ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
21d ago
Apparently, the UKGBNI is set to completely decriminalize abortion in England and Wales when performed by the woman (not when performed by a doctor). According to Reuters and BBC, under existing law abortion by a doctor is legal up to 24 weeks and a woman can perform an abortion on herself with prescribed pills up to 10 weeks. In contrast, the new law—approved by 73 percent of the House of Commons—appears to permit abortion right up to the point of birth when it is performed by the woman.
Text of the law (on pages 108–109 of the PDF; part of a much larger bill):
Tonia Antoniazzi, NC1
To move the following Clause—
Removal of women from the criminal law related to abortion
For the purposes of the law related to abortion, including sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy.
Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would disapply existing criminal law related to abortion from women acting in relation to her own pregnancy at any gestation, removing the threat of investigation, arrest, prosecution, or imprisonment. It would not change any law regarding the provision of abortion services within a healthcare setting, including but not limited to the time limit, telemedicine, the grounds for abortion, or the requirement for two doctors’ approval.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6mo ago
(I guess this comment may be somewhat low-effort and/or more suited to the Wednesday Wellness thread, but in light of recent discussion I feel that it may still be appropriate for this thread.)
Are racial sexual preferences natural and mentally healthy, or racist, unnatural, and mentally unhealthy? Is a white man who finds himself afflicted with "jungle fever", an Indian woman who feels a desire to become "bleached", or a black man who has succumbed to "yellow fever" suffering from a delusion that has been inflicted upon him by stereotypes in the media (both pornographic and non-porn)?* Or are these preferences inherent and natural? Is a person obligated to find sexually attractive all people who share the same general category of sex/gender, weight, and figure? Or is attraction permitted to hinge on such minor attributes as skin/nipple color, hair texture, and lip size?
*For example, perhaps the aforementioned black man suffering from "yellow fever" actually just finds skinny, demure-seeming women attractive, but has been brainwashed into thinking that the women who fit that role are overwhelmingly East Asian, and there's no use looking for them elsewhere. Maybe the Indian woman thinks that only white men are capable of building attractive levels of muscle, with few exceptions. Et cetera.
YIMBY sentiment on this forum has (I think) been mostly focused on increasing the density of existing residential zones. However, it may be worth noting that there is an alternative: converting existing agricultural or unused land to low-density residential use (i. e., continuing to "sprawl"). In this article, a former employee of the libertarian Cato Institute accuses that organization of focusing exclusively on high-density housing, and of smearing as racist people who are not interested in long-term high-density living and clamor for more single-family houses. (In his view, upzoning imposed from the top down is not libertarian, because the existing owners have a sort of property right in the zoning of their neighborhood as a substitute for deed restrictions that could or should have been used instead of zoning codes.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1yr ago
Not an effortpost, just a casual summary of a court case in which people may be interested:
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Audrey Stone was a Southwest flight attendant, and also the president of the flight attendants' union. In her capacity as union president, she attended an pro-abortion protest and at that rally implicitly represented all the flight attendants at Southwest. Specifically, she carried signs with the Southwest logo on them, and the expenses of union members who attended the protest were paid for using union funds.
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Charlene Carter was another Southwest flight attendant, who had left the union several years prior and was in active opposition to the union (including leading a recall campaign against Stone). She was opposed to abortion, and therefore was angered by Stone's implicit representation that all of Southwest's flight attendants were in favor of abortion. On Facebook, she sent to Stone various anti-abortion messages, including graphic videos of aborted fetuses.
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Stone complained to Southwest, which fired Carter for "representing our company in a manner that is disparaging to Southwest Flight Attendants". An arbitrator confirmed that the firing was supported by "just cause" under the applicable collective-bargaining agreement.
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Carter (1) sued the union for failing to properly represent her in the complaint process, (2) sued both the union and Southwest for retaliating against her due to her protected speech (both union-related and religion-related), and (3) sued both the union and Southwest for discriminating against her due to her religious beliefs. A jury agreed that all of these charges were valid, and awarded to her millions of dollars in damages. Due to federal law, the judge capped the damages at 600 k$ in compensatory and punitive damages, 150 k$ in backpay, and 60 k$ in pre-judgment interest.
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On the basis of the jury verdict, Carter also asked for an injunction (1) reinstating her to her former position, (2) forbidding Southwest from violating its flight attendants' rights to religious speech and union-related speech in the future, and (3) requiring Southwest to inform all its flight attendants of item 2, including an explicit mention of Title VII (which protects religious speech). The judge granted the request. Southwest apparently asked for some parts of the ruling to be stayed pending appeal, but it did not ask for part 3 to be stayed.
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Southwest then openly defied part 3 of the judge's ruling, and instead sent to all its flight attendants a message (1) stating that Southwest would continue to enforce its policies and (2) failing to mention Title VII. Accordingly, Carter moved that Southwest be held in contempt of court.
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The judge investigated, and found that the memo circulated to the flight attendants was drafted by one of Southwest's in-house lawyers (Kevin Minchey), who obviously should know better than to willfully defy the judge in this manner.
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Therefore the judge: (1) told Southwest to distribute a specific message verbatim, without edits, in order to comply with part 3 of the ruling; and (2), as sanction for this willful disobedience of the court's order, required three of Southwest's in-house lawyers (including Minchey), as representatives of Southwest itself, to undergo at least eight hours of religious-liberty training conducted by a representative of the Alliance Defending Freedom, since the lawyers obviously don't understand religious-liberty law properly.
Relevant court documents:
The Washington Post complains that "Southwest had a constitutional right to issue a memo expressing its disagreement with the jury verdict". The judge's response to this argument is: Speech can be compelled by the government as long as it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. Making sure that Southwest's flight attendants are aware of their rights under Title VII is a compelling government interest, and the message that the judge is forcing Southwest to send is as narrowly tailored to that interest as possible. Also, the message ordered by the judge is significantly less objectionable than the longer notice (including an apology) that Carter originally asked the judge to force Southwest to send.
The Washington Post complains that "subjecting lawyers to training by an ideological advocacy group such as ADF", rather than "by accredited law schools", is "ludicrous". But the judge points out that ADF has won multiple Supreme Court cases on the topic of religious liberty in recent years, so it obviously is well-qualified to conduct a training session on that topic.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
My opinion that unions are evil is largely based on the negative externalities they impose on society, the distortionary effects and inefficiencies they wreak on the economy, and their strong and not-at-all-coincidental historical affiliation with organised crime.
But how much of that is intrinsic to unions, and how much is a result of a specific implementation of unions, under which they are immune to antitrust laws while companies are not (1 2)?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
21d ago
The transcript of the debate appears to support your uncharitable description. Antoniazzi:
Although abortion is available in England and Wales under conditions set by the Abortion Act 1967, the law underpinning it, which dates back to 1861—the Offences Against the Person Act—means that outside those conditions, abortion remains a criminal offence carrying a maximum life sentence. Originally passed by an all-male Parliament elected by men alone, this Victorian law is increasingly used against vulnerable women and girls. Since 2020, more than 100 women have been criminally investigated, six have faced court, and one has been sent to prison. The women affected are often acutely vulnerable. Victims of domestic abuse and violence, human trafficking and sexual exploitation; girls under the age of 18; and women who have suffered miscarriage or stillbirth, or have given birth prematurely, have faced invasive and prolonged criminal investigations that cause long-term harm.
The fact is that new clause 1 would take women out of the criminal justice system, and that is what has to happen and has to change now. There is no way that these women should be facing what they are facing.
I implore colleagues not to lose sight of the moral imperative here: namely, vulnerable women being dragged from hospital bed to police cell on suspicion of ending their own pregnancies. This is urgent. We know that multiple women are still in the system awaiting a decision, accused of breaking this law. They cannot afford to wait.
We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put an end to this in a simple and secure manner. This is the right change at the right time, so I implore colleagues who want to protect women and abortion services to vote for new clause 1. Let us ensure that not a single desperate woman is ever again subject to traumatic criminal investigation at the worst moments of their lives.
I don't think he sees "car dependency" as a problem.
Every city in America is a 15-minute city if you take automobiles into account. Thanks to automobiles, the typical U.S. urban resident lives within 15 minutes of more than 100,000 jobs, several different supermarkets that compete hard for their business, one or two shopping malls, parks and other recreation facilities, a variety of health care facilities, friends and relatives, and many other potential destinations and activities. Even the densest cities in the world can’t provide that kind of variety and opportunity within 15 minutes on foot.
According to the 2000 census, Los Angeles is the densest urban area in the United States, and 89.5 percent of Los Angeles commuters usually drive to work. Just to the south, San Diego is only half as dense as L.A., and 90.9 percent of its commuters drive to work. Atlanta is only half as dense as San Diego, and 93.5 percent of its commuters drive to work. And Lompoc California is about half as dense as Atlanta, and 94.4 percent of its commuters drive to work. So doubling density might get a little more than 1 percent of commuters out of their cars. That’s not much.
Low densities, large parking lots, and other indicators of sprawl are effects of automotive technology. They don’t make people auto dependent; they enable people to be auto liberated. Density and various design features planners want to impose will have, at best, marginal effects on the amount of driving people do.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3mo ago
I think his account is perfectly reasonable. I personally was not aware of the huge strength differences between men and women until around age 25, when I stumbled across this transcript of a Senate hearing on the topic of adding women to combat units in the US armed forces. I watched exactly zero sports on television.
Did his school never do the Presidential fitness tests?
I don't think my high school did.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10mo ago
Culture war in building codes?
In most of the United States, the building codes are based on codes issued by the ICC (International Code Council), including the IECC (International Energy Conservation Code). Apparently, the committee in charge of updating the IECC for 2024 attempted to insert a bunch of mandatory provisions that were not directly related to energy conservation. The NAHB (National Association of Homebuilders) summarizes the objectionable provisions as follows:
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Electric-vehicle charging infrastructure in both residential and commercial buildings
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Solar-readiness provisions in residential buildings
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Electric-readiness provisions for electric cooking, clothes drying, and water heating
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Penalty for using natural gas for space or water heating in commercial buildings
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Electrical energy storage system readiness in commercial buildings
These insertions were appealed to the ICC's board of directors, which (by votes of at least 10 to 7) ordered that they be moved to nonmandatory appendices of the code.
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Small weapon and small shield
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Small weapon
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Two small weapons
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Big weapon
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Small shield*
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Two small shields*
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Big shield*
Which do you find the coolest to look at? Which do you find the most fun to use in games?
IMO, "small weapon and small shield" is coolest, but "big weapon" has ended up being the most fun to use in the action-focused video games that I've played (e. g., Dark Souls 2, Nioh 1, and Gundam Breaker 4).
*Among video games, those in the Dark Souls series are the only ones of which I am aware in which these setups are semi-viable (not counting Captain America–style shield throwing). Among tabletop RPGs, GURPS provides a fair amount of detail for shield users (1 2 (a b)).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1yr ago
Article from the Volokh Conspiracy (culture-war-adjacent, but IMO extremely funny):
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Under the "major questions doctrine", if Congress delegates power to an administrative agency, but fails to explicitly describe the limits of that power, then it is to be presumed that the delegated power has implicit limits. If Congress wants to delegate a lot of power (such as the ability to forgive 400 billion dollars of student loans), then it must explicitly say so.
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In a recent Supreme Court opinion, Justice Barrett used the following analogy to illustrate the doctrine: If a parent hands his credit card to the babysitter of his children and tells the babysitter to "make sure the kids have fun", then he implicitly is expecting the babysitter to do something minor like taking the children to a local ice-cream parlor or movie theater, and it would be a grave breach of the spirit of the instruction for the babysitter to do something major like taking his children to an out-of-town amusement park instead, even though technically that would not be a breach of the letter of the instruction.
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The author of this article (a law professor) agrees completely with Barrett's analogy, and so does his father. However, according to a survey that some researchers conducted on this topic, only 8 percent of Americans agree with the analogy! The respondents rated a multi-day amusement-park trip at 92 percent for adherence to instructions and 4.7 out of 7 for reasonableness. In comparison, they rated the "correct" option of buying pizza and ice cream and renting a movie for home viewing at 100 percent for adherence to instructions and 6.8 out of 7 for reasonableness. This result may cast doubt on the linguistic justification that has been put forth for the major-questions doctrine.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11d ago
Is Texas just requiring the same sort of "age verification" that's existed since the '90s (the website asks "are you 18?" and you click "yes")?
No. This new law effectively requires adults to upload their driver's licenses for age verification.
HB 1181 requires a covered entity to “use reasonable age verification methods to verify that an individual attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older”. To verify age, a covered entity must require visitors to “comply with a commercial age verification system” that uses “government-issued identification” or “a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data”. The entity may perform verification itself or through a third-party service.
(I don't know what "a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data" would be.)
For purposes of "traffic calming", urban planners (1 2) often make the roads in residential neighborhoods curved rather than straight. What if a developer were to simply use a space-filling curve to lay out his residential subdivision on a single ridiculously curved road?
Example subdivisions appropriate for the International Zoning Code's R1d single-family-residential zone: 1 (Hilbert curve), 2 (curve name unknown), 3 (Peano curve)
See also: Small intestine
@Southkraut: "Outmanoeuver"? A daring synthesis, as the cool kids say.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9mo ago
Volokh: Security Clearance Denied for Watching Furry Porn Depicting Animated 16-Year-Olds
Bierly confessed that some of the furries in the videos he watched were depicted as minors as young as age 16. The SOR advised that Bierly's history of "engaging in criminal sexual behavior by viewing and masturbating to pornographic images of minors" and intent to continue doing so constituted a "security concern". For his part, Bierly objects to characterizing the videos as child pornography because they featured animated characters rather than actual 16-year-old people.Bierly's constitutional claims are as follows:
Count I claims that viewing animated furry pornography is protected speech under the First Amendment, and that DCSA's suspension of his security clearance therefore infringes this right.
Count II argues that DCSA's suspension of his security clearance abridges Bierly's First Amendment freedom to associate with others who share his political, religious and cultural beliefs.
Count III contends that SEAD 4, which allows the DCSA to withhold clearance based on sexual behavior that "demonstrates a lack of judgment or discretion or may subject the individual to undue influence of coercion, exploitation, or duress", is unconstitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment.
Count IV challenges the same language in SEAD 4 as unconstitutionally vague.
Count V is a substantive due process claim, arguing that the viewing of legal pornographic material is a protected liberty interest that the DCSA has wrongfully abridged.
Count VI is a Fifth Amendment Equal Protection argument, alleging that the defendants have unequally and arbitrarily applied SEAD 4 against Bierly, and that this uneven application fails strict scrutiny.
The court avoided the substantive constitutional questions, in part because federal precedent provides that "the grant of security clearance to a particular employee is committed by law to the appropriate agency of the Executive branch" and therefore "employment actions based on denial of security clearance are not subject to judicial review", especially when it comes to requests for injunctions seeking the grant of a clearance (to oversimplify in some measure).
The court also rejected Bierly's separate statutory claims under the Administrative Procedure Act, Freedom of Information Act, and Privacy Act. Note that Bierly's Complaint states that, "Mr. Bierly admitted to watching 16 year old Furry pornography when he was 15 years old, and the polygrapher used that age for all subsequent Furry pornography that Mr. Bierly admitted to watching," though that wouldn't affect, I think, the court's analysis.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1yr ago
What are some obscure job tasks that might make for fun video games? We all are aware of the zillions of programming, train-routing, and bridge-design games. But what about parking-lot design? Guide-rail design? Curb-ramp design? House design (as a game with targets to be met, rather than as a goal-free sandbox like The Sims)?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7mo ago
7 DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION, OUR BILL OF RIGHTS, AND OUR FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS, INCLUDING FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREEDOM OF RELIGION, AND THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS
95% chance, high confidence. I don't see freedoms/rights getting worse under Trump, personally.
Reason: "Neither Harris nor Trump Is a Friend of Free Speech"
If Trump had his way, flag burners would be jailed, purveyors of "fake news" would lose their broadcast licenses, and news outlets would have to pay him damages when their coverage strikes him as unfair.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1yr ago
(1) Buy an ordinary fuel-efficient hatchback
(2) Have a body shop cut out the back half of the passenger compartment and weld the rest of the car back together
(3) Get a super-fuel-efficient two-seat car
Real-life example (pre-modification fuel-economy comparison)
Would you do it?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6mo ago
A few months ago I mentioned at work that I drink a lot of grape juice with seltzer (carbonated) water as a kind of ersatz grape soda, and my coworkers gave me weird looks. Is this a strange use for seltzer water? My mother got me into the habit many years ago.
Now that I think of it, I have no idea what any other uses of seltzer water could be in the first place. It obviously doesn't taste particularly good if drunk straight. Wikipedia and Google seem to suggest that its primary use is for mixing alcoholic drinks (as seen in at least one Three Stooges film), with some alternative applications to cooking and cleaning, but that all seems too niche for Costco to be selling gigantic cases of it. What do you use seltzer water for?
It appears that this forum is filled with city slickers in fancy German cars. What cars have you driven on a regular basis? If they were expensive, have you found them to be worth the extra money?
I have driven the following cars on a regular basis.
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2023: 2023 Mitsubishi Mirage (purchased new for 18 k$)
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2019: 2015 Honda Fit (purchased from my mother for 14 k$)
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2017: 2007 Pontiac G6 (borrowed from my father for free)
I have been driven around by my parents in the following cars.
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The aforementioned Fit (mother's) and G6 (father's)
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2013 Honda Civic (mother's)
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2001–2010 Volvo S60 (father's)
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2000–2005 Dodge Neon (mother's)
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1993–1997 Mazda MX-6 (father's; manual)
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1993 Toyota Tercel (mother's)
I have never found fault with these cheap (not including the S60, I guess) cars (other than the Civic's poor rear visibility; I prefer hatchbacks to sedans) or seen any reason to get anything more expensive.
(Note that I purchased the Mirage, not to replace the Fit with it, but so that (1) I could sell the Fit back to my mother, and then (2) she could expunge from our household the Civic that I disliked. Another motive for getting the Mirage was FOMO on a car that was soon to be discontinued in the US market despite obviously being the best car there.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9mo ago
Would you want to live in this cute, perfectly-code-compliant neighborhood?
(Yes, I was too lazy to add radii to the driveway corners. Sue me.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
19d ago
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In January 2021, a person jaywalks across a road. He is returning to his car from a bakery, carrying "a box of custard cups", so his vision is obscured. He trips over a large pothole (4 ft × 1 ft × 2 in or 1.2 m × 0.3 m × 5 cm) and breaks a hip. Accordingly, he sues the municipal govt.
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The trial judge dismisses the lawsuit. In a different case, a person sued over a sidewalk that for 18 years had been obviously dangerous and near which the municipal govt. had repeatedly done repair work, and that was sufficient to prove that the municipal govt. had notice of the dangerous condition. However, in this case, the pothole was quite small at first and grew larger only gradually, and it existed for only six years. (Indeed, it was genuinely recognizable as a pothole only for two years, according to Google Street View's photographs.) This is not sufficient evidence for a jury to find that the municipal govt. knew or should have known of the dangerous condition, since nobody reported it until after the accident.
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The appeals panel reverses and remands for trial. Between 2018 and 2019, the municipal govt. made several repairs immediately adjacent to the pothole. And, between 2018 and 2020, the municipal govt. was seeking to get a grant from the state govt. for resurfacing this road, and was actively inspecting the area for problems to be included in that resurfacing project. All this is sufficient for a jury to find that the municipal govt. knew or should have known about the pothole, even though nobody reported it until after the accident.
(The pothole was temporarily patched in March 2021, and was permanently fixed by the resurfacing project in July 2021.)
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March 2019: A mother notices something strange about her two daughters, 12-year-old "Kelly" and 13-year-old "Taylor". She brings them to the hospital, and is surprised to learn that they are both pregnant. Taylor gives birth a few days later. In police interviews, the daughters do not provide any leads, and deny that the mother's romantic partner is the culprit.
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June 2019: Kelly gives birth. The police obtain a DNA sample from the romantic partner.
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September 2019: The DNA test shows that the romantic partner is the father of both babies. The father is arrested and is charged with fifteen felonies, and then is released on his own recognizance (zero bail; this isn't mentioned in the opinion, but is indicated on the docket).
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March 2021: Taylor gives birth again. Presumably the father made the most of being out on bail.
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August 2022: The father pleads guilty to three felonies—impregnating Taylor at age 12, impregnating Kelly at age 11, and impregnating Taylor again at age 13. He is sentenced to 25 years in prison (without the possibility of parole).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
26d ago
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Some 14-year-old urban youths are hanging out on a Philadelphia sidewalk. As a 73-year-old man walks by, a boy and a girl decide to hit him in the head with a traffic cone. He is hit once by the boy and twice by the girl, and dies of the resulting brain injuries. The entire incident is captured on surveillance video. The boy and the girl are charged with murder and conspiracy to murder.
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The trial judge dismisses the charges against the boy. There is no evidence of conspiracy between him and the girl. Rather, after he delivered his blow and dropped the cone, she independently chose to pick up the traffic cone and deliver her own, totally separate blows. And the boy merely hit the old man once and then walked away, so there is no evidence of the "malice"—either intent to kill or reckless disregard for a high risk of killing—that murder requires (as opposed to the negligence that can support a charge of manslaughter).
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The appeals panel reverses and remands for trial. The surveillance video clearly shows that (1) the boy dealt his blow immediately after the girl handed the traffic cone directly to the boy, and (2) while the girl was delivering her blows the boy only walked away for a few seconds, and soon returned with a smile on his face. That is evidence of conspiracy. And hitting an old man in the head with a heavy traffic cone even once is evidence of reckless disregard for a high risk of killing.
A culture-war-adjacent court opinion that @The_Nybbler may find entertaining:
An 80-year-old man applies for a permit to buy a rifle. The permit is denied, solely because he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital for four days forty years ago. He applies for expungement of the records of that commitment, so that he can get the permit.
The judge denies the application for expungement.
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