Texas

[DT]

I'm only here because my family has been in this area since before Texas was even a State. My mother is getting older and more fragile. I'm 1.5 hours away from her so that is another reason to stay close.

Have you mostly lived elsewhere and back because of family, or been in TX most of your life?

 

[lizkat]

Me am dumb.

Nah you had it right for an earlier time, think it was Minnesota... but then @Huntn moved to TX.

 

[lizkat]

How about Ohio?

It’s just Texas without the cattle.

Aren't cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati pretty ok though?

 

[Joe]

Have you mostly lived elsewhere and back because of family, or been in TX most of your life?

I've lived in Texas my whole life. I was born in Austin, but grew up in a small town about 2 hours from Austin. I lived in San Antonio for 4 years when I was in college. Then I moved to Dallas and stayed there 4 years. I hated Dallas so I moved to Houston and love it. I have been in Houston for 10 years already. Time flies.

 

[DT]

How about Ohio?

It’s just Texas without the cattle.

Aren't cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati pretty ok though?

We've actually talked about moving to Pittsburgh (where the wife is from, went to college). Talking in/around downtown (or dohn-ton in the local parlance ). It's a very cool, big-ish city, and affordable (relatively speaking), we'd have lots of very awesome family close by (none of mine, *snicker*), it would be a huge change, but fun.

 

[lizkat]

We've actually talked about moving to Pittsburgh (where the wife is from, went to college). Talking in/around downtown (or dohn-ton in the local parlance ). It's a very cool, big-ish city, and affordable (relatively speaking), we'd have lots of very awesome family close by (none of mine, *snicker*), it would be a huge change, but fun.

I have some kin who met while at Carnegie Mellon and both of them had really enjoyed living in Pittsburgh... but they later on ended up living in Cincinnati ro raise their kids. They still speak fondly of Pittsburgh though. Carnegie Mellon's computer science graduate study programs are supposed to be pretty great.

 

[hulugu]

Texans are largely a plague here. I find myself absolutely loving Texans—my wife's from Dallas, and my best friend grew up in "East Ass Texas"—and also thinking they're the worst combination of bombastic attitude, and pigheaded thinking ever made on God's Green Earth outside of the Hindu Kush.

 

[Huntn]

We've actually talked about moving to Pittsburgh (where the wife is from, went to college). Talking in/around downtown (or dohn-ton in the local parlance ). It's a very cool, big-ish city, and affordable (relatively speaking), we'd have lots of very awesome family close by (none of mine, *snicker*), it would be a huge change, but fun.

6M in Houston, too much. Minneapolis is closer to my size, 1.5M in the metropolitan area including suburbs when we lived there. Probably larger now.

 

[Huntn]

You live it TX? I thought you lived lived up north, like around the Great Lake area, WI, etc.

Duh.

DC, then Maryland, Texas, Guam, Maryland then, Minneapolis 3 decades, moved to Texas 2010, arm twisted by my Honey.

 

[Joe]

On social media, all the Trumpers are happy as a pig in mud.

Trumpers: If you're so scared stay home!
Also Trumpers: I need all of these guns! I can't leave the house without my gun!

 

[lizkat]

Texans are largely a plague here. I find myself absolutely loving Texans—my wife's from Dallas, and my best friend grew up in "East Ass Texas"—and also thinking they're the worst combination of bombastic attitude, and pigheaded thinking ever made on God's Green Earth outside of the Hindu Kush.

Texas is where I learned what it's like to be discriminated against (legally, no less) for skin color. 1960, dusty diner outside San Antonio, guy wouldn't serve me because he thought I was Mexican, which he was proud to say he didn't serve, "nor mix either"... well I was sixteen and hungry and the next stop on the bus would be Tulsa OK, a long haul, so I flashed an inch of pale skin over the belt line of my jeans, and that turned my money green enough for him to stop swabbing the counter with a dirty rag and ask me what I wanted "to take out, 'cuz that bus will be leavin' right quick." Meanwhile a couple women seated at the counter for lunch were talking about me like I was a dairy goat at a county fair, "He shoulda known she was no mix, even the mix they all have the straight black hair". Jesus Christ!

The experience was a radicalizing set of revelations for a teenager from upstate New York, to be sure. Anyway my favorite Texas song is still Ernie Payne's "Nothin' Wrong with Texas that Leaving Won't Fix." I kept thinking I should give Texas another shot decades after the civil rights laws were passed, and was always curious about Austin, but time has slipped away and now I'm inclined to let Ernie's song stand as the punctuation to my brief Texas adventures. I hasten to say that I have had great friends who hailed from Texas.. not sure they went back there though, and I met them in NY or Chicago.

 

[Joe]

Texas is where I learned what it's like to be discriminated against (legally, no less) for skin color. 1960, dusty diner outside San Antonio, guy wouldn't serve me because he thought I was Mexican, which he was proud to say he didn't serve, "nor mix either"... well I was sixteen and hungry and the next stop on the bus would be Tulsa OK, a long haul, so I flashed an inch of pale skin over the belt line of my jeans, and that turned my money green enough for him to stop swabbing the counter with a dirty rag and ask me what I wanted "to take out, 'cuz that bus will be leavin' right quick." Meanwhile a couple women seated at the counter for lunch were talking about me like I was a dairy goat at a county fair, "He shoulda known she was no mix, even the mix they all have the straight black hair". Jesus Christ!

The experience was a radicalizing set of revelations for a teenager from upstate New York, to be sure. Anyway my favorite Texas song is still Ernie Payne's "Nothin' Wrong with Texas that Leaving Won't Fix." I kept thinking I should give Texas another shot decades after the civil rights laws were passed, and was always curious about Austin, but time has slipped away and now I'm inclined to let Ernie's song stand as the punctuation to my brief Texas adventures. I hasten to say that I have had great friends who hailed from Texas.. not sure they went back there though, and I met them in NY or Chicago.

The town I grew up in had 2 high schools. The original HS was the white HS for decades, and the 2nd HS was built in the 60s after desegregation. My mom was the 1st to attend the new HS (which was mainly black and hispanics) and she has told me stories about the kids from the original HS coming over to their side during football games and spitting on them and calling them racist names.

Fast forward to the early 90s when I'm old enough to remember things lol - my older brother played football for the 2nd HS. They were horrible. At one point they had the state's longest losing streak in football. The school district didn't care about the 2nd HS. All the best coaches and resources went to the original HS. The original HS is winning games and going on long playoff streaks, but the 2nd HS has lost 40+ games in a row. You may think it is just football, but it was EVERYTHING. Everything was bigger and better at the original school.

Everyone in my family graduated HS from the 2nd HS so imagine their surprise when I went to the original HS LOL At the time, I was a teenager. I wanted to go to the "good" HS. I wanted to be cool I guess lol I think my older brother teased me all 4 years of HS because they went to all the football games because I was a band nerd. I teased him back saying it was the first time he got to go to a playoff game LOL

But the point of my long winded story, is that eventually all of this caught up with the school district. The school district technically desegregated but in reality it really wasn't. The State came in and told our school district that they needed to fix this and to racially balance the 2 schools because a town that size shouldn't have 2 schools that are so racially segregated. So my senior year of HS (99-00) the school board voted to CONSOLIDATE both of the schools into 1 HS to fix this problem. So I was actually part of the last class to graduate from the original HS before they combined them the next year. They could have just redrawn the boundaries but so many people didn't want to send their kids to the 2nd HS. The new consolidated school was a cluster. It stayed consolidated for 10 years before they voted to de-consolidate and build 2 new high schools. One on the west side of town and one on the east side of town and they basically split the boundaries down the middle to racially balance them. It's been like that the last decade and it seems to have helped with some of those racial issues that town has had in the past. It's not perfect, but its better. For starters, both schools are exactly the same with just different names and mascots so there doesn't seem to be any favoritism. And these kids attending now weren't even born back in the 60s-90s so they don't even know how segregated and racists the 2 original schools used to be and how much they hated each other when it came to rivalries.

 

[Thomas Veil]

And he says it with such pride.

You know, like the Three Stooges: “We are morons tried and true! And we’ll do our yell for you! Eyuuuuuhhh!”

Idiot.

Aren't cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati pretty ok though?

Cleveland’s okay. Cincinnati is more conservative, though. Statewide, Ohio is red and highly gerrymandered to keep it that way. Our legislature has passed some really questionable laws lately, including one of those fetal heartrate abortion bills, and another that says that answers on tests cannot be considered wrong if their religion says they’re right.

We've actually talked about moving to Pittsburgh (where the wife is from, went to college).

Uh-oh. Lifelong Browns fan here. You and I will have to become bitter enemies.

 

[Thomas Veil]

New TV show: Texas Fire.

In the opening scene, a family runs out of their burning home and counts themselves lucky to have escaped alive.

Then the Fire Department rolls up to the still burning building, led by Fire Chief Gregg Abbott. Before the truck has even stopped, Abbott assures the distraught family.

ABBOTT
(to family)
It’s okay, folks! You can
go back inside. We’ve
got it under control.​

 

[User.45]

View attachment 3819​

And he says it with such pride.

Our libertarian babysitter used to looove this guy, like he's so cool. For me, every step of the way this dude just does stuff that is bad. From limiting ballot boxes in urban areas, to his petty as fuck whining about renewable energy, his fossil fuel statement was so blatant they could pass as commercials with a scrutiny of conflicts of interest. So seeing this is of no surprise and the timing is clear as fuck=> he tries to redirect the attention from the power grid blunder. Just imagine people going unmasked into packed bars. The nasty thing about COVID is the mortality rises happen with 2-3x of an infection courses delay (i.e. 20-30 days) because the bar goers will have a runny nose, then they infect their partners, and then this large net of infected start spreading it to the vulnerable.

Opening should be gradual and mask mandates should go away last.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Texans are largely a plague here. I find myself absolutely loving Texans—my wife's from Dallas, and my best friend grew up in "East Ass Texas"—and also thinking they're the worst combination of bombastic attitude, and pigheaded thinking ever made on God's Green Earth outside of the Hindu Kush.

I so completely get that reference to the Hindu Kush.

Very, very, funny, yet very, very, apt.

Some years ago, I spent the best part of two years in Afghanistan, and feel pretty much - actually, very much - the same way about Afghans.

Wonderful people, lovely people, but suffused with pig-headed thinking, and yes, bombastic attitudes, at times, yet leavened with, (and enriched by, and redeemed by) a knowing, bitter, ironic, self-deprecating - yet hilarious - wit. As an Afghan friend said to me, "shooting ourselves in the foot is our specialty in foreign policy."

 

[JayMysteri0]

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1366942588767404036/

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I feel bad for the average Texan as this is clearly going to lead to confrontations, especially considering some businesses are still going to insist customers still wear masks. Personally I feel if he felt he had to do anything in this direction he should have either ended the mask mandate or opened 100%, not both. But I guess for some people when you are going to let willful ignorance be your guide there’s no reason to half-ass it.

I look forward to some legislation being proposed that attempts to offset the covid deaths that will give an advantage to the Democrats whose voters don’t live by the legendary “fuck it” Texan spirit.

 

[SuperMatt]

Joe Biden decided to speak his mind on the issue:

Joe Biden calls Gov Abbott's end of mask mandate 'Neanderthal thinking'

When asked today about Texas' and Mississippi's illogical decision to lift the mask mandates, President Biden told reporters that it was a "big mistake." Emphasizing that we need to follow…

boingboing.net

Agreed!

 

[JayMysteri0]

I feel bad for the average Texan as this is clearly going to lead to confrontations, especially considering some businesses are still going to insist customers still wear masks. Personally I feel if he felt he had to do anything in this direction he should have either ended the mask mandate or opened 100%, not both. But I guess for some people when you are going to let willful ignorance be your guide there’s no reason to half-ass it.

I look forward to some legislation being proposed that attempts to offset the covid deaths that will give an advantage to the Democrats whose voters don’t live by the legendary “fuck it” Texan spirit.

Yup, I read on Twitter that the Alamo Drafthouse didn't care what the governor said, they were following CDC guidelines. No mask, no entry.

It will be interesting if we return to when this was earlier, and people suddenly didn't believe in the rights of businesses.

They can decide NOT to bake a cake, but they have no right to make you wear a mask when entering their premises.