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Brisketexan

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Posts posted by Brisketexan

  1. The Swedes do very, very, VERY little well, culinarily. The meatballs are a real thing, those little pancakes with lingonberries are quite good…and all the herring. When we’ve been in the Nordics, I’ve eaten ALL the herrings, but I’m the only one in my family who likes it. Smoked, curried, pickled, creamed, all of it. But I definitely understand how it’s a specialized taste.

  2. 3 minutes ago, WineGuy69 said:

    Yea for sure. Why would I have a problem with liberals owning a gun if they do it legally?

    Mostly because most conservatives, who we all THOUGHT were super-worried about an authoritarian government casually acting outside the rule of law and sweeping people up without regard for the constitution....but it turns out they were only worried about that in their fever-dreams when they thought that might happen to white people.  So, you'll understand when we doubt the sincerity of any conservative's professed reverence for constitutional rights.

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  3. Second confirmed measles case in Travis county.  Picked up by a vaccinated person......HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...NO.  An unvaccinated fuckwad piece of shit, of course.  But, at least he didn't expose anyone else to it.   HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  OF COURSE HE EXPOSED PEOPLE:

    Officials report that the infected person visited several locations in and around Austin over the past week, which include:

    • An office building at 300 Colorado St., on Wednesday, April 16, from 9 a.m. – 7 p.m.  
    • Maaribu Coffee Shop, 1413 S 1st St., on Thursday, April 17, from 8:45 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. 
    • Curra’s, 614 E Oltorf St., on Thursday, April 17, from 5:45 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. 
    • Starbucks, 1920 E Riverside Dr., on Friday, April 18, from 10:08 a.m. – 12:08 p.m. 
    • UPS Store, 2407 S Congress Ave. STE E, on Saturday, April 19, from 1 p.m. – 5 p.m. 
    • Hestia Restaurant, 607 W 3rd St. #105, on Saturday, April 19, from 5:45 p.m. – 11 p.m. 
    • Walgreens, 1920 E Riverside Dr. Bldg B, on Sunday, April 20, from 8:45 a.m. – 12 p.m. 
    • Pueblo Viejo, 2410 E Riverside Dr. STE H-8, on Sunday, from April 20, 8:45 a.m. – 12 p.m. 
    • CareNow, 1920 E Riverside Dr. Suite A110, on Sunday, April 20, from 8 a.m. – 12 p.m.

    Because, you know, being vaccinated is totally a personal choice, and fuck any consequences for anyone else, I get to do whatever I want and fuck you and your interests or health.  ME ME ME ME ME.

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  4. 7 minutes ago, Clintonaldo said:

    Trump’s first term some of his shit worked because he was unpredictable but that ain’t working this time because the rest of the civilized  world has realized he is an ignorant buffoon who just runs his mouth and they aren’t scared anymore. In summary, the bully has bluffed all he can and now actually has to fight. 

    A whole lot of this.  When your play is "bluster and make a lot of noise and dust," it works the first time or two you run it.  But once folks see it for what it is -- and anyone with an IQ greater than Trump (so....pretty much everyone in a position of power elsewhere in the world) absolutely sees it for what it is -- they just stand there and let you make your noise and dust.....and they're still standing there, unmoved, when you're done running your one and only play.  And then what?  He doesn't have a Plan B.  That would require him to know the fucking alphabet, which is clearly 25 letters more than he can handle.

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  5. 3 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

    Thanks for responding. I don't see how that refutes what I said. 

    A person begins his belief about God by reading the Bible. The Bible is true because God wrote it. 

    Written without rancor.

    The Bible is true because it speaks truth.  Attribution to an anthropomorphic author with a human motivation is not necessary for it to speak truth.  To go back to Spong, until we loosen our grip on the overly humanized, childlike insistence on a language of existence that we can understand because it is exactly what we experience as humans, we restrain ourselves from embracing the full truth.  We actually do the truth that is the divine a disservice by confining it to a box of an orthodoxy created and imposed by men.

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  6. Just now, Clintonaldo said:

    Really appreciate the kind words and I think you really nailed something. I am seeking the truth no matter how uncomfortable it makes me. I have been surrounding myself with people not like me and asking questions that spur debate because I want to continue growing. 

    Hard questions.  Which I've found yield humbling, often uncomfortable answers.  That's the way "truth" is - whether it be the universal, existential type discussed here, or the more granular of "how do I do my job more effectively?", or "how do I get healthy?"  If the "answers" you keep coming with look a whole lot like the path of least resistance, and not "man, that's some shit I'm really going to have to work on, and it's hard," they the odds are incredibly high that you're lying to yourself, steering yourself away from "truth."

    As an easy example, and the one I cannot seem to even come CLOSE to clearing the hurdle on, a call and answer to the question of "how should I treat people" from Christianity: But I tell you, love your enemies.  How ndo we walk "the way" that is Christianity?  One of the ways to do that is to . . . love our enemies.  That's not easy.  It's really fucking hard.  I sure as shit do a piss-poor job of it.  And I'm getting worse at it, actually.  But . . . I am honest enough with myself to acknowledge that no matter how much I don't want to hear it and don't want to do it and don't do it and will probably forever fail at it . . . it is true.

    Walking "the way" is hard.  It helps a lot to know we're not alone.  Even when we're walking backwards.

  7. Oh, and to @Clintonaldo, I would say....you are walking.  You know that you are not doing it alone.  You wrestle with understanding what truth is.  But you seek it.  And you do so with and in love.  Your name is written in the Book of Life.  Next to mine.  Next to everyone else's.  It is a staggeringly beautiful book, written in two hundred billion trillion stars (yeah, that's the actual number, best we can tell).  And written in each moment you live.  With each step you take.  From the infinite to the mundane, you are in that Book, you are writing that Book.  We are profoundly lucky and blessed to be on that journey together, in this sliver of time we have to be alive.

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  8. 3 hours ago, Vegas64 said:

    I think the idea that you go to a concept of heaven up in the atmosphere away from earth and see all your friends and family and reunite is pretty widely accepted to be false. I think you might not even know your wife or husband or child or best friend, in the temporal sense we know them now, but it's a return to the shalom (the completeness, unbrokenness) that was how God intended

    This is consistent with my universalism - as in, they are complementary, and not mutually exclusive.  

    God is creator, but also within all creation (again, that's pretty Hindu).  We are in and of the universe - that whole "we are each of us some of the universe's stardust, coalesced for a period of time to be 'Brisketexan.'"  When we die, we literally return to that inanimate state -- again, the literal "ashes to ashes, dust to dust."  And that is a return to being in and a non-independent part of the universe. 

    I think it's quite beautiful, actually.  As infinite and incomprehensible as this massive universe is, its story cannot be completely told without speaking of that time when some of its stardust was Brisketexan.  Omit that, and the story of the universe and its journey is incomplete.  So, while my perception can easily be that I am an insignificant collection of dust, the fact that the dust that is me is part of the universe's total inventory means that I am NOT insignificant.  I am part of the story.  To go Jewish, my name is written in the Book of Life.  Creation knows of every speck of dust in it, and it is profound to be part of that completeness and unbrokenness.

    Indeed, I see that as overlapping with the concept of grace as well, which I have always found theologically powerful as hell.  No matter how much I fail -- in spite of my failures -- I am welcomed and loved by God.  Or, another way to see it: no matter how much I might try to separate myself from the universe and everything in it -- particularly including the parts of that universe manifested as my fellow man -- it's pointless.  The universe necessarily embraces me, and I will always return to its fold.

    And I say that this sort of belief is complementary, not mutually exclusive with Christian faith because I see Christianity as being materially allegorical.  Jesus spoke in parables, why cannot and why should not our faith itself be a parable, anthropomorphized for our human understanding?  The important thing to understand is that parables are TRUE.  Not literal, but TRUE.  Thus, our faith, even if allegorical, even if an anthropomorphized translation used so that we might understand, need not be literal to be TRUE.

    I wept -- not a few tears, but actual fucking sobs, when I saw "Everything Everywhere All At Once."  Because the theme conveyed - or at least, that I received - was that the only true boundless force in creation is love.  And that no matter what iteration or permutation of the universe you might imagine, in infinite alternate universes, love is a common thread, on a quantum level.  Humans on this exact earth?  Our love, and those we love, will find each other and be bound to each other.  An alternate universe, where we are mere stones?

    sddefault.jpg

    We will find each other.

    My daughter and I, even when our connection is difficult, communication is hard, and we do not understand each other.  The love is there.  A quantum thread, running through every imaginable universe:

    eeaao-15926.jpg

    My wife and I.  For us - with one way of looking at it - we were lazy and simple, "falling in love" with someone who literally grew up mere blocks away.  Or, with a quantum view, ended up growing up merely blocks away from each other because the thread that runs through all universes was going to put us together.

    Sounds of laughter, shades of life
    Are ringing through my open ears
    Inciting and inviting me
    Limitless, undying love
    Which shines around me like a million suns
    It calls me on and on across the universe

     

    Limitless, undying love.  That calls you on and on across the universe.  Tell me that is NOT the essence of God.  Tell me that is NOT the essence of faith - all faiths.  It is the one truth of our collective existence.  We are called to be a part of this universe, drawn and bound together by love.  And thus to practice it.  With every part of our being.

    “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

    Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

    Allegory and faith are truth.  Because they communicate a truth that is the very nature of existence as living beings.

    Which is why I have always bristled at the gatekeeping of many iterations of "Christianity" of "but you have to accept Jesus -- without that ticket, nothing else matters."  No.  The universe - God - will not exclude me from the embrace and wholeness of divine creation because I don't say magic words or check a box.  The beauty that is a human soul and being, conceived in and bound by love, cannot be denied the embrace of creation, because it does not affirmatively declare a particular allegory to be literal, yet lives the same truth of that allegory.

    My wife - my ordained wife - loves John Shelby Spong's take (we are lucky enough to know two of Spong's sons personally), that as a faith, we will not advance until we loosen our insistence on the concept of the physical resurrection of Christ (the zombie Jesus thing, in pop culture parlance):

    Quote

    Bishop John Shelby Spong has a unique view on the resurrection of Jesus; it was not really a resurrection at all as we understand it. In his book, Resurrection: Myth or Reality (1994), he states repeatedly that he believes in the reality of the resurrection; he explains (page 106):

    Easter, for me, is eternal, subjective, mythological, nonhistorical, and nonphysical. Yet Easter is also something real to me.

    On page 143, he asks:

    Did Easter reverse the verdict of Jesus’ death? No, I don’t think so…I think Easter is real, but it is not an event that takes place inside human history.

    It is real.  It is true.  But it is not literal the way that Christianity has made it out to be.  NOR DOES IT NEED TO BE.

    For me, in the end . . . fuck if I know.  I'm just walking on this journey.  I get it wrong.  A lot.  I go down dead-ends.  I stop and sit down, petulant and angry.  Sometimes, I charge ahead, and feel like I'm actually advancing.  But -- and this is the really, really important thing when it comes to faith, and church, and such: I know that I am not doing it alone.  I walk on my journey, and others walk along with me.  Some in a way similar to mine, some in their own way that seems odd or alien to me.  But we do so in community.  That is the primary benefit that being part of a community (any community, but including a community of faith like a church).  We walk.  Together.  Because that is the fucking way.  We are all coalesced stardust of the same universe.  Why would we NOT walk together?

  9. 4 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    As a general note, EVs have to control the charging speeds to limit damage to the batteries. They can charge faster the more "empty" they are. Charging on a DC charger will go slower for an EV when the battery charge is above 60%. The particular charge curve will vary based on manufacturer and battery chemistry. A peak of 120 KW is fairly slow for a DC fast charger.  170 KW is pretty ubiquitous at this point. Some vehicles and chargers support much more, with 400 KW becoming more common. 

    Sure, by my case study as to my wife's rechargeable vibrator....I mean, umm, phone....let's go with "phone"....is that it charges faster during the day than the overnight hours.

  10. 22 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

    IMG_8226.thumb.jpeg.e751c5b767a9d8c15500ea1093fe9539.jpeg

    Narcolepsy:

    Quote

    English Translations Of The First Clinical Reports On Narcolepsy And Cataplexy By Westphal And Gélineau In The Late 19th Century, With Commentary

    ADD/ADHD:

    Quote

    The symptoms of ADHD were first described in 1798 by the Scottish physician Sir Alexander Crichton as “the incapacity of attending with a necessary degree of constancy to any one object.”

    In 1902, British pediatrician Sir George Frederic Still describedTrusted Source “an abnormal defect of moral control in children.” He found that some affected children could not control their behavior the way a typical child would, but they were still intelligent.

    And we could go on and on about the rest of it as well.  

    RFK is a complete and total dumbfuck.  There is not a single synapse of his worm-ridden brain that is not 100% dedicated to the ardent pursuit and practice of total dumbfuckery.  He is a fucking Shaolin Monk of dumbfuckery, having mastered the practice to a point where it is not what he does, it is entirely what he is.

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  11. 1 minute ago, Larry T. Spider said:

    There are only two real chances at fixing the recapture issue and both are long shots. One is republican donors fighting for it. There are actually quite a few prominent ones in west Austin and westlake that send their kids to public schools. At least for elementary in AISD. Obviously an uphill battle fighting the “suck it libtards” crowd from the rest of the state.

    The more likely scenario is the state taking over AISD, placing somebody Republican friendly in charge, then listening to them when they figure out how bad the funding situation is. They then get to look like they saved AISD.

    So....no chance.  You coulda just said "no chance" and been done with it.

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  12. Just now, TwiceHorn said:

    I will say that these obstruction of immigration charges likely won't hold up, as noted above and elsewhere.

    And, yeah, the judge should be permitted to test that by motion to dismiss the indictment.  That whole due process thing that people were so pissed off about.

    But of course, the point isn't to bring good charges, charges that will stick, etc.

    The point is to use the power of "The State," via badge and gun, to harass, intimidate, and terrorize members of the judiciary.  The old "you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride," applied to actual functionaries of the government who are not doing exactly as the regime demands of them.  

    Someone needs to start shooting these fuckers when they show up to effectuate an illegal arrest.

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  13. 1 minute ago, Willfully Horn said:

    ICE can enter your home without a warrant, if they suspect you have someone illegal inside. 

    And you can use deadly force to protect yourself from home invaders.

    Hey, all of you "the 2nd Amendment is our last line of defense against an authoritarian government" types.....where are you these days?  This is your fucking moment, this is what you've been waiting for.  How come you aren't all over the internet and airwaves, advising people on the proper weaponry to acquire to protect themselves and their homes from a lawless authoritarian regime?

    Wait....what's that?  Your whole schtick presumed that all of the homes being invaded belonged to lily-white "real" Americans, brown people need not apply?  Huh.  I must have missed that footnote.  What font size was it in?

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  14. 3 hours ago, Hermanator said:

    Pretty soon we're going to need a thread of which countries are welcoming American citizen refugees

    Problem: those countries will follow our lead, and not be particularly receptive to people coming from "shithole countries."  Such as the US.

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  15. 1 minute ago, BurntEyes said:

    There is a slow adoption of Hybrid in the sticks but they're still a LONG way from EV.

    Agree.  Hell, I'm urban and a good example of that.  95% of my driving is commuting and/or other driving within a city.  But for that 5%....I have to go to court in far-flung counties, I go hunting and fishing in the sticks, etc.  In other words....driving where I am uncomfortable relying on an electric charge alone.  Being able to run on gasoline is necessary.  Maybe someday it won't be (when there is adequate charging network/infrastructure, even in West Possum Dick, Texas).

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