Posts posted by bolverk
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2 hours ago, Goredho said:
I did it and all I see is that Craig James apparently killed 5 hookers?
It's 2021 and @markstancostill doesn't know how search engine optimization works.
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More from that interview:
Quote“Heidi is smoking hot, so I said ‘Man, you look great,’” Mr. Cruz said. “I don’t think there are many women who would be thrilled to have reporters following them around taking pictures of them in their bikinis and sticking them in the pages of the New York Post, but that’s what goes by journalism these days.”
Mr. Cruz said his wife was angry that her text messages, first published by The New York Times, inviting their Houston neighbors to travel with them to Cancún in the midst of statewide power outages had been leaked and was investigating who betrayed her confidence. Mr. Cruz said he suspected it was one of his Democratic neighbors.
“She was over at our neighbor’s house walking through it,” he said. “We have folks on our street who put up Beto signs, which I thought was pretty rude.”
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Read this last night and feel like it's a reasonably convincing -- and confidence-building -- outline of what to expect over the next year.
The Most Likely Timeline for Life to Return to Normal
An uncertain spring, an amazing summer, a cautious fall and winter, and then, finally, relief.The end of the coronavirus pandemic is on the horizon at last, but the timeline for actually getting there feels like it shifts daily, with updates about viral variants, vaccine logistics, and other important variables seeming to push back the finish line or scoot it forward. When will we be able to finally live our lives again?
Pandemics are hard to predict accurately, but we have enough information to make some confident guesses. A useful way to think about what’s ahead is to go season by season. In short: Life this spring will not be substantially different from the past year; summer could, miraculously, be close to normal; and next fall and winter could bring either continued improvement or a moderate backslide, followed by a near-certain return to something like pre-pandemic life.
Here, in more detail, is what Americans can expect daily life to look like for the next four(-ish) seasons.
SpoilerSPRING 2021
For the most part, daily life will continue to be far from normal for the next few months. Normal is of course a slippery word, given that many Americans have had to report to work or have chosen to dine out, travel, and do all sorts of things that others have avoided. But whatever people have not been doing for the past year, they can expect to keep not doing it this spring.It’s unlikely that enough people will get vaccinated in the spring to restore normalcy. In fact, experts fear that the pandemic could get much worse in the near term, because variants of the virus that are more contagious or vaccine-resistant than the original version have begun circulating in the United States. The damage those variants will do is still unknown; “March to May is the mystery,” as my colleague Robinson Meyer wrote earlier this month.
The good news, though, is that even with these variants, existing vaccines appear to reduce the risk of severe illness, meaning more and more people will be protected as vaccinations continue. And vaccines can change individuals’ risk calculus. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, told me that in a month or so, in the absence of a variant-driven surge, he’d probably be comfortable going to a friend’s house for a drink, mask-free and indoors, if he and his friend were both fully vaccinated. “As we get into late spring, a lot of that stuff—the smaller gatherings of vaccinated people—I think starts becoming quite possible,” Jha said.
SUMMER 2021
Whatever happens in the spring, the summer should be a sublime departure from what Americans have lived through so far. As my colleague James Hamblin wrote last week, “In most of the U.S., the summer could feel … ‘normal,’” even “revelatory.”“Barring some variant that is just really crazy, I expect the summer to be a lot like the summer of 2019,” Andrew Noymer, a public-health professor at UC Irvine, told me. Based on the drop-off in cases and hospitalizations over the past few weeks, he thinks life could even be close to normal as soon as sometime in May.
Other experts I consulted were slightly less optimistic, but they generally agreed that at some point between June and September, the combination of widespread vaccinations and warmer weather would likely make many activities much safer, including having friends and family over indoors, taking public transit, being in a workplace, dining inside restaurants, and traveling domestically (whether for work, visiting loved ones, or a vacation).
The safest way to phase these activities back in will be for people to gradually go from smaller, private social settings (such as a friend’s house) to bigger, public ones (such as a restaurant)—which is also what many will probably feel most comfortable with. “People will slowly expand the social world that they engage in, building [their] pod back up,” predicts Emily Oster, an economist at Brown who writes about everyday pandemic decision making in her newsletter ParentData.
Jha, for instance, expects to host 20 or so friends for a Fourth of July barbecue in his backyard, with every adult vaccinated and no one having to wear a mask. He imagines himself being comfortable eating indoors at a restaurant later on in the summer, provided it’s not packed and the ventilation is decent.
The summer will still have its limitations, though. The experts I spoke with didn’t foresee the return of indoor concerts, full attendance at sporting events, or high levels of international travel.
They did, however, expect that Americans will be able to ease up on mask wearing and social distancing in other contexts. “I think when people are vaccinated themselves, they will start letting their guard down, but it will also genuinely be safer from a public-health perspective,” said Jennifer Beam Dowd, a professor of demography and population health at the University of Oxford and the chief scientific officer of Dear Pandemic, a COVID-19 public-education campaign. Noymer’s prediction is that masking will be necessary in public settings until every American has at least been offered a vaccine, at which point he figures he would be okay with repealing mask mandates.
Even once these precautions are no longer strictly necessary, many people will probably keep up some of them, opting to wear a mask, say, on public transportation or in a grocery store. Oster thinks that while certain activities should become much safer over the summer, many people might not be comfortable resuming them until the end of the year or even later.
FALL/WINTER 2021–22
Even if the summer feels like the end of the pandemic, it could turn out to be more of a temporary reprieve.Most of the U.S. population should be vaccinated by the fall, but some resurgence of the virus seems likely in the colder months. “It won’t be as bad as this winter, but I don’t know if it’s going to be pretty bad or [if] just a few people will get it,” Noymer said.
Thankfully, the latter scenario seems more likely, and could still allow for additional normalcy; indoor concerts might even come back. “The summer might be a little early for really large crowds,” Dowd said. “I see the autumn as the important turning point for those kinds of mass gatherings.”
This scenario might result in isolated viral flare-ups, but vaccines should significantly reduce the likelihood that anyone who gets infected would end up in the hospital, and could also make them less likely to spread the virus.
Another outcome seems less probable but more troubling: Whether because a variant ends up evading existing vaccines or because infections surge among unvaccinated people, cases might climb again. Even after a wonderful summer, a rise in cases could necessitate a reversion to many of the precautions from earlier in the pandemic, even if it doesn’t require full-on lockdowns. “I’m not saying that the return of the masks and working from home and all the crap that we hate is guaranteed,” Noymer said. “But if it does return, it won’t be in the summer. It’ll be in the fall.”
Thankfully, though, if stubborn variants do circulate, new vaccines should be able to tame them relatively quickly. Adjusting an existing vaccine recipe could take only a few months, meaning that the disruption to daily life would not be as drawn out as what Americans have lived through already.
SPRING/SUMMER 2022
Beyond next winter, experts’ predictions are blessedly simple: Life in the warmer months of 2022 should be normal, or at least whatever qualifies as normal post-pandemic. The virus will still exist, but one possibility is that it will be less likely to make people severely ill and that it will, like the flu, circulate primarily in the colder months; some people would still die from COVID-19, but the virus wouldn’t rage out of control again. Meanwhile, Americans should be able to do most, if not all, of the things that they missed so much in 2020 and 2021, mask- and worry-free.Of course, this dreamy era is still more than a year away, and some unforeseen obstacle could delay the resumption of normalcy. Jha said he couldn’t picture what that might be, though. After a year spent gaming out how bad the pandemic could get, he can finally see ahead to a time when there are no more catastrophes to imagine.
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This was the best I could find on the status of school re-openings by state. Looks pretty comprehensive and you can hover over each state's individual orders.
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SCOTUS ordered Trump's accountants to release all relevant financial records to allow the investigation to continue.
Supreme Court Denies Trump’s Final Bid to Block Release of Financial Records
The former president’s accountants will give the records he has spent years trying to shield to New York prosecutors.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a last-ditch attempt by former President Donald J. Trump to shield his financial records, issuing a brief, unsigned order requiring Mr. Trump’s accountants to turn over his tax and other records to prosecutors in New York.
The court’s order was a decisive defeat for Mr. Trump, who had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep his tax returns and related documents secret. There were no dissents noted.
The case concerned a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA, by the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat. The firm has said it will comply with the final ruling of the courts, meaning that the grand jury should receive the documents in short order.
Mr. Vance issued a three-word statement in response to the court’s order: “The work continues.”
SpoilerUnder grand jury secrecy rules, it would ordinarily be unclear when, if ever, the public would see the information. But The New York Times has obtained more than two decades of tax return data of Mr. Trump and his companies, and it recently published a series of articles about them.
Mr. Trump, the articles said, has sustained significant losses, owes enormous debts that he is personally obligated to repay, has avoided paying federal income taxes in 11 of the 18 years The Times examined and paid just $750 in both 2016 and 2017.
The scope of Mr. Vance’s inquiry is not known. It arose partly from an investigation by his office into hush-money payments to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump, relationships the president has denied. But court filings by prosecutors suggested that they are also investigating potential crimes like tax and insurance fraud.
The subpoena sought Mr. Trump’s tax records and financial statements since 2011, the engagement agreements with the accountants who prepared them, the underlying raw financial data and information about how the data were analyzed.
As a candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump promised to disclose his tax returns, but he never did. Instead, he fought hard to shield the returns from scrutiny, for reasons that have been the subject of much speculation. In 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled that state prosecutors may require third parties to turn over a sitting president’s financial records for use in a grand jury investigation.
In a footnote to the decision, Judge Robert A. Katzmann said that Mr. Trump’s break with his predecessors’ practice was significant.
“We note that the past six presidents, dating back to President Carter, all voluntarily released their tax returns to the public,” Judge Katzmann wrote. “While we do not place dispositive weight on this fact, it reinforces our conclusion that the disclosure of personal financial information, standing alone, is unlikely to impair the president in performing the duties of his office.”
Mr. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court. In July, the justices soundly rejected Mr. Trump’s central constitutional argument against the subpoena — that state prosecutors are powerless to investigate a sitting president.
“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority in that decision.
Though Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented from other aspects of the decision, all nine justices agreed with that proposition. But the court gave Mr. Trump another opportunity to challenge the subpoena, on narrower grounds.
“A president may avail himself of the same protections available to every other citizen,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “These include the right to challenge the subpoena on any grounds permitted by state law, which usually include bad faith and undue burden or breadth.”
Mr. Trump did just that, but his arguments were rejected by a trial judge and a unanimous three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New York.
“Any documents produced under the Mazars subpoena would be protected from public disclosure by grand jury secrecy rules,” the panel said in an unsigned opinion, “which greatly reduces the plausibility of the allegation that the district attorney is acting out of a desire to embarrass the president.”
“There is nothing to suggest,” the panel added of the information sought, “that these are anything but run-of-the-mill documents typically relevant to a grand jury investigation into possible financial or corporate misconduct.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers then filed an “emergency application” asking the Supreme Court to intercede. It urged the court to block the appeals court’s ruling while it decided whether to hear another appeal from Mr. Trump.
“Even if the disclosure of his papers is limited to prosecutors and grand jurors, the status quo can never be restored once confidentiality is destroyed,” the brief said. “But the harm will be more than irreparable if the records are publicly disclosed. It will be case-mooting — the strongest possible basis for a stay.”
In response, Mr. Vance’s lawyers — including Carey R. Dunne, who argued the case the first time around; Walter E. Dellinger III, a former acting United States solicitor general in the Clinton administration; and Michael R. Dreeben, a former longtime deputy solicitor general and a member of the team that assisted Robert S. Mueller III in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election — pointed to the Times articles. The cat, they said, was out of the bag.
“The New York Times has obtained his tax-return data and described that data in depth in a series of articles,” Mr. Vance’s brief said. “With the details of his tax returns now public, applicant’s asserted confidentiality interests have become highly attenuated if they survive at all. And even assuming any remain, they cannot justify extraordinary relief from this court that would deprive the grand jury alone of facts available to anyone who reads the press.”
“This litigation has already substantially hampered the grand jury’s investigation,” the brief said. “No legal basis exists for the extraordinary relief that applicant requests — or remotely justifies the further delay it entails.”
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On 2/16/2021 at 4:14 PM, cactusflinthead said:
I'm several pages and a couple of days behind (partially due to our deregulated electricity market), but I need to chime in here. Although Troy has retired to Horseshoe Bay, he's not from there. I went to high school with his daughter and his good-for-nothing shithead son. While Troy portrayed himself locally as a pillar of the First Baptist Church, whenever he was away Sunny would host gigantic, open-bar parties for all of us fellow underaged high schoolers at their hacienda. Troy, himself, was always an "aw shucks" kind of guy around town, but even at the age of 16, I easily figured out he was a total shyster. Sunny was smart enough, decent, and okay, but her younger brother was an absolute shit, who took much more after his dad, and was a total cokehead. He eventually got arrested on 6th Street in Austin while his dad was still in office. /csb
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26 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:
Where is his grave going to be?
Because they better have a 24hr guard.
They better hide it. Far away behind barbed wire and up a long forgotten dirt road.
Ever been to Jim Morrison's grave? Yeah, if they ever make the location known to the public, it'll be like that...but covered in shit, piss, blood, and any other discharge from a human body you can imagine.
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6 minutes ago, CleverNickname said:
Sure. Arguably you should be conserving but do a quick 3 min shower. I've showered with pails of untreated beaver fever water. Just don't drink it and keep your eyes shut, just in case. (Caveat: I have zero expertise)
I just googled "beaver fever" and it wasn't at all what I was expecting.
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6 minutes ago, Blotto said:
Ha I know the guy that sold them their fancy new LED lighting set-up. I'm going to give him shit for this, if thats true. What kind of a lighting system requires a licensed electrician for simple on/off operation. I cant believe that's a thing.
Licensed electricians who know how to leverage their licenses for $.
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Edited by bolverk
14 minutes ago, Chopper said:Dumb question, but there's such a huge demand for water in Austin because there's so many pipe breaks?
Yes.
12 minutes ago, Not that Bob said:Water just went off. Is there really a reason to turn it off at the street since none is coming in from there. Faucets all gurgled like they were emptying backwards when water went off.
Yes.
11 minutes ago, ztejas said:We are using 3 times more water than "ever before"? That can't just be from dripping faucets can it?
Yes, plus lines are bursting.
7 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:Lines busting and running probably.
Yes, this is happening.
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6 minutes ago, Anastasis said:
my primary concern at this point is that I had some lines that didn't drain and still froze. I guess we'll see, but last thing I want to do is shock the system with a full turn blast.
That's absolutely a valid concern. I'll likely keep mine off until Sunday after a couple days of thaw just to allow any potential ice in the lines to fully melt. Right now, I've got several faucets fully open and they were just blowing a little air after the city cut this part of Austin off. Then, my neighbor and I cut the main line at the street. Opening it all back up may be a little tricky, but I figure I'll give a couple nonfreezing days a chance. On the plus side, I live alone so only my daughter's cat will have to deal with my filthy stench. I did take a nice, long hot shower yesterday morning to warm my bones while the power was still off and my house was in a deep freeze.
PSA: If you live in my neck of the woods near southern end of West Gate, the store at the intersection with Davis is open and with power. The one hilly portion of West Gate has also been sanded. They still had some bottled water a half hour ago but going fast. They're also fully stocked on wine and beer.
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7 minutes ago, Anastasis said:
For the early adherents, as well as the newly converted by threat of violence, just remember to open your faucets and restore the pressure very gradually when we get to the point that we can turn things back on. You don't want to send a full pressure blast into the empty lines.
Y'all, listen to this man.
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15 minutes ago, troph said:
ok so if we have no water (pressure gone, pipes drained, faucets open (upstairs/downstairs/outside), should we turn off the main so that when pressure returns it doesn't smack through ice pockets in the pipes where residual water was that later froze? does that make sense? turn off the main or just wait for pressure to return? faucets are open btw and we have power.
This is exactly my situation. Just to stay on the safe side, I'd turn off the water at the main line now since we've still got three more nights of hard freezes. When water comes back, you'll can always just go out there and turn it back on. Besides, you're not going to have water anyway.
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15 minutes ago, Anastasis said:
#teamwateroff@mainline since Monday. At this point doesn't fucking matter since there is no water in the hood anyways. Total shitshow.
Having grown up in West Texas and getting my undergrad while living in super cheap and crappily built apartments in Lubbock up on the High Plains (regularly gets very cold there at night during winter), I wasn't too concerned about bursting pipes so long as I kept the indoor faucets at a decent low stream. Now, with zero water, I'm definitely on #teamwateroff@mainline.
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9 minutes ago, BigBenBamboozle said:
78749, now on a boil notice with no water coming out of any faucets after a a slow decline of pressure the last couple hours.
Question: with no water coming through the pipes, should I take this opportunity to turn off the main cutoff outside? TIA
That's what several of us on our block in 78745 just did after our water went out a couple of hours ago. We've got three more nights of a hard freeze and can obviously no longer stream or drip, so it seems like the prudent move.
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12 minutes ago, htown85 said:
Is there a website that will tell me what gas stations in Houston are operating? Getting harder to charge the phone in a car running out of gas.
9 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:Google app or maps will show you what's nearby and you can call. The app purports to show whether things are open, and that's usually accurate, but not in these times, methinks.
If you click on the pin on google maps, the stores will typically show how busy they are. I'm about to run for a supply pick up at a place where google says "Busier than normal." It's the only one that's open that I feel comfortable driving to. HEB, the Circle K, and the 7-11 I would typically go to are all closed.
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Edited by bolverk
Buddy has always been a helpful neighbor. God bless Buddy.14 minutes ago, LebongJames said:Pump station has no power here in Westlake so now we have no water at all. What is the play when they get water turned back on?
I currently have multiple faucets dripping but now nothing is coming out because you know no water. Should I go around and close them all of leave them open?
Water went completely out here in SW Austin a couple of hours ago. A good ol' boy redneck by the name of "Buddy" was out on the block helping all our neighbors turn off the water at the street so that when pressure comes back on our pipes all don't burst since we can't drip/stream any longer. You might look into doing the same since we're going to have three more nights of hard freezes.
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Went without power from 2am Sunday until about midnight last night. It was in the nick of time too as I had run out of firewood and began resorting to burning cardboard boxes that had been in my garage from all the deliveries over the past year. Never lost hot water though, so that was a blessing.
But, now, the water is out all over southwest Austin. If you're west of Manshack and south of Wm. Cannon, you have no water.
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I'm at just over 24 hours without power. I've used up most of the firewood and have decided to burn the last I have in the morning when the temp is the lowest. I've been heating up cans of soup/chili in a saucepan over the fire. The fire went out a couple of hours ago, and it's fucking frigid. I'm going out to the car to keep my cellphone charged and warm up some.
Who's been covid vaxxed? Stand up and be counted.
in Daily Texan
Got my first shot of Moderna through APH today at the Dove Springs rec center. Kinda felt like voting day - about 45 minutes waiting in line mostly outdoors. Only a touch of soreness but not bad at all. The weird thing was a slight sensation of feeling it spread down my arm a few minutes later but no big deal.