Morgan’s Wonderland was named after his daughter, Morgan, pictured on the left in the top picture. At one point, he bought the house nextdoor to my mom and turned it into a transitional group home for young adults with special needs.
We’d frequently see Morgan at the house, helping out with different projects. Morgan’s father seemed to be an incredibly kind and generous man who understood that money=power or at least opportunity and recognized his financial privilege.
When he finally decided to sell the group home, he sold it to another company who shared his principles of helping kids with special needs.
Now, my sister has kids whom she and my mom take to Morgan’s Wonderland. Her kids are not significantly limited by any special needs, but the park is so accessible that is one of the few places where parents with young toddlers or infants can take their children on rides or let them roam relatively free at the splash pads.
All-in-all, I’d say that Morgan and her father have been incredibly positive influences on San Antonio and the community.
I never expected to be emotionally uplifted by thee fartographer, but I’m happy I was 😊
I had to go look back at who posted this comment (I don’t usually look) and I knew it was going to be you.
I’ve taken my special needs nephews there and it’s amazing. They both loved the Ferris wheel so I had to ride it what felt like a hundred times. Even the regular ticket prices are really good for the quality of the place.
It’s a good day when a Texas drunk recognizes the contributions of the fartographer (a moniker my phone tried desperately to avoid).
I think the fartographer is a neat person. We’ve discussed Texas stuff and checked on each other during the hurricane. When I get the opportunity it’s always a nice conversation. That’s the closest thing I have to a friend on Lemmy.
So it’s definitely a good day for me.
Thanks buddy! I always get excited seeing your username in the comments, too
Now I kinda wanna create a community called lemmybefriends for lemmings who’ve befriended each other. But then it’d need to be moderated and I’m lazy…
You’re both adorable
@TexasDrunk@lemmy.world we need a 'ship portmanteau…
FartDrunk
It’s either that or texasographer
Sorry for any confusion - it’s genuinely awesome that you guys connected. Just the usernames were funny to me.
I would love to find a relatively local friend on lemmy.
Oh, I wasn’t taking it any kind of bad way! I was just adding context that yeah, we’ve got funny user names, but I also genuinely think the fartographer is a pretty cool human in general.
The great thing about the interwebs is it makes everyone local. Oddly enough I’m meeting someone from IRC tomorrow.
I met my wife on IRC. She made the mistake of saying I was cute (I wasn’t and am not). We referenced it in our wedding vows.
15 years later, we’re married with a kid. She hasn’t realized, or at least acknowledged, her mistake yet. At least she doesn’t use IRC anymore, so I don’t have to worry about some other nerd stealing her from me.
I knew it was going to be you
Don’t make me feel some kind of way.
That’s amazing. What an inspiring guy.
This is well out of reach for most of us to replicate, but think about Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk… These dragons could change the entire world, yet they instead only seek personal gains and the disruption of positive progress.
Good for this guy and his family, though. He did what so many will never care to do.
I mean, they are changing the entire world…
Literally lmao. Hate Bezos all you want but the US can’t live without Amazon now; it’s another Walmart/Target now.
i haven’t ordered anything from Amazon for years. i think we would live.
I’m not going to renew my Amazon sub when it expires. I say it’s for moral reasons but honestly it’s cause they’ve made the search so incredibly awful.
I’ll search for things with the exact product name, still end up having to scroll down a ways to find it.
I’ll go back to buying direct from manufacturer websites.
I got hooked on that no shipping and Amazon Video for a short while, but I haven’t missed ordering from then in the last 8 or so months since I cancelled. As far as missing the video, yarr, avast ye hearties!
Thing with the video, I already get it from alternative means even while paying for it because Amazon doesn’t like to play in full quality on Linux.
What about the majority of the internet that runs on AWS things?
AWS definitely indispensable.
Amazon, I’d like to hear your case for “too big to fail”.
Azure, GCP, OCI
I base my statement on AWS outages always being news.
Yeah but if it weren’t an option we would adapt. Commerce would not grind to a sudden halt.
It’s still baffles me how hard the ball of online mega Corp was dropped by Sears. When the world returned to catalog shopping, They failed hard.
Somewhere in the multiverse Sears is the online giant Amazon is in our reality, and it makes perfect sense.
Sears is the clearest example ever of how the leaders of large corporations are not in any way competent at running large corporations. They are only competent at climbing to the top of large corporations.
And all it took was anticompeting anyone who could provide a better service.
It can, it just doesn’t want to.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk… These dragons
The only sense in which they’re dragons is “dragon deez nuts across our faces”.
Also the wealth hording.
Smaug was only worth $62bn
All the positive things they could be spending their money on that wouldn’t put a chip in their wealth and the only charities any of them do keeps turning out to be ways to hide their money from the tax collectors.
Let’s not lump Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk together though. I feel weird defending Bezos, but he does have a big charitable fund that’s quite transparent about how it spends its money. As for Elon, he’s allegedly given billions to charity, but has never specified what that charity is and given his views on things it’s probably appropriate to consider that highly suspect.
I wish more millionaires and billionaires would use their exorbitant wealth for community service. Clearly they can still be wealthy and make positive impacts in the world.
I have a hard time imagining not doing that if I were rich. The constant motivation to do something to help people would be so strong.
That’s what happened to Rockefeller and Carnegie. After, I think, Vanderbilt died Rockefeller and Carnegie got into a competition to see who can give away the most money. They donated buildings, money, and all sorts of stuff till they died. The thing is, they were making so much money through their businesses they ended up with more money when they died.
Of course this “change of heart” the 2 had was after decades of competing to be the richest man in the world. They accomplished this by not paying workers enough, and even making production more dangerous. The steel workers were being injured at a rate of 1 in 9. They should have been taxed properly to begin with and pay their workers better instead of calling pinkertons to shoot them when they striked.
The Pinkerton/steel workers were Carnegie. Rockefeller had his own problems, include running newspaper articles saying electricity is dangerous and burns down houses, so stick with Rockefeller kerostine lamps or other trusted oil products.
Electricity did burn down my house though
Reminds me of how people were claiming, technically rightish, that seat belts injured a ton of people when they were first made legal way back when.
Like yea, injuries due to car crashes spiked a ton that first year but that’s cause people stopped fucking dying in car crashes thanks to them.
Exactly. Head injuries also went up in the military after the introduction of the metal helmets in WW1. Some extra critical thinking might tell you those head injuries would have been deaths of not for the helmets.
Electricity doesn’t kill people, misusing guns - I mean misusing electricity kills people
If we taxed them and closed loopholes, we wouldn’t have to depend on them being generous on a whim and paying their fair share…
You’re absolutely right they need to be heavily taxed, but the government has plenty of money and they aren’t doing anything like this. So taxing the rich appropriately still wouldn’t lead to outcomes like this, which is what makes this guy special.
We could easily make them do that.
oh no, dont say the T word
Trebuchet?
I’d be a full on hedonist. Donate to causes in person for the smiles and the thanks.
Having my name on stuff - eh… not as important b/c I see how colloquial names are given and dedicator’s names[1] are ignored.
[1] Bay Area people: you ever hop on the Nimitz or Junipero Sera? More like the 880 or the 280. Or do you hear “John F. Kennedy Space Center” or just “Cape Canaveral” when rockets launch?
I’d like to go around leaving big ass tips. 5 dollar coffee, here’s a 1000 dollar tip.
They all want to be remembered and worshiped for what they accomplished by seeing numbers go up in their bank account.
They are too egotistical to realize they would actually earn respect, adoration and have a legacy if they put their money towards helping the world be a better place. Instead they seem to think having a dick measuring contest via rocketships is a good way to help humanity.
And this is why good people who got rich don’t stay rich and people who do are usually selfish assholes. Elon Musk bought Twitter for 44 billion, he could have literally built hundreds of amusement parks for disabled people with the same money. Or do literally a thousand other things to make life for other people better. Instead he bought a toxic social media platform to make it even more toxic.
Technically speaking he could have built 4,823 of these amusement parks and still be a billionaire after.
He bought twitter because he was trying to do a pump and dump with the stock. Then the SEC said we warned you once you better be serious this time. He decided buying twitter for a massive premium was better then possible prison time.
He bought twitter because he was trying to do a pump and dump with the stock.
Maybe, but the fact of Saudi and Russian backing of his takeover and his turning twitting into (more of) a nazi propaganda shithole suggests that was the main purpose behind the acquisition - especially when the cost was an absolutely trivial fraction of his overall wealth.
That’s why they loaned him the money. Most of his wealth is Tesla stock. He either needed loans or to sell a bunch of stock.
It’s called Morgan’s Wonderland. The father’s company has also built a community center next to the park.
Talk about spending your money for a great cause, on top of being an amazing father!
I read “A Texas dad sold off his business…” and expected that to go in a different direction.
I saw a video clip of this place in a local news report somewhere. This guy’s a badass.
This just makes me think of south park where Cartman buys a theme park but with a more wholesome twist.
Yes slightly more wholesome
That’s beautiful of him. 💓
How special do my needs have to be?
