Jump to content

Brisketexan

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    43,415
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    238

Posts posted by Brisketexan

  1. 1 hour ago, DDD Dad said:

    8 Track.  C'mon, man!

    No, man....by my driving years, cassette was the dominant medium.  I said what I said, motherfucker.  I stand by it.  If you don't wanna ride with us, you can get in your friend's janky-ass Chevette and listen to the Carpenters or some shit.

  2. 1 minute ago, bolverk said:

    I think that over time, these things start to fall apart as bad actors begin to glom onto an issue/movement and cause trouble. It all just gets out of control,

    Which is why every one of these needs organization and clear, strong leadership.  But those needs are counter to the character of the people most likely to be involved.  Operating the movement as a lovey-dovey commune means you have 1,000 muddle messages and no clear direction.  It's the old problem of when the revolutionaries succeed and take things over....they're only good at being revolutionaries, not at getting actual shit done.  Hell, see the problem from the other side: the radicals who have taken over county and state GOP parties in Michigan.  The meetings and action coming out of them are....a shitshow.  Because everyone is the chief revolutionary, everyone thinks that their vision should define all action and they don't listen to anyone else.  They are good at being radicals and noisemakers.  They are terrible at being "people who actually get shit done."

    Culturally, strategic thinking is a huge weakness that we have.  As we can see demonstrated over and over.

    • Hook 'Em 2
  3. 4 minutes ago, BurntEyes said:

    I made the point a while back that if you lead a protest it should be well organized and with clear goals. Further, you should make efforts to separate yourself from bad actors. Without all three, the message becomes muddled at best, takes away from the issues at hand, gives a massive platform for bad actors (in this case antisemitic murdering assholes) and ultimately does more harm than good.

    Also a very good point. I mentioned my wife being involved with a couple of clergy-led protests in recent years, and those points were front-and-center.  They had a clear message and goal.  They had clear expectations as to behavior.  Even the "civil disobedience" portion (that is, the people who were going to sit-down and be arrested for refusing to leave) was planned in detail, discussed with the authorities beforehand, and conducted peacefully.  They made their point, with a plain message.  They did not have any immediate or direct success in terms of policy change, but they took a step forward in changing people's minds/getting them to think.

    You don't save the world with one march or act.  You do it slowly, incrementally....frustratingly so.  See the entire civil rights movement.

  4. 6 minutes ago, BurntEyes said:

    Honestly, the complexity of descaling the engagement while figuring out how to remove Hamas from the equation is madly complex.

    I won't pretend that I have a simple answer. However, I'm of the opinion that bringing leader of the US, supporting NATO members, Isreal and the Palestinians together to discuss is better than not discussing it at all.

    The Hamas aspect is the biggest hitch in the path forward. I'm strongly convinced that descaling fighting without finding a way to remove their influence in Gaza will lead to continued attacks and more Israeli lives lost.

    So, I guess my ask is why aren't the powers that be calling for some sort of round table. If they are, and I missed it, I'll own my ignorance.

    There's also a permutation of the response that is the punchline of "no, don't run down there and fuck one of them....walk down there and fuck all of them."  That is....take the time to be more selective with your targeting.  Eliminating Hamas as a threat, WITHOUT purposefully waging war against civilians (and we've seen much more than mere "collateral damage" - Israel and numerous senior officials have made it clear that they are targeting Gazan civilians to terrorize them and force them out of Gaza altogether, to meet a stated goal of total ethnic cleansing) takes time and methodical action.  Israeli leadership stating that their goal is more than eliminating Hamas -- it's to ethnically cleanse Gaza completely -- doesn't help their position.  At all.  Israel has gone beyond self-defense, and is following a purposeful path of war crimes.  That's the problem.  Which is totally lost in the shuffle.  We've now successfully reached the point where you either blindly and totally support Israel, subjecting them to zero accountability, or you're a pro-Hamas terrorist sympathizer.

    • Hook 'Em 5
  5. 1 minute ago, F250 said:

    This is the way and to the UT System's credit, it has been following a similar path. It just started late down this path and lacks the great locations found in California.

    You know, this aggression against Tyler and Arlington will not stand, man.  Tyler is totally the Santa Barbara of Texas.

    • Haha 4
  6. 1 hour ago, lucious leftfoot said:

    “Milei’s plan is not anarcho-capitalism, it is anarcho-colonial. The recovery strategy is now clear: it’s oil, gas, mines, and grains. He wants to turn Argentina into an extraction country for raw materials. This pre-capitalism takes us back to the days of the Viceroyalty,” she said.

    Alternatively, it harks back to the halcyon days before the First World War when Argentina enjoyed a prosperous place as Australia’s twin in the British imperial and commercial system, shipping commodities to Europe. It was the best of times for Anglo-Argentine concord, culminating in Harrods of Buenos Aires, the only foreign branch ever opened abroad.

    A century later, Australia still manages to leverage its resource and farming wealth into a high-tech economy of top tier affluence. There is no foreordained reason why Argentina cannot do much the same.

    You could bet on Kirchner's take: “Milei’s plan is not anarcho-capitalism, it is anarcho-colonial. The recovery strategy is now clear: it’s oil, gas, mines, and grains. He wants to turn Argentina into an extraction country for raw materials. This pre-capitalism takes us back to the days of the Viceroyalty,”

    Or you could bet on the author's take: "A century later, Australia still manages to leverage its resource and farming wealth into a high-tech economy of top tier affluence. There is no foreordained reason why Argentina cannot do much the same."

    The problem is, the author's take misses one important point.  "There's no reason" why Argentina can't follow Australia's path.  The problem is, there is definitely a reason why it can't.  That reason is "it's Argentina."  Corruption, graft, and inefficiency are woven into its DNA.  It is much, much more likely that Argentina will become an anarcho-colonial extraction economy, benefitting only those at the very top who have managed to take advantage of it.

    I'd love it if that was wrong, though.  I love Argentina, I really do.  Just saw enough with my family living there for 6 years to tell me which way to bet here.

  7. Just now, Skipper said:

    100% agree with this.  It's a bunch of losers without a social life and/or a group that wants to find a target to blame for their own self made problems.  And that applies to both extreme sides of the political spectrum.   Personally, I'm an equal opportunity hater.  Despise and deride both groups at each opportunity.

    The hell of it is, where these groups START is often a place I have some sympathy/empathy for.

    Tea Party?  Yeah, our gov't IS too beholden to special interests.  But y'all had to go full Q-anon nutbar.

    Occupy Wall Street?  Yeah, our system IS rigged to skew outcomes in favor of the capitalist elite who have set rules that favor them.  But y'all had to go full-on "anything but agrarian communism is evil" and "all prosperity is bad."

    Pro-Palestinian activists?  Yep, Israel IS killing the shit out of civilians and using starvation and such as a weapon.  But then y'all have to go full-on "Hamas is cool," and "let's liberate everyone and everything willy-nilly."

    It sucks, because the original cause gets lost in the noise, and then discredited and derided as it has been here.

    • Hook 'Em 8
  8. Just now, safe sex said:

    Ngl, I want the top they're wearing in that photo

    What, do you dream of taking over the Mineral Wells Ladies' Sewing Circle?  Because that's what that top is MADE FOR.

    • Hook 'Em 2
  9. 2 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

    "Brain worms? He been swimmin in the stock tanks? You know that happened to Jimmy and Darline's boy Maverick last summer. They had to take him to the big hospital over in Brownwood and he was innair for 3 weeks! He's fine now, except for a little twitch in his right eye. But that could be from when he hit that tree on his 3-wheeler." 

    rob-riggle-raise-hand-x0v4ktgiejm5y6n2.g

     

    Hits a bit close to home.....

    • Haha 3
  10. 12 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

    Mission creep is the gradual or incremental expansion of an intervention, project or mission, beyond its original scope, focus or goals, a ratchet effect spawned by initial success. dumbasses starved for attention & accolades

    I don't fully agree with the bolded, because that implies that the chief kick they get out of this is external approval.  I think it's equal parts internal self-satisfaction and approval FROM THEIR TRIBE/ECHO-CHAMBER.  That is, they don't even get that much approval from their "side" of the political spectrum, outside of the small group of true believers that is their immediate "tribe."  The other self-important pro-palestinian activists pat them on the back, but that's a relatively small group.  The Q-anon-ers love each other, but they aren't lauded by the largest percentage of right-of-center people.  

    It's about human nature and craving an identity and a tribe.  It's non-partisan and across ideologies.  Seriously, look at the people at Trump rallies.  It's tribal, because IT FEELS GOOD.  That's what we're seeing here, and what we've always seen about extreme ideological movements.

    It's why I've at least gotten a chuckle out of watching our local right-wing bunch jump all over this as some sorta toldyaso gotcha.....when the extremists on their side of aisle have actually ascended to positions of power and control.  Mock the purple-haired Pro-Palestinian ideologues all you want....as you ignore the Q-anon/MTG/stollen election log in your own eye.

    • Hook 'Em 4
  11. 2 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

    I have to disagree on a point of order that a university is more than just the academic experience and that just because you have an inferior substitute which is "acceptable" like a UTD or UC Santa Barbara, you miss out on the soft skills, benefits, and experiences offered by a UT or Cal Berkely and that sucks for kids who would love what UT has to offer.

    Sucks for those kids who have to go live in Tyler for a year and rush as a weird sophomore when the eventually become history majors at UT (as a best case) or live at home and go to UTD or have to pretend to be a serious person and be a diehard Roadrunners football fan (as a worst case).

    Cool.  

    Texas population in 1988: 16.67 million

    Texas population in 2024: 31 million

    It's damned near DOUBLE what it was when I started at UT.  That means, by basic extrapolation, the pool of similarly qualified applicants is twice as big.  But the campus isn't.  The resources to teach those students aren't.  If you have a school that can handle 50k students, and the pool of applicants doubles....that necessarily means that those non-god-level candidates who would have gotten into UT in 1988 have much lower chances of getting in today.  And of course, the very FACT that UT Austin is more selective INCREASES its cachet -- seriously, having a degree from UT today means more than it did back in my day.  It was a good state school in the early 90s.  But now, due to the fact that its student body is made up of top 5% and such, it's an elite-level school.  It's a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg thing.

    And from what I know of friends whose kids have gone to UTD, and UT Arlington....they're getting damned solid jobs out of school.  The kind of jobs that the middle tier of students at UT got when they graduated back in my day.

    I mean, I get that everyone would love to walk on the UT Austin campus.....but it's not feasible.  Shit, everyone would like to buy a modest home within a couple of miles of campus.  You could do that easily through the 1960s.  Today....not so much.  Geography, and the fact that there is a finite supply of such properties with 5X as many people who want them now means that no, you aren't going to be able to buy a cheap house in Hyde Park.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  12. 20 minutes ago, We’reTexas said:

    Doesn’t matter, it’s the omnicause, bruh.

     

     

    8 minutes ago, Da Fino said:

    In love with this. There’s no disability justice without a liberated Palestine.

    spacer.png

    It means that what is happening with this group of naive true believers is what happens with ALL groups of naive true believers.  They get caught up in a flurry of "causes" instead of focusing on a results-oriented path based on one cause or a couple of closely related causes.

    Pro-Palestinian activists/liberationists who started out protesting real-time genocide of Palestinians but are now calling for disability rights and a panoply of other predictable left-of-center shit?  Meet the Tea Partiers....who started out protesting representatives who were too beholden to special interests but are now full-on Q-anon and "stollen election" nutbars.  Same shit happened with the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.  Same shit happened with the populist MAGA movement.

    True believers are more focused on how gratifying it is to "believe," and lose sight of the fact that maybe it would be better to actually achieve a result.

    • Hook 'Em 5
    • Like 2
  13. 12 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

    In regards to public schools, his point was specifically that UCLA AND BERKLEY USED TO BE MUCH MORE ACCESSIBLE TO MORE PEOPLE. He literally fucking showed very simple graphs and charts from when his mediocre ass got accepted to what they were when his assistant applied. It's not make them available to everyone, it's make them available to the SAME PERCENTAGE of people who had access before. Again, it's called maintaining the status quo.

    In fairness to the "top tier publics," there are some limitations due to simple logistics, geography, space, growing population, etc.  The answer isn't to have 100k students at UT Austin.  The answer is to have the University of Texas system offer the quality of education that UT Austin offered in the 80s and 90s to a similar percentage of students (as a percentage of overall Texas population) as it did in the 80s and 90s.  And....that is happening, to a reasonable degree.  Look at UT Dallas - I'd wager that the caliber of students they are getting, and the education they are getting there, is on par with the middle of the bell curve of students at UT in, say, 1988.  That's good.  That's what university systems should do.  Hell, that's what the California system has done - there are multiple damned fine schools in the state system.

    Due to simple logistics, not everyone who USED to qualify can go to UT or Berkely today.  As many of us have noted, we wouldn't get into UT today.  That means that we weren't god-level prospects back then, either -- UT had enough space where it wasn't as selective.  So long as those good (but not god-level) prospects can get the same quality of education that they could have gotten at UT in 1988 SOMEWHERE in the system, then the system is doing its job.

     

    • Like 1
  14. 11 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

    People involved in obstruction typically won't include the judiciary.  Yet here we sit.  We are going to have to win in November for any trial of consequence to even take place.  Ridiculous.  

    The real problem to me isn't that lawyers are throwing everything they have at this (that after all is their job).  The problem is that judicial system is completely compromised by the politics of the day, rather than the heart of the matter.  I'm not sure how you solve that.  

    This is also true.  And, even if he is defeated in November, the narrative won't change much.  At that point, the prosecutions will be "THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IS TRYING TO BURY ME TO COVER UP THE RIGGED AND STOLLEN ELECTION!  ALL THE EXPERTS SAY I WON BY A BIG AMOUNT!  ELECTION FRAUD!"  And his cult will buy it.  And people will die in the violence.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  15. Maybe an attorney can educate me. Why would the DA office/Garza offer a 12 year deal? It seemed like a pretty straight forward case where he would be found guilty and prob get close to the max term. Why did the DA office feel the need to chicken out?

    Because he’s bad at his job and his whole office is reflecting that now. It’s the same reason that Greg Davis ran Hodges Mitchell up the gut 17 times for an average of .01 yards against Stanford…it’s because he sucks at his job.
    • Hook 'Em 2
    • Like 1
    • Rage+1 1
  16. While on the back patio a few nights back, I watched a firefly float by and flicker and disappear and reappear a few yards away. First one I've seen in years.
    It was like opening a portal to spring and summers as a kid.

    After a total absence of 25 or more years, we have been seeing a few dozen fireflies in our yard the past several evenings.

    We back up to a green belt with a wet weather creek. In a wet year (so maybe this one), it sometimes looks like stars in our backyard. We’ve had hundreds of them, flickering on and off. And I never get tired of it. It’s magical.
    • Hook 'Em 3
    • Like 1
  17. 2 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

    I’ve been here saying the law is fake for years.

    As have I.  Its core vulnerability is that it's just a fucking mutual agreement.  It's always been vulnerable to 1) abuse by the rich/privileged (ask a black dude from the past....entirety of US history....about that), and 2) a popular uprising against it.  That is, when enough people simply opt out of the mutual compact that is the Rule of Law, it's over.

    "I have this piece of paper that says you have to do X."  In a Rule of Law society, people do what the piece of paper says.

    In a Trumpian society, they say "fuck you" and go about doing whatever the fuck they want.  Which means that the only way you can require anyone else to do anything is with force/violence....which is exactly how the Trumpanzees want it to be.

    • Hook 'Em 6
    • Like 1
  18. 1 minute ago, wild_turkey said:

    Perhaps this has been discussed, but the internet in general is a much worse place to navigate. Almost every webpage now requires you to acknowledge cookies, but the popups are sometimes slow to load and it delays your ability to start using the site. I think as a global society we should all come to an understanding that cookies are implied by being on the internet. And then once you get beyond the cookies, almost any website that sells stuff will try to get you to sign up for their emails to save 10% or whatever, so that's another popup to click through before you can use the page, even if you are already an established customer on the email list. It's ridiculous.

    This.  Someone somewhere got the message of "hey....when people show up on your site to maybe buy something....totally stop them and interrupt the experience with a "sign up for our email list" email that has the tiniest x in the history of the world to close it.  Because we don't want them to actually look at our product's page and buy it.  We want to annoy the fuck out of them before they can buy anything."  It's fucking maddening.

    • Rage+1 1
  19. 1 minute ago, Gatorubet said:

    to be accurate, that is likely a Presbyterian committee ruling. 

    All things in decent and orderly fashion, this is the way.

×
×
  • Create New...