Happy New Year You Surly Bastards!
Everything posted by Texas Jeff
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What the fuck is wrong with you, Austin?
Downtown Austin has a few blocks north of the river that are downtown-ish. Get north of ... let's say 8th street ... and downtown dies as you get into the capitol complex. Just dead. State workers drive in from suburbia, sit at a desk, drive home. North of MLK ... vibrant again! UT has done a great job laying claim to everything between Disch-Falk and Lamar, either through direct ownership or campus living. It's very walkable and will get more so with the IH-35 cap. The state property is the weak link. At some point that needs to change or the towers will find somewhere else to grow. Austin should preserve a few views of the capitol, ditch the rest, and start thinking about a downtown all the way from the river to campus.
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The movie you just watched
Rear Window starring Grace Kelly. Jimmy Stewart is also in this movie, but I didn't notice him much. Grace Kelly is stunning and Jimmy can't stop looking at neighbors out his rear window, even though Grace Kelly is traipsing about his apartment.
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Waymo cars Hit the Freeways
Back to the original idea - Waymo on highways. I think they've started on slower speed roads because the consequences of a failure are lower. Fender benders vs 80 mph collisions. And they know that they are being held to a higher safety standard than human drivers. And they also don't want to hurt people. They are getting more confident that they can handle higher speeds and greater risk and they are expanding to highway driving. But it's not their main use case right now. Right now, they are expanding to more cities ... mostly as an inner city taxi service. More cities gives them more visibility to more people, and establishes them as *the* leading driverless car solution. They have a limited number cars and they are trying different business models in different cities, while experimenting with higher speeds on highways.
- 2025 CFP First Round - The "U" @ aggy
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Pluribus - Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn
Martin Brothers' Cafe on Guad north of campus ... closed in 1997 so it might be an unknown for many of you. Magnolia Cafe on Lake Austin Blvd ... thought it would always be there.
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Trump’s America
Trump's $1776 "bonuses" are being funded by congressional increases in troop housing allowances: https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/12/trump-rebrands-congressionally-approved-troop-housing-subsidy-warrior-dividend-bonus/410250/ Congress approved more money for military housing, also called the BAH, as part of the defense bill they just passed. The DoD is giving this to the troops in the form of the $1776 bonuses. So the cost of housing is going up, Congress recognized this and is giving our troops more so that they can afford housing, and Trump's team rebranded it as a "Warrior Dividend" and made it look like a bonus.
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Trump’s America
How much do billionaires have? Trump just talked about $1776 payments to about 1.4 million military members. That's about $2.5 billion dollars. Trump's own net worth went up by about $4 billion when he was given stock in Truth Social, although the stock has gone down since then. He didn't work for that money, it was a stock grant. Stack cryptocurrencies and a free airplane on top of that and the pile just gets bigger. Which is pennies compared to Elon, who is worth about $648 billion. Elon could give $1776 to each military person, each month, for a year, and it would cost him less than 5% of his net worth.
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Trump’s America
America just saw what George saw:
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Trump’s America
Did he forget to reserve the Oval on Teams?
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Pluribus - Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn
He finished the full scan but had at least one frequency of interest, and went back to check it. He found a signal at 8.613 MHz ... then received the video tape from Carol ... turned off the radio and headed out.
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Waymo cars Hit the Freeways
I get that. I too am curious about how much they are dead-heading vs carrying passengers. But ... it is scaling fast and at some point it's going to impact bus ridership. I think folks will eventually get an income-based Waymo subsidy to make rides cheaper, and that subsidy could come out of what we are paying today for Cap Metro. Knowing Austin, Waymo will hit ubiquitous scale a week before we open light rail.
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Waymo cars Hit the Freeways
Waymo says they drove 6.3 million driver-free vehicle miles in Austin between March and September, 2025. Some of those miles had more than one passenger in the car, but they don't provide a passenger miles. But for arguments sake let's assume only one passenger per Waymo. For comparison, Cap Metro drives about 25 million vehicle miles per year. When you multiply by the number of passengers, they transport people about 130 million passenger-miles per year. Depending on how you read their budget, Cap Metro spends $3-6 per passenger mile. Waymo, in year one, with service for about half the year, in a limited service area, is approching 5% of Cap Metro's yearly ridership. They are charging you 0% sales tax and $0 property tax to do this. The future is pretty clear...
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2025 Texas High School Football
That is weird because the administration's proposal to redistrict schools had Austin High's capacity lowered, which was the reason given for proposing a move of some neighborhoods to Crockett. The admin wanted the capacity of Austin High to be 2069, with a projected enrollment around 1900.
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2025 Texas High School Football
5A band directors statewide are rejoicing....
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Pluribus - Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn
Somehow the radio frequency that Paraguay guy found is going to come back in play.
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2025 Texas High School Football
I count 22 schools over the 6A limit in the Austin area, although maybe I missed one or two. I played around with ChatGPT to create three groups of schools for three Centex 6A districts, with minimum distance between the schools in each group District 1 — North / I-35 Corridor Round Rock Cedar Ridge Stony Point Hutto Georgetown East View McNeil Westwood District 2 — Northwest / West Austin / Leander ISD Cedar Park Leander Vista Ridge Rouse Vandegrift Lake Travis Westlake District 3 — South & Southeast Austin High Bowie Akins Del Valle Buda Johnson Buda Hays San Marcos Dripping Springs
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The Trump Economy
Anyone heard Trump going on about how he wanted to give money directly to the American people, so they could buy insurance, rather than giving it to the insurance companies? I looked up that plan. It failed in the Senate, but the plan was to establish health savings accounts for each person and have the government make a contribution to the HSA so that the person could buy insurance. Trump's plan was to give each person on an exchange plan a total of $1500. Per year. Unless you are under 50 years old, in which case it was $1000. Per year. In an HSA. To buy health care. For the year. That's what he meant by not giving money to the evil insurance companies and instead giving it directly to the people.
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Blue Blood Scandal Resumes
Texas: * Ron McKelvey, a 23 year old defensive back who was actually 30 at the time and was not named Ron McKelvey. * Edwin Simmons, lost his car, his girlfriend, his clothes, and his consciousness over about a six hour period and ended up naked in some alumni's backyard in Northwest Hills. But nothing is better than: Texas A&M: * Gave Eric Dickerson a gold Trans Am. Eric went to SMU but kept the car.
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Its happening (stadium renovations)
UT probably does not get enough time in the Moody Center. Someone else paid for it and UT is only guaranteed a certain number of dates. I think Texas gets about 60 days a year. Plus it gives UT and Austin a second smaller site for shows.
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Trump’s America
It’s sort of social. Demented and sad, but social.
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Trump’s America
In theory, Calibri is easier to read for those that have difficulty reading, because it is sans-serif. They also increased the default font size. https://www.section508.gov/develop/fonts-typography/ So, the switch was intended to help those with low vision or reading disabilities, which probably is part of the "inclusion" part of DEI. The switch back may make it more difficult for some people to read government docs, so Rubio is saying let's do that.
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Bye Week Fodder- Texas' Historic Game Recommendations
1977 Texas v Baylor, featuring Earl Campbell, Ham and Lam Jones, some unknown Texas QBs, and a Baylor freshman linebacker named Singletary. Campbell goes through a closet of tear-away jerseys. Artificial turf as cushy as a parking lot. Color man Frank Broyles has to say good things about Texas for three hours. ABC shows both bands at halftime and Teri Garr makes an appearance in a beer commercial. Lots of seats available in the horseshoe and tons of parking around the stadium. Aerial shots of the brand new Erwin Center and the almost new Disch-Falk.
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2025 Big 12 Championship - BYU vs. Texas Tech
New rule: Both teams have to give a field goal to Ed Jones, no matter how they do in the game.
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Your favorite opening track on an album?
Main Title - Star Wars original soundtrack
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Texas vs. Texas A&M - 6:30pm on ABC
Both bands marched, last year and this year and probably most other years. Visiting band goes first. When you march as the visiting band you can expect to get mostly booed. At the OU game, you get cheered and booed at the same time and you hear cheers or boos based on what side of the 50 you are on. It is awesome. Yesterday, Longhorn Band shortened their show so that they could split time with the Aggies.