Jump to content

Samson's Wig

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    2363
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Samson's Wig

  1. That is an insane level of flip-flopping from Dr. Offit. Really weird. It's almost to the point I would suspect a deep fake on that video, although I don't see evidence of that watching it. He's throwing out talking points of anti-vaxxers and QAnon idiots, people about whose stupidity he has literally written a book. I'm not sure if he's just chasing that attention high he received during the pandemic by switching teams, if it's fake, maybe just edited so that we're missing some of the context, or if he just fell off the old man cliff and needs to be put to pasture. But this is a guy who was on the same hit list as Fauci for a lot of mouth breathers out there over the last few years. What a confusing video. He's fully in the "just asking stupid questions" camp, now, apparently. I don't know whether people should get this next shot or not (I haven't yet but probably will when I get my flu shot), but I'll definitely look elsewhere than a pediatrician in his 70s who appears to have shifted his entire professional viewpoint in his waning years for medical advice. This is all especially frustrating coming at a time when we now know Long Covid is real and not psychological (which I admittedly thought it was), and this asshole is talking about myocarditis, which is almost statistically insignificant even for the only group really at risk for it (35 out of 100,000 for 12-17 yo males). So he's worried about a side effect that at worst impacts .03% of a small group of young healthy people who will also almost all recover from it just fine when long covid, which affects somewhere between 7%-40% of people who contract Covid (of any age). The more I think this through the more that video is just more bullshit anti-vaxxer porn.
  2. You sound like someone who lives for the moment, has no regrets, and will likely die young (and who possibly suffers from ADHD based on chronic procrastination with a lack of self-loathing). NTTAWWT
  3. While I'm sure the people in Bama's story were likely the standard issue pill heads trying to score, there is also a shortage of many medications right now which also leads to some heated discussions at the pharmacy. As a nation, we're running short of everything from chemo drugs, antibiotics, ADHD meds, testosterone (tin foil hat tells me this one may be regional in red states - for reasons), and even fucking lidocaine. I feel bad for the pharmacists being on the front line having to explain to sick people that they can't have their medicine because . . . . Blaming supply chain issues at this stage of the game seems like a copout, although I'm sure there's some reality to it. People are dying or living miserably not getting their meds. I've driven over 300 miles to pick up medicine for my son I couldn't get anywhere in Austin. We've got compounding pharmacies on speed dial. The whole thing just sucks, and I'm not sure what needs to be done to fix it. I do know that the pharmaceutical industry does not deserve as much rope as others, however. They're still drowning in money. https://www.ashp.org/drug-shortages/current-shortages/drug-shortages-list?page=CurrentShortages&loginreturnUrl=SSOCheckOnly
  4. It's possible to love Texas and hate the corruption. Anyone who can defend recapture with a straight face is either a crook or a moron.
  5. People keep saying/writing things like this, demonstrating they either have no clue how any of this works or would simply prefer to pretend that the largess they enjoy in their suburban communities is not being heavily subsidized by people in the city, particularly Austinites.
  6. The 5th and 9th circuits enjoy going toe to toe every year to determine who can stretch reason the most to justify insane politically based jurisprudence. This is nothing new, but the scary thing now is the lack of a balancing force in the higher court.
  7. You can't pass a bond like that when basic needs aren't being met. It's completely disingenuous to argue that Prosper residents are the only ones paying for that stupid stadium, just as when other suburban schools pulled similar bond elections for toys. Prosper ISD and other suburban schools have all of the basic needs met thanks to taxpayers in Austin (and to a lesser degree Houston and Dallas), so they have the luxury to propose bonds for bullshit stadiums. How do you think a $94M bond for a stadium will go over if it's on the same ballot as a bond to try and repair air conditioning and leaky roofs? When there isn't even enough money to pay for special ed services? It's an amazing socialist-style rip-off being enjoyed by the folks most likely to decry socialism. This entire thing is nothing more than a grift from the morons who run this state to funnel money to certain types of Texans while completely screwing over the "wrong" types of Texans. It should be criminal. I understand why suburbanites want to bury their heads in the sand. I would be ashamed too if I knew my kids' beautiful campus was being subsidized off the backs of impoverished minority kids in the inner city. Or perhaps even worse, to know that all that excess is being paid for by the pinko commie libs in Austin. It's much easier to just assume that our community is special and built all of this amazing infrastructure due to our hard work, special status, and the Lord's blessings. What's going to be amazing to watch is how these same entitled suburbanites react when they realize that vouchers will destroy these public school palaces they've built. The biggest supporters of vouchers live in the burbs. When half the kids in these districts disappear to learn about Jesus instead of science, what do you think is going to happen to their public schools? And who do you think is going to own and profit from all the new religious schools that pop up to meet this need? Every single bit of all of this is about funneling tax dollars to a handful of crooks and keeping those same crooks' preferred monkeys in office. It's not complicated. You say this as if Austin and AISD have a choice in this matter, or that the money isn't very purposefully being apportioned the way it is. The State steals money from Austinites (and other municipalities to a much lesser degree) so that it can funnel the money to their preferred districts. You don't need to be a rocket surgeon to recognize the determinative factor of where the money goes. Perhaps more egregious is that a lot of the money goes into the general fund. So Austinites subsidize a lot more than just public schools in the suburbs, and state leadership loves it because they get to steal money and clown on libs all at the same time. And it's all legal thanks to well-intentioned, but ultimately stupid legislation passed in the nineties that has zero chance of being changed.
  8. To be fair, they're pulling from a uniquely entitled and pampered group of kids who have been protected from the dangers of things like books their entire lives. It's hard to find the requisite amount of grit to win football games in that situation.
  9. NAEP is a joke, and the data is commonly wildly misconstrued and used to draw boneheaded conclusions. Most prominently, it was used by morons like Betsy DeVos to argue for school vouchers. It's also the only single metric that demonstrates Texas students are doing okay. The only one.
  10. I grew up in Texas public school (a rural one to boot), and no teacher held back on the genocidal aspect of our history, but that was many moons ago. We also had proper sex ed back then. I know Texas whitewashes the shit out of things these days under the direction of our theocratic overlord Mike Morath, but I didn't know that was part of it. My kids are just getting to the age where they will cover these subjects. Looks like I'll be supplementing. I also will be really surprised if the teachers in AISD hold back, to be honest. We're not in the suburbs, and they don't tend to keep their opinions to themselves. You might be more likely to get angry parents around here if you taught some version of history that made it seem like wine and roses. It's one reason we send them to schools with no air conditioning and rat infestations rather than move to the suburbs.
  11. But they get to go home knowing those South Dallas kids paid for their stadium. What a world.
  12. Many of our state leaders come from that neck of the woods. Texas Senate District 8 is notoriously one of the more corrupt legal jurisdictions in America (and the system that has protected Paxton's sorry ass for so long). That their communities profit off the backs of poor minority students in urban centers should surprise absolutely no one.
  13. Here's hoping we're smart enough to avoid it. I'd like to see quicker movement on getting manufacturing the fuck out of there, but we're all slaves to quarterly reporting and that will fuck us on this one.
  14. When I lived in Chicago I had a buddy who would cook those fuckers up ni a number of different ways when the cicadas emerged. I was roped into his cicada feast a couple of times. It was fine. I don't recall shitting legs and wings, but I was drinking a lot back then.
  15. Are there significant numbers of Americans who deny this? I thought it was widely accepted. Perhaps I live in a bubble.
  16. Thank you. And fuck Prosper. If we can't get rid of recapture, the least that can be done is that hot women in these communities can come on down and service those of us who actually paid for their big-ass football stadium. It's only fair.
  17. Zeihan has been singing that song for a long time. Hope he's right, so long as they don't drag the world down with them. Fuck China.
  18. Something that should give every Texan pause is the fact that Florida has really good public schools while our system is a national laughing stock (even at the insanely overfunded suburban schools the education is shit). Recapture and a love affair with football are big reasons why. Fundagelicals are the other. But Florida. Fucking Florida. It's embarrassing.
  19. How do they survive?
  20. Harder to track that down than who pays. Wonder why? Even if a district doesn't receive funding, it may still be subsidized. Most of the affluent suburbs rig their tax structure to ensure they don't pay recapture themselves (after having been propped up by recapture for a couple of decades). While I don't blame them for playing by the extremely crooked and fucked up rules that are in place, it still sucks.
  21. I don't have a list of schools that receive funds, although you can find information about who is paying in here: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.txsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-Total-Recapture-per-District-by-Amount.pdf (Not sure if this will work without a pdf reader built into your browser.). No shock as to who is on top, and with a bullet. The list is basically inner cities and rural areas, with a couple of suburban communities with small payments because they fucked up their math. Most suburban school districts rig the system (Allen is one of them) to ensure they don't pay recapture. You can bet your ass Allen received recapture money back when they built their own palatial football stadium (which now seems quaint compared to some of these disgusting projects being built today). You can't pull off a bond for a stadium if you don't have basic services covered, and recapture made that happen for these districts. Like other similarly grotesque suburban communities, once the growth pushed them into a potential recapture situation, they massaged their property taxes to ensure it didn't happen. So, while roundabout, the poor inner-city kids in Austin, Dallas, Houston, etc. are still propping up these absolutely stupid suburban districts so that upper-middle-class, mostly white, mostly evangelical, future frat and sorority kids can go to school in structures nicer than most universities while kids in the cities fight off raccoons and don't have air conditioning. This state is completely fucked, and the only people who don't seem to see it live in the suburbs around major cities. But it's easy to think things are peachy keen when your lifestyle is being subsidized by others and sanctioned by state leadership. It's going to be interesting to watch these communities lose their shit when vouchers get passed and there is no money for their overgrown systems. Half those suburban kids will end up in Jesus school. Welcome to the party.
  22. Given that area's proclivity for generating aggies, I'm not surprised and also glad you made it out alive.
  23. Do you remember when she mentioned she's surrounded by old people?
  24. Damn. Looks like a lot of emergency personnel standing around in those pics, but no kids. Hope they're okay.
  25. I wasn't directing my comments at you personally, I hope that came across. dcbc beat me to it providing the data. Covid is still (by far) the deadliest airborne pathogen. Whether flu or RSV "sucks" more than Covid is entirely a case-by-case basis. With any of them, you might have an easy go or a miserable one. As far as pediatrics, and entirely anecdotally, both of my kids have had Covid recently. One breezed through it like it was nothing and the other was knocked flat on his back for over a week, and came close to being hospitalized with a secondary infection. It's not something to take lightly, just as the flu and RSV shouldn't be taken lightly. I definitely don't think we need to be overwrought with concern, but taking these pathogens seriously is important.
×
×
  • Create New...