TIRM
1mo ago
I've been told my whole life that riding on the sidewalk is illegal. But when a cop visited my school and a parent prompted him to tell us that, he said he's not aware of any such rule. Years later a cop yelled at me to get on the sidewalk when the bike lane was obstructed by cars. Let's say it is very hypothetically illegal.
If I was in that guy's situation I would ride in the bike lane or get on the sidewalk. Anything other than getting into the lane and hoping the driver behind you gets on the brakes on time. That's of course their legal obligation. I wouldn't bet my spine on it.
critique of a nebulous “elite”, the only point of which is to spread a general mistrust in whoever happens to be in power
But enough about their wise and desirable traits.
My main complaint about the other side is their unthinking reflexive trust and support for their favorite elites. Seemingly changing their opinions and values on a dime when "the science" or some cabal of would-be technocrats sends out new positions for right-thinking people to hold.
There's a level of distrustful contrarianism that is maladaptive. The opposite of stupidity is not necessarily wisdom. But conservatives are onto something vaguely distrusting our self-appointed elites. Correctly recognizing that taking orders from the vanguard of the opposition is not a good idea.
TIRM
1mo ago
Hunter gave "10% to the big guy". Biden was pocketing the bribes. It is not all Republican fantasies.
TIRM
1mo ago
essentially nobody in the West has a stake in Gaza that makes it worth protesting about.
American Jews with family in Israel or even family killed on Oct 7. The last American hostage held in Gaza was released a couple weeks ago. A "let our people go" walk is relevant to some Americans.
TIRM
2mo ago
it appears they made a mistake
"Oops. Looks like I, a career bureaucrat, accidentally foiled the Republican executive I derive all my authority from yet again. I sure hope these accidents don't keep happening every time a Republican is elected president."
TIRM
1mo ago
proctored exam time to (mostly) write several short essays in person by hand, without electronics
I'm really showing my age here, but this is my typical high school and college experience. Tests are maybe an hour long in high school, longer in college. No electronics other than sometimes a scientific calculator. No graphing calculators since they can be programmed with the relevant formulae; including fake screens that say all memory has been just now wiped.
AP English literature, English language and history was lots of hand written essays. Just write a few paragraphs answering some question statement about some short reading.
This is all so obvious and relatively fool proof. Sit and do the work in a room in front of your professor and TAs. If you could wave a magic wand and give young me an amazing hand held device with a super-LLM, it would not have helped me at all for in class final tests. Nothing but pens and paper allowed. Unless your professor is a sadist and makes open book exams. But always no looking at your cell phone.
Even my numerical methods class final was in a computer lab with the professor and TA watching us. Do whatever you want with that base installation of MATLAB, no opening the web browser. No LLMs need apply since only the final exam doc and MATLAB are allowed to be open on that computer. Using the meagerest mental faculties, I memorized the few solution methods they taught me and performed them under my professor's watchful eye. I don't see why now that doesn't equally work. I could have tried to cheat and opened the web browser to Google answers. But I didn't and couldn't given the monitoring. LLMs are not beyond Google in this respect.
Reading this thread I see more a problem in instructor will and discipline than LLMs. In class, no cellphones, no laptops, write down your answers tests. Problem fucking solved, like they were for me 20ish years ago.
TIRM
1mo ago
Intetesting. I would call out the spandex-clad roadies as the worst of the worst. There's some hills with two lane roads by me. They like riding down hill in the street rather than the bike lane even though they are much slower than cars. I get stuck behind a line of cars following spandex man. I wish those guys were ticketed and had to go to traffic court.
Kids are mostly fine. Maybe ride too fast on sidewalks sometimes. Particularly recently with surprisingly fast electric bikes. But they generally don't suicidally shoot into traffic and they've avoided getting too close to me when walking. They slow down and carefully go around me and my family. Spandex man could learn a lot from middle schoolers how to navigate the world as though other people also occupy it.
I understand the schedule is not literally true. This won't be relevant 400 years from now. Someday some political or social change will kill it or make it irrelevant.
They started this program in the 1960s with a special tax to pay for it. They stretched that tax and made it people's income ever since then. It's taxpayer sinecures for consultants. And recently local city board meetings in which local residents ask why this has a multi-century timeline. And of course proposals to increase taxes since the program is in a bad state.
The fact that it lasted 6 decades so far does mean the schedule is not completely made up. It's a long running program and we can compare decades of it's progress to the stated goal.
TIRM
7d ago
Orthodox Jews believe in bodily resurrection. Which means they want their bodies kept intact. No organ donation or cremation, etc. They don't think God makes a fresh new body for you. It is your current body brought to life.
TIRM
1mo ago
I bought a house a few years ago. The previous owners gave it a fresh interior paint job. Very wise for selling a house. BUT, they chose medium-grey paint. It was dark and oppressive. My wife and I had to first thing repaint it light cream. I'm not sure we had to use white primer first to block out that overpowering grey, but we did just to be sure you couldn't see it leaking through like some evil stain.
TIRM
1mo ago
Social media brainrot hits some women very hard and this is the result? People living in an online echo chamber amplifying their vague progressive leanings into extremism and cutting off all the evil conservatives, MAGAs, etc from their lives. People living the rhetoric of the lowest grade of Reddit political discourse.
TIRM
23d ago
minimum results
Border encounters have plummeted to near zero. The results are enormous.
TIRM
20d ago
Ideal weather? Southern to central coastal California. Warmish and dry. Humidity is the great enemy and it is not present here. I'm fine with snowy winters, it is muggy wet summers that are intolerable.
New Yorker isn't free to read anymore? Boo.
Anyways: https://old.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/jbff9q/libertarian_police/
TIRM
15d ago
Is he a boy and is fucking any significant part of the motivation for his actions? >He's a fuckboy.
Sure, but then fuckboys are everywhere. Given a broad enough understanding of "significant part of the motivation", most men are.
TIRM
15d ago
A young woman may go to college in a town other than the one she grew up in. And later graduate and get a job in some third town. No reason to think she has a local brother or father ready to punish you for not committing in the way she prefers.
TIRM
2mo ago
Gender Queer is, among other things, a book of gay cartoon sex. Targeted at 8 year olds and stocked in public school libraries at my expense.
I support sex ed and some Motte interpretation of the positive things you mention. But the current popular Bailey of sexual cartoon books for young children supplied at taxpayer expense has nothing to do with those positive vibes.
I read your posts and just hope your children against the odds manage to become well-adjusted adults despite your efforts
Sneering contempt against most parents.
TIRM
30d ago
I don’t expect bicyclists to dismount at lonely intersections. And I think rolling stops should be legalized in the absence of cross traffic. Maybe we can't legalize it because people can't be trusted to follow a conditional rule of only rolling through if there is no cross traffic. I wish we could. I'd say legalize it anyway see if accident rates increase.
When I say some bicyclists enjoy blowing through stop signs, I mean in the presence of other traffic. They could do whatever they wanted on lonely roads or empty intersections and I'd never care. Instead they defy traffic controls in ways that make drivers have to move out of their way or hit their brakes. That's my problem. People should drive and ride predictably. That means stopping if there is cross traffic with the right of way. That means not suddenly unexpectedly swerving into the street with much faster cars driving in that lane; like I saw this morning.
the absurd ("speeding is actually safer because a vehicle that isn't keeping up with traffic causes more accidents when people try to pass')
That's just true. If everyone is going 70mph except one person going 55mph, then the 55mph driver is being wildly dangerous by causing people to constantly pass him at 15mph speed difference. Speed differences are dangerous. Driving 60mph in a 60mph zone while everyone else is going 40mph would also be dangerous and I don't recommend it. Speed match the road for safety. Or at least get out of the leftmost lane if you insist on driving slower than everyone else.
both of them said Vance's address was the most shocking speech they'd seen in their respective diplomatic careers
They are illiberal in a way shaped perfectly to block people like Vance or more traditional American Republicans from winning elections. Very selectively applied laws used to round up critics of leftists using police raids. A political Overton window enforced through state action and without any input from voters. Vance rightfully points out that Europe's true threats are just this sort of action.
The response is predictably shock, outrage and literal weeping.
I think many Americans just don't realise how visceral and close and frightening the Ukraine war is for many people in Europe
Europe buys Russian gas and contributes only the most meager and hesitant support for Ukraine. I notice the revealed preference here. "Apparently not very important."
TIRM
1mo ago
some griping about it
My work has an internal chat program. It is like slack. More than a little cheerleading on it for pride recently. Also bitter complaint that major companies are not sufficiently showing their support for pride this year.
I'm used to Rainbow Captalism being a subject of mockery. My coworkers really want it. Or at least a portion do and everyone else remains silent on the issue.
TIRM
1mo ago
Ah yes, the personality assessment. In which the assessor looks at an applicant's race and marks them down as an unlikable unrespected coward if they are Asian.
The holistic interviews being originally invented to limit the number of Jews at Harvard, now easily repurposed for more modern racism.
TIRM
1mo ago
But residents proposed increasing taxes to speed it up and the response was that won't work.
Some have suggested doubling the tax to halve the life of the project, but city officials say the disruption to traffic and available crews would make that impossible.
They're kind of pivoting from one excuse to another.
But sure, cost disease and schedule disease are close relatives. To some degree this would speed up if it was very cheap.
TIRM
27d ago
Obligatory I don't advocate "fingers first" bonesawings for anyone, but Khashoggi was an Islamist and his political complaints were there not being enough and the correct kind of Islamic rule. And then Americans lamenting this poor "journalist" as though he wasn't an advocate for something completely incompatible with our way of life.
TIRM
1mo ago
I'm on the West coast. The road I'm talking about is hilly and 2 lanes. It is not safe or practical to pass on it. Instead we get a line of cars following a bicyclist. Not that often really. Not a great burden on me. But that road has a proper bike lane. These people chose to obstruct traffic.
Actual leftists are not liberals. I've seen LIBERALS GET THE BULLET TOO plenty on edgy online leftist spaces. By which I mean self-identified socialists and communists.
They historically went even further and denounced social democrats as "social fascists". SocDems, socialists, anarcho-communists and Soviet-backed revolutionaries battling each other by rhetoric or sometimes literally with bullets while actual for-real fascists took over Europe.
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