ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
Item 1 of 5
In 2023, California enacted a law allowing (city and county governments to allow) ADUs (accessory dwelling units) to be converted into condominiums that can be bought and sold separate from the lot's principal dwelling. According to the legislators:
The statewide median home price is nearly 800,000 dollars. At that price, only 17 percent of households can afford to purchase the median-priced single-family home. This figure is less than half of the national average, and less than half of the rate at the start of the pandemic.…
…The average size of a single-family home in California is 1860 square feet. By comparison, the average size of an ADU in California is less than one-third of that, at 615 square feet. Presuming a commensurate reduction in price, the purchase of an ADU would be affordable to lower-income households.
According to a news report, the municipality of San Jose now has become the site of the first actual sale of an ADU condominium under this law—750 ft2 of house according to the Zillow page and 2000 ft2 of land (plus a long driveway easement) according to the tax map, for 530 k$. (The property as a whole (principal dwelling plus ADU) is assessed by the county govt. at 715.4 k$ (494.6 for the land and 220.8 for the improvements).)
Item 2 of 5
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A paraplegic is a “tester” of accessibility under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act): he visits, and then sues, businesses that fail to measure up to the ADA's requirements (the ADAAG, ADA Accessibility Guidelines). His latest target (he testifies that it's his 83rd) is a strip mall. He alleges: (1) Of the property's two accessible parking spaces, one is immediately adjacent to a driveway, with no access aisle for safety; (2) of the property's several curb ramps, one is too steep; (3) the sidewalk in front of the businesses is not sufficiently flat, making it difficult for a wheelchair user to open a business's door without rolling backward into the parking lot; and (4) a different curb ramp often is blocked by parked cars.
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The paraplegic demands that several changes be made. The trial judge rejects most of them (removal of bollards in the sidewalk, addition of two more accessible parking spaces, reduction of parking-lot slope, etc.): they are not “readily achievable” within the meaning of the ADA, as they would drive out tenants (by exacerbating the property's existing parking shortage), jeopardize the property's grandfathered status under the municipal code (it has only 88 parking spaces rather than the required 104), expose the company to liability (businesses have been sued for not having bollards), etc. The company implements one demanded change voluntarily before the case is even over, moving the accessible parking space without an access aisle to a safer location (right next to the other accessible parking space, so that they share an access aisle). The judge finds that the company must accede to one more demand: changing the too-steep curb ramp from perpendicular (protruding from the sidewalk into the access aisle) to parallel (taking a 3-foot-deep chunk out of the 8.5-foot-deep sidewalk in front of the businesses).
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The company moves for a new trial, complaining that a parallel curb ramp (1) would be too expensive and too difficult to get permits for and (2) itself would violate the ADA, but the trial judge rejects these arguments. (1) The company has presented insufficient evidence of the expense of the modification or the difficulty of getting permits. (2) The company's expert misread the ADAAG! He looked at the bathroom guidelines, under which door swings cannot encroach into required clear areas. But the sidewalk guidelines have no such provision, so the parallel curb ramp is fine. (The judge's opinion includes helpful diagrams.)
Item 3 of 5
Australian airline Qantas has announced plans for non-stop Sydney–London and Sydney–New York flights, using an Airbus A350 variant specially designed for long range. If these flights enter operation (expected for London in October 2027 and for New York at a later date not yet announced), they will surpass Singapore Airlines' Singapore–New York and Singapore–Newark flights (which use an older variant of the same Airbus plane) as the longest commercial flights in the world.
According to Google Flights, the current non-stop Singapore–New York flight reduces travel duration from 24–21 hours (with a stop in Manila, Hong Kong, San Francisco, etc.) to 19 hours, but boosts price from 1000 dollars to 1500 dollars. These Qantas flights presumably will involve a similar money-for-time trade-off.
Official marketing materials on the topic from Qantas are available on this page. See also the Wikipedia page on the longest non-stop commercial flights.
Item 4 of 5
[Court opinion censored due to mention of child sexual abuse; external link]
Item 5 of 5
New J⁎rsey is the only state in the US that forbids motorists from pumping their own gasoline. Legislative attempts to eliminate this ban regularly die in committee.
Surveys consistently show that New J⁎rseyans actually like this state of affairs. According to the latest one, a whopping 64 percent of NJ residents want to keep gasoline pumps full-service-only. This support holds across all population segments surveyed.
| Segment | Support (%) |
|---|---|
| Affiliation: Democratic | 71 |
| Affiliation: Republican | 62 |
| Affiliation: Independent | 58 |
| Age: 18–30 | 68 |
| Age: 31–44 | 66 |
| Age: 45–64 | 64 |
| Age: 65–∞ | 61 |
| Gender: Woman | 74 |
| Gender: Man | 56 |
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
I wouldn't even have minded a trophy-wife situation where I at least got decent sex out of the deal
500 k$ ÷ (15 a × 365 d/a) = 91 $/d
That's comparable to the cost of legal prostitution in Australia. But, unfortunately, prostitution remains illegal in the Land of the Free™.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5d ago
It's hard to get much out of one snapshot like this compared to, say, comparing this against the stats from 2013–2014 and shifting the age groups by 1.
For consumer units of one person in 2013–2014:
| Age (a) | (Food away from home + entertainment) ÷ income before taxes (%) | Food away from home ÷ food (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 0–∞ | 9.5 | 42 |
| 0–24 | 16.2 | 57 |
| 25–34 | 9.7 | 51 |
| 35–44 | 8.2 | 50 |
| 45–54 | 7.8 | 42 |
| 55–64 | 8.6 | 35 |
| 65–74 | 11.8 | 39 |
| 75–∞ | 9.1 | 32 |
0–24 is one I'd like to see broken up further, since that includes every child but also people up to 6 years into adulthood.
These statistics look at consumer units, which are basically the same as households. The definition of "consumer unit" doesn't have an explicit minimum age, which is why I didn't put one here—but you probably can assume that a consumer unit is unlikely to be led by a person younger than 18.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
I feel obligated to point out that a person can share a house with someone who is not his romantic partner.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
ToaKraka
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5d ago
ToaKraka
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5d ago
You have to add two spaces at the end of a line in order to create a line break.
ToaKraka
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6d ago
I think you meant to post this comment in response to Skulldrinker's comment, rather than in response to my comment.
ToaKraka
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6d ago
a minor birth defect (the article doesn't specify what)
It says "a minor heart defect" farther down in the article.
palette
palate
ToaKraka
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7d ago
the problem has been a fundamental obstacle to my emotional well-being for 5+ years
Just give up. I'm sure you can think of things to do with your time that are more enjoyable than romance.
ToaKraka
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8d ago
ToaKraka
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9d ago
ToaKraka
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9d ago
Movie studios will make deals with short-form video apps for the rights to “micro movies”.
Article: The Vertical Revolution: How Microdramas Became a Multi-Billion-Dollar Global Phenomenon
I believe Red Letter Media discussed Quibi in one of its videos. I don't remember which specific video it was, but see also Vertical: An Immersive Theatrical Experience.
Schools will try to teach language in schools not with phonics, but with ebonics, using rap-along content.
Article: Activists demand that Black English be pushed on kids in California preschools
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9d ago
A biography of one random streamer doesn't seem postworthy. (When Asmongold or Hasan Piker goes trans, then you can @ me.)
IIRC, F1nn5ter used to be sufficiently prominent to make the front page of Reddit on a semi-regular basis, just like Asmongold and Hasan. That's where I learned about this rigmarole.
ToaKraka
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10d ago
reduces or destroys
Again:
In the words of Justice Holmes, "while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking".
ToaKraka
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10d ago
They expect Plan D to be the most likely path, and one of the crappier ones.
ToaKraka
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10d ago
I assume it's a derogatory use of "pink" to mean "left-wing" (an older meaning of the word, but it checks out).
ToaKraka
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10d ago
The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that rent control is not an unconstitutional taking because the owner is renting voluntarily. He can just stop renting and sell the property if he wants to.
When a landowner decides to rent his land to tenants, the government may place ceilings on the rents the landowner can charge, or require the landowner to accept tenants he does not like, without automatically having to pay compensation. Such forms of regulation are analyzed by engaging in the "essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries" necessary to determine whether a regulatory taking has occurred. In the words of Justice Holmes, "while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking".
ToaKraka
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10d ago
Hilariously, this law was watered down from an earlier bill that would have capped the upset price at just 50 percent of the mortgage! (The text isn't clear as to whether it's referring to the first mortgage or to all mortgages combined.) This original version was passed by the legislature, but was vetoed by the governor.
These provisions may operate to force lenders to take large losses on mortgages in default even when the market would enable them to recoup most or all of their investment. In addition to raising legitimate constitutional concerns, such a system could also harm borrowers by restricting access to credit and mortgages in New Jersey, as lenders would be forced to factor these potential losses into their lending decisions. For these reasons, I am recommending that the provision capping the “upset price” be removed from the bill.
Court opinion somewhat relevant to the culture war:
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According to lawmakers: "New Jersey is consistently in the top three in the nation with the highest foreclosures. Our state also has the widest racial wealth gap in the country. Black and brown wealth is hemorrhaging through the loss of foreclosed property, and the people who live in the community often do not have deep enough pockets to even participate in the foreclosure process." "The current process favors companies that have the money to purchase property at sheriff sales and resell it for a profit." In response to these concerns, the state govt. enacts a law ensuring that, whenever a residential property is foreclosed on, a right of first refusal is granted to the owner, his next of kin, and his tenants (if the owner is an individual rather than a company), and a right of second refusal is granted to certain redevelopment-oriented nonprofits (regardless of the owner's identity). Normally, foreclosure results in an auction starting at an "upset price" (minimum/reserve price) set by the foreclosing lienholder (presumably the lender of the property's first mortgage). However, these two new rights of refusal allow the property to be purchased for the upset price without an auction. The lawmakers say: "This legislation will help to keep property ownership within the community." "This is what equity in systems looks like."
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However, the new law causes problems because it often results in undervaluation of the property, so that junior lienholders don't get paid back. For example, in one of the cases consolidated here: A residential property with estimated fair market value of at least 680 k$ was foreclosed on. US Bank held a first mortgage for 281 k$, and PNC Bank held a second mortgage for an amount that I can't find in the court documents. US Bank set the upset price at 309 k$. PNC was prepared to bid the auction up to 401 k$, which presumably would suffice to pay off both mortgages. However, instead a nonprofit exercised its right of second refusal and bought the property at the upset price of 309 k$, paying off US Bank's mortgage but leaving PNC with substantially less than what it would have gotten at auction. In PNC's words: "The refusal to recognize other bids results in illegal lien-stripping and the illegal taking of substantial surplus that would have been realized, and the deprivation of PNC's property interest that would have attached to that surplus." (PNC also alleges that the nonprofit is a sham. It was created just a few days before the auction would have taken place, and is not registered as a nonprofit with the state govt. or with the federal IRS.)
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The trial judge rules that the nonprofits' right of second refusal is an unconstitutional taking without just compensation, and the appeals panel affirms. The federal Supreme Court recently found that it is unconstitutional for the govt. to foreclose on a property for a 200-k$ tax delinquency, sell it at auction for 300 k$, and pocket the extra 100 k$. Likewise, if a property is encumbered with a 300-k$ mortgage, it is unconstitutional for the govt. to let a nonprofit buy it for 200 k$ and magically extinguish the extra 100 k$ of debt owed to a lender. (Nobody has invoked the owner's, next of kin's, and tenants' right of first refusal, so it technically is not at issue in this case. But if the right of first refusal is challenged in the future it presumably will be held unconstitutional under the same rationale.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11d ago
I did a lot of writing for AI 2027 and was listed as a co-author. Some of my writing made it into Plan A too, but it was a bit less. The difference is of degree rather than kind, but because of this—and to give me more latitude to discuss it the way I like with less PR blowback—we decided not to put me as a co-author this time. I continue to be proud of having a part in this, small as it may be.
Even if he's not an official coauthor, he did make substantial contributions.
ToaKraka
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11d ago
Item 1 of 6
Steve Jackson, leader of Steve Jackson Games and the Generic Universal RolePlaying System (which just celebrated its 40th anniversary):
I have just revised our illustration contract with a flat prohibition against the use of generative AI. I'll work on our writing contracts next. The problem is carving out a clear exception for those old-school spelling and grammar checkers which don't try to write the next dozen words for you. (I have accepted, with angst, that some truly fine writers will never learn to spell, and they need this.)
Anyway: No generative AI. If that's not blunt enough: This company will not knowingly publish AI slop (except, perhaps, to mock it), and any "creator" who tries to foist it on us will be rejected, blacklisted, and quite possibly named and shamed. Don't do it.
Item 2 of 6
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In a residential zone, a municipal ordinance permits only single-family detached dwellings, where a “dwelling” is used by one or more families and does not include “hotels, motels, rooming houses, or other tourist homes”, and a “family” is “one or more persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption, living together as a single housekeeping unit”.
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A real-estate investor buys a six-bedroom house capable of holding 17 people, and uses it as a short-term rental. The municipal govt. issues a violation to him, on the basis that the house counts as “hotel or other type of transient lodging” rather than “single-family dwelling”. The municipal zoning board and the trial judge agree with the municipal govt.
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The appeals panel reverses (two to one). Since the ordinance fails to define “transient lodging”, it is ambiguous, and ambiguities are to be interpreted in favor of the owner. “Enterprises such as AirBnB have expanded the possible uses of single-family dwellings, and a township can address such uses in the zoning ordinance. However, amendments ‘cannot be effected by shoe-horning a use that involves renting an entire single-family home to vacationers into the definition of a “tourist home”’.”
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The state supreme court reverses (unanimously). “While ‘single housekeeping unit’ is undefined in the ordinance, it is a term of art that is widely used in zoning ordinances. This court has adopted the common definition, used by courts throughout the country, as requiring the person or persons residing in the home to function as a family and to be ‘sufficiently stable and permanent’ and not ‘purely transient’. Thus, by defining ‘family’ by requiring ‘a single housekeeping unit’, the ordinance clearly and unambiguously excluded purely transient uses of property.” “The [appeals court]'s decisions have slowly eroded our decision in Albert [where we adopted this interpretation], from Marchenko (allowing some transient use) to Shvekh (allowing mostly transient use) and now in the case at bar (allowing purely transient use), differentiating Albert on less and less convincing grounds.”
Item 3 of 6
Excerpt from Wikipedia's Manual of Style:
Italics generally are used only for titles of longer works. Titles of shorter works should be enclosed in double quotation marks. This particularly applies to works that exist as a smaller part of a larger work.
But practices vary. Some publishers (such as the aforementioned Steve Jackson Games) use italics for shorter works and bold+italics for longer works.
Reminder: In any of these situations, it technically is bad practice to just hit Ctrl-I or Ctrl-B on your keyboard. Rather, you are supposed to use semantic markup (such as the cite element in HTML⁎ or a custom style in Word) and apply styling based on the semantics. (Using CSS to generate quotation marks that do not exist in the original HTML is possible. However, I personally dislike that practice, since characters that do not exist in the HTML are invisible to copying-and-pasting. So just type those quotation marks manually.)
⁎Historically, the cite element has been badly misused by some software.
Item 4 of 6
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A food manufacturer experiences salmonella contamination at a peanut-butter factory. It is targeted by thousands of lawsuits, and calls on its insurer for coverage, since it expects to incur total damages in excess of its policy's deductible of 250 k$ per “occurrence”, defined as “an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions”. However, the insurer points out that a later section of the same policy redefines “occurrence” as “any ‘bodily injury’ or ‘property damage’ that arises out of any one ‘lot’ of ‘your product’ that is prepared or acquired by you”—i. e., each 24-hour lot of peanut-butter production counts as a separate occurrence. The contaminated peanut butter was distributed over 225 lots, so the 250-k$ deductible must be reached on the basis of a single lot—not all the contaminated lots combined—before the insurer will provide coverage on that single lot. The manufacturer sues the insurer in order to get a clarification of which definition of “occurrence” controls.
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The trial judge rejects the insurer's interpretation and adopts the manufacturer's, and the appeals panel affirms. The later section of the policy is ambiguous as to whether it is intended to redefine “occurrence”, especially when compared with other sections that do explicitly specify that they are redefining previously-defined terms. Even when considered in a vacuum, the second definition is ambiguous in itself: it is not clear whether, under the second definition, multiple injuries caused by a single lot are one occurrence or multiple occurrences. And it is circuit precedent that any ambiguity in an insurance policy is to be construed against the insurer that wrote that policy.
Item 5 of 6
Found via the YouTube algorithm: Mildly interesting video using popular Japanese Twitter posts to illustrate LLM stereotypes in that language (akin to em dashes in English)
Item 6 of 6
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As part of a road widening, the state DOT (department of transportation) condemns a 13-foot-wide strip of land at the front of a person's residential property. The person's house would overlap this strip, but the DOT has modified the strip with a rectangular cutout in order to eliminate the overlap. Years later (presumably while the construction is ongoing), the person hires a surveyor to double-check the DOT's plan. Whoops! The DOT's survey fails to show a large concrete porch at the side of the house⁎, so the cutout failed to exclude that area from the DOT's taking.⁎⁎ (Disclaimer: Past this point I am far from certain that I understand what's going on in this lawsuit. But, IMO, this one paragraph is quite interesting on its own.)
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The person sues for compensation—not just for the de jure taking of the land under the porch as shown in the DOT's plans, but also for the de facto taking of the porch itself as not shown in the DOT's plans. The trial judge allows the de jure claim to proceed, but rejects the de facto claim, reasoning that the de jure claim already includes any economic damages incurred by the DOT's misstatement.
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The appeals panel reverses and remands for further proceedings. The economic damages have nothing to do with this question. This lawsuit may seem like double-dipping, but it is perfectly reasonable for the taking of the land+porch to be composed of de jure and de facto portions that must be considered separately.
⁎Google Street View indicates that this “porch” is large enough that “patio” may be a more appropriate word.
⁎⁎Can we pour out a drink for the hapless low-level civil engineer who was tasked with drawing the “survey” from old as-built plans and/or Google Earth screenshots, and now doubtless is being excoriated for this mistake?
Isn't Oblivion Remastered considered an extremely-low-effort port, abandoned by the developers with most of the bugs left unfixed?
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