
Texas Jeff
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Everything posted by Texas Jeff
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COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
I would expect UT to have a COVID curve similar to almost all of the other COVID curves out there. They brought together a mix of people who were sitting at home for most of the late spring/summer and now they are all living pretty close together. The UT campus is in the fourth most dense zip code in Texas. There is going to be an outbreak. It should have a sharp rise over maybe 4-6 weeks and then a peak and then tail off over maybe 8-12 weeks. If you look around the world, this seems to be the experience of almost every population out there. I would be surprised if UT is any different. If they have a small, contained outbreak with good isolation and contract tracing we should applaud them for being competent. Hopefully they don't decide to send everyone home to give it to Mom, Dad and the rest of their hometown. -
COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
UT has a pretty good dashboard here: https://coronavirus.utexas.edu/ut-austin-covid-19-dashboard They are doing "proactive community testing", whatever that means. Last week they did 678 tests and had one positive. -
I think he's going to go the way of Elvis. Vegas shows as pay-to-attend rallies where he just rips people, keeps getting fatter, eventually the lifestyle catches up with him and he's gone, tourists pay to check out Mar-a-lago and/or Trump Tower for a generation. Trump TV will be a thing. Whatever he can sell.
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Counties that are part of the "Countywide Polling Place Program" in Texas allow you to vote at any polling place in your county. Here is the list from the July 2020 runoff election: https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/laws/countywide-polling-place-program.shtml I count 72 counties on that list, including most of the highly populated counties.
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Please let this be his last State of the Union...
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Many people are saying that Trump gave Biden ten endorsements now and three to be named later to get Herschel's.
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This is a lot of anger about the way things are being run coming from the incumbent party, running for re-election. "I'm angry at what is going on in this country ... and the only solution is to keep going with the guy that has been in charge for a while now"
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A note to DC based RNC protesters -- don't get mad, get vuvuzelas. There is not a more annoying sound on the earth than a chorus of those plastic pieces of crap. No line of police would be able to take it.
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COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
How about here: https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/0d8bdf9be927459d9cb11b9eaef6101f Click on "Hospitals - Regional" at the bottom. Austin is in Trauma Area O. They don't show total ICU beds but they do show available ICU beds - 73 currently available in Austin. Avoid area N (College Station), they have only 5 ICU beds available. Area T on the southern boarder also appears screwed, they have 1 bed left. -
Running thread of the disaster that is the new school year
Texas Jeff replied to Superhero's topic in Daily Texan
Corporations ditch laptops every 3-5 years. Hard to believe there aren't plenty of capable laptops sitting in storage at various used PC locations. Kids need a camera, wifi, a browser and maybe a word processor. -
So, anyone think this might end up like the 1968 Democratic Convention with protests surrounding the event?
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COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
Head on over to their other dashboard: https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/39e4f8d4acb0433baae6d15a931fa984 In the panel "Weekly Hospitalizations by Race & Ethnicity - MSA", click on the tab "MSA ICU and Vent 7d Mov. Avg." -
Strangest Tarantino casting ever ...
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In Travis County, it is on the weekend during early voting. Specifically, on Sundays. If the NFL is playing, record the game and go vote. Early voting is starting early this year, there may be multiple weekends to vote. Travis County puts up a great website at www.votetravis.com . You can see polling wait times and pick the place with the lowest lines in real time. In Travis County, you can vote at any polling place in the county, even on Election Day. You can print a personalized ballot on their website. To help others, print one out and mark your choices ahead of time, then bring your printout with you to the polls. You will vote faster and help move the line along for others.
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COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
7 day moving average of hospital admissions. Check out their dashboard here: https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/0ad7fa50ba504e73be9945ec2a7841cb -
Allow me to save you some time and consternation, at least for football. After years of watching high school football from the other sideline, I think I can go ahead and call it... Y'all can flip a coin with LT for the district championship. The rest of us will draw lots for the last two playoff slots. You can have the small school playoff spot and LT will take the big school spot. The two other schools will prep to be obliterated in first round games. No need to play until a vaccine is here. If the playoffs start Feb 1, you'll still be playing in mid-March. Just get ready for the playoffs .. thank you for not crushing us this year.
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Austin ISD has a plan to rebuild almost the entire school district over the next 30 years. It's not a perfect plan but it is a good plan. They want to do it without raising the tax rate, with a new bond package every five years or so. They plan to do it by issuing new bonds as they pay off old bonds, but without jacking up the tax rate. They were very careful during the last bond to keep the tax rate used for construction unchanged. If the city keeps raising taxes for billion dollar tunnels and hundreds of millions for bike lanes and sidewalks, the school district will have a harder time later convincing people to raise their taxes even more. The $460 million on the ballot for bike lanes and sidewalks could build 10 new elementary schools serving about 8000 children, about 10% of AISD. Half of those would be economically disadvantaged kids sitting in brand new state of the art schools. The property tax rate can not just climb forever. People will move to the suburbs to escape the taxes. The sprawl that the transit folks don't want will happen. I was pro-public transit until a few years after the Red Line opened. I was an Austin Monorail supporter way back when. I don't have faith, after watching the city dig the Waller tunnel, watching the city go over budget on the library and after watching ridership on the Red Line fall short of projections, that the city and Cap Metro can deliver the projected ridership at the proposed cost. I hope I am wrong.
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Austin City Government - Circus of the Insane
Texas Jeff replied to skittlebrau's topic in Daily Texan
This is about CodeNext, or changing zoning in the City of Austin. Adler has seven votes but needs nine. Before COVID hit, the city was trying to adopt a new zoning plan. This plan was previously called CodeNext. During the CodeNext debate, the mayor had around five solid votes for CodeNext, maybe a 1-2 more. In 2018, Ora Houston and Ellen Troxclair were replaced on the city council with two council members friendly to zoning reform. CodeNext came back, but it was renamed the Land Development Code Revision. Throughout 2019, votes for the LDC revision typically passed 7-4, with the same 7 people for and the same 4 against. The four against were Pool, Alter, Tovo and Kitchen. They represent central Austin districts, mostly in the middle and west sides of town. Their districts were going to see a lot of change because of CodeNext. If this passes, developers will make a lot of money tearing down existing homes in Central Austin and replacing them with smaller condo or apartment like units. These units might be three homes where one stands today, on a 50 ft lot, or as many as 10 units in a small apartment building in a "transition" zone on one lot. Reduced parking was also an issue, since some of the denser units required little or no parking. No on-site parking assumes people either go carless or park in the street. There were changes citywide (at least two homes per lot allowed on many lots, for example). In the fall of 2019, the plan passed the planning commission and it later passed the first two readings at city council. Three readings are required to approve it. State law says that a city considering a zoning change must give the citizens notice of the change and must allow them a way to protest the zoning change. The protest can be overridden by three-fourths of the city council. The city knew this but did not follow the law. They asked a city lawyer for an opinion that stated that since the zoning change was citywide, this state law did not apply. The lawyer wrote such an opinion. Many citizens tried to protest anyway, by sending protests to the email address the city provided for LDC comments or mailing the city protest letters. A group sued the city and won. The judge said that the planning commission decision was not allowed, because they did not send notices, and the first two votes on the city council reading were not allowed, because they did not allow citizens to protest. The city decided to appeal the decision, and the appeal is pending. So, Adler now needs nine votes, not seven, to deny citizens their right to protest changes to zoning and proceed with CodeNext. Alternatively, he could win the appeal or compromise with the four on the other side. Or ... he could try to get rid of his opposition and replace them with supporters. I assume from reading her website, that Witt would be another vote for Adler on CodeNext, giving him eight votes. If Adler gets to nine, he and city staff can design whatever zoning map they want, pass it, and Austin citizens will have no ability to protest zoning changes. If he does not get to nine, he will have to wait for the appeal, compromise to get to nine votes, pass the plan and allow citizens to protest, or do something else. Since he was OK with ignoring the protest law before I suspect he will try to get to nine votes. So, if you want to force Adler to compromise with the people that represent the districts where a lot of the change is proposed, you should consider voting for Pool. If you want the zoning change as is ... or maybe even more change ... with no citizen power to protest ... you should take a look at Witt. -
Newman will get it done ... the mail never stops. "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor the president of the United States stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds..."
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Which would be a more morally correct way to spend $2 billion in Austin? A 1.5 mile tunnel so that trains and buses don't have to mix with cars for 1.5 miles... ... or invest about $100,000 per AISD high schooler to completely modernize or rebuild ALL of our high schools and make them the best schools in the area? ... I'm talking $280 million for Bowie, $240 million for Austin High, $290 million for Akins, and so on. Every high school kid in the district massively benefits. Now, the tax bases are not the same, some RRISD and other ISDs are in the Austin city tax base, but the tunnel we are talking about here is going to benefit one small area. It would be a lot cheaper to just kick cars off of the 1.5 miles and make it transit only ... and spend the money to transform the lives of the next generation. Give them the education they need to get some of the tech jobs coming to our town.
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COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
Man, who knows at this point... Few would have predicted the sharp rise in June after a relatively flat May and I think few at the end of June were thinking we would have a peak in mid-July. Personal behavior is driving this thing. I predict we will have 100-200 deaths per day in Texas throughout August, which means 3000-6000 Texas deaths in August. Probably more Texans dead this month from COVID than died in then Vietnam War. The real ballgame is what happens from mid-August through early October. How does behavior change when college kids are back on campus, some kids are back in school, and some colleges are trying to host tens of thousands of people at football games? I think we have learned to gradually beat back the virus the way we are living this summer, but life is about to change because the calendar says it is time to change. Our reaction to that will drive the numbers in October and November, which could either dwarf August numbers or decay to not much, based on behavior. -
So about a payroll tax holiday. Payroll taxes fund social security and Medicare. A large part of his base is on social security and Medicare. Seems like the Dems just have to repeat "Trump defunded SS and Medicare and he wants to make those cuts permanent" and the olds will freak out.
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COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
The data for Texas is showing a little bump in cases that started about a week ago but is now easing. Is it possible that this was caused by July 4th get-togethers? If so, that sucks, because it means that an event that causes a spike does not show up in the data for a month. With that kind of lag, any type of opening plan has to go really really slowly. Make a change, wait a month, see if you are screwed, make a change, wait a month, see if you are screwed, etc. I don't think we have the patience for that. The number of daily tests is dropping, which is curious. Are people feeling less of a need to get tested, or believing that testing is useless so why do it, or are the labs running out of supplies to process tests? It would be nice to know the average latency of a test, from request to result, and how that is trending over time. -
Do you think one of the astronauts has to just sit there and wait while the other guy struggles to get his crap out of the overhead bin?
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COVID-19 2nd wave - Texas only - Stats and such
Texas Jeff replied to justhookit's topic in Daily Texan
BTW, today is day 150 of COVID in Texas ... first case reported in Texas was March 4th. If a vaccine is available on Jan 1, 2021, we have 154 days to go. It is going to be a long, long fall.
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