comment: >
  
  I've been here almost 30 years.  We used to get them about every 10 years, generally icy in the morning and gone the next day.  Two years ago were were snowed in for several days, most of us without power or water.  This time it was short but very destructive.
context: Again….the headline forgot the word ‘again’ >
  
  Nobody could've predicted this >
  
  Once in a generation disaster >
  
  Probably the fault of them durned librulls. >
  
  I blame democratic fascism and transsexual windmills. >
  
  I knew!
  Those damn transexual windmills. >
  
  oh is it that time of the year for Ted's cancun trip? >
  
  yeah first thing that came to mind is, "wonder if rafael has a window seat"
  (yes his real name is rafael because this guy comes from big money so he tries to give himself a blue collar image by going with ted, because that's what you do when your career is fleecing money from gullible people. fuck that guy in so many ways!) >
  
  I don’t think he goes by Ted to seem blue collar, he goes by Ted to seem white. >
  
  He could just tell everyone that he's a Canadian immigrant. O, wait. Immigrant. Nevermind. >
  
  Just thank god he can’t be President >
  
  Natural born american. Doesn't matter where he's born so long as he's got that magic American citizen born abroad paper. >
  
  Thats the part I never understood about the whole Obama birth certificate drama. Everyone knew that his mom was a woman from Kansas so it didn't matter who his dad was. >
  
  “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.”  - Rick Perry >
  
  Maybe they should impeach the people who keep doing this to them. >
  
  Or at least stop voting for them. >
  
  I recently saw that Texas is gerrymandered intentionally so that Republicans can't lose even though most of the state's registered voters are Democrat. >
  
  They'll do everything they can to keep it that way, because if Texas goes blue, there will pretty much never be a republican president again. >
  
  Yup, California is basically always guaranteeing 55 electoral votes towards Dems. with Texas joining them that would jump to 93. A full third of the 270 majority with just two states alone. >
  
  Plus NY and IL and it’s almost time to pack up. >
  
  As a ny resident I'm very worried of the reach Republicans have in the state now, hopefully this Santos shit will remind ppl how awful cons are >
  
  Nah, even if people finally see the problem, the Republicans will just replace Santos with a new person who "promises" to be better than Santos. >
  
  Well, not "better", just less obvious about their shittyness. >
  
  If only they could have foreseen this >
  
  Part of me thought this was a repost from last year.
  Nope! >
  
  This whole year is full of reposts from the 1930s. >
  
  Complete with mumps and measles >
  
  Saw a tiktok the other day of some mom complaining about how her kids have no friends because they don't vaccinate. 
  Not they didn't get the covid vaccine, they don't vaccinate their kids at all, for anything. I mean I know this isn't new I guess... but what?? Like for anything?? Do we not remember polio? Or any of these awful diseases that we've thankfully already dealt with? I just will never get it. >
  
  No, people don't remember polio. I suspect that's a large contributing factor for this idiotic trend. >
  
  My mothers aunt had polio and my mom was an anti-vaxxer in the 90’s. I’m ashamed that I’m mostly unvaccinated, I’ve taken all the ones I can get in my 20s. >
  
  Straight up when I turned 18 I had to go through the gamut of getting all of my vaccines that I missed
  The worst part was trying to get my old vaccine records and none of my family would tell me where they were >
  
  One of the best things about the UK is that we have access to all our vaccination records and medical test results online via Patient Access. You get Patient Access as soon as you sign up to your GP and can order repeat medication, sometimes book appointments, and do some self referrals through the site. I can look at the site and tell you which day I got my first vaccines almost 28 years ago. >
  
  Soooo dumb we don't have a central place to keep medical records... >
  
  “We had hoped to make more progress today,“ said Jackie Sargent, general manager of Austin Energy. ”And that simply has not happened.”
  Yup. Sounds about right. >
  
  Republican politicians should have heckled and name-called the cold weather, isn’t that how they “legislate “? >
  
  They just pass a law banning freezing weather and expect it to happen. >
  
  Nooo that's much too productive. They'd pass a law banning changes to the system. Ignore the problem entirely. >
  
  Our freedom grid is performing exactly as expected after operators did absolutely nothing to fix the problems we knew about from the last storm.
  EDIT: For those pointing out the difference between this and previous storms, one of the recommendations from ERCOT after the near grid failure 2 years ago was improving redundancies in substations to prevent widespread outages and keep them localized.
  Literally nobody did this, Austin Energy indicated only 5% of that work has been completed, which has driven the current outage situation with people being without power for 2 days now.
  30% of Austin has been without power for 2 days now, including me.
  People in areas which experience regular icing have redundancies and systems in place to prevent long outages.  Those people also tend to have generators available. >
  
  Dont worry, this is only the third year in a row with a "Once in a lifetime" storm.
  There's no way its happening again next year. >
  
  I don't get why people are complaining. Just take a few days off work and hang out in Cancun. >
  
  Ah yes, the Cruz Escape Plan. It is a classic. >
  
  The Cruz Cruise, as it were. >
  
  If Tom went it would be the Cruz Cruise Cruise. >
  
  Send Terry, you can have the Cruz Cruise Crews Cruise. >
  
  The people that work there? The Cruz Cruise Crews Cruise Crew >
  
  I love a good homonym thread >
  
  What did you just call me? >
  
  Governor Abbott - Sorry there's no power, we spent the money for upgrades to the grid shipping migrants around the country. >
  
  How can they not feel warm after a burn like that? >
  
  Texas:
  
  29M Citizens
  24M Elligible Voters
  17M Registered Voters
  9M Voted in 2022
  only 15% of those under the age of 35 Voted.
  
  Texans are used to fucking themselves over and over again. >
  
  Im in Texas and people voted for Abbott again this past year. I’m honestly tired of being upset that people vote for the same people that keep things messed up. It sucks for the rest of us, but the majority that voted obviously was happy with the status quo, and those who didn’t vote were, by default, also happy with the status quo. We as Texans have nothing to complain about. >
  
  I live in Texas and vote dem. Im in the Texas subreddits and was trying to figure out why the hell people aren't voting. 
  So many of these little shitd are like BoTh PaRtIeS sUcK aNd VoTiNg eNaBleS tHe TwO pArTy SySteM ThAt I dOnT LiKe. 
  Excuse me, what now? What two party system? Republicans have owned the system for almost 30 years now. You not voting enables a single party system to screw us all over. 
  There's no getting through to these people. I dont understand. Somehow, republicans have become successful in capturing some of the minority votes as well. Makes absolutely no sense with the white hatred in this state. Its exhausting. >
  
  Those same people are doing extreme mental gymnastics to try and convince themselves that this is normal and every northern state just goes without electricity during winter storms. One guy vehemently tried to claim there’s literally no way to prevent trees from falling on power lines. >
  
  I do know a number of people who left Illinois for Texas to escape the cold. It's a bit ironic right now. >
  
  You think florida is getting too weird for people the other way now? Like, before it was weird crazy. Now it just seems like it’s getting asshole red state crazy. 
  They don’t have power grid type problems like texas but they definitely have a voter base problem >
  
  It isn't too surprising to me that Florida is getting more conservative. It's always been a place people go to retire. And when it comes to young people, climate change deniers are probably more likely to want to live there with everyone else realizing that hurricane season is only getting worse. Florida's geography is starting to reshape its voter base. >
  
  There was an influx after they became a coroana virus rules haven too. It’s no longer a swing state at all >
  
  But they owned the libs by electing Abbot again. >
  
  Sure.  Look at how many thousands of Texans died unnecessarily from Covid after Abbot squashed things like mask mandates. Losing a few hundred to freezing temperatures and preventable power loss won’t even get noticed. >
  
  They will never learn, at this point they see their own suffering as a badge of honour, they wear it with pride. I'm not even joking, they see their own self-inflicted struggles as evidence they are fighting the good fight. >
  
  Ah yes the old “I didn’t have X and I turned out just fine.” No, Bobby, you lack critical thinking skills and self awareness. You did not turn out just fine. >
  
  That boy ain't right. >
  
  Thank God Abbot spent tax payer money on humanitarian human trafficking to send illegal immigrants to DC to protect them from the cold winters hitting Texas now since the Texas grid is pretty crappy and totally not vulnerable due to climate change. >
  
  A fair number of them were here legally as refugees. >
  
  I'd wager most were documented asylum seekers, otherwise Abbott committed human trafficking. >
  
  Still did that regardless of legal status.  Transported them under false pretenses. >
  
  Texas has more important things to do, like making sure women are not getting abortions in the state. A functioning power grid is something that can wait. >
  
  Doctors can’t perform abortions if there is no electricity. >
  
  Checkmate, libs >
  
  A Classic Maneuver you might say. >
  
  Just go to cancun bro >
  
  ~angry Ted Cruz packing noises~ >
  
  Followed by: Sad dog being left behind noises. >
  
  We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas! >
  
  Hilarious—sadly true but hilarious >
  
  This was not a grid failure, it was a local thing.  I'm near Austin and we had an huge amount of ice buildup overnight, the place looks like a war zone with all the downed trees.  There were places that never lost power and others who were down for two days (some are still down).  I was only out for about 10 hours.
  The grid is in exactly the same shape it was two years ago but the temps only got to about 30 degrees and it only lasted a few days, not single digits like it did two years ago.  We also just got ice, no snow but everything and I mean everything is covered in a 1/2 inch of ice.  It took me 15 minutes to break off enough ice on my wife's car to just open the door.  
  If you don't believe in climate change, you just don't want to.  The freeze two years ago was the longest time below freezing in record history.  This time, I saw 30 - 40 year old trees split in half.  This shit just didn't happen in this part of the country. >
  
  Ice storms are extremly destructive. It'll rip the grid to bits. It genuinely takes a few days I'm sure the state of the road was diabolical. Has Austin ever had an ice storm like that before?