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Samson's Wig

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Everything posted by Samson's Wig

  1. I know it's not a popular opinion. I hate it for the dogs as it's ultimately a people problem, but sometimes it's appropriate to cull animal populations, especially when culling the human population is off the table.
  2. Shelters have no shame lying their asses off to people about the presumed breeds of their dogs. Austin Pets Alive is often sitting at 90%+ pit mixes, but it's rare to find even one listed that way. I love dogs, but I don't support our no-kill policy. It just floods neighborhoods with bad dogs. We have a neighbor who adopted a pit mix (she was told boxer I believe) who broke free from his leash and attacked our dog (on leash). They wouldn't get rid of it after that incident, even after the city came out for a hand slap. Then it attacked one of their kids. Gone now. As a breed pits can be just fine when raised from birth by responsible people. The sheer volume of pits in shelters who come from miserable backgrounds and irresponsible jackass humans is at the root of the problem, IMO. I'm not necessarily advocating for putting down every pit mix that lands in a shelter, but I'm open to that discussion. Perhaps not breed-specific rules, but a checklist of traits and history that fast-track certain dogs for termination would be the way to go.
  3. San Antonio was already much faster on the draw in this regard.
  4. They may as well ask the question the right way: "Do you want your kids to be molested by a religious leader while they're at school, or would you prefer we give parents the choice to have their kids molested by a religious leader at church on the weekends?" It's all about parents making the decisions for what's best for their kids, right?
  5. If cedar season has been over for a while, wtf has my allergies blowing up for the last week?
  6. What do his original intentions have to do with it? The saddest part of that origin story is that he came up with the idea because he couldn't afford his rent. Now he's made sure many more are in the same boat. As for the second item, it would probably be easier for you to catch everyone else up to speed on how anyone on the Tesla board is anything but a rubber stamp. But you can find one example of Gebbia being little more than a bro if you look at his direct tweets at Elon, including telling him that threatening to go private was a "baller move" instead of calling him out (or being able to recognize it) for what it really was. I'm sure he's a nice enough guy and fun guy to party with, which is probably how he ended up on Tesla's board in the first place, but like most of the tech bros that so many deluded goobs look up to these days, he's an empty suit that causes a great deal of harm without adding much of anything of value beyond funneling wealth into a smaller and smaller pool. That's not something I find commendable, personally.
  7. And yet that man-child built his fortune by founding a company that has done more to make home ownership a pipe dream for most Americans than any other factor. Don't forget he's also an Elon bootlicker and on the Tesla board. Fuck Joe Gebbia.
  8. I'm sure they'll get that knocked out and passed in no time.
  9. Sorry if I missed someone already posting this. https://www.kut.org/2024-02-12/bozeman-montana-city-manager-austin-hiring-job
  10. The world is full of insufferable cunts, but it doesn't matter much until they inherit a shitload of money. I assume PETA will take ownership of the real estate when she's gone?
  11. I'll take the curbside shoppers over the old ladies at the grocery store any day. They both take up the entire aisle and couldn't less that anyone exists or is trying to shop, but only the old ladies look at you like you're a piece of shit when you politely ask to get by them.
  12. Unless I glanced past it, the article is missing the obvious part of him laundering the money in Vegas, not actually wasting it in the casinos.
  13. Were all his victims real estate developers? If so, this may be a Batman/vigilante justice type of thing that the feds should just mind their own fucking business about. It would also explain why his victims would readily believe they did something to piss someone off enough to put a hit on them.
  14. Thank you for putting this more eloquently than I did. How anyone can remotely try to compare what Austin has going on to any of those places is ridiculous.
  15. Not really making an argument so much as trying to understand what Austin is trying to accomplish with its complete lack of direction downtown. I don't hate condos, I owned and lived in them. I wouldn't buy one in Austin if they were giving them away. It is not a pleasant place to live for the demographic you just described. Downtown Austin is simply nowhere in the same stratosphere as any of those neighborhoods in terms of a functionally livable environment. I have actually lived in River North, the Financial District, and downtown Austin (albeit well before the boom). Austin doesn't just lag behind these other locations, it's not even reasonable to compare them. Pied-à-terres are not the issue, as we clearly have way more than anyone wants to inhabit. The issue is what surrounds them, and while not a complete dead zone it's damn close. I don't know who we're trying to attract to downtown, but it isn't exactly filled with DINKs, affluent singles, or downsizing empty nesters. There's a reason. And those neighborhoods you mention did not start to revitalize by building condos and nothing else. If I have a point at all, that's it. We're doing it backward and I'm trying to understand why. It's not working. My concern is I don't think we're moving forward. We have a bunch of dwellings with no one living in them full time, like a Chinese suburban development.
  16. I agree with you, but that's a bit like bragging about being the fittest guy in the buffet line at the Golden Corral.
  17. I'll bet it's fewer than 10%. I'll take a look.
  18. No, but I can see how you might mistakenly pull that out of what I wrote. There are many things missing from downtown Austin to make it a place people might actually want to live. Most of these things are commercial and not government-owned or funded: Grocery, retail, etc., not to mention housing that attracts actual residents and not investors alone. Building more condos for absolutely no one to live in is fucking stupid and benefits no one locally at all. I also have seen no noticeable reduction in my local taxes since the building of all of these condos, have you? Or are you a suburbanite with no actual skin in the game? The city loves all that extra revenue, I guess so they can build more bike lanes for all those folks who don't live downtown to never use, but they sure as fuck aren't using it to offset what they charge the rest of us. I might actually get behind that scenario. Texas cities are some of the slowest in America to recover from white flight, in part because our state government ensures that white evangelicals in the burbs are made as comfortable as possible. Given how quickly our population is growing, we're going to have to get over it, and soon.
  19. A lot of SMBs came to the realization during the pandemic that a certain percentage of their customer base isn't worth dealing with anymore. A lot of it is generational, I think, as older folks need their hands held much more than younger folks ("I want to talk to someone before I place an order, by god! No real reason other than I want to!"). Whether or not that is reasonable is beside the point, as businesses will eventually stop caring what customers who require more effort to close want and for good reason. Younger buyers value efficiency and ease of transaction i.e. they don't want to talk to someone, they want to order it and have it in hand as soon as possible. Older buyers often still like to be sold something, and want the human interaction. They require much more time and effort for the same sale. From a business standpoint, one of these customers is much more attractive than the other, and the folks complaining the loudest about the lack of customer service these days tend to fall in the less attractive category. As wealth continues to shift from the gigantic older generation to the gigantic younger one, older folks are going to complain more and more about customer service. It won't matter when those old folks are GenX, as we've been too small in numbers for anyone to ever give a shit about anyway. The point: customer service seems worse for the neediest customers because businesses have stopped focusing on attracting their business.
  20. For some, no downtown is livable because they just prefer single-family housing, and by livable, I'm not talking about affordable (which is another discussion), but for those who enjoy urban living, there are plenty of great cities with great downtowns in America. Austin just isn't one of them (at least not yet). Based on personal experience, New York, Boston and Chicago come to mind immediately. Toronto (while just across the border) is amazing for downtown living. Downtown Chicago was primarily a business district for decades up until the last fifteen years or so, but the edges of it made for excellent livable areas even before the recent push for downtown residences. Cities like Miami and San Diego provide a functional downtown living experience. There are tons of mid sized cities that provide great downtown living as well, such as Greenville or Burlington. These places have the infrastructure and amenities (not just laundromats, but museums, art galleries, etc.) to make living downtown comfortable and functional, starting with transit systems but also including everything one might need within walking distance or a short transit ride. Austin has places to eat and drink downtown and rows and rows of condos. Living down there takes a lot of effort you don't have to put in many other major cities, and provides very little in terms of features. The library stands out as something great for reason. It's about all we have. Downtown Austin is designed for tourists, not residents, and building more condos won't change that.
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