ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7mo ago
Tired:
Relying on its prior opinion in Central Florida Nuclear Freeze Campaign v. Walsh, 774 F. 2d 1515, 1521 (CA11 1985), cert. denied, 475 U. S. 1120 (1986), the Court of Appeals held:
Wired:
Relying on its prior opinion in Central Florida Nuclear Freeze Campaign v. Walsh (F. ser. 2 vol. 774 op. 1515 (CA11, 1985, cert. denied (US vol. 475 order 1120 (1986)))) p. 1521, the Court of Appeals held:
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
8mo ago
You seem to be saying that, if a participle is active, then it must be treated exclusively as a verb, with no trace of adjective nature. I reject that assertion.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
There are many very small cars to choose from, without any of the extra hassle and just as fuel-efficient as the end result of that hack-job.
Maybe in Europe, but not really in the US, I think.
And if all you want is to drive around yourself, no passengers and no cargo, then you may as well get a motorcycle or one of those scooter-sized cars that barely have an enclosed cabin.
Those aren't very convenient in winter.
According to American Nightmare (Randal O'Toole): Six-year house loans (with down payment of 0.5 percent, no fixed payment schedule, and the possibility of refinancing at the end of the term) were popularized around year 1889, and 12-year mortgages from building-and-loan associations (with down payment of 25 percent) also were popular. Sears's famous mail-order house kits could be obtained with 15-year mortgages (with down payment of 25 percent) around 1911 (zero down payment from 1917 to 1921). Longer-term mortgages weren't mainstream until 1948, when the federal government authorized the Federal Housing Administration (created in 1934) to offer 30-year mortgages (with down payment of 5 percent, or zero for veterans).
A US appeals court has ruled that, if a copyrighted standards document (ASTM, ASHRAE, NFPA, APA, etc.) is incorporated by reference into a law, then it is legal to post a DRM-free copy of that document online.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
Kiwi Farms thread (requires Tor, Brave, etc.)
On Friday, the USA's National Association of Realtors agreed to settle a big lawsuit (in which it lost a jury trial late last year). Starting in mid-July, sellers' agents will be permitted to list houses on NAR-controlled multiple-listing services (the databases from which Zillow and Redfin copy their information) without being forced to make a blanket offer to split their commissions with buyers' agents. This will make it much easier for buyers to hire their agents separately (rather than the current practice of having the buyer's agent hired by the seller), leading to lower buyer's-agent commissions. Alternatively, it will be much easier for buyers to imitate the standard practice in Britain and Australia, and hire real-estate attorneys for a flat fee rather than real-estate agents for a percentage commission. See these articles (1 2 3 4) for descriptions of how house buying works in Britain and Australia.
Bonus: Starting on page 106 of this PDF is the testimony of the plaintiffs' star witness, economist Craig Schulman. The meat is on pages 196–211. (Unfortunately, it seems that RECAP isn't set up to process trial transcripts.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3mo ago
Normally, whenever you download a document from the federal government's official PACER website, you must pay ten cents per page downloaded, capped at thirty pages (three dollars). If you have installed the RECAP extension in your browser, then the extension automatically uploads to the third-party website RECAP whatever you download from PACER. (You can create an account on PACER and download stuff from it even if you aren't a lawyer.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6mo ago
Dashcams have been normalized—why not bodycams? As long as the government can't seize the footage without a warrant, I see no downside.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6mo ago
In the immortal words of Peter Griffin: Oh, my God, who the hell cares?
Why don't you just hit the mute button and let the ads play while you browse in another browser tab? Did your parents fail to teach to you the overwhelming importance of the TV remote's mute button when you watched traditional television with them, two or three decades ago? I don't understand why people complain so much about watching a few short seconds of advertisements in exchange for dozens of minutes of FREE video.
It's my understanding that, if you don't skip until the 30-second mark, then the ad counts as having been "watched", so the uploader still gets paid. There's at least one Chrome extension that you can set up to automatically skip ads after the 30-second mark. I don't know whether Safari has anything similar.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
8mo ago
We're talking about "exhorting", not "exhorted".
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10d ago
Activities that are both fun and cheap:
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Playing video games
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Reading
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Converting texts from print or PDF to HTML
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Watching video games on YouTube
t. zero friends and zero romantic partners
ToaKraka
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18d ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
No fuel-economy measurement is given on the for-sale page. But it seems obvious that reducing the car's weight in this manner will improve its fuel economy by reducing its rolling resistance. (I admit that the worsened aerodynamics may cut into that improvement somewhat.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
There has been some discussion (1 2) of how the lawsuit recently lost/settled by the US's National Association of Realtors may affect real-estate transactions in that country. But what about the rest of the world? It would be nice if some of the goshdarned furriner varmints that frequent this forum could relate their own experiences with buyer's-agent-free real-estate transactions, so that we uncultured USAians know what to expect in the coming years. For example, are these articles from Britain (1 2) and Australia (1 2) accurate?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5mo ago
If you download the full spreadsheet and reduce the weight of incarceration rate to zero in the calculations, Texas still ends up at a pitiful #46 on personal freedom.
Gambling: #39
Marriage: #44
Education: #35
Marijuana: #50
Asset forfeiture: #42
Travel: #50
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
8mo ago
realtor
The word "realtor" is a trademark of a specific organization. In order to avoid encouraging that organization's market dominance, one should instead say "real-estate agent".
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
Fun with HTML and CSS: Magic symbols and half-size artless cards
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
even Mitsubishi discontinued the Mirage
It's only a rumor that Mitsubishi plans to discontinue the Mirage in the US by 2025. Mitsubishi has not actually confirmed the news reports.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3mo ago
This website doesn't keep track of each user's total Internet points, though.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3mo ago
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A telecom company wants to build a 150-foot cellular tower in a municipality of 6,500 people. Three of its permit applications to build a cell tower on govt. land have already been rejected, so now it's trying to build on privately-owned land—in a commercial zone, but adjacent to a residential zone.
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February 2018: The municipal govt. rejects the application because of the negative impact on the value of nearby residential properties.
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August 2019: A judge vacates and remands because the govt. did not properly assess the factors underlying its decision.
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November 2019: The govt.'s expert says that the cell tower would cause the value of nearby residential property to fall by 10 to 20 percent. The govt. accepts this testimony, and on that basis rejects the application.
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February 2021: The judge vacates and remands because the govt.'s expert did not base his estimate of 10 to 20 percent on any actual data.
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Unspecified date: The telecom company's expert testifies that, though it's anecdotally true that higher-end house buyers are "more discerning" and less likely to buy houses near cell towers, the data show that any drop in house prices near the cell tower would be less than one percent. The govt. rejects the expert's evidence-based testimony because the dataset is not representative of the site in question, but accepts his non-evidence-based anecdote about higher-end buyers, and on that basis denies the application.
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June 2022: The judge reverses the govt.'s decision and approves the application outright, with no remand. The govt.'s treatment of the testimony of the plaintiff's expert was arbitrary and capricious.
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February 2024: The appeals panel affirms the trial judge's decision in all respects.
Six years later, maybe the cellular tower can finally be built!
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