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We’reTexas

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by We’reTexas

  1. 2 hours ago, wild_turkey said:

     


    We once did 5 nights in Paris followed by 3 nights in the Loire Valley. We stayed in Amboise, which we found to be a nice town with good access to nearby chateaus. If you find that kind of thing interesting, I would specifically recommend visiting Chateau Chambord and Chateau Chenonceau. The surrounding countryside is really beautiful as well.

    I would highly recommend renting a car in Paris so you have the freedom to explore on your own. I think it’s about a 1.5 hour drive from Paris.

     

    +1, but recommend not literally renting a car from the city center as that is quite a harrowing experience. 

    Last time in the Loire we stayed at an old monastery, Fontevraud Abbey, near Chinon. Would recommend. 

  2. 22 minutes ago, HRSchenker said:

    Do you know why ranked choice voting takes so long to declare a winner? Why aren't ballots counted and the ranking done on election night?

    It’s not RCV itself, it’s just the local election administration rules in place.  The RCV can be done in minutes. Some places wait until all ballots are counted, I guess because they don’t like the idea of a candidate being eliminated one day and brought back the next, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In San Francisco we see the RCV results real time. 

    • Like 1
  3. 25 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    I've never believed in the wisdom of rent control. I get it that it helps renters but it also creates an artificial marketplace that harms others as well. People can't afford a new place because a landlord needs higher rents to cover the fact that another tenant has been paying $200/mo for the last 40 years. Of course, my understanding is that new NYC rent control apartments stopped in the 70s, and those tenants at the time were grandfathered in. Very few of them remain. Their stories are crazy so they often get repeated and believed to be widespread. 

    Rent stabilization is the current system that makes more sense. However it still creates an artificial marketplace that eventually gets out of line when its controlled by politicians who answer to said tenants. Who wants to vote for a politicians who indirectly raised your rent.

    Stabilization can also lead to subpar living conditions as the apt owner has less incentive to improve the building. Since they have limited availability to sign new tenants, they will do the bare minimum required perhaps even waiting to be forced to do so by the authorities.

    Stabilization vs control is basically a distinction without a difference these days (in SF the increase is capped around 2% usually). In addition to everything you mentioned, it decreases the rental supply as landlords take vacant units off the market for condo conversion (or sell to corporate owners with the means to evict). And there is no means testing - I’ve know a few people with such great deals they bought houses in Sonoma or Tahoe and kept their city apartments. And yet in pure Tobias Funke “but maybe this time” fashion, it persists (although St Paul is already walking its disastrous experiment back after just two years). 

  4. 30 minutes ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

     

    So immediately, progressive = non-pragmatic.  Right there.  Holy crap. 

     

     

    I mean, to be fair, this is a DSA progressive and I don’t think even they would disagree with that. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  5. Pretty much sums up my thoughts, but too alarmist. Zohrans had their run along the West Coast 2018-22 and totally failed. Seems like a nice guy but the type of leader that is going to set us up for success. 

     

  6. 2 hours ago, Valmy77 said:

    Hey man we have been going hard on the "free market will work things out" for decades and the result is that it failed to work things out and generated tons of right and leftwing populists. I am open to new ideas.

    I think public grocery stores might be necessary in an environment where the market created powerful monopolies that are creating food deserts. I think social housing might be needed in areas where the market made tons of people homeless.

    What I am getting at is in terms of policy and politics we need pragmatic leadership and good governance that delivers tangible, long term results. For example, in blue cities like NYC, the “free market” in housing development is a very novel concept. Rent control, a focus on subsidized housing development and a near-total opposition to market development are very old concepts that only made the problem worse. The math doesn’t math for those progressive measures - and most others - and while they are nonetheless wildly popular for large swaths of voters doubling down on them is a terrible idea as a matter of policy. 

    They are also wildly unpopular with larger swaths of voters. There has been a backlash against progressives in San Francisco, LA, Seattle and Portland. Chciago’s progressive mayor’s approval is at like 20% right now. I’d be hesitant to read much more into the NYC race other than Zohran seems like a really nice guy and the front runner is an old and rapey and killed senior citizens. 

  7. 51 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

    Mamdani literally interviewed hundreds of working class New Yorkers and asked them what matters to them and why they voted for Trump. His platform is based almost entirely on direct feedback from voters, not the pages Jacobin.

    That’s a great point I will concede. Leftist populism definitely has the appeal of having voters choose overall terrible policy decisions in favor of their immediate self interest. 

     

    41 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

    jack off please GIF

    Ok, boomer.

    Oof, the tankie edginess is strong with this one. 

  8. 25 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

    Yeah, clearly we should just let the free market sort out the housing crisis in New York, considering it's done such a bang up job so far. Municipal grocery staple wholesalers? So scary.

    Yes, we should absolutely let the free market sort out the housing market in New York, and in San Francisco, LA and DC, where it has been deeply obstructed for 50 years. But more to the point, fantasyland leftist populism is no more the answer to the direction of the party than rapey old men who won’t go away. 

  9. I think it’s more likely that no one outside the pages of The Nation or Jacobin thinks “freeze the rents” or “socialize the grocery stores” is sound public policy. 

  10. 18 minutes ago, Pancho said:

    Of course fucking old guard dems are pushing cuomo in the NYC race.

     

     

     

    Angry Season 4 GIF by The Office

    Rapey old men or DSA brain rot, lotta great choices in that race. 

    • Hook 'Em 2
  11. 2 hours ago, PGFrog said:

    There are some in the Houston media who tried to make the argument the Astros screwed up by not leaving Smith in the minors because he is going to be great and playing him this year will cost them a year of team control.

    With this roster and the other outfield options, fuck that idea.  

    I thought the argument was against having him on the opening day roster and not waiting the 12 days or whatever? I’m not seeing him on any of the odds lists for AL ROY. 

  12. 29 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

    He's a far better candidate than Cuomo. The only reason it's close is because of Cuomo's big name recognition advantage.

    I’ve only been exposed to him through housing Twitter, where he is routinely dunked on, but his ads are extremely well done. Quite interesting to see a progressive surge in the NYC primary after progs got taken to the woodshed throughout other Blue coastal enclaves last fall. 

  13. 1 hour ago, Brian Fantana said:

    Zohran wishes he had a big beautiful beard like mine that he can pull down to his nipples.

    ...which I've never done. 

    Wait that dude just polled as the front runner? Lmao

  14. 10 hours ago, YChang said:

    My espresso game is still pretty inconsistent... so going to a dual boiler for now doesn't make sense. As lustworthy as it would be to eventually graduate to one. 😅

    Same, brotha. I prefer lighter roasts and my bambino is made of plastic and won’t last forever, and the Move seems like a pretty reasonable endgame set up for when I’m ready. However, I feel like it could look outdated quickly, so if you are going to go for counter candy might as well get something like a Linea Mini which will last for decades and never go out of style…

    • Hook 'Em 1
  15. 1 hour ago, YChang said:

    Brewing and understanding coffee went from my pandemic hobby into well a full blown lifestyle/obsession now. I have just about every brewer out there now except a moka pot and aeropress. Pour over is my favorite style and these days it’s a Hario Switch that’s my daily driver. But the moccamaster for when it’s too early in the morning or I want a large batch of coffee.

    IMG_3615.jpeg

    Have you been considering upgrading from the Go to the Move?

  16. 38 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

    I think we’re winding up here because she wants to stop spending money at Starbucks on cafe americanos and my requirements are a drip machine that I can program to brew in the morning. The additional requirement that is making this stupid (why not just get an espresso maker and I can have a $30 Mr Coffee) is that she only wants one thing on the kitchen counter and it needs to be pretty.

    What complicates this is I can feel myself wanting to get the best version of this thing and potentially doing down a rabbit hole, although I think this fits our needs likely. I do have a baratza encore (or whatever it’s called) that I used to grind beans, so probably this will be good enough to work for now and then gradually hook me and then I’ll fight with my wife over having additional appliances.

    Well, to save you many hours right now the best quality for value is the Bambino and DF64 if you just want to get that and call it a day for the next few years. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
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