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Samson's Wig

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Everything posted by Samson's Wig

  1. I don't think there is a shortage of discussion on this particular rhetorical technique, and yes I think it permeates much of public discourse these days. I'm not sure that assuming someone else is more extreme than they actually are falls into the same category, though. The motte and baily fallacy is a purposefully employed device, whereas an assumption of another person's motives or beliefs is instinctual. I think that ultimately it just comes down to plain old tribalism. "What you're talking about sounds vaguely like something one of them would say, so you must be a member of that other team! Now die!" This quirk of human nature is exploited well by political factions.
  2. I've considered spearheading an Austin secession movement. I haven't found any precedent for a city seceding from a state (although some states allow a city to secede from a county), but I'd like to see how the rest of Texas enjoys paying for their public schools (and other programs) without having the citizens of Austin as a whipping boy and piggy bank. I would likely require federal funding of some kind, and the city would become something along the lines of D.C. I think somewhere around 25% of their budget is funded by the feds. We wouldn't need that much as we wouldn't be housing their infrastructure. I don't think it would be a hard sell for the majority of Texans, who spew vitriol at Austin with every breath, as they've been trained to do to keep the entire charade going. Taxes wouldn't go down in this scenario, of course, but at least they'd stay local. All a pipe dream, but a fun one to indulge in from time to time.
  3. A DM with details on those services would be greatly appreciated.
  4. Do you live in Austin? You can get to $20k fairly easily (but yes, it's not average homes at that amount). I don't think people outside of Austin realize just how much we pay in property taxes, the vast majority of which do not stay local. It's, in part, how the state funds itself, and it should be criminal. Almost half of it goes to AISD, which is to say it's stolen by the state to hand out to politically favorable suburban districts (and a big chunk just goes into the general fund). Austinites are robbed blind by the State of Texas.
  5. Yikes. My son plays soccer as well and will be trying out for the Lamar team next year. Thanks for giving me something else to worry about.
  6. McCallum is being renovated in phases. The first bond package already passed. It will take two more to get it all completed though based on the current plan (which is really fucking stupid). First phase will be starting fairly soon. Like most things with AISD, it's a clusterfuck. I just don't want my kids stuck in portables the entirety of high school, but I'll be shocked if they actually start demoing anything before 2030, when they graduate. https://macshieldonline.com/60278/news-2/bond-renovation-plans-take-shape/#:~:text=A floor plan layout of,to pass in Central Texas.
  7. No doubt. We're in the Murchison/Anderson zone, but the kids are in the fine arts academy at Lamar, and both want to go to McCallum. It drives me nuts that AISD refuses to officially call the FAA a magnet program (even though that's exactly what it is in every respect), so they don't have to provide buses for the kids. Dropoff and pickup is like an elementary school on crazy pills. I understand it's a budgeting issue, but that brings us back around to how insane it is that we paid (checks notes) around $10kin property taxes for AISD last year, and we have rats and raccoons running around classrooms with kids in them while suburban kids get palaces that we pay for. We can't even get our kids a ride to school. The way the State of Texas treats Austin residents is how violent revolutions have been started in the past. We have no representation whatsoever, and the clown show is happy to keep robbing us blind and just handing it over to suburbs (or the general fund) because they're mostly white, evangelical, and vote for the current state leadership. It's insane and something you'd expect in a banana republic, not the United States. McCallum is getting a renovation over the next few years, finally. My kids will be going there during the construction, which I don't love but they're damn near insistent upon it. AISD seems happy to let Lamar continue to be a rat-infested dump. At least the programs have been good, and we'd still rather our kids attend a dump where they don't ban books, worry about drag queens instead of ministers, or teach religion as a counterpoint to science like in the burbs. But it still sucks that this state is so hostile to the citizens of Austin, who are bankrolling the rest of the state in more ways than one. Is there a historical precedent for a city seceding from a state? That would be interesting.
  8. Express VPN user here. I've been very happy with it. A bit faster than NordVPN, in my experience, but there may be other drawbacks I haven't noticed yet.
  9. I know what you're saying, and it's an interesting dynamic that is really difficult to explain to folks from other regions. "The River" could almost be a direct allegory for Bubba's story, or vice versa. He found grace and acceptance through religion, and it also killed him.
  10. Well, thanks for putting words in my mouth. I agree it's not out of control, but it is a significant problem. I'm curious—do you live there? Because I don't know a single person in Toronto who would agree with you, and I know a LOT of people there. You brought up Ontario police stats when it's not a reasonable comparison at all, given two very different sets of laws, the difference in the number of guns on the streets, and a significant difference in culture. I'm actually on your side on this issue, but I would find a better way to make your argument. Crime in Toronto is significantly worse than in Austin, and anyone who has spent time in both cities will tell you that. And no, it's not only in the rough areas of town. There are certainly quiet suburbs, but I'm talking about the city. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing city. I would move back in a heartbeat, and our many family members still love living there. The crime shouldn't be a deterrent for anyone, just like the crime in Austin shouldn't be a deterrent for anyone coming here. However, arguing that their crime is really low despite having few cops is disingenuous and serves no point. I agree it doesn't mean they should go hire a bunch of goons like we do, but they don't do that anyway. Police brutality is nowhere near the issue in Canada as it is here. They absolutely have a violent gang problem in Toronto, however, and it's a constant point of debate and contention for residents because law enforcement is doing very little to curtail it. These issues exist even in the absence of jackbooted thugs with badges running around like we have in the States.
  11. It's anecdotal, for sure, and again I don't really care that much, but yeah, I see people driving like maniacs much more now than before the pandemic, and I can't remember the last time I saw a car pulled over by APD. It's been years. Seems like an active choice on their part to just not bother. I'm sure they have a couple of hot spots they still go raise a few bucks at, but there is no type of consistent presence or active involvement in curtailing dangerous driving that I'm seeing. I saw some DPS bullshit when they were running rampant, but that wasn't traffic control.
  12. For what it's worth, from someone who lived there, has family there, and visits multiple times per year, gang crime in Toronto and surrounding areas if fucking awful. Austin is a much safer city. I don't need statistics to know we have no police in Austin. You never see any like you used to. I kind of like it that way, personally, except for the demolition derby our streets have become. If we could bring back only traffic cops with a limited scope of responsibilities, I might get behind that.
  13. I remember sometime around 15 years ago some Southern Baptists knocked on my door trying to recruit fresh blood to their church. I remember thinking then that they weren't long for existence if they were already begging door to door. Yet somehow, they still dominate politics in places like Alabama and Texas. That particular religion can't dry up and die fast enough. They've driven more people away from Christianity than booze and cheap women (although those are what did it for me).
  14. I agree with your sentiment 100%, but that reads a lot like the fully stretched interpretations of the bible that fundamentalists come up with. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy your interpretation, but I don't think any Christians' heads are exploding over what amounts to heavy inference. They're busy with their own.
  15. I took away that the cemeteries were not connected to his church as well. Nothing else in that story indicates his church wouldn't have been happy to bury him if they had a cemetery. For Southern Baptists, his church was definitely an outlier.
  16. I've got no issue with community colleges, and I acknowledge their benefit to the community (although it's a stretch in Austin that community college grads are sticking around to contribute, based on the cost of living alone). I got my foreign language credit knocked out at ACC many moons ago. However, ACC is drastically overfunded to the point of comical bloat when we can't even provide grade schools with functioning HVAC systems or potable water for the children here. We're talking about free tuition for high school grads when we're not even educating our high schoolers adequately. We've got this all backward. I understand the funding works differently for each, but that doesn't change the underlying reality and our lack of motivation to do anything about it. I pay a similar amount of property taxes as you do each year, and it's tiring knowing how little we get back for the trouble. ACC is just one of many problems, but this latest move for free tuition feels like blatantly laughing in taxpayers' faces. When this group of blowhards is sitting around talking about free tuition, that's a sign that ACC already has too much money, not that it needs more (which will be the end result of this policy). Further, the ACC board and admin have been running wild for a long, long time. It's a huge money grab and the benefit does not align with the cost, IMO. If either middle school kids or community college students have to go to classrooms infested with rats, I know which one I would choose. Austin has chosen differently.
  17. Some folks just can't help themselves from spending other people's money. I'm all for community college and agree with the general notion that an educated populace is a benefit to everyone, but Austin property owners are already being robbed blind to fund white suburban jesus districts across the state at the expense of our own public school children. When is enough, enough? I'm not convinced we're really getting a return on our investment with ACC. Maybe the new nursing degree program will provide some community benefit, but free tuition for all from a city school with a 100 fucking percent acceptance rate is pointless unless we're firing 90% of the administrative roles. If they can manage to truly limit this to local high school graduates who don't really attend UT and use ACC for free basic requirements, it might not be too expensive. I'd like to see a serious tuition hike for nonresidents who come here just to attend ACC (yes that happens and we'll be flooded with them if they can find a loophole to get the free tuition), as well as non-full time students, i.e. UT and Texas State kids getting cheap credits. tl/dr The Austin community would be better served shuttering ACC completely and finding a way to funnel those funds into AISD.
  18. Nothing yet for us in Travis. I hate looking at it, mostly because every time I see how much goes to ACC I want to murder someone.
  19. We don't have food delivered often, but when we do we always note that the delivery should be left on the porch with no interaction. Same with any other delivery that doesn't involve a signature. Started doing it during the pandemic and then realized that it made sense to continue. We have a dog that is mostly well-behaved but was trained in a house with young children, so there are definitely gaps. He will jump on people when excited. It pisses me off but my daughter is hell bent on encouraging the behavior when I'm not looking. Why potentially subject someone to that when so many are afraid of dogs? And why risk a ridiculous interaction like the one in the OP?
  20. Taking my son to the Rangers/Astros game on Saturday the 6th. Is it reasonable to assume I35 from DFW to Austin on Sunday is going to be an absolute trainwreck (more than it always is)? Thinking I might shift gears and just fly up for the game.
  21. That he was delivering under someone else's name will be the most interesting angle of this story. If delivery companies crack down on that practice, I don't think they'll survive. I don't really understand the reasoning for it, but I don't recall the last time a food delivery driver matched the description in the app. I've always assumed it was a single household using one account and working 24 hours a day or something like that. Maybe it's a way for ex-cons who can't find work to make a buck. I'm sure someone here knows.
  22. Exactly what we were missing!
  23. Not sure I could keep from hunting every one of those fuckers down if that had been my wife and child. We don't do football players any favors in this country by raising them up to think they can do whatever the fuck they want and then letting them do whatever the fuck they want until they stop playing, and then, of course, we don't give a shit anymore. Handing 22-year-old (oh wait, now it's 18-year-old) fucktards with mush brains, no education, and no sense of responsibility to the community millions of dollars just means they can cause even more damage than they would otherwise. You've got to have a sub-80 IQ and a complete lack of humanity to street race. I don't really care that most who do this shit are under 25 and working with juvenile brains, if you get caught doing this shit you should be removed from society. Perhaps it's time we start restricting access to driving for boys until they turn twenty five or thirty. At the very least, it should be a one-strike policy of some kind. Taking the bus builds some humility.
  24. Fuck it. I was too late.
  25. I spent my entire childhood and about half of my twenties working cattle when I wasn't working a cotton patch. I've gone soft since those days. Firearms absolutely have their place when out working, but anything sitting on your hip is going to be useless against an angry bull unless you're extremely lucky. Handy for rattlebugs, though.
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