. I learned during preschool that nowhere is going to meet what I think the standard ought to be, so childcare and education are going ti be constant disappointments for me until my kids are grown.
  19. Listened to the live Q&A session tonight. The director of planning came off pretty sharp but pretty much every other person, including Superintendent Segura, came off pretty unprepared and incapable. The call started late, had technical difficulties, then had 10+ min of the consultant moderator going over needless administrative points before they actually got to the Q&A. Anything on this topic should always be prefaced with the fact that AISD is only in this position because of the restrictions that state and federal govt have put on them; give the district $800M more in funding and all of a sudden every body with kids in AISD would be more than satisfied. I am focused on SW Austin and here were my other takeaways: Seems like they focused more on distance than commute when redrawing zones, which is stupid as fuck. They moved a bunch of people from Gorzycki to Small middle school, meaning families are going from a 1 min commute to a 20+ minute commute even though the distance is only a couple miles different, because to get to Small they’ll have to go thru the Y (290/71 split) in Oak Hill. To their credit they said they are looking at it so I have hope they’ll fix it. This was the only change that affected my family so I’m hopeful, but if they don’t fix it a ton of well-resourced people are going to be fucking pissed. It doesn’t seem like they put much thought into how many families will go private due to these changes and how that will affect district funding. Eanes being its own thing is really fucking up the high school zoning. There are a bunch of kids in SW Austin that are gonna get royally fucked having to go all the way to Crockett or Austin High instead of Bowie, when really most of them should be going to Westlake if they aren’t going to Bowie. Segura gave lip service to a question about transfers for folks who purchased a home specifically for the schools they were zoned to; he said they were looking at it, but my takeaway is that those people are fucked. Same thing around families who have been rezoned between kids and want their subsequent kids to go thru the same vertical the previous kids went to. Overall most of the responses were non-answers, especially during the academic and transfer portions.
  20. This is the exact way leading Democrats should be speaking about anyone associated with the GOP. “Dumb motherfuckers” “fucking liars” “evil pieces of shit” “shitty morons”…these should all be commonly repeated.
  21. Thanks for posting. I read that when you posted it earlier. There’s some bullshit in there but overall it’s a pretty clear picture of why Thiel is evil and crazy.
  22. I think Thiel is one of the top 10 worst human beings on the planet. Super rich, super crazy, super evil. A true 21st century Bond villain. He basically single handedly decided who would be vice president. Scary shit.
  23. What exactly is “speaking out”? I think a lot of people, myself included, are “speaking out”. That shit isn’t working, and the next step involves a lot more risk.
  24. I think a major question of this moment is: at what point do sane people engage in violent resistance? Trump has clearly done a lot of authoritarian shit over the last 9 months, so why haven’t we seen widespread violence in opposition of those things? It’s one thing to talk shit on the Internet and lament how crazy/bad things are. But if all these things are as bad as most of the regular commenters on this thread are saying they are, then doing shit like message board banter, voting, peaceful protest, etc. is all weak, pointless, and woefully inadequate. Of all the commenters talking shit about people downplaying things, I am pretty sure none of them have actually done anything other than whine about how bad things are and maybe donate a few dollars to opposition groups. But taking meaningful action involves serious consequences. It means risking your life and the safety of your family. That’s a different animal. And for just about everyone, the tipping point for choosing that path hasn’t yet arrived, and it’s very very difficult to determine what that point will be and how to recognize it when it gets here. I do think there’s a chance some real shit could go down on Oct 18.
  25. War on Woke? Lately Trump looks like he’s fighting a War on Stroke…and losing.
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