Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Discussion in 'SBAF Blogs' started by purr1n, Dec 26, 2018.

  1. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    Meh, 3500 sq ft for a million flat in a nice, kid friendly neighborhood is nothing like Bay Area prices. Also people are happier: https://patch.com/colorado/boulder/boulder-no-1-place-nation-live-2020-u-s-news
     
  2. Tachikoma

    Tachikoma Almost "Made"

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    If I hated the US I wouldn't be hanging out in predominantly American forums. I believe that Malaysia would be best served by a neutral stance between China and the US, and that relies on the US actually being interested in security instead of serving the wanton impulses of a psychopath. That applies to Taiwan too, I think.

    I do dislike the crimes committed against Palestine, but I'm not Muslim. Trump believes in being in power, nothing else - he is just as likely to start or end wars depending on what serves that purpose.

    Funny thing about Mongolia - wasn't it the other way around? A part of Mongolia took over China, so China now includes said part of Mongolia.
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2020
  3. Elysian

    Elysian Friend

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    I was probably looking at the expensive parts of Boulder as I kept seeing $2.5m+. I just wish the tech job market and salaries were better in Boulder but it seems to be about on par with Austin. Are there any specific neighborhoods or suburbs to look for?

    Any plans to ever return back to California? Every few months I hear another friend sharing that they're leaving the state. I have trouble reconciling that with how Bay Area suburban SFHs are going off market within a week or two after listing. Our mailbox is filled with realtor spam with flyers asking people to sell their homes.
     
  4. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Hate to break it to you, but Trump's record is tame on wars and interventions. He's actually been trying to draw down the "interventions" that his predecessor Obama started, much to the chagrin of those in the the US military industrial complex and the "globalists". All of Trump's military actions have been incredibly restrained.

    Obama:
    • American led "intervention" (to depose Assad) in Syria Civil War: September 2014 - present
    • American "intervention" in Iraq (Iraqi Civil War / against ISIS): 2014 - present
    • American led "intervention" in Libya (Libyan Civil War / deposing Qaddafi) : Spring to end of 2011
    • American "intervention" in Libya part deux (against ISIS): End of 2015 - present
    • American counterterrorism war in Yemen (supporting regime): 2010 - present
    • American supported Saudi intervention in Yemen Civil War (after old regime fell): Spring 2015
    • American increase in troop levels in Afghanistan Civil War (near 100,000 personnel, military and contractors): 2010-2012

    Trump:
    • Surgical missile and bomb strikes against Assad targets for the regime using chemical weapons: x2 between 2018-2019
    • Surgical drone strike against planners (Solemani and al-Muhandis) of attack on US Embassy in Iraq where 4 military and 1 contractor were killed: Early 2020
    • Cyber attacks against Iran (for Iran downing US drone): Summer 2019
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
  5. Elysian

    Elysian Friend

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    Last I checked, it's not our reality TV star President that was going around invading other countries and overthrowing governments.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya–United_States_relations
    "2011 Libyan Civil War
    ...
    The US military played an instrumental role in the initial stage of the intervention, suppressing Libyan air defenses and coordinating international forces in the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya,[15][16] before handing command responsibility to NATO and taking a supporting role in the campaign of air strikes against pro-Gaddafi forces.[17] The intervention severely weakened the Gaddafi regime and aided the rebels to victory, with the fall of Tripoli in August 2011."
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2020
  6. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    Google, Apple, and Twitter are here and Facebook is hitting Denver soon. Plus a thriving, growing startup scene, it's awesome! I can say the big companies pay ~85% of a bay area salary and the cost of living is 50% for us.

    I doubt I'll be moving back. I love the Bay Area but there's no world where the combination of ungodly mortgage/cost of living + everyone working 80 hours a week making them stressed/irritable + the commute + any of it is worth it anymore. The only possibility is if we retire in San Diego or a similar place one day.

    With kids, neighborhoods like four mile creek are great in Boulder. It's so kid friendly, other kids from all over the county come for Halloween. I buy like 10+ costco sized bags of candy on a normal halloween and it's awesome to see so many happy kids and families. Here's a house on sale for 1.2MM:

    https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4120-S-Hampton-Cir_Boulder_CO_80301_M28204-25980

    Sure you could spend more and get a bigger place or be up in the foothills or something, but this house is ~half the price of our old house in Sunnyvale (where you came for the meet) and that was not nearly as nice + this house is 50% bigger.
     
  7. Hands

    Hands Overzealous Auto Flusher - Measurbator

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    Boulder is cool, but there are plenty of places that are quite nice to live, whether you're looking at Colorado Springs all the way up to Fort Collins, and are considerably cheaper than Boulder.

    I know some just have to live near Denver, whether for work or because they want to be near all the shit in that area, but there are some very nice areas in Colorado Springs, and you can get a house similar to the one in Boulder @zerodeefex mentioned for about half the price. $1.2m in the Springs is likely to get you a large, custom built house that sits on a hilltop, overlooking the peasants in their cheap ass 80s cookie cutter houses below. Ask me how I know? Hint: I'm the peasant.

    Yeah, some cranky or very cool people will poo-poo Colorado Springs, but it's in the top 5 on that list, apparently.

    There aren't a ton of tech jobs in the Springs, however, unless you are willing to work as a contractor and have security clearance. There's a large military presence in the city and military contractors. The tech job market in the Denver metro area I believe is decent.

    The northern part of Colorado Springs is maybe 45 minutes from the southern Denver metro area, so plenty of people live here and commute to Denver. Monument and Castle Rock are good places to check out that sit in between Colorado Springs and Denver, with Castle Rock seemingly being someone more upscale. Falcon is a good option just east of Colorado Springs and basically just an extension of the city these days. Plenty of gorgeous houses and properties in the Black Forest area.

    Don't move here, though, because demand is already stupid enough and seeing $1m houses makes me mad.
     
  8. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    I suggested Boulder because @Elysian is looking at tech jobs.

    Colorado is beautiful as hell. I can't recommend the liberal bubble parts of the state enough.
     
  9. LetMeBeFrank

    LetMeBeFrank Won't tell anyone my name is actually Francis

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    Housing prices around the country vary so wildly, it boggles the mind. When we were looking at houses around Jackson, the top pick was a nice 2600sqft house on 10 acres (~8 acres of woods) for $250k. The day we came up to look at houses someone else made an offer on it. I'm glad we missed that one because I much prefer our current house. Fully remodeled 1800sqft house on 3 acres for 190k.
     
  10. Elysian

    Elysian Friend

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    I work in software and have ended up in a fairly specialized discipline so unfortunately most of my job opportunities are in SF, the South Bay/Peninsula, or NYC. I see a handful of Boulder startups pop up on my radar time to time but there would be a massive compensation hit leaving a publicly-listed company. I think @zerodeefex's recommendation probably makes the most sense in the long-run, moving to either a FAANG company or a unicorn that allows WFH. It's hard to figure out how much is enough and what point do we scale back to balance family vs. professional life. I like working and have a great job but I don't like the direction California is heading in. My YouTube feed this week has been full of high-earning content creators who are leaving California for Las Vegas or Austin.

    The difference in housing prices across the country is something else. $1.2m won't even get you into a 1bd/1ba condo in Palo Alto or Los Altos anymore. It's scary the mortgage+property tax/income ratios that a lot of younger Bay Area families take on. A long unemployment stretch will wipe a lot of these people out if they don't have someone to lend them money. These people aren't even trying to keep up with the Joneses. They just want to raise their kids in a SFH and have access to decent schools.

    It would be so much fun to live in a community that celebrates Halloween. It was one of my favorite holidays as a kid but my last few neighborhoods have been largely Chinese and Indian immigrants so it's been kind of sad seeing how much things have changed. In my personal experience, I tend to see immigrants in Caucasian upper-middle class communities make more of an effort to take on American traditions, but those buyers are probably self-selecting for that kind of lifestyle and upbringing for their kids.
     
  11. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Little change of subject. As usual I don't trust any of the polling in FL. Recent final voter registration for Nov election came out in FL:

    https://www.politico.com/states/flo...into-democrats-registration-advantage-1325557

    Last month Dem to GOP voter registration advantage was 180kish, now it is down to 134k in a month. Most people won't pay attention to this, but this is big news. Keep in mind back in 2016 when Trump won FL, the Dem voting advantage to GOP was 327k.

    Mostly this is due to FL GOP been pushing hard to go to people's houses to gain new voters. Dems mostly do electronic calls/emails/letters stuff. Face to face works best, FL Dem party knowns this but since the FL Dem State party sucks, they are as usual continued to get their ass beat since the late 90s.

    Also, this means as expected Trump is very very popular here. People here focus too much on a Governor/President as the reason to register to vote than anything else. I'll be interested to see where the FL GOP is going to do next once Trump is done either next month or in four years (if the base isn't really crazy for someone, more of them don't vote). Trump mania isn't going to last forever, and people's opinions/beliefs change. I'll can't wait to see what the FL GOP is going to do in the future to keep gaining new voters.

    However, a few important things here:

    1. No political party in FL has a major voter registration advantage. Currently after the numbers that came out today Dem is about 36% of total voters, GOP is about 35%, and Independents/Other Parties are just about 26%. While GOP continue to gain more voters, they haven't changed too much on the % of total voter registration. The group who been really gaining the most voters are the Independent/Other Parties. While GOP voters vote in higher # than Dems in FL, that is not enough to win an election. The #s stated here is why FL will always be a purple state. GOP need enough flips from moderate Dem voters and those Independents to get them to the finish line. This mean FL GOP can't be hard on social issues like the other Southern States, because there are a block of voters here who vote on money issues, and don't like hard-right social issues.

    2. There could be a decent bit of GOP registered voters who are flipping for Biden this time around. Question is we don't know how big these voters are. There are billboards floating around the state with GOP voters saying we can't for for Trump. This # could be small (great for Trump), or higher than expected (bad for Trump).

    3. Independents are always a mix bag, you don't know where they are going to land. Never count of them on voting for either major party. This is why both the big parties in FL attempt to not go too crazy in one direction at times. FL GOP Voters don't care too much about if their party goes further in the right. The FL Dem voters who are young are pissed that the FL Dem party are still mostly the old-school New Democrat Clinton voters who don't like progressives at all.

    4. Turnout, of course.

    Knowing how this state works for a while, I do believe at this point with the data that I been seeing I believe Trump got FL in the bag. He won 2016 with 1.2% of votes. I'm guessing he will win between 0.1% to 1.0%. I'll be surprised if he can get above 1.0% this time around. Of course this all depends on the four factors above. If Trump by pure luck he can get closer to 2.0% win, consider it a FL blowout.
     
  12. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    Guess i gotta live in Colorado then.
    I have been reading this thread, and it seems like most places are bad, expensive, burning, or other problems. But I did love living in Golden CO over the summer.

    Time to find an acoustics job in CO...
     
  13. YEEEEGZ

    YEEEEGZ Almost "Made"

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    [​IMG]

    This thing never fails to give me the fear.
     
  14. nishan99

    nishan99 Friend

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    That's not fair. 2010-2016 were super crazy times here in the middle east, the time of the Arab Spring, nation wide revolutions and multiple civil wars. After that came the the Houthi insurgency in Yemen and the Saudis and their allies war against him.

    No freaking way Trump will be as restrained in the middle east during those times.
     
  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    It's 1000% totally fair:
    1. Some of those "times", or those civil wars haven't ended (note the "-present"). As such, your assertion that Trump would not be as restrained is not only speculative, but patently false:
    2. The reason the embers are less hot in Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan is because we pulled out or started the process of pulling out. We'd already told the Saudis f**k this shit, we ain't getting more involved in Yemen. We finally got smart enough to get out of Afghanistan through a "peace" process of negotiations with the Taliban (just don't harbor more Al Qaida, and you can do what you want). We told the Russians: you can have this shit in Syria (like Syria was NEVER in our sphere on influence anyway and I don't even know why we made a power grab for it).
    3. The "crazy times" argument doesn't work. Each and every POTUS has a choice to think different rather than follow what our military establishment has to say. Haven't we learned from history, even fairly recent history, that getting involved in others' civil wars or deposing despots rarely has any benefit to the USA or even the people in those countries? All it ever does is result in instability and violence in those countries and guns and butter (deficits) in the USA.
    4. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. His election pledge was not to get us involved in more shit. OK, I get that maybe we had a responsibility to Iraq. But the rest, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, f**k that - we can't win that shit. We helped f**k over the Russians in Afghanistan - why would we think that we could do better in place of the Russians? The Russians are absolutely right that we don't know WTF we are doing over there. These "nations" are simply not ready for democracy. Democracy only means violence and death for these people. I know it is horrible to say this, but sometimes we need to be pragmatic. Europe took 2000 years of violence to finally realize democracy. The USA via the UK may have a had slight head-start with so many English monarchs getting their heads lopped off.
    5. The hunting down Al-Qaida / Taliban argument doesn't work. It's like killing ants. All this does is create a new generation of kids that grows up hating the USA. Didn't anyone watch the first season of Jack Ryan on Amazon?
    I hope to God that Biden is strong enough to think for himself and doesn't listen to our military/state establishment to us expand our sphere of influence, get involved in other peoples' ongoing civil wars, etc. Folks bitch about how we don't need moar plans, moar missles, moar ships; but maintaining military operations in foreign lands in other peoples' unwinnable civil wars is a heck more expensive.
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
  16. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    [​IMG]
    Robert F Kennedy
    64th United States Attorney General ("Top Cop" of the USA)
    Brother of John F Kennedy during his short tenure as POTUS

    Just saying. Trump hasn't been in the only one in history "installing the likes" of loyalists.
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
  17. Elysian

    Elysian Friend

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    The entire establishment has thrown its weight behind Biden this last week. If he wins, it's going to be another rehash of the GWB/Obama years and endless wars. I don't know anyone can't be appalled at Twitter and Facebook's handling of the NY Post expose on the allegations of bribe taking from Hunter, James, and Joe Biden. Trump was raked across the coals with far flimsier evidence of Russian collusion. I'm looking forward to hearing why the FBI sat on Hunter's hard drive for almost a year and still haven't publicly announced anything yet.

    Biden and Harris are barely able to pull 10 people to a rally while Trump is still pulling thousands. I suspect the polls are cooked and this feeds into the current narrative that in-person voting will swing towards Trump on Nov 3, then we're going to have hundreds of thousands of ballots mysteriously show up over the next week. Thankfully the Michigan Supreme Court and other states are shutting down that nonsense.

    The civilians in the Middle East want peace as much as the rest of us. It's the governments and extremists that profit off of keeping us at each other's throats.

    “Nine in 10 Arab respondents in the surveyed countries consider the resolution of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict important, with about three-quarters in Egypt (79%), Saudi Arabia (75%), and the UAE (72%) saying it is ‘very important,’” Zogby found.

    Summaries of the Zogby poll from partisan news sources:
    https://allarab.news/shock-poll-79-...abs-in-region-see-normalization-deals-coming/
    https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/10...-for-ties-with-israel-in-some-arab-countries/
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
  18. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    You are overthinking about this a little bit I think. The polls aren't wrong that the voter enthusiasm gap is favoring a lot more to Trump. I see this a lot in my backyard, just so many more strong Trump supporters in his base. Question is will he get enough of the middle ground folks to vote for him during this time around (the ones who aren't in his base but voted for him back in 2016). This remains to be seen. As I stated in my FL post previously, Trump can't win if all the GOP voters vote for him because they aren't enough of them. Currently I don't even think people care about the wars ATM when people are losing work and everything in the country is a mess.

    Regardless of who wins/loses: They will be too busy with this Covid-19 crap and as usual Congress will barely do anything but go on TV and say the other side sucks.
     
  19. Elysian

    Elysian Friend

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    I'm glad we aren't seeing the COVID-19 surge that's happening in Asia and Europe in the United States' numbers. No idea if that's due to testing discrepancies, how we've followed the Swedish protocol, or anything else.

    I don't know what it looks like in the rest of the country but I'm seeing a huge resurgence in the economy in the Bay Area. Hiring has picked up a lot, restaurant outdoor dining is consistently packed, and every contractor I've spoken with is backed up for months with work. There's traffic jams on the freeways every day now and the outlet parking lot is full by 11am.

    Maybe this is unique to California and tech driving the economy but I was watching Catherine Wood's September webinar last week (founder of ARK Invest who manage the hottest ETFs right now) and she stated that they're seeing a V-shaped recovery. Aside from Tesla, they've made a lot of really good short/mid-term bets and I think she's incredibly sharp.
    https://ark-invest.com/webinars/
     
  20. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    The difference is that when there is change of the guard in the USA, the transition it peaceful. Doesn't anyone remember McCain's gracious concession speech to Obama?

    I'm sure after Trump loses (or even if he manages to win), there will be some not so pleasant incidents - but for the most part, the transition will be peaceful and people will move on. Like every other change since George Washington. For however much bluster, the dudes with the potbellies who play special forces or D&D in the woods of Michigan aren't going to shoot anyone, at most they will have thoughts at kidnapping politicians, and even then they will be completely incompetent at it.

    This is the difference: peaceful transition. The folks in certain parts of the world will not accept change in a democratic way. Too many tribes, warlords, variations of Islam, etc. I doubt we will ever see peace in the Middle East within the next 500 years. I only imagine things getting worse with climate change, overpopulation, less resources, etc.

    As far as the Palestinian situation, the other Arab states are kind of full-of-shit on this. It's lip service. This is something that most American's don't realize. And if the Arabs weren't so incompetent in going to war against the Israelis, losing not once, but twice, badly, they probably would have annexed those parts of Palestine themselves.
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020

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