ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
I wonder whether jails in densely-populated places like Chicago (total inmates 5900, largest single facility designed to hold 1500) are worse than prisons in sparsely-populated places like Wyoming (total inmates 2500, largest single facility holding 700).
God, I hate I-frames. They're a stupid, "gamey" mechanic that should be replaced with actually reactive animations. If you dodge a hit, you dodge it by not letting it hit you.
Exanima implements this idea, but I've watched several hours of gameplay and it doesn't look very fun.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
13d ago
*insert leftist talking point here* because Jesus said to be compassionate in the Bible somewhere
No, I'm not a Christian, and I have nothing but contempt for your backward religious beliefs.
So, yeah, this argument wouldn't work on me, but maybe if I use it on you you'll do what I want.
Dark Souls 2 has a reputation for being very unfair because people try to play it with the camera lock on, a mechanic that restricts your movement when activated, and predictably get bodied by the mass of enemies that jump them. If you learn to play with the camera unlocked and dodge without rolling, it’s a whole different experience.
As a person with hundreds of hours in Dark Souls 2 who finished his latest playthrough literally yesterday, I am inclined to disagree with this assessment. I personally find that using the lockon even during multi-enemy "gank" combats is basically necessary, in order to avoid having to manually mess with the camera in the middle of combat.
With that said, there is one non-obvious trick that I have noticed: if you are dealing with two enemies that are close to each other, and you press the attack button and then switch your lockon from one enemy to the other while your character is winding up, you often can trick your character into attacking the space between the two enemies, thereby damaging (and hopefully staggering) both of them simultaneously. And of course running around the arena rather than rolling (and while being careful to avoid triggering the slow animation that happens when you try to turn 180 degrees while holding down the run button) definitely is an important tactic.
Notably, there are no I-frames at all in Silksong. (I believe the same was true in Hollow Knight, but it's been a while.)
Hollow Knight has a move that grants I-frames, the one where you dash forward.
I actually kind of resent the Dark Souls comparison. I've barely played a real Dark Souls game, but I actively disliked Elden Ring (despite its, too, having incredible aesthetics and ridiculously deep lore). So many of the bosses felt exactly the same—oh, here's a screen-filling attack, I've memorized how many frames it takes so I can dodge-roll at the right time. Oh, whoops, it was his fake-out attack instead, now I'm dead. (I guess I should have allocated my stats differently in their ridiculously-badly-explained leveling system so I could take two hits instead of one.) And I hate that other games considered soulslikes (Salt & Sanctuary, Nine Sols) have latched on to this style, too. You know, you can have a good, challenging game without making it ALL about I-frames!
The other thing that Hollow Knight and Silksong do better than almost any other game is rewarding exploration. In most games, finding a secret wall will give you a small optional upgrade, and you do it because you want the 100-% completion mark. In Silksong (even more than in Hollow Knight), finding a well-hidden secret wall might unlock a key quest item, or a hidden encounter, or even an entire new zone.
You may like Dark Souls 2 more than Elden Ring, as IMO it satisfies both the "less mindless mashing of the roll button" and "more rewarding exploration" criteria. (It's my understanding that Dark Souls 2 is a controversial member of the series. But I haven't played any other Soulslike games. Some 4chan users feel that Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring degenerated into mindless "rollslop" in comparison to Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 2.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
14d ago
As a way to test it, I wanted to check something that could be easily verifiable with primary sources, without needing actual Wikipedia or specialized knowledge
I'm no expert but my guess is that most of the articles are similarly schizo crap. And undoubtedly Elon fanboys are going to post screenshots of this shit all over the internet to the detriment of everyone with a brain.
On the other hand, the admin of the Kiwi Farms says: "This article on the Kiwi Farms is perhaps the best and most neutral article I've seen on the Kiwi Farms." So perhaps more effort was expended on controversial topics.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
14d ago
country (or collective of countries)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
15d ago
Somebody recommended Proton and then deleted his comment, so I guess I'll replace him.
Note, however, that Proton does seem to have unnecessarily strict spam blacklists. For example, emails from Questionable Questing and Archive of Our Own never get to my inbox or even my spam folder on Proton, so I've been forced to keep using my old Gmail account for those websites.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
15d ago
Proton even has an LLM assistant, though it's based on open-source models and expensive to use with a pretty small token/week limit.
You forgot to mention that it's advertised as having privacy, unlike its competitors.
How is Lumo different from other AI assistants?
Lumo is built with privacy in mind. Unlike other AI assistants, it does not collect your data to train its models or keep any logs of your conversations. Your data is protected by Proton’s strong privacy principles.
How are my chats stored?
Your chats with Lumo are stored with zero-access encryption, so Proton can't see your chat history. Only you can securely access your conversations by logging in to your Proton Account.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
15d ago
You can't expect everybody to be able to get lastname dot com. Personally, I use firstnamelastname at firstnamelastname dot com, though some may find it excessively long.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
16d ago
The more important question is: Which ones are cooler—lawyers, doctors, programmers, or engineers?
I'm an engineer (civil), but I vote for lawyers. Engineers merely apply the simple guidelines that have been laid out for them by the researchers of AASHTO, ASCE, et cetera. But the guidelines laid out for lawyers in documents like the Restatements (to say nothing of the tens of thousands of judicial opinions) need real brainpower to understand and apply.
its ban on pesticides
To avoid confusion, I will point out that this language appears in a March 2017 draft, but not in the version that was actually passed by the General Assembly (with only Israel and the US opposed) in December 2017, and not in the similar 2021 resolution (also passed with only Israel and the US opposed) that was the first result of an Internet search for "united nations food human right". Also, other resolutions in the same vein have passed with Israel and the US not opposed, most recently in 2024.
And those people are prosecuted for fraud. Here in PA, the OIG has an entire section dedicated to public benefits fraud that prosecuted between 30 and 100 cases per month, most of them felonies, most of them for making these exact kinds of misrepresentations regarding eligibility requirements. The liberal appointees running these agencies don't shy away from this, and they talk in press releases about how fraudsters divert funding from people who actually need it.
This is just an anecdote, but my father happened to work in another state's equivalent department, and he once (three or four years ago, I think) complained to me about how his bosses would regularly fail to prosecute the fraudsters that it was his job to uncover. IIRC, he said that over multiple years he nagged his bosses to prosecute one particular person, and eventually the culprit was diagnosed with cancer and his bosses used that excuse to close down the investigation as bad PR.
But this was in a different state, and he may be biased against the department. But on the third hand it's the same state as @The_Nybbler's.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
17d ago
The pension system determines salary based on average of your highest three years, including overtime.
That's interesting. My state government's pension system doesn't include overtime in pension calculations. And it was increased from the highest three years to the highest five years in 2010.
It really seems like some court at some point needs to question whether marijuana really fits the definition of a Schedule I controlled substance.
Apparently (article, opinion), this happened back in 1994, but the appeals panel found that the DEA's interpretation of the statute was not unreasonable.
Our review of the record convinces us that the Administrator's findings are supported by substantial evidence. The Final Order canvasses the record at length. It recites the testimony of numerous experts that marijuana's medicinal value has never been proven in sound scientific studies. The Administrator reasonably accorded more weight to the opinions of these experts than to the anecdotal testimony of laymen and doctors on which petitioners relied. The Administrator noted that
[w]ith one exception, none of [these doctors] could identify under oath the scientific studies they swore they relied on. Only one had enough knowledge to discuss the scientific technicalities involved. Eventually, each one admitted he was basing his opinion on anecdotal evidence, on stories he heard from patients, and on his impressions about the drug.
These findings are consistent with the view that only rigorous scientific proof can satisfy the CSA's "currently accepted medical use" requirement.
But that was 30 years ago, so perhaps more scientific studies are available nowadays.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
17d ago
2D or 3D? IMO (as a civil engineer), 2D CAD software is pretty easy. (QCAD is very similar to the MicroStation v8 and OpenRoads that I've used at work.) But I don't know much about 3D CAD software. (OpenSCAD is great but perhaps a little clunkier than desirable. I didn't like FreeCAD when I tried it a while ago.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
17d ago
I have posted on my blog
You've got a rather bad typo in that heading.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
17d ago
Funny translation decision from Reuters:
When US President Donald Trump last week conditioned a hefty financial bailout of Argentina on President Javier Milei triumphing in upcoming midterm elections, he handed the country's opposition a new rallying cry.
On social media, #PatriaOColonia—motherland or colony—trended after Trump's comments, which came during a press conference with Milei at the White House.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
18d ago
More specifically, the prosecution is forbidden from introducing the defendant's criminal history if that history is more prejudicial than probative.
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The fact that the defendant has been convicted of robbery twice in the past has no bearing on whether he committed this specific robbery, and will only prejudice the jury against the defendant.
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The fact that (1) in two past robberies of which he was convicted the defendant stubbed out his cigarette on the victim's cheek, and (2) the perpetrator in this case did the same thing, may be highly relevant in determining whether the defendant is the perpetrator in this case.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
18d ago
The people that the defendant had to fear weren’t the police, but rather the jury.
Trust in juries is 58 percent. But the jury doesn't matter if the police destroy or hide exculpatory evidence, or the prosecutor or the judge doesn't let you present exculpatory arguments. (I'm not suggesting that such fears are reasonable.)
According to other surveys, trust in the state courts is 63 percent, but trust in the judiciary as a whole is 35 percent. So I guess the numbers are all over the place.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
18d ago
Should "all firefighters experience this, and usually it does not result in their quitting with PTSD" be a sufficient argument to deny compensation?
According to the state supreme court:
Abandoning the distinction between normal and abnormal working conditions would eliminate the element of causation. It would destroy the fundamental principle underlying the scheme of the Workers' Compensation Act—that, in order to be compensable, an injury must be work-related. Otherwise, a claimant would have to establish only that the employee suffered from a mental illness while employed and that the illness was a condition created or aggravated by that employee's perception of the conditions of his employment. That would reduce workers' compensation benefits to nothing more than a disability or death benefit payable only because of the employee status of the claimant—and not because the injury was caused by his employment.
There is a degree of uncertainty inherent in any employment situation, as in life itself, such that an employee’s individual, subjective reaction to ordinary vicissitudes is not the type of condition which the legislature intended to require compensation for because it is not, in the common understanding, an injury.
Does that mean that, in cases like those radioactive watch face painters, where everyone in a line of work was exposed to a perhaps underappreciated probabilistic risk by convention, those who did get struck by it (the people who got cancer) have no claim to compensation?
This standard is applicable only to psychological injuries, not to physical injuries.
A person has been employed as a firefighter by a municipal government since year 2001, and also was a volunteer firefighter before 2001. First in 2018, and again in 2021, he is called upon to perform CPR on a baby, but the baby dies anyway. As a result of these two events, he develops PTSD, quits, and files for workers' compensation.
The municipal government does not dispute that the two baby deaths led directly to the firefighter's PTSD. However, it does dispute the firefighter's claim that baby deaths constitute "abnormal working conditions" that give rise to a valid workers' compensation claim, rather than being merely part and parcel of working as a firefighter.
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The workers' compensation board finds that the baby deaths in question are not "abnormal working conditions" for a firefighter, so the plaintiff is not entitled to workers' compensation. The trial judge affirms. But the appeals panel reverses.
We agree [with the municipal government's expert (Claimant's boss, a firefighter with 36 years of experience)] that, standing on its own, performing CPR on an individual, witnessing death, or responding to an emergency involving a child might each be an unfortunate but expected working condition for a firefighter. However, we must consider the specific factual scenario faced by Claimant, and we do not do so by looking to "unrelated component parts, where each part, standing on its own, might be safely determined to be a 'normal' working condition". Such a review would render our discussion a "potentiality with no relation to what happened in this case".
The reality of Claimant's situation was that he performed CPR on, and witnessed the deaths of, two infant children within a 16-month period. It was the compounded effect of these two incidents that caused Claimant's disabling PTSD. There can be little doubt that firefighters experience a high amount of stress in their jobs. Nonetheless, we must recognize that certain events, even in high-stress professions, may rise to the level of abnormal working conditions. Claimant did not simply witness death at a usual call involving a fire or a motor-vehicle crash. Claimant was actively involved in attempting to resuscitate two separate unresponsive babies and witnessing each of their deaths. We cannot agree that Claimant's experience in this regard was a "normal" or "expected" consequence of being a firefighter. Indeed, in Claimant's 20 years' experience in firefighting service before the first event, Claimant had never before had to perform CPR on an infant. There is no evidence in the record that suggests firefighters in [this municipality] or even in [this state] routinely or normally perform CPR on infant children or witness the deaths of infant children. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that, of the three instances in which Employer called upon the county's Critical Incident Stress Decreasement Team between 2018 and 2022, two of those calls were in response to these two incidents involving Claimant and the infants. Certainly, this highlights both the rarity of these events and the potential for substantial psychological impact to the participants, which is further magnified by the fact that the same person, Claimant, administered CPR on infants on each occasion.
Series of court opinions:
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On a road with one lane in each direction, a posted speed limit of 55 mi/h (90 km/h), an "extremely wide" shoulder, and heavy motor-vehicle traffic, a bicyclist decides to ride at 15 mi/h (25 km/h) in the middle of the lane. A police officer gives him a ticket for obstructing traffic. At trial, the bicyclist boldly asserts that he had "no legal obligation" to avoid obstructing traffic, and claims that the shoulder was unsafe. The trial judge disagrees, finds him guilty, and imposes a fine of 25 dollars. The appeals panel affirms.
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The state supreme court vacates and remands. The lower courts have been using a standard under which a bicyclist who is obstructing motor traffic always is required to get out of the way. However, when compared with the statute, which requires that bicyclists "use reasonable efforts so as not to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic", this standard is overly rigid. Instead, whether it is reasonable for a bicyclist to temporarily move to the shoulder (rather than, e. g., merely moving to the right edge of the lane) is fact-specific and must be determined on a case-by-case basis. But a bicyclist does have a duty to make a "serious, fair attempt" to avoid obstructing motor-vehicle traffic. (Two of the seven justices dissent. They think that the majority's new standard is too vague to give to bicyclists reasonable notice of what specific activity is lawbreaking, so in practice bicyclists will move to the shoulder in all circumstances, just as under the previous standard, due to fear of prosecution.)
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On remand, the appeals panel affirms again. The police officer's dashcam video clearly shows: (1) the shoulder was perfectly safe; and (2) the bicyclist did not even once look backward at the cars whose passage he was obstructing, from which behavior the panel can infer that the bicyclist had no interest in making the "reasonable efforts" or "serious, fair attempt" to avoid obstruction that the law requires.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
19d ago
Court opinion with possible culture-war implications:
Morales-Torres and Rivera drive to Almodovar's house in Morales-Torres's truck, and do not return. Worried, Morales-Torres's romantic partner drives by Almodovar's house, sees Almodovar with bloodstains on his shirt and Morales-Torres's truck still in the driveway, and calls 911. Several hours later, Morales-Torres's truck is found elsewhere, on fire and with Morales-Torres's and Rivera's bullet-riddled corpses inside it. Almodovar is charged with two murders.
Almodovar claims that he only defended himself from an attempt by Morales-Torres and Rivera to rob him of 20 k$ of drug money, and he had a cousin (who later died while committing a robbery) burn the corpses because he thought no one would believe the self-defense story. But the jury disbelieves the self-defense story and convicts Almodovar on both counts.
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Almodovar appeals, arguing that there was insufficient evidence for the jury to find the "specific intent to kill" that a conviction of murder requires. But the appeals panel affirms.
Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, as we must, we find that the jury rationally concluded Almodovar's account was false. Almodovar's argument relies on the fact that his testimony was mostly unrebutted. Of course, that is largely because Almodovar covered up the crime. That this case involves a claim of self-defense does not detract from the principle that circumstantial evidence is sufficient to meet the Commonwealth's burden, and Almodovar's argument fails to account for the inferences that may be drawn from his testimony that he covered up the crime. It is well-established that efforts to conceal wrongdoing may be considered as circumstantial evidence of guilt. [Citing a 1988 decision of the state supreme court:]
Evidence of [the defendant]'s disposal of the body supplied important proof relative to whether she acted with malice. Human experience teaches that persons who commit justifiable homicides, without malice, do not ordinarily feel compelled to destroy the victim's body. Rather, it is those who harbor a guilty conscience, believing their acts not to have been justified, who are most likely to conceal evidence of their deeds.
Thus, even setting aside the implausibility of Almodovar's testimony of how the shootings unfolded, we conclude that his post-shooting actions are more than sufficient circumstantial evidence establishing that the victims were not the aggressors. Indeed, his concealment and destruction made it impossible to test, for example, the firearm destroyed in the fire. Moreover, the pathologist could not fully test the bodies for evidence like gunshot residue or conduct a complete autopsy. Accordingly, the circumstantial evidence readily supports the jury's finding that Almodovar specifically intended to kill both men.
But is the state supreme court's pronouncement of "the wicked flee when no man pursueth" truly applicable in the modern age? According to a recent poll, in 2023 confidence in the police was only 49 percent among whites and a pitiful 31 percent among nonwhites in the US. Those numbers recovered to 54 percent and 44 percent (respectively) in 2024, but even that is a bit lower than one might expect. Should a defendant's distrust of the police be held against him in court?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
20d ago
Mary Peltola is the one and only Democrat to be against gun control in 2025.
A cursory search for "firearm" on Congress's website indicates a few more who may count.
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Jared Golden of northern Maine joined 188 Republicans in cosponsoring a bill that would force all states to grant concealed-carry reciprocity.
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Henry Cuellar of southern Texas joined 35 Republicans in cosponsoring a bill that would force the District of Columbia to grant concealed-carry reciprocity to congresspeople (but not to other people), and joined 17 Republicans in cosponsoring a bill that would "broaden the authority for certain law enforcement officers to carry concealed firearms across state lines".
Culture-war-related court opinion:
NB (♂) and LB (♀) are in the process of divorcing. LB obtains a restraining order against NB, claiming that NB (1) has been harassing LB both in person and via text, (2) owns a gun, and (3) "has made vague statements that LB believes are suicidal".
In this state, a domestic-violence restraining order requires the officer to seize the defendant's (1) guns and (2) permit to buy guns. After being made aware of the restraining order's existence, NB goes to the police station, where an officer asks him about the gun. However, NB cannot remember where he left the gun! At first he says he left it at his cousin's house (intentionally, to prevent his anger issues from leading to violence during the divorce process). Then he says it's in a storage unit. And finally he remembers that, though he originally left it with his cousin, the cousin later gave it to NB's sister and informed NB of the further transfer. He retrieves the gun from his sister's house and gives it to the police.
The trial judge credits NB's claim that this was just a failure of memory in a stressful situation, rather than an intentional series of lies. However, the trial judge also finds that "when possessing a firearm one must have it guarded, protected, and secured where you can control that possession, and clearly that wasn't the case for a period of time", so NB lacks the "essential character of temperament necessary to be entrusted with a firearm", "it is not in the interest of public health, safety, or welfare" for NB to possess guns, his gun is forfeited to the government, and his permit to purchase guns is permanently revoked. The appeals panel affirms.
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