Rov_Scam
52m ago
No, I can't. The legal consequences of disestablishing paternity are irrelevant if the man and woman are married and living in the same household with the child. The three things that are legally at play here are support obligations, visitation rights, and the right to make decisions. Married guys with kids don't pay child support to their wives, and visitation isn't an issue when you live together. And he doesn't need a court order to let his wife make all the decisions.
Rov_Scam
56m ago
Like I said, if you're suspicious you can get a test done through a lab, it just won't be able to be used in court. If you decide to get divorced based on the result, then you can have a forensic-grade test done. I also don't know what kind of universe you think exists where a guy could initiate proceedings questioning the paternity of one of the marital children that wouldn't result in the wife just filing for divorce anyway.
Rov_Scam
1hr ago
I guarantee there is a universe where you say they are allowed to accelerate. One in which a mob of people attack your car and it’s either blast thru or die.
Read my comment again. He was a block away from the crowd when he started accelerating towards it.
Video does show someone hitting his back bumper with like a pipe before he accelerated.
You'll have to post a link because I couldn't find any video showing that, but it doesn't matter. Even if someone starts shooting at me, it doesn't mean that I can just blindly accelerate forward without regard for anyone else's safety. At minimum, it's depraved indifference homicide, which is categorized as Second Degree Murder in Virginia. That's what he was originally charged with, until the prosecution found evidence of premeditation.
Rov_Scam
1hr ago
I'm not sure what the point would be of legally disestablishing paternity would be if you're married. If you want to do it for your own edification then buy a test off of Amazon; there's no role for the court to play here.
Rov_Scam
1hr ago
The prohibition on challenging paternity only applies when the parties are married. Changing this wouldn't even make sense because you don't make support payments or deal with visitation rights when living in the same household. If you file for divorce then the marriage ends and you very much can challenge paternity. While you won't have to make child support payments, you also won't get any visitation rights.
Rov_Scam
2hr ago
Correct. I make no attempt at understanding European law. I should have clarified that.
As far as I know, the law in US federal states and Western European countries is usually that a husband may not have a paternity test done on the child or children unless the wife agrees to it in writing and the family court permits it (in case of a divorce).
This is incorrect, at least in the US. The source of the confusion may be that there's a difference for purely informational paternity tests and forensic tests that have strict protocols and can be used as evidence in court. The latter are only done, for obvious reasons, if there are actually court proceedings, and require a court order.
Rov_Scam
15hr ago
I don't know what video you're looking at that shows his car was struck before he accelerated, but in any case I don't see how that's relevant. There's no universe where you have a legal justification for starting a block away before driving into a crowd at 30 miles an hour.
Rov_Scam
15hr ago
To be clear, they weren't given sentence reductions because the judge felt sorry for them, but to comply with an esoteric Supreme Court ruling regarding what evidence is required for robbery under the Hobbs Act to qualify for mandatory minimum sentences.
Rov_Scam
17hr ago
A few things. First, the Eggshell Skull Doctrine, strictly speaking, does not apply here, as it's a tort law doctrine that prohibits the defendant from limiting damages to what was foreseeable. In the first example, A punches B and causes a black eye, which is the foreseeable consequence of his action. In the second example, a punches B, but B has a medical condition that A doesn't know about that causes severe medical consequence. In both examples A is liable for battery, but in the second he can't argue that his damages should be limited to those for a black eye because he didn't know about B's medical condition. The criminal law regarding manslaughter seems analogous, but that the defendant cause the victim's death is an element of the offense, and the law doesn't require that such a death be foreseeable.
With that out of the way, it's clear he's guilty of involuntary manslaughter. There may be a chance that a jury views the whole situation as an accident, but it's a small chance. The problem for the prosecutor is that once you strip away all the culture war bullshit, there isn't a compelling case for pursuing this as aggressively as the prosecutor seems to be. The underlying battery was trying to knock the phone out of the guy's hand, which is about as minor as it can get. The blow that proved fatal was the result of inadvertent contact, the defendant had no criminal history, and he apparently cooperated with the police afterward. If I were the judge in this case I'd seriously consider excluding any evidence regarding the subject matter of the confrontation because I wouldn't want jurors deciding the outcome based on where they stand on the Israel-Palestine issue.
When it comes to sentencing, judges in California appear to have more discretion than in most places. I'm neither a criminal lawyer nor barred in California, but from reading the relevant statutes it looks like confinement to state prison was never on the table. I'm not going to list them here, but defendants convicted of involuntary manslaughter only go to state prison if certain factors are in play, none of which appear to be. Beyond that, the term of imprisonment is a maximum of either 2, 3, or 4 years. If certain other mitigating factors that don't apply here are in play, 2 is the max, and if certain aggravating factors that do apply here are in play, the max is 4. However, while the case for involuntary manslaughter is airtight, the case for the aggravating factors the prosecutor alleged wasn't. Taking them individually:
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Personally inflicted great bodily injury True, but this is an element of the involuntary manslaughter charge; in any event, it's hard to imagine a case of involuntary manslaughter that wouldn't involve severe bodily injury. This would therefore only be applicable to the battery charge.
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Defendant armed with and used a weapon Possible, but would require the jury to find that the defendant used the megaphone as a weapon, i.e. he intentionally struck Kessler with it.
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Victim was particularly vulnerable Also possible, but would require that the jury find that Kessler was unusually susceptible to the attack in a manner which made the defendant's conduct distinctly worse than an ordinary example of the crime. I'm not sure what evidence the prosecution planned to present that would suggest Kessler was unusually vulnerable.
None of this ultimately matters because of the guilty plea, but I point it out here because there's a pretty good chance that the judge had more leeway with sentencing than he would have if the case had gone to verdict. If the jury hadn't found that any of the aggravating factors applied, then 3 years would be the default maximum sentence. But those are only maximum sentences. California doesn't offer any real guidelines, but when searching for the statutory text I came across a California defense attorney's website that says a conviction can mean:
Probation possible — up to 1 year county jail — common in lower-end cases where the court finds incarceration unnecessary
I can't vouch for the guy, but I'm assuming he didn't just put this up today to trick people into thinking the Alnaji decision was justified, so I'm going to assume that this is more or less accurate. I also took a look at PA's guidelines, to see how they compare. Here, Involuntary Manslaughter is a First Degree Misdemeanor with a theoretical maximum sentence of 5 years. For someone without a record, the recommended sentence is 5–8 months in county. In fact, statutory maximum aside, the maximum under the guidelines is 22 months. California isn't Pennsylvania, but the point is that a sentence of one year (6 months) plus three years of probation doesn't seem excessively lenient for the crime he was convicted of. You'd struggle to find a state where it's typical for someone with no priors to get four years in the state pen for involuntary manslaughter.
As to the disposition of the case, that's definitely strange. Whether this is an illegal judicial plea offer or not, I don't know. What I will say is that in the case you cited the judge knocked out enhancing factors before making the offer while in the present case the defendant pleaded guilty to all the counts in the indictment, but there could be other deficiencies I'm not aware of. But the procedural posture of this case is strange in general. The current judge was just assigned in March, after the original judge died. Yesterday's hearing only appeared on the calendar at the last minute. The case had already been listed for trial several times, but each time was continued at the last minute. And each trial date had requests for media presence and cameras. Judicial involvement in settlement negotiations is common in civil litigation but most states prohibit it in criminal matters. California, though, is one of the exceptions, though I don't know to what extent the practice is encouraged. The article says there were several meetings with the judge, and assuming these were similar to civil mediations, here's my theory on what transpired:
The judge knew that the matter was likely to become a media circus, and wanted the parties to settle. The prosecutor might not have been willing to make a deal, or wasn't willing to offer a deal that was acceptable to the defense. Over the course of the meetings it became clear that the judge's view of the case was that while a conviction was likely, the evidence the prosecution was giving him didn't support the sentence they were asking for. The prosecutor doesn't determine the sentence, and if a defendant thinks that he can get a better deal than what the prosecutor is offering by just pleading guilty and throwing himself at the mercy of the judge, there's nothing the prosecutor can do to stop him. In other words, the "offer" the judge made was the same as the sentence he would have given had the defendant been convicted at trial. The benefit to the defendant is not having to endure a two-week media circus with him as the star that is likely to yield the same result. They're scheduled to be in court in less than two weeks, but the media will be there, so they schedule an immediate hearing with little notice so that they can resolve the matter as quietly as possible. They still have to go back for formal sentencing in July, but unless something unusual happens that will be a formality that nobody cares about. Some people will still complain, but a lot fewer people are following the case now than would be if it goes to trial, and advocates for the prosecution have to deal with the elation of the guilty verdict followed by the disappointment of the sentence. The prosecutor, meanwhile, doesn't have to own anything. Everything is wrapped up in a nice little package.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
The difference is that underage gender transition will only affect a vanishingly small proportion of the underage population, while school prayer affects everyone. There's a difference between being pissed of about what other people's kids do and what your own kids are forced to do.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
Whether the problem is with the design of the plan or the implementation is not my concern; a plan is useless if you don't follow it. The flagger was not in the middle of the intersection but directly in front of the construction equipment, where he was a distance a way from me and at such an angle that he would have not been visible to the other three legs. I talked to my PennDOT engineer friend again and he said that I should call District 11 on Monday and explain what happened because if nobody complains then nothing will get done. He also told me about how he sort of impersonated a PennDOT engineer years ago (he was working for them but was in a different district) when he came across a construction zone that was set up incorrectly. He said he was from PennDOT and told them what they needed to do to rectify the situation, and they told him that he needed to call their supervisor. He said that if he made any call it would be to the police to shut the job down, and they apparently made the changes he requested. He said that whether or not the police would do anything about it depends on the department, but calling the district office is always a safe bet because few enough people call about tuff like this that they can take all of the citizen complaints seriously.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Paging @ToaKraka, since you're the resident civil engineer/rules aficionado, I have a question about construction zone safety, and what I can do to combat the rash of confusing and/or nonsensical flagging situations that seem to have proliferated in the past year or two. Last night I was sitting at a 5-way intersection in the southbound center lane, intending to continue on the same road. There is also a left turning lane for those making one of two left-hand options, as well as a lane for those turning right. The lane I was traveling in, on the far side of the intersection (about 200' away), was blocked by construction vehicles, a sign saying "Road Work Ahead", and two flaggers, one with a flag and one with those light batons. The opposing lane of traffic had cars sitting at the light traveling northbound, and at some point one of the flaggers waved them through. The light was operating throughout this whole time so I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to follow the light or the flaggers, but when I had the first cycle of green there was nowhere for me to go so I just sat there watching the flaggers who, mind you, were 200' away from me.
At one point the guy with the light batons, who was standing near the trucks behind the guy with the flag, started doing some dance that I at first couldn't tell if it was because he was trying to direct traffic or because he was bored, but it soon became obvious that it was the latter. Then the guy with the flag started making a waving motion that was so vague I couldn't tell which cars he was waving through or where he wanted them to go, but given that I had been sitting there a while and the northbound lane was clear I interpreted to mean that that lane was available for southbound traffic. Of course, as soon as I start heading for the open lane the guy starts yelling "No" quite loudly, and I have to beat a retreat to making a right turn, which was only a minor detour but still irritating given that I knew as soon as I saw the construction that I wasn't going to be given any straightforward instructions.
To summarize: There were two guys controlling a road at an intersection with four approaches, two of which were too far away to see anything clearly, the other two with bad sight lines. One of the guys was treating his traffic control device like a toy. There was no signage indicating that the southbound lane was closed, or any posted detour. A simple sign indicating that the road was closed would have been sufficient, but instead they seemingly decided to create a situation that was intentionally confusing in the hope that people would just not bother. I was half tempted to pull up and roll down my window and demand to speak to who was in charge of this and see a safety plan, lie about being an engineer from PennDOT and make up a state law saying that the contractor had to have a copy of the safety plan on site that was available upon request.
If this were an isolated incident I wouldn't care that much, but something similar has happened about a half dozen times, all in the past year or two, once last summer at the exact same intersection. I don't recall it happening at all in the previous 20 years of driving, so either I'm getting dumber or people are getting more lax. I'm sure there's some way to lodge a formal complaint, but that's no fun. I want to know what the actual regulations and best practices are so I can go into full-blown dick mode the next time this happens and have some ammunition to back me up. I can understand if this was some kind of emergency repair but they repaved the entire road last summer and have been doing more work for the past week.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Except in a realpolitik way it doesn't make sense to release it. If I'm in the DNC and want the party to have success in the future, the best situation is to move on entirely from anything that had to do with Biden. There are plenty of younger politicians out there without any of the political baggage that comes with being tied to an unpopular president and losing bid. If they release it now it's news for a week, only political junkies pay attention to it, and a year from now when people start announcing their candidacies the whole thing is yesterday's news.
If you really think that Harris candidacy is a threat to the party, then you tell her not to run with the implicit threat that if she does then it may get leaked at an inopportune time. If she doesn't announce then it never sees the light of day. If she does, then she isn't a team player and they won't mind throwing her under the bus. If it's leaked and she wins the nomination anyway, then she's a stronger candidate than anyone thought and she deserves to have it.
Rov_Scam
8d ago
I think that if Trump had been assassinated in Butler it would have been "successful" insofar as it would have influenced the upcoming election. the GOP convention was scheduled to begin the following week, and while it probably would have gone forward as an opportunity to eulogize Trump, it wouldn't have actually selected a nominee. While there was some controversy over Biden's passing the baton to Harris, it was nothing compared to the all-out war that would have happened in the Republican Party if their nominee had been killed on the eve of the convention. J.D. Vance, Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSantis all had claims to the nomination that were equal parts credible and ludicrous. Haley had won the second most primary votes, but those all came from people specifically voting against Trump. DeSantis probably would have been the nominee if Trump hadn't run, but he got even fewer votes in the primary than Haley, had a frosty relationship with Trump, and there's no way of proving what would have happened besides taking the word of Ron and other people who want him to be the nominee. J.D. Vance was the named heir apparent, but that wasn't public at the time, and anyone claiming that he was Trump's pick would just be accused of being self-serving, similar to people fighting over a will based on "what dad really wanted". And that leaves out opportunists who would throw their hat into the ring as "compromise candidates", and people who would throw their hat into the ring as full on Trump stans who would claim that none of the candidates represent the true MAGA spirit.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
it seems you've shifted the goalposts -- creating an entirely new argument for why the indictment falls flat
Courts don't operate like a Harvard debate club, and I don't argue here like I'd argue in court. I try to do my homework but I don't have the time or inclination to fully research my position as I would if it were for an actual client. When I read the statute I didn't get the impression from the language used that it would apply to opening a checking account, so I stopped right there and didn't bother to analyze the case further. You helpfully pointed to a case that demonstrated that such an interpretation would work, and I owed it to you to continue with the analysis.
Anyway, to answer you questions, the statement was colloquially false, but whether it was literally false depends on how you define "conducting business". They were, in fact, accepting money from one party and giving it to another. Maybe this doesn't fit your personal definition, but I can assure you that it's not an uncommon arrangement. In fact, several companies I represent only exist to do exactly that. Basically, they exist to get sued. The insurance companies pay them, and the money is used to pay settlements. The reasons for this are complicated and I'm not going to bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that these companies have no offices, no employees, and don't do anything that would conventionally be described as business. There are thousands of similar shell corporations that exist in the country, and I've never heard of any suggestion that if one of their officers signed a form with a bank that had language about "conducting business" it would subject him to criminal prosecution for lying to a bank. We can argue about this all day long if you want to, but it's ultimately irrelevant, because the indictment alleges that they lied by concealing the ownership of the companies, not because they lied about whether or not they were conducting business.
Do you agree that at the time that statement was made, the individual was acting on behalf of the SPLC?
Yes, but like I said, there's nothing in the indictment that suggests the individual in question ever made a statement to the bank that this was not the case. The document with the alleged false statement is simply confirming that the individual had the legal authority to open the account in the company's name, and the government hasn't presented any evidence to the contrary. The only person with the authority to open those accounts was the person whose name was registered as the dba.
If (1) an organization states on its website that it opposes a particular event; (2) it actually donates money to help organize and support that event; but (3) it doesn't explicitly say that it won't donate money to support the event, then there's no fraud?
I'm not going to get into all the elements right now, but at minimum the government would need to identify a particular person that saw the representation, relied on the representation, and that the organization made money off of that reliance. The indictment doesn't indicate that. That doesn't even begin to touch the prevailing theory that the SPLC was manufacturing racist incidents to increase donation numbers which, again, isn't alleged in the indictment, and would be difficult to prove without a witness within the SPLC willing to testify to it. Again, at the very minimum they would need to identify at least one incident that the SPLC caused to happen.
It wasn't that long ago that you were arguing how it was similarly clear that Letitia James totally committed mortgage fraud, a couple weeks before multiple grand juries failed to indict her. This case is similarly going nowhere,
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I think it's a bit premature to say Trump was the target. Apparently the gunman started shooting in the hallway outside the dinner while Trump was still inside, at least from what I can piece together from Wolf Blitzer's firsthand account.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
If there's case law suggesting that it applies to opening a checking account, I'll concede the point. But that doesn't mean there's criminal liability in this case, because we still have to meet the elements of the crime. As @odd_primes points out, there are three elements:
- Make a false statement to a Federally insured financial institution
- Knew the statement was false, and
- Did so for the purpose of influencing in any way the action of the institution.
I get why 1 and 2 would seem self-evident, but it isn't clear to me whether either of these prongs have been met. The alleged false statements were contained in documents called "Sole Proprietorship Resolution of Authority", which stated, for each of the at-issue accounts:
I, [Employee], certify that I am sole owner of the above named proprietorship, Federal Tax ID number [9788], engaged in business under the trade name of [Company].
The evidence that they present of these statements being false is that, following an investigation by the bank, the accounts were closed and the SPLC had a discussion with the bank memorialized in a letter stating that the accounts were opened for the benefit of SPLC operations and under their authority. The confusion here arises from the difference between legal ownership and beneficial ownership. To cite an example that explains the difference, we'll go with one I'm familiar with, the lawyer trust account.
Suppose a client hires my law firm to handle a commercial real estate transaction worth several million dollars. They give me a check for 5 million dollars so that when the closing date arrives, I will have the cash on hand and be able to pay the seller. In the meantime, though, there will be due diligence and continuing negotiations, and the actual closing date may be several months from when the client gives me the money. I can't just deposit the check in my firm's operating account, because it's not mine to spend, and comingling client funds with my own would get me in trouble. Since the money is likely to generate a non-negligible amount of interest during the time the transaction is pending, I have to open up a client trust account with a bank so that the client doesn't lose anything because of the delay. I am legally responsible for this money and I'm legally the only one with the authority to spend it. But the only way I can spend it is by paying the seller of the property, and if the deal falls through I have to return it, along with any interest it accrued. I am the legal owner, and the client is the beneficial owner.
This distinction comes up a lot in the context of contemporary FinCen and KYC regulations because criminal enterprises will often try to hide behind webs of LLCs. The LLC is the legal owner of the money, but since the LLC has an owner, that owner is the beneficial owner. So If I start a single-member LLC it's easy because I'm the beneficial owner. It gets more complicated when the LLC in question is owned by other LLCs, which are in turn owned by other LLCs, and it takes a day on the Secretary of State's website and lots of money spent ordering incorporation documents that are on microfilm in order to figure out who the physical person is behind everything. The implication that the prosecution appears to be making here is that since the accounts were being used for SPLC purposed, the SPLC was actually the beneficial owner of the accounts, and the statements that the employee was the sole owner of the accounts were therefore false.
There's one problem with this theory, though—sole proprietorships do not have beneficial owners. All a sole proprietorship is is a business name that an individual uses. There is no separate corporate structure apart from the individual. The way counties record them is instructive, either as "fictitious names" or "doing business as". e.g. Robert T. Beck dba Beck Paving Company. The idea of a sole proprietorship having a separate beneficial owner is similar to the idea of an individual having a separate beneficial owner. For that reason, all the various regulation that's been put in place over the years regarding disclosure of beneficial owners doesn't apply to sole proprietorships. The point of the Resolution of Authority is to certify to the bank that you are the person legally authorized to open the account, and to appoint agents who will have access the account. A beneficial owner does not have this authority; if I open a client trust account the client doesn't have any authority to access the account or to designate agents. The same is true for an LLC. If there is a web of legitimate LLCs, and the one I'm in charge of running is owned by another LLC with a different board and different management four layers above, those owners/managers can't open bank accounts in their capacity as beneficial owners. If you look at Resolutions of Authority for LLCs, they don't ask about beneficial ownership at all; in fact, they don't ask about ownership at all. All they ask is for the person opening the account to affirm that they have been authorized to open the account and to provide paperwork to that effect.
Assuming that the person who opened the accounts was indeed the legal owner of the sole proprietorships, and the indictment doesn't suggest that he wasn't, you have imply that the language in the Resolution of Ownership implied that it was also refering to some type of beneficial ownership, which wouldn't make any sense. Now, one could make the argument that due to some kind of collateral agreement between the legal proprietor and the SPLC that some sort of beneficial ownership did exist. I can't find any law suggesting that such an arrangement is possible; maybe you can. But even then, in order to prove that the statement was a lie, you'd have to prove that the bank contemplated such an interpretation at the time, and it's highly unlikely that the government has such proof, since the nature of the paperwork they are using as evidence isn't used to determine beneficial ownership even when a beneficial owner who would not appear on that paperwork could theoretically exist. And that still doesn't get you all the way there, because that only gets us to the second prong, that the person opening the account interpreted it this way as well, and thus knew they were making a false statement. If someone asks you if you own a company without any qualification, and you are the only legal owner, and you say yes, you can't say they knew they were lying because some obscure interpretation that you weren't made explicitly aware of exists which would make the statement untrue.
And we haven't even gotten to the third prong yet, and it's likely to fail here as well, that the false statement was made to mislead the bank. It's unclear why the person opening the account would have a motive to mislead the bank. In the case you cited, it was clear that the guy was trying to mislead the bank because he was using the accounts to deposit checks made out to somebody else. The indictment alleges that the accounts in the present case were used to mislead third parties as to the source of the funds, but that isn't an element of the offense. The SPLC had its own account with the same bank, and there's nothing in the indictment to suggest that the bank would have refused to open the accounts had they known that the SPLC was behind them, or that the employee who opened them was deliberately trying to conceal their purpose. This is the weakest argument, since one could argue that any false statement was made to mislead the person to whom it was made, but it would take a miracle to even get this far, and such an implication is just as weak for the prosecution.
Are we assuming that the organization boasts on its website about how it opposes "trail obliteration"?
No, but if you want to split that particular hair then it works both ways. Where on the SPLC website did it say they wouldn't give money to a particular group? That's beside my point though, which is that the language is simply too vague to prove fraud. Look at a typical fraud case: I tell you that if you invest your money with my firm I'll put it in the stock market, and you chose a few funds to invest in. In the meantime, I use your money to make loans to my son's unsuccessful woodworking business, and I produce fraudulent statements showing the amount of money you would have had if I had invested the way I told you I was going to. In other words, there was a clear promise that I would do something, made to you in particular, you relied on that promise, and you can imply from the circumstances that I never intended to invest your money the way I promised. That's a very different circumstance than a general statement made on a website that you can't prove that any individual donor actually saw, let alone relied upon. In the nonprofit environment, misusing restricted funds comes looks a lot more like traditional fraud than using general funds that may be at odds with what is said on a website, in that you made a specific promise to a specific donor to use funds a certain way, and then used them for something else. And even in those cases, the result isn't a fraud prosecution, but a civil suit from the state AG to recover the money, and possibly loss of tax status.
Look, I don't have much love for the SPLC, would never consider giving them money, and I understand your arguments. But I'm not willing to squint hard enough to believe that this indictment is any more than an attempt to spin straw into gold.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
Yeah, I'll get to the question later. I've been working quite a bit and didn't have time to give a proper answer. Hopefully I'll get to it later today.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
What concessions do you realistically think the pro-gun people would be willing to make?
Rov_Scam
12d ago
A lot of people, myself included, who work traditional office jobs have a lot of flexibility when we have to be at the office, even if we're technically 100% in-person. I'm sure the government and some large globocorporations have detailed sign-in procedures, but no one at any non-governmental office I've ever worked at paid much attention to when you were coming and going. My father, who punched a clock his whole life, never understood how cavalier I could be about what time I got to the office, since being 5 or 10 or even an hour late never mattered much so long as I got my work done. Same thing with lunch breaks—I could and still can disappear for half the afternoon without anyone realizing I'm gone.
There are also a lot of people who just work odd hours. Industrial work, retail, and healthcare are the most notorious for this, but my neighbor, for instance, in a floor manager at a casino and works 3am to 11am, so she's home during the afternoon every day, and her days off are Wednesday and Thursday. A friend of mine who drives a tow truck for PennDOT works 4 tens followed by two days off, so his "weekends" are always shifting. Another friend who is a stationary engineer works a similarly goofy schedule. A friend of mine who does power plant outage work only works in the spring and fall, but racks up enough overtime to cover his expenses for the whole year. Teachers don't work much over the summer and have random days off. I have several friends who work for paving companies and are effectively off all winter. The idea that everyone besides young people, retirees, housewives, and the unemployed is stuck at work all day during the week is an overgeneralization.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
Compromise projections are the best projections. The purpose of a world map is to see where things are at, not to make precise measurements, unless you're a sailor or something. I don't care if size or shape are distorted a little, as long as it doesn't look ridiculous, and compromise projections are the only ones that don't look ridiculous. If we're talking local maps then Transverse Mercator is the only way to go, since the meridian is chosen based on the local area you're mapping. If people are going to be so insistent about the metric system then I'm going to be insistent about UTM, which by all rights should replace latitude/longitude since a grid is inherently superior to an angular system. If someone decides to send me a pin for directions I'm going to insist that it's in UTM from now on, in case my phone dies and I have to navigate with map and compass.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
It wasn't a bad song until I had to listen to it 20 times a day. I predict that in 25 years it will have the same status as "Dreamlover" by Mariah Carey, i.e. it's so ubiquitous that everyone collectively gets tired of it and agrees to never speak of it again.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
The US didn't have any ground troops, no. But they were supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army, which had 25,000 troops fighting in a country with 0.6% the land area and 2% the population of Iran. If there were an Iranian Liberation Army with a million troops, I'd agree with you that an air campaign would probably be successful.
Please read the entire thread before commenting.
If you're suspicious, you can feel free to have a private lab do a test. If you then decide to file, you can have the court order a proper test as part of the proceedings.
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