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Samson's Wig

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Samson's Wig

  1. So, the cowards at AISD dropped a bomb in parent's lap last night, as a reaction to the assholes at the state dropping the initial bomb on them late yesterday (all conveniently right before a holiday weekend to avoid all the angry phone calls, etc.). All of this conveniently happening the same day school vouchers passed the state house. The state is finally making a move on AISD due to the shittastic performance of Dobie. It's insane that our laws allows for one bad school to take down an entire district, especially when that school is struggling, in part, due to actions taken by the state. The cowards in AISD administration, by way of the school board, are desperately trying to save their jobs (because if they state takes over they'll all be gonzo) by closing Dobie and moving all ~550 students over to Lamar Middle School, which is already overcrowded to the point I don't understand how it passes fire code. They haven't said it officially, but this will likely kill off the fine arts academy at Lamar as well, as they can push the kids that aren't zoned for Lamar out to make room for the Dobie kids. Which, ironically, will also push many of the academically excelling kids out of the school and further lower Lamar's numbers and rating. This is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, but I'll never understand the mindset of "fixing" bad schools by simply moving underperforming kids into a school with high-performing kids in order to bring test averages up to just about passing. That is protecting jobs, not better educating kids. AISD has failed these kids at Dobie miserably, and their solution is to ruin a school that is at least functional, and thereby make education terrible for even more children. Fuck every last one of these feckless assholes. They tried to bring back busing, of all the stupid ideas proven repeatedly not to work, before the pandemic in an attempt to do the same thing. The entire administrative staff, starting with the sawed off little piece of shit superintendent, should be fired yesterday. The school board is a collection of well intentioned but ultimately braindead progressives who will happily destroy shit just to make things appear to be okay. They will do precisely what they did during the last debate over bussing, and just accuse anyone opposed to their self serving plan of being a racist, because that's all they've got. Not actual plan, no concern for any of these kids, just ass covering bull shit. If you have kids in AISD, pay very close attention to what is happening, as this is just the first big domino to fall. The state will be taking over the district at some point, and nobody wants that, especially after seeing what those crooks have done with HISD, but at this point I'm wondering if it can really be any worse than the spineless, self-serving assholes running AISD currently (to be very clear, I'm not talking about teachers, principals, or anyone else who spends time educating children daily, just the dumbfucks in charge). There was already a mass exodus of kids from AISD happening before the pandemic. The pandemic sped it up tremendously, and this next step will be the biggest backbreaker of all. The only positive that may come of this is that 3+ bedroom homes may drop in price as a bunch of them will be going on the market in Austin soon as families get the fuck out. Of course, that's bad news for any current families desperate to get the hell out of what is quickly becoming a nightmare scenario for the kids. There aren't enough private schools in the city to take in all these kids, and of course most parents can't afford it anyway even with the governor's new welfare for rich parents program. So, lots of people are going to just have to live with the knowledge that they are stuck in an overpriced city sending their kids to an overcrowded and unsafe school where they will not receive much of any kind of education. We are living in weird times.
  2. https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/houston-we-have-a-myth-what-was-really-the-first-word-spoken-from-the-moon/285-412522095
  3. Fuck that guy. Sorry, not sorry.
  4. I'm a motorcycle guy, but not a Harley guy, which is essentially all ROT was for. I hated the ROT rally, and it was the one time of year my wife and I were sure to keep our bikes in the garage and not ride. The roads are dangerous enough with all of the shitty cagers driving around staring at their phones, but when you add in all of the rookie riders that show up for ROT on their overpriced piece-of-shit Harleys the roads were simply insane and not worth it. I don't want it to come back. Some posters above conflated motorcyclists with antivaxxers, conspiracy nuttos, Trumpers, etc. That's not true at all, but it is more prevalent in the Harley community, which is its own insular little club and not representative of all riders, just like the 20-year-old crotch rocket death seekers making all the racket on 2222 on the weekends don't represent all riders. The majority are normal, quiet people who enjoy the experience of riding, which is something just about everyone should try out before they get too old to do so. The sport/hobby is dying off as young people in America don't ride at all anymore, so it's become a 45+ activity for the most part. I ride a bike around town more than my truck, and love going for longer rides out to Big Bend, etc. on an adventure bike to get off road and camp. My favorite activity is getting up in the dark on the weekends and riding with a fly rod out to rivers in the hill country and slaying fish all morning. Back by mid-afternoon, grilling up something tasty for the family (not the freshwater fish, because I don't have a death wish), and relaxing away the evening. The point is, there are lots of great ways to incorporate all kinds of classic Texas pastimes with riding. Hell, I'm part of one group that just rides out to a different BBQ joint within a couple hours of Austin every couple of months. Bunch of olds and fatties in that crew, and not an antivaxxer among them as far as I know.
  5. Ah, Kristy Swanson. I'm off to find "Higher Learning" on a streaming platform now, as the need to see her play dirty with Jennifer Connelly is now taking up all of my brain's bandwidth.
  6. You're imputing comments made by others onto me for whatever reason. That's okay, though, as you and the fellas who neg-repped me missed the point. You don't base sentencing on whether or not the victim was going to go on and lead an extraordinary life, because there is no way to know that. It's an entirely moronic way to determine sentencing. If a victim is a complete and worthless piece of shit, their murderer should still go to prison for a long time. This guy will spend a long time in jail, and deservedly so. So will other folks who murder people. It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter who the victim was or what make-believe life one might imagine he would go on to live. But that make-believe notion is precisely what has some folks in this thread way too emotionally attached to this story while they mostly ignore the other twenty thousand murders that happen in this country every year. Yes, that was the point.
  7. By that time, the victim could just as easily be on his third divorce due to being an abusive piece of shit, have lots of kids who think he's a loser, have a raging drug habit, earn a living screwing honest people out of money, i.e., working in finance or insurance, and be a general no-good piece of shit. He would probably pay his country club dues on time, though, so on balance, he would be an okay fella. Okay, I'm coming around to your way of thinking.
  8. Or "Contact", depending on where you draw the line in terms of on the moon. Either way, "Houston" came up much later.
  9. The first word spoken from the moon was "That's", but facts don't matter anymore. We have fucking morons in charge.
  10. Just as soon as Abbot takes over the White House from Trump.
  11. It's amazing. I took my daughter for the first time a couple of summers ago. She was ten. The gentleman working the desk was really nice, and told her he was running a special that day and if a kid could tell a joke that makes him laugh he will let them and their parent in for free. My daughter did not hesitate and launched into the following highly inappropriate joke: "What do you say to a man in a wheelchair who is wearing camouflage? - You can hide, but you can't run!" I had never heard that joke and don't know where she picked it up. My immediate response was to laugh out loud but I stifled it while becoming worried this guy was about to kick us out, or at the least judge me for being a terrible father and scold my kid. He didn't move for what felt like ten minutes but was just a sizable pregnant pause, and then he burst a gut laughing his ass off and let us in for free.
  12. When antivaxxers/wellness gurus/conspiracy morons go wrong.
  13. Gonna need more than $250k for mental health care in this country.
  14. That's what I'll actually be doing as well. The other option sounds like more fun, though.
  15. Penny wise and pound foolish, the lot of you. I'm taking this opportunity to sell my wife, kids, pets, the house, the cars, and any depreciable assets lying around. I'll then be grabbing a fly rod and tackle, a change of underwear, and a bottle or two of the good stuff and riding a Triumph Bonneville down Mexico way. No half measures.
  16. The problem with the "did my own research" and "common sense uber alles" crowd is that they've never grasped the age-old principle that the breadth of one's knowledge always limits one's logic and reason. If you know very little about something, or research incorrect information about a topic, lots of wrong things will seem perfectly reasonable to the point you would swear up and down you must be right. I made the joke in my last post about airplanes getting smaller as they get higher, and that comes from an old story that illustrates this point well. A kid who has never flown before watches from the airport window as planes take off and disappear into the sky. Once she's on board her flight, she turns to her mom and asks, "When do we start shrinking?" It's a perfectly logical and reasonable presumption based on the kids' limited knowledge, but it's also completely wrong.
  17. There's no reasonable justification for Tesla's valuation since, well, just about ever. Why should that change now?
  18. Don't forget that those fucking things shrink as they get higher, and plain old common sense tells you that is impossible. It has to be some kind of mirage trickery, probably some secret DOD stuff harvested from alien tech they won't tell us about.
  19. I agree with this. The older I get, the more confrontational I get, which will probably be the end of me at some point. I mentioned this already today in a thread about conspiracy nutbags, but we have been too neutered as a society and don't call out bad or stupid behavior like we should. This is the true dismal tide, as assholes will just keep being assholes if no one points out what an asshole they are. That's what I'm talking about right there. Take action.
  20. The feel-good inclusivity politics of the last thirty years are a big part of why we are now dealing with conspiracy theorists who are confident enough to espouse idiotic bullshit to anyone who will listen. They genuinely believe that they are reading and doing research because they have no fucking clue what that means. I know the Internet and social media provide a platform, but if we adequately shamed stupid people for being stupid none of this would be happening. Instead, we pass kids along who can't read, convince certain folks (mainly white suburban kids) that they are intelligent because they score high on really easy standardized exams, and generally coddle morons of all stripes. Maybe it's time to bring back the judgmental shaming of kids. At the very least, start failing the kids who are too stupid to pass our embarrassingly easy public school classes instead of passing every single one of them along. At least then, they'll know they're stupid and/or lazy and will have the opportunity to do something about it instead of just meandering into adulthood with misguided notions of their own intelligence. TLDR: We would have fewer stupid adults if we started telling stupid kids they're stupid again. Put that on a red hat.
  21. Agreed, except Aggy should be folded back into the UT system from whence it came. They both serve the same markets. If there were to be a second system (and really, it should all be under one, IMO) it should probably be Tech to serve the western part of the state. Plus, fuck aggy.
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