Grits for Breakfast

i sort of think way more social problems could be solved by tripling every city's parks and rec department budget than we might expect

damn bro maybe you should've just let the fucking trans people play sports

Actuarial Warfare: How Seven Insurance Letters Closed the World’s Most Critical Chokepoint and Why Markets Are Mispricing Duration by 300% Private Reinsurance, IRGC Fragmentation, Interceptor Depletion, and a Dead Nuclear Fatwa Have Produced a Crisis No Military Victory Can Resolve

Actuarial Warfare: a paradigm in which private reinsurance desks, operating under regulatory capital constraints, exercise de facto sovereignty over the planet’s most critical maritime chokepoint more durably than navies, missiles, or executive orders
shanakaanslemperera.substack.com/p/actuarial-...

Seems like Trump's promise to protect ships going through the Straight of Hormuz isn't going so well.

The Iran war is the most unpopular military engagement in living memory and if Dems don't do this, it's only bc the AIPAC caucus wants this war and they're engaging in sycophancy out of muscle memory. But public opinion on Gaza has flipped. If Dems do this, they'd be leaning into public opinion.

Democrats should demand a clawback of ICE's remaining OBBB money before agreeing to supplemental Pentagon funding.

I've never noticed Texas prosecutors getting too hung up at the state bar for misconduct, even in rather extreme cases, except for 1 or 2 many years after they've retired in basically symbolic gestures. Possibly in some state; definitely not here.

The more I think on it, these lines remind me of the current conflict in Iran. No matter how hard that nation is knocked down right now, if the US is "unforgiven," 9/11 demonstrated that no nation can evade the "patient search and vigil long of him who treasures up a wrong."

Bobby Pulido for Congress with three young women celebrating quinceañeras in the background

INBOX: Latin Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Bobby Pulido, who is running as the Democratic candidate for #TX15, is offering to sing at any quinceañera in his district by request, after his Republican opponent remarked that he “only belong[s] at Quinceañeras":

pulidoevents.com/quince

She also knitted "carloads" of socks, sold at the general store in San Marcos, as a side gig to pay for her chain smoking habit. Tobacco had to be imported in from New Orleans, and she rolled her own cigs from corn husks: Trimmed the husks to uniform size then rolled a cigar-box full at a time!

A biographical essay about the woman by a contemporary who admired her declared, "We acknowledge that she was a good hater." And also a good planner, apparently, bc despite her involvement being common knowledge, she died at age 80 in her family bed unburdened by any consequence for her crimes.

Poetry lines are an excerpt is from Byron's Mazeppa. The murder took place in the 1840s in the early days of Texas statehood and involved elaborate planning and deployment of her children to perform the deed, plus a multi-step escape plan by which they successfully eluded authorities.

Researching a TX woman who engineered an elaborate revenge-murder plot, and her grandkids later said she often recited these lines!

“And if we do but watch the hour
There never yet was a human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.”

Wrongfully imprisoned for 20 years, Carmen Mejia now faces ICE deportation A day after Carmen Mejia was exonerated in a Travis County courtroom, she remains in jail as ICE decides whether to detain or deport her.

Heartbreaking, and infuriating (gift article): Wrongfully imprisoned for 20 years, Austin woman Carmen Mejia now faces ICE deportation www.statesman.com/news/courts/...

This schizophrenic man gouged out both of his own eyes and ate one of them but apparently prosecutors believe he's mentally competent to face execution in Texas. This is one of the more embarrassing cases Texas has produced in recent memory. Just pointless cruelty and very willful ignorance.

I agree with you I haven't seen remotely enough to justify allegations of bribery, trafficking, etc.. OTOH, the crazies have said crazy shit for years. They're still bringing up PizzaGate, fergodssake! What'd they think wd happen when they opened Pandora's Box?

Oh no, the lies right wingers ginned up for years to attack liberals are coming back to bite them in the ass. Whatever will we do? I mean, besides watch and laugh.

It really was!

I had one of these Schwinn Stingrays as a kid, a 5-speed, and rode that bike hard and far. Back then we called that high back a "sissy bar," which now seems likely to get a straight, middle-aged white dude in trouble, but Idk another name for it. Was indeed groovy as hell, though. Loved that bike.

Vichy Democrats

Cornyn, Abbott, Johnson, and all the other POS demagogues pushing this lie are truly beneath contempt.

Talarico

My point was that the "keep religion out of politics" crowd shd've been speaking up when he was in preschool. That ship has long sailed in this state.

I don't oppose him, I support him in the general. I preferred Crockett in the primary, because when both were in the TX Lege, she was a progressive ally who was already on that train and him not so much. But I'm glad he's saying this stuff now.

Andrew Alexander, the Fort Worth Blues shortstop I was researching, served the 24th regiment in the second half of 1876, so he wasn't part of this 1875, 2,500 mile megamarathon to prepare the High Plains for Anglo settlement. But it's a remarkable tale, nonetheless. 3/3

When they were done ranchers like Charles Goodnight moved in, launching the era of the cowboy and the cattle drive that became the defining ethos of the state. Generations of TX kids played shoot-em-up as "cowboys and Indians," but IRL it was mainly black soldiers doing the fighting. 2/3

Researching the military service of a 19th century Cowtown baseball player, I ran across this story of 450 Buffalo Soldiers in 1875 who "cleared temporarily the High Plains of Indians ... mapped the region and connected by wagon road several water sources on it." 1/3

I've seen little evidence those ppl retain the capacity for shame

But I also enjoy imagining this earliest iteration of black baseball in Texas as a professional entertainment product, when teams were building squads mainly from local talent and constructing the new business model as they went. The Fort Worth Blues/Light Weights seem to embody that moment.

Moving to another city to play baseball is very much next level, and in many ways, that 1891 Waco squad, followed by the Austin Reds 3 years later, were when black baseball in TX really leveled up. Soon, those teams were producing HOF-level talent like Rube Foster and Smokey Joe Williams.