ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
30 k$ seems pretty low for a crime whose default punishment (for the citizen, not for the alien) under the US Sentencing Guidelines is a prison sentence of 8–14 months plus a fine of 4–40 k$. I have a hard time believing that enforcement is so lax that people will commit such an easily-trackable felony for so little.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5mo ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6mo ago
Doesn't exactly look like "fun thread" material
You are supposed to laugh at (1) the prisoner's writing two pages of "no homo" and (2) the appeals panel's being forced to defend the prisoner's right to send "repeated[] express[ions] of hatred of individuals belonging to the LGBTQ+ community" that it finds "vulgar, reprehensible, and distressing".
pak chooie
I think the typical English onomatopoeia for spitting is "ptooie" or "ptoo". It has a rather childish connotation, though, and I don't think I've ever seen it used for spitting in disgust. In such a situation, a native Anglophone normally would just write "(spits in disgust)".
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
17d ago
What number would you consider more appropriate?
I've been depressed for a few years, so I may be misremembering the comparative enjoyment. But, IIRC, before I became depressed, playing video games was a much more reliable source of enjoyment than masturbating to a jade-like beauty, and fapping was merely an extra bonus that could be quickly extracted at the end of the day without requiring me to invest hours of time into it (but still requiring a significant amount of annoying arm exercise).
Are you familiar with the meme "nut, clean up, close 50 tabs"? And, to put it delicately, how familiar?
Based on personal experience, I assume that the meme is a gross exaggeration and the typical person engages in, not two-hour edging/gooning sessions, but 30-minute fap/schlick sessions.
ToaKraka
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1mo ago
ToaKraka
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1mo ago
The actual fix for US 130 was the construction of I-295. What remains is only residual problems.
By no means has US 130 been fixed. The buildings are so close to the traveled way, and the lanes are so narrow (because, many decades ago, it was converted from two lanes with a shoulder in each direction to three lanes with no shoulder in each direction), that those buildings regularly get hit by errant cars. And there are so many driveways, and the state govt.'s right of way is so narrow (especially after space has been reserved for sidewalk), that even putting up guide rail to prevent these crashes is impossible.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2mo ago
Your formatting is broken. Add two spaces at the end of a line if you want a line break after that line.
(I don't have an informed opinion on the question.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3mo ago
An earlier AP article provides more details.
The National Rally and 27 of its top officials are accused of having used money destined for EU parliamentary aides to pay staff who instead did political work for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. The National Rally was called National Front at the time.
The European Parliament’s suspicions were further heightened when a 2015 organizational chart showed that 16 European lawmakers and 20 parliamentary assistants held official positions within the party — roles unrelated to their supposed duties as EU parliamentary staff.
A subsequent investigation found that some assistants were contractually linked to different MEPs than the ones they were actually working for, suggesting a scheme to divert European funds to pay party employees in France.
Investigating judges concluded that Le Pen, as party leader, orchestrated the allocation of parliamentary assistance budgets and instructed MEPs to hire individuals holding party positions. These individuals were presented as EU parliamentary assistants, but in reality, were allegedly working for the National Rally in various capacities.
The European Parliament’s legal team is seeking 2.7 million euros in compensation for financial and reputational damages. This figure corresponds to the 3.7 million euros allegedly defrauded through the scheme, minus the 1 million euros already paid back.
Le Pen, whose party has softened its anti-EU stance in recent years, denies wrongdoing.
“Parliamentary assistants do not work for the Parliament. They are political assistants to elected officials, political by definition,” she previously said. “You ask me if I can define the tasks I assigned to my assistants; it depends on each person’s skills. Some wrote speeches for me, and some handled logistics and coordination.”
Despite her denial, her party has already paid back 1 million euros to the European Parliament, the Parliament’s lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve said. Of that amount, 330,000 euros were directly linked to Marine Le Pen’s alleged misuse of funds.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3mo ago
They do not automatically see all comments. Click the "report" button and wait (at least several hours) for them to show up.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4mo ago
Source for inflammatory claim (table 2):
Assumptions:
- Mortality: Standard
- Lifetime earnings basis: Individual
- Lifetime earnings measure: Actual
- Discount rate (%/a): 2
Income quintile Social Security tax rate (%) 1 −21.9 2 −1.0 3 +3.6 4 +6.4 5 +6.8
The researchers appear to say that, if you adjust for a zillion variables, the redistributive effect basically disappears:
Assumptions:
- Mortality: Dependent on income
- Lifetime earnings basis: Household
- Lifetime earnings measure: Potential estimated based on income(?)
- Discount rate (%/a): 4
Income quintile Social Security tax rate (%) 1 +4.1 2 +5.2 3 +6.0 4 +6.0 5 +5.5
I don't know how much I believe that claim.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4mo ago
Road work normally is not conducted in such a manner as to block the entire street. Rather, work will be conducted on half of the street, and traffic will be directed through the other half of the street (using alternating flow and flaggers if half of the street is too narrow for two lanes of traffic).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4mo ago
anything that results in a closure of a section of street will cut off a lot of people
It's a loop, with one travel lane and one parking lane (which can be cleared in emergencies) in each direction. I don't see how anyone would ever be cut off.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5mo ago
In the biggest Hilbert-curve subdivision, the distance from the center to the nearest edge is 8000 feet (2400 meters) in a car versus 2000 feet (600 meters) as the crow flies (or on one of the pedestrian paths proposed by another commenter). Is that such a huge price to pay for an ultra-quiet neighborhood?
It probably wouldn't look too different.
Actually, according to this (not-very-trustworthy-looking) website, it would look quite different.
Some notable differences:
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Apple: 12.9 % of capitalization, 6.5 % of profit (6.4-% decrease)
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Nvidia: 11.2 % of capitalization, 4.0 % of profit (7.3-% decrease)
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Microsoft: 10.9 % of capitalization, 6.0 % of profit (4.9-% decrease)
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Amazon: 7.9 % of capitalization, 3.4 % of profit (4.6-% decrease)
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Saudi Aramco: 6.0 % of capitalization, 12.0 % of profit (6.0-% increase)
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Berkshire Hathaway: 3.3 % of capitalization, 7.6 % of profit (4.4-% increase)
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CEMIG: 0.0 % of capitalization, 14.2 % of profit (14.2-% increase)
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Toyota: 0.8 % of capitalization, 2.3 % of profit (1.5-% increase)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9mo ago
I'm not sure what your angle is here.
I just thought people in the football thread might find this football-related court opinion interesting.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9mo ago
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A professional football player who makes 2 M$/a (Christopher Maragos of the Philadelphia Eagles, in 2016 "the highest-paid special-teams player in the NFL") experiences a knee injury (the MRI appears to show complete tear of one ligament, partial tear of another ligament, and tear of a meniscus root). He gets a surgery from an orthopedist (who reconstructs the completely-torn ligament, but considers the partially-torn ligament "stable" and amenable to natural healing, and finds the meniscus root not torn at all) and starts the process of rehabilitation.
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After more than a year of ineffective rehabilitation and continuing pain, the player, frustrated by his knee's lack of recovery, gets a second opinion from a different orthopedist. The second orthopedist informs him that the first orthopedist should have conducted a second surgery (to fix the meniscus root, which in fact was torn and has been getting even worse over time), and the first orthopedist's failure to do so has caused the player's knee to degrade to the status of career-ending injury.
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The player sues the first orthopedist. The jury finds the orthopedist liable and awards 44 M$ of damages. The appeals panel affirms (in year 2024, seven years after the injury and five years after the lawsuit was filed).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9mo ago
The comment was intentionally phrased in an inflammatory manner for laughs (since this is the Friday Fun Thread). Seriously, though, as a reasonably-well-off person living in the US, I personally have little need of garages, closets, and pantries.
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I have no pantry. All my room-temperature food is in the kitchen cabinets.
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I have a closet, but I hardly use it. Rather, I keep all my regularly-used clothes in a large plastic basket or haphazardly around my bedroom. And a wardrobe can serve the purpose of a closet anyway.
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I have no garage. I can see how it might be useful for working on a car, but I personally just go to a mechanic.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9mo ago
Maybe it's a combination of the terms "human wave" and "meat grinder", which both have been used to describe Russia's tactics in the current war.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10mo ago
Standard US tips are 20% of the bill.
A cursory Google search suggests that 15 to 20 percent is the standard range.
Restaurant owners strongly encourage credit card payments
What about the big class-action lawsuit regarding credit-card fees? And the other lawsuit regarding credit-card policies that forbade businesses from "steering" customers away from credit cards and toward cash?
To be fair, this platform does not permit a single comment to include responses to multiple comments (as, e. g., Xenforo and 4chan do), and which workarounds for that limitation are best is not immediately obvious. Maybe you should clarify what your preferred workarounds are—e. g., one long response with a bunch of username alerts at the end, or a combination of one long response and a bunch of short responses consisting of links to the long response.
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