Lover of life, people and technology đ Former born New Yorker who moved to Texas đ€ and joined the Austin startup scene in 2015. Occasional tech/cloud/AI posts
đš BREAKING: Rioters have begun setting the school buses ON FIRE in Times Square during the Knicks riots
Police do not have NEARLY ENOUGH SUPPORT
Mamdani and Hochul have ABSOLUTELY FAILED NYPD and law abiding New Yorkers
It's 1980 in Austin and you had no idea that Christopher Cross's song "Sailing" was about Lake Travisâ”ïž
LAKE TRAVIS, TX (@fox7austin)â When you think of the definitive yacht rock anthem, you probably picture the beaches of Malibu or the coast of Maui. But the ultimate masterpiece of the genreâChristopher Crossâs iconic, 5-time Grammy-winning hit "Sailing"âactually traces its roots straight to the choppy waters of Travis County. While Cross was born and raised in San Antonio, graduating from Alamo Heights High School, it wasnât until he moved his musical ambitions up the road to Austin that the inspiration for his signature 1980 Billboard No. 1 single truly took shape during frequent trips across Lake Travis.
Cross has often noted that the classic track wasnât written about an ocean getaway, but rather the genuine sense of escape he discovered in Travis County as he transitioned into adulthood. Reflecting on the local inspiration behind the legendary song, Cross shared: "It's about an older friend of mine who had a boat... and we would go out on Lake Travis. It was just a transition from being a kid to being an adult... just a very wonderful way to escape the transition of growing up." That peace he found on the lake ultimately became a song universally recognized as the absolute pinnacle of yacht rock.
This edited video includes shots of Lake Travis.
A Letter from Gen X
Iâve read the letter from Gen Z from early this morning and the response from the Boomers around noon today.
As someone born in the late 70s, I sit right in the middle. We watched our parents get laid off in the 80s and 90s. We saw pensions disappear and loyalty to companies punished. We entered the workforce during multiple recessions and the beginning of mass offshoring. We were told to âjust go to collegeâ right before tuition exploded and wages stagnated.
We are the generation that saw the betrayal in real time and still tried to play by the old rules.
To Gen Z: Yes, it got harder. The ladder was pulled up. The social contract was broken. Many of us feel the same anger you do.
To the Boomers: Some of you fought it. Many of you did not. Too many went along with the cheap labor policies, the trade deals, and the open border experiments because it made their 401(k)s go up and their house values increase. You benefited from the system even as it started to crack.
We Gen Xers are the ones who had to adapt. We became cynical early. We watched both parties sell us out. We saw our parentsâ generation get discarded and decided never to fully trust institutions again.
The truth is simple: The generations before us built something great. Then politicians and global interests slowly sold pieces of it off. Each generation since has inherited less of the original promise.
We donât need more blame. We need to stop the bleeding.
The country still has incredible potential, but only if we quit pretending the last 40 years of policy were accidental.
A tired but still fighting Gen X
đš WOW! Rep. Wesley Hunt just made the Democrats SPEECHLESS after dropping straight truth nukes
"My own father, who grew up in a segregated South, had to walk around to the back of a restaurant just to order a sandwich because of the color of his skin."
"THAT was Jim Crow, and THAT is precisely why it is so offensive to compare that era of legalized discrimination and racial terror to showing a PHOTO ID in a voting booth!"
"And it's just as offensive when groups and organizations like these manufacture faux hate and racial tension, requiring identification of vote."
"It's not oppression. It is not segregation. It is not racism."
"It is a basic standard that applies equally to every single American citizen, regardless of what you look like. You need an ID to board a plane. You need an ID to cash a check."
"You need an ID to buy alcohol. You need an ID to enter these very federal buildings. And by the way, attaining an ID in this country is an extremely low bar."
"But somehow showing an ID to vote in America is now considered to be Jim Crow 2.0. This is NOT about civil rights. This is about political theater. And the Democrat Party survives on manufacturing grievance."
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One of the biggest mistakes many conservatives make today is assuming young Americans are embracing socialism because they hate freedom or hate America.
A lot of them are simply growing up inside the consequences of decades of economic, political, cultural, and globalist failures they did not create.
They look around and see:
- rising rent
- unaffordable homes
- stagnant wages
- endless debt
- jobs shipped overseas
- declining trust in institutions
- shrinking economic opportunity
They have eyes.
They can SEE what is happening around them.
So when socialist politicians like Mamdani and Bernie Sanders come along offering âfreeâ solutions, promising to punish corporations, redistribute wealth, or massively expand government programs, of course it sounds attractive on the surface.
And if our only response is:
âStop being lazy.â
âWork harder.â
âSocialism is evil.â
âŠwithout actually educating them on WHY America became the most prosperous nation in human history through capitalism, ownership, innovation, production, competition, and economic freedom, then we lose the next generation by default.
The uncomfortable reality is many young Americans were never properly taught:
- the history of capitalism
- the dangers of centralized government power
- the catastrophic failures of socialism
- or how Americaâs economic dominance was built in the first place
Their schools wonât teach it honestly.
Their universities wonât teach it honestly.
Social media wonât teach it honestly.
Their peers wonât teach it honestly.
So who will?
This is why figures like Charlie Kirk understood the assignment.
He didnât just rebuke young people.
He engaged them.
Debated them.
Explained ideas in plain English.
Went directly onto college campuses instead of surrendering them.
That matters.
And while President Trump is taking some of the most consequential actions to reverse Americaâs decline - rebuilding manufacturing, confronting unfair trade, securing borders, prioritizing energy independence, and putting American workers first - there also needs to be a serious communication strategy aimed directly at younger Americans.
Because many of them are not seeing the long-term strategy.
What they see TODAY is:
- expensive groceries
- impossible housing markets
- economic instability
- student debt
- weak job prospects
If conservatives do not connect the dots for them, the socialist movement will.
And this is where foreign policy also enters the conversation.
For decades, Americaâs leadership class pushed policies that financially benefited multinational corporations and foreign interests while hollowing out parts of the American middle class at home.
Factories disappeared.
Communities collapsed.
Entire industries were outsourced.
America became dependent on foreign manufacturing, foreign supply chains, and geopolitical rivals.
Young Americans inherited THAT reality.
So when they hear slogans about âsaving democracyâ overseas while struggling to afford rent at home, many naturally become cynical toward the entire system itself.
This is why understanding foreign policy is no longer optional.
Foreign policy is not some distant issue only discussed in Washington think tanks.
It directly impacts:
- your cost of living
- your job market
- inflation
- energy prices
- national security
- manufacturing
- housing
- economic opportunity
Everything is connected.
Thatâs one of the main reasons I wrote âForeign Policy Is Survival.â
Because if the next generation does not understand how global decisions shape their daily lives, they will continue becoming vulnerable to emotionally appealing socialist narratives that promise simple solutions to complex national problems.
We cannot just rebuke younger Americans.
We have to educate them.
Patiently.
Aggressively.
Consistently.
Because this is not just a political battle anymore.
It is an economic battle.
A cultural battle.
An educational battle.
And increasingly, a geopolitical one.
Lang Lang the greatest classical pianist in the world walked up to emilio piano and asked him to play rush E, one of the hardest pieces ever.
What happened next... I can't believe itđ„đ„đ„
I'm a connoisseur of dumb redneck shit and it's been years since something has impressed me. Don't let the flawlessness of its execution rob you of awe of its skill and danger.
âĄïžThe college middle is dying because its product no longer clears the market.
The elite schools survive because they sell status, network, selection, legitimacy, and access to power. The hard-skill pipelines survive because they sell licensure, technical competence, healthcare access, engineering access, or direct employment conversion. The giant public systems survive because they have scale, subsidies, brand familiarity, and political backing.
Small private colleges without elite status or hard employment conversion are the exposed layer.
They were selling a dream built for another economy: come here, become educated, get a degree, enter the professional class, and justify the debt later. That bargain worked when the white-collar ladder was expanding, credentials were scarce, interest rates were lower, families trusted institutions more, and employers still needed armies of junior knowledge workers.
That world is breaking.
AI is accelerating the collapse because it attacks the exact output many of these schools were quietly selling: generic cognitive competence. Writing, summarizing, researching, presenting, organizing, analyzing, coordinating, producing decent professional language. Those skills still matter, but the wage premium around average competence is falling fast.
So the degree loses its magic.
The student asks: why pay $40K, $50K, $60K per year for a brand no one outside the region respects, taught by an institution moving slower than the labor market, for a credential that may not protect against AI-driven white-collar compression?
That question kills schools.
The financial tables are the corpse smell. Negative unrestricted assets, high expense burn, borrowing to survive, restricted donor funds getting strained. These are not normal weakness signals. These are institutions consuming future optionality to keep the present illusion alive.
The death spiral is mechanical. Enrollment weakens. Tuition discounting rises. Net revenue falls. Programs get cut. Morale drops. Faculty leave or get squeezed. The brand weakens. Families worry about closure risk. Enrollment weakens again. Then one day the school that looked âtroubled but aliveâ suddenly becomes unfinanceable.
The brutal truth: many of these colleges should not survive in their current form.
That sounds harsh, but the alternative is worse: years of students paying premium prices to institutions that are financially unstable, academically generic, and economically misaligned with the future. Preserving the shell of a dying college does not protect students. It often transfers institutional failure onto them.
The real tragedy is local. These schools are community anchors. They employ people. They hold memory. They give small towns identity. They offer second chances to students who may not enter elite systems. Their collapse will damage places already hollowed out by industrial decline, demographic stagnation, and institutional decay.
But sentiment cannot pay bondholders, faculty, vendors, or studentsâ future wages.
The deeper civilizational signal: higher education is losing its monopoly on human formation.
For decades, college was the default bridge into adult legitimacy. Now the bridge is splitting. One path is elite network/status. One path is hard skill/licensure. One path is entrepreneurial proof-of-work.
One path is AI-native self-education plus portfolio.
The generic liberal-arts credential from a financially weak school becomes harder to justify.
Western self-condemnation has become a cheap form of virtue theatre. Its peak is behind us .
people mistake condemnation for morality and morality for analysis and thatâs the confusion because it blinds you from seeing the real culprit.
It's not just want one particular culture or society is all humans
People mistake denunciation for wisdom. Condemning âthe Westâ has become a way of advertising virtue, as though civilisationâs failures belong to one colour, one culture, one empire, one half of the human race. and that civilisations successes must be denied in every respect. Itâs a way of brainwashing. Itâs just an alternative form.
The ancient books warn against this. They knew moral vanity would take out a rational discussion eventually and then end in even more chaos.
Cruelty is human. Greed is human. Tribalism is human. So is conscience, invention, mercy, law, repair and sacrifice. just read history self evident and undeniable. Nobody gets a free pass. Youâve gotta be accountable all of us for the whole of human history. Even the bits you donât like.
The task is not to pick a team and scream from the terraces. The task is to understand the whole human system clearly enough to ( help ) stop repeating its patterns. collectively yelling at it isnât gonna change a thing.
At the moment, much of the world looks like rival mobs of football hooligans, each convinced its own side is pure and the other side is barely human.
Give me a break.
The moment you reduce history to a jersey, a flag, a skin colour or a tribe, you have stopped thinking.