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Samson's Wig

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Samson's Wig

  1. No need for a fight, but you may want to take a moment to ponder that Wally's is a DQ, owned by a guy who owns numerous DQs in Austin, serving the same damn food as a DQ, prepared in the same way with the same ingredients. It's all the same.
  2. I think it's largely the same reshuffling of the deck chairs that AISD has been doing going back to at least the '80s with the bullshit busing they did then. These same demographics struggled academically back when AISD was flush with cash, and they struggle today when AISD is broker than the Austin homeless population. All the administration ever comes up with is shuffling kids around to meet testing metrics and never considers how to actually educate challenging student populations. Administrators worry about their jobs first, the teachers second, and the kids dead last, if at all. A complete rebuild of public education, starting with how it is funded and how central offices are staffed and operated, would have to be part of it, but that won't happen in this state until there is a massive overhaul of leadership at the state level. The public schools that perform well in this state do so because parents carry a huge chunk of the load. Parents from the past have no clue how involved parenting is now, especially what is involved in making a school run smoothly. How schools operated just fine in the past with hardly any parent involvement is beyond me, but I'm sure an educator here will have some insight. Schools today would collapse if parents weren't carrying half the load for the educators and admin. At our kids' rate infested school, the parents are paying the salary of at least one science teacher for fuck's sake (but we're supposed to be a "privileged" school). It's like we live in a backwater instead of one of the wealthiest cities in the world in a state with the 8th largest economy of any nation in the world. We should all be ashamed of ourselves for letting this happen. For schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, it can be harder for parents to get involved financially and with their time. For most of them, it just isn't possible to do more. It shouldn't be ignored, however, as it so often is in this discussion, that there is less effort from parents in the aggregate in those communities as well. It's not entirely the fault of the schools. Broken social systems is not a problem that an educational institution can fix unless we can magic ourselves back in time to a public school system that doesn't rely so heavily on parental support. But that circles us back to funding, doesn't it? It's a disaster for all of us, as Texas will get dumber, and we will have fewer and fewer competent people to create jobs, build and operate infrastructure, police our streets, teach our children, serve in the medical professions, etc.. I think it's Brisket who often compares Texas to Mississippi, and boy is that going to be more and more the case over the next ten to twenty years. After that, Mississippi might look like a brain trust compared to this place. We have already failed a couple of generations of poor folks in this state, and that failure is a multiplier generationally. The floodgates are open. I don't know if there is even a way to fix it at this point, but if anything will do it, it has to start with placing a focus on educating future generations instead of looking for ways to steal tax dollars from schools to line the pockets of politicians and their buddies. This country was started by a revolution triggered by less disgusting taxation without representation than we see in Austin. Some states handle public education very well (although not many). Massachusetts is the obvious example, but the shocking one is Florida. Fucking Florida has a rock solid public education system. Florida. That should embarrass the shit out of every single Texan. Fucking Florida.
  3. Pucker up, because it's coming no matter what. The only question is when. If you have elementary-aged kids, there is almost no chance they won't see a TEA takeover. Now is the time to start considering alternatives. High school age? They may skate through before it happens. Middle school? Probably not. We've got 7th graders, and will probably not start them in high school in AISD knowing what is coming. Given the voucher nonsense passing, AISD is about to take another major financial haircut. Things will not get better but worse. And rapidly. There is almost no chance of them turning around these schools, and I have zero faith that the state will be satisfied with just putting charters in place for the failing schools. Too much money was made on the grift in Houston by taking over the entire thing.
  4. Someone had fun editing the Google Maps listing.
  5. Their only other "solution" was to cram all of the kids in underperforming schools into already overcrowded schools with better ratings. At least we're not sacrificing the entire student populace this way. But yeah, this plan will fail miserably and TEA will come knocking anyway. There is no guarantee the state will even accept the mid year charter school option either. Those failing schools already have significantly more funding, programming, etc. than the schools that are performing better. Throwing more money at it won't solve anything when 70% of the kids involved can't speak or read English but are tested only in English. AISD is run by some seriously incompetent folks who get paid insane amounts of money for doing a very poor job, but the state has set them up for failure no matter what they do. It would take some kind of Churchillian leadership to successfully navigate the conditions they are working under. I don't want to excuse the incompetence, but it really doesn't matter much when the deck is stacked against you this badly.
  6. Also, if you're not in the Cloak Room, I'm as anti-Trump/MAGA as they come. And the right wing grifters have always infuriated me, Owens and Kelly included. I wasn't accusing you of being an incel or a Trump fan, Hank. Just pointing out that the sources you are citing are every bit as biased as anything on any other platform. Their motivation is clicks/money rather than political, but there is still bias. In this case, the folks chasing this story largely fall into a particular political group, but the YouTubers don't care about that. They just want engagement on their channels, no matter where it comes from. The worst place to look for information about anything involving litigation is social media, including YouTube. The next worst place to look is any court filings. No one who is not directly involved will ever know the truth of this situation, or any other similar situation. That's just not how it works. Anyone who has been through a divorce or even business litigation knows that what is presented in court or disseminated to the public rarely reflects what happened. It's just two competing lies banging against each other until something shakes loose. FWIW, and unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, I know a great deal about this situation. I have avoided discussing the particulars or what I think about it in this thread for a reason.
  7. Say what you will about social media, but YouTube is where the truth-tellers of our time share their voice. They definitely have no motivation to push a certain angle on a story if they thought it would draw more views and likes from incels and Trumpers who have latched onto this story when absolutely no one else cares. I've been saying for years that YouTube celebrity gossip channel hosts are the Walter Cronkites of our modern era.
  8. Holy shit I forgot about that abomination of a movie. Go Disney!
  9. That really is incredible. Some days, you just gotta stay in bed and deal with the consequences.
  10. Yep, this is where they landed. It's a shame they didn't go "all in" (admin and board's phrase) on these schools before now. You know better than I how they've been kicking this can down the road for many years. I am sincerely hoping for the best, but I don't see how they will improve these schools in one year when all of the district's resources and energy have been spent on these same campuses already, including insane amounts of funding for special programs, specially trained staff, etc. to the detriment of students at other schools in the district. Despite what some outside community organizer agitators, with no personal stake in this situation, have been spewing online and in their podcasts, these underperforming schools have had much higher budgets, better facilities, teachers with higher qualifications, etc., than the so-called "privileged" schools in the district. This move seems like magical thinking more than anything, especially when these campuses have already been on a specialized turnaround plan for a couple of years that has been failing. I'm still operating under the assumption that TEA will be rolling in after next school year. I hope I'm wrong, but I'll be ready to pull my kids out when the stormtroopers show up in 2026. For now, I'm selfishly thankful that my kids' last year of middle school won't be ruined by the cockeyed plan that sawed off little superintendent tried to push through with his blatant lies. He needs to be shown the door after next year, no matter what happens.
  11. Gotta love this place. Because this particular camp endangered wildlife (allegedly), it was a top priority to go. Camps endangering other humans? Fuck 'em. At least we now understand the playbook. I'll be bringing up the golden cheeked warbler in an attempt to get the assholes in the woods near us evicted before they start a southern CA style wildfire in our neighborhood. If it stopped development in our area it can sure as shit be used to justify getting the useless junkie trash out of the woods.
  12. I don't think there is any risk of that, at least not in our lifetimes.
  13. Honda has been offering the DCT since 2010 or so on a few models. I wish other manufacturers would do likewise. It would open up riding to many more people, which is a good thing for all of us. Triumph kicked ass in 2024 by offering up small displacement bikes and making things easier and more affordable for new riders. I hope they realize they can double down on that success by coming up with an automatic platform of their own. BMW has its ASA options on bikes such as their new 1300 GS, and Yamaha is coming out with its Y-AMT system this year. Harley decided to ride the nostalgia train almost into the ground, but who knows? With what's going on now with their CEO getting the boot and their sales in the toilet, they may decide to finally start offering bikes other than oversized and overpriced machines with dated tech. Their demographic is aging out of riding by the second, and they forgot to build interest among the younger generations. My wife has a 300cc Vespa GTS that she loves riding, and though it can go 90 on the highway if need be and easily keep up with my 1200cc Bonnie, she wants something that won't get blown around so much at higher speeds, especially when the wind is blowing. Using a clutch has held her back from trying a lot of bikes, but I'm going to get her on a few of the Honda DCT models to see if one will work for her. I suspect the Rebel 1100 will win out, given the lower seat height, but I'm secretly hoping she goes for the Africa Twin so I can ride it some too. Of course lots of bikes come with quick shifters and auto blippers these days, but that's not quite the same for someone who is either afraid of a clutch or can't use one due to physical limitations.
  14. Oh yeah. We have an old timer in our neighborhood who will hire a sheriff's deputy to come issue tickets from time to time. It cracks my ass up every time our block text thread blows up form incredulous women complaining about getting speeding tickets. It happens every few months like clockwork, and not once has one of them ever expressed that maybe they should just slow their asses down. It's always a bitch fest about how unfair it is that they were targeted.
  15. This is anecdotal, but that video tracks with who I see not picking up their dogs' shit in my neighborhood. Older women. It's a really strange form of entitlement, but they have so few entitlements I don't want to judge too harshly. Nah, nevermind, fuck those old ladies. Pick up after your animals or learn to live alone with your thoughts.
  16. I like the new Trident 660 a lot. Saw it the first time at the big Triumph event a few months back, where they unveiled the 2025 lineup. If you're in Austin, AF1 has been such a massive improvement over the last shitty dealership that had Triumphs (and had them taken away by the manufacturer). If you change your mind and go the modern classic route, it's not too late for the Distinguished Gentleman's ride this year.
  17. A hearse for space robots from 1960s television.
  18. Ah, Seagraves. I dated a gal from there for a stretch. She moved to Sundown, and for some reason, that ended things. She probably found a better-looking fella with a nice truck or something. My dad's family moved from the Goldthwaite area to Brownfield when my grandma was pregnant with him, and the poor guy was born in Hobbs, NM, when they went there for a visit for some unknown reason. Mom's side is cotton farmers from the south end of Wolfforth. Both folks went to Tech, and I did as well for undergrad. Still tons of family growing cotton and raising cattle scattered amongst the communities in that triangle of Lubbock, Big Spring, and Midland/Odessa.
  19. You're absolutely right. I'm not sure how pedestrians didn't work their way into my thought process there, especially as I'm one of them on my daily 3-5 miles.
  20. It was indeed Cooper, back when it was a backwater. It's incredible how much has changed. My mom taught at Andrews for a few years, driving down from Lubbock every day. That would have been the early seventies if my memory is sound. She ended up at Lubbock-Cooper, so I did too.
  21. It sucks, and the only way it will change is the same way it changed back in the '90s. SCOTUS will have to force the state's hand. There is a zero percent chance the fundagelical voter base in the suburbs will tolerate their politicians taking a single thing away from them, as they are content letting inner city kids wallow in rat infested schools getting a crappy education as somehow, in their minds, they deserve it. The vast majority have no clue how their happy little suburban districts were built on the backs of Austin taxpayers and at the expense of inner city kids, and will argue over it even when presented with facts. As for the PB and West Texas in general, I went to a very poor rural school (no oil) that was in a district with places like Seminole (the heart of the current measles outbreak). They had their own indoor pool, a golf course, modern beautiful buildings, state of the art theater, etc. All paid for with oil and all in the middle nowhere. Any time we went there for athletic or academic competitions we always felt like the Clampetts visiting Beverly Hills. And it was always a long two hour busride back after getting our butts kicked in whatever competition we were there for. Thanks to recapture, my dinky little school has quadrupled in size and is now drowning in money. As we do with everything in this country, we overcorrected, and it's really difficult to find an equilibrium after that. We're just going to overcorrect again with vouchers, but I have to admit I'm intrigued to watch suburbanites finally wake up to what's going on in public education when their schools start losing tons of kids to all of the pop-up Jesus schools that are about to appear.
  22. True, but they're still handy on a motorcycle. Not for backing up, but for keeping an eye on the asshole in the cage coming up behind you at intersections while staring at their phone. I've managed to dodge an idiot teenager and an idiot soccer mom in a vehicle too big for her husband to handle, thanks to the rear camera I installed. They're also handy for providing evidence that the accident was, indeed, caused by the person on four wheels who wasn't paying attention and not the guy on two wheels who has to pay attention very closely if he doesn't want to die. They also provide blind spot detection, although I don't find that as useful as my neck still works. A few more years on me and that might become a feature I enjoy more. One huge negative of the EV market is how dangerous they are for motorcyclists and bicyclists. They encourage people to not to pay attention when driving (at least the idiots who believe their car is "self driving", which seems to be a ton of them). Clueless drivers is already a major problem thanks to smart phones, but EVs have added to the problem considerably. They weigh a metric shit-ton, so collisions are much worse compared to ICE vehicles of a similar class. The number one brand killer of motorcyclists is, you guessed it, Tesla. I'm not arguing against EVs, but this is a major negative that doesn't get discussed much as most people don't give two shits about motorcyclists (or bicyclists for that matter). I didn't see the weight numbers for the Slate, but for something that looks like a Lego toy it will weigh as much as a full size Chevy Silverado, if not more, but with better acceleration, handling, etc., that lead clueless drivers to drive them recklessly. All you have to do is watch the average Tesla driver try to navigate a moderately windy road (or even a straight one a lot of the time), to know they have very little control over their vehicle.
  23. There aren't many places (any?) in Austin where you can get to the airport in an Uber for ~$25. And that's before a tip. Factor in where people are more likely to live who travel for work, which is most often not anywhere near the airport, and you can easily double that number. For those early morning work flights, we typically use Blacklane or another private car service, as Uber/Lyft are unreliable in the early A.M.
  24. This type of forward thinking you two are bringing to the table is exactly what will never happen in a system controlled by people desperate to just hang onto their overpaid jobs long enough to land the next one. I love the ideas, though.
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