ToaKraka
Dislikes you
No bio...
User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
8d ago
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Around 2 AM in Philadelphia, a 12-passenger van rear-ends a car at low speed, causing the car to spin out and the car's driver to receive a minor injury. The van flees the scene, but the car follows. After a 12-block chase at 50 miles per hour through several stop signs and red lights, the van turns into a parking lot from which it is unable to exit. The responding police officer observes that the van driver appears drunk. The municipal judge acquits the van driver of drunk driving, but convicts him of reckless endangerment, and imposes a sentence of 18 months of probation.
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The appeals panel reverses. There is no evidence that the rear-end crash with the car was the result of recklessness rather than of negligence. (Drunk driving is not inherently reckless, especially when it was not even proved that the van driver was intoxicated beyond the legal limit.) And there is no evidence that, during this early-morning chase, any other vehicles or pedestrians were on the street in front of the van to be endangered in the first place.
Fun fact: It may be legal for you to design a house even if you are not a licensed architect.
NJ Statutes tit. 45 ch. 3 § 10:
No person except an architect licensed in the State of New Jersey shall engage in the practice of architecture in this State.
Nothing herein contained shall prohibit any person in this State from acting as designer of a dwelling and all appurtenances thereto that are to be constructed by himself solely as a residence for himself or for a member or members of his immediate family.
PA Architects Licensure Law ch. 5 §§ 8 and 11:
No individual shall engage in the practice of architecture in this State unless such individual holds a currently valid license issued pursuant to this act.
Nothing contained in this act shall be construed to prohibit the preparation of any drawings or other design documents for detached one-family or two-family dwellings not more than three stories in height and their accessory structures.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9d ago
So does the quintessential suburb, Levittown, NY.
Well, I guess the UN definition is not necessarily dispositive.
Kenosha actually doesn't—it's 1,360.46/km2 according to Wikipedia.
The Census Bureau includes in its numbers the entirety of Kenosha's legal area, including an airport and some rural land to the west of the part where the actual people live. In contrast, the EU map that I linked works in 1 km × 1 km squares without regard for legal boundaries, and shows that the eastern part is denser.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9d ago
It's urban under the UN definition (1,500 or more people per km2).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)
The diaeresis diacritic indicates that two adjoining letters that would normally form a digraph and be pronounced as one sound, are instead to be read as separate vowels in two syllables. For example, in the spelling "coöperate", the diaeresis reminds the reader that the word has four syllables, co-op-er-ate, not three, *coop-er-ate. In British English this usage has been considered obsolete for many years, and in US English, although it persisted for longer, it is now considered archaic as well. [citation to 1993 book] Nevertheless, it is still used by the US magazine The New Yorker. [citation to 2012 article] In English-language texts it is perhaps most familiar in the loan words naïve, Noël and Chloë, and is also used officially in the name of the island Teän and of Coös County. Languages such as Dutch, Afrikaans, Catalan, French, Galician, Greek, and Spanish make regular use of the diaeresis. (In some Germanic and other languages, the umlaut diacritic has the same appearance but a different function.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11d ago
My gut says he's probably a PRC nationalist
Direct quote:
Yes, the government of the PRC is bad, very bad. I am currently in the US which already proofs it. But there are more colors than just black and white in this world.
Re disliking Chiang Kai-shek... that's a tough one since AIUI he wasn't a very sympathetic character.
To clarify, IIRC his position is something like "Chiang/the ROC should have admitted defeat like Robert E. Lee/the CSA and permitted the country to be reunited, rather than retreating to Taiwan and permanently dividing people". But I may be misremembering/misinterpreting his opinion.
Here's a direct quote:
ToaKraka: In the video game Hearts of Iron 3, you can play as the PRC and capture/execute Jiang Jieshi rather than allying with him against Japan. ¶ (at the Xi'an Incident)
Coworker: Allying with him was the only option. Different in political affiliation does not make him an enemy of China. Japan was the ultimate enemy. ¶ His sin is that he splits the country into two.
So effectively no real use of Hanja there either.
I'll point out that error to him tomorrow.
Now I'm even more confused.
Well, maybe I'm misremembering. I asked him about his views on Mandarin and Cantonese today, but we discussed Japanese many months ago. I'll ask him about Japanese again tomorrow. But he may just reiterate that I can't properly understand the situation without learning Chinese, as he told me today when I tried comparing Serbo-Croatian (a speech-first language with two different writing systems that may eventually diverge into two different languages) to Chinese (a writing-first language with two different speech systems that may eventually diverge into two different languages).
Tomorrow edit: Direct quote: (exasperated but smiling) "Stop discussing things that you don't even know what it means!" [sic]
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
Does your coworker speak Mandarin as his first language? Is he from the northern PRC?
Cantonese is his first language. He's from Guangzhou, in the south.
Is he a nationalist?
I don't know. He has expressed thorough dislike of both the PRC government and Chiang Kai-Shek. He considers "zhonghua ren" to be significantly preferable to "Chinese person" as a moniker, I think since "Chinese" too easily implies "zhongguo".
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
Hanja use in modern Korean rounds to zero
He said was referring specifically to the Koreans who live in China. The Wikipedia pages for them (English, Chinese, Korean) don't mention whether they use hanja, but I guess he thinks they do.
Japanese use of Kanji
I didn't say anything about Japanese. He doesn't think that Japanese counts as using the same writing system as Chinese.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
The characters are used very differently grammatically.
He has claimed previously that grammar isn't really a thing in Chinese.
You could write English nouns with Chinese characters, that doesn't make English Chinese.
I think he would disagree, if I'm understanding his position corrrectly.
Is your coworker perhaps a Han supremacist?
I have no idea.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
I genuinely don't understand why your coworker put spoken Korean and spoken Chinese in the same bubble, they're mutually unintelligible and come from different language families, even if they used the same writing system for a long period.
His position is that a particular speech can be part of multiple languages depending on how it is written. The exact same hanzi/hanja passage of writing can be understood by speakers of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean, so they are dialects of the same language, regardless of mutual intelligibility between the three speeches—but Korean speech also forms part of the Korean language when used with hangul.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
Who wrote this and what languages does this person know?
I drew this diagram in an attempt to understand my coworker's opinions, not necessarily as an endorsement of those opinions.
I am fluent in English and know a fair amount of Latin. He is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin and mostly intelligible in English.
The inclusion of Korean speech in the bubble of Chinese language is already highly suspect.
The "Chinese language" is essentially like creating an entity called the "Romance language", of which Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. are "dialects". After all, they also use a shared writing system just with more variation.
My coworker's argument is that the Romance languages would be dialects of Latin if they all used the same speech-independent writing system (as they used to when they were called Vulgar Latin)—but they use phonetic writing systems, so they're languages instead.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
My Chinese coworker says that this image is a reasonable representation of the controversy over whether Mandarin and Cantonese are dialects or languages. What is your opinion on the topic?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
If you're a Gundam fan, you should be playing Gundam Battle Operation 2!!! In what other game can you play an RGC-80 GM Cannon (1 2) and have an ultra-fun battle against an RX-78-1 Prototype Gundam (1 2) in the middle of an abandoned city? Or beat down an MSN-02 Zeong (1 2) with an AMX-011P Zaku III Psycommu Type (1 2) as you dodge and weave between asteroids?
Example pulse-pounding gameplay:
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Low-power: Maria Shield Co. GM II on ground, Psycommu System Zaku in space, Dozle Zabi's Zaku II in space
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Mid-power: Zaku III on ground, Perfect Gundam on ground, Engage Gundam Incom Type in space
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High-power: Crossbone Gundam X-1 Kai on ground, Gundam F91 on ground, Gundam Tristan Failnaught in space
The game can be played FOR FREE on PC (try to play during hours when the playercount is high), PS4, and PS5. Some MSes are available only through a gacha system, but the game definitely isn't pay-to-win, and even the gacha-only suits can be purchased with non-premium currency after a few months.
In-game power levels range from 100 (e. g., level 1 GM) to 750 (level 4 Zeta Gundam or level 1 Gundam F91) in theory, but in practice matches don't go lower than 250 or 300. Personally, I'm not a big fan of high-power battles and space battles, and stick to ground battles in approximately the 400–550 range, with occasional forays into 250–350 and 600 if no other matches are available. My most-used MSes are Guncannon Heavy Type D, Jegan Heavy Equipment Type, Dom Cannon Multi-Gun Type, and Galluss-K. (Yes, I love shoulder cannons, how could you tell?)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
13d ago
Note that these "alt codes" work only with a numpad, not with the row of number keys at the top of your keyboard. (Many people who never use the numpad are willing to pay extra money to save desk space with a "tenkeyless" keyboard that has no numpad.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
13d ago
Markdown supports HTML named character references. "& mdash;" without the space becomes "—".
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Historically: In 1924, Oswald Mosley was a member of the Labour Party, and stood for reelection to the House of Commons, but lost by a hair's breadth (0.28 percent). In 1926, he returned to Parliament. In 1929, he was made a minister without portfolio, but was not able to get any of his radical policies implemented because the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer disagreed with them. In 1930, he resigned his cabinet post in disgust, and submitted to the Labour Party Conference a policy memorandum that was defeated by a relatively narrow margin (8.9 percent). In 1931, he left Labour and founded the fascist New Party.
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In this alternate-history book: He wins the 1924 election, and is able to build up more support within the Labour Party. In 1931 his policy memorandum is defeated by an even narrower margin (3.2 percent), and he sticks with Labour rather than turning fascist.
Shadow of Montreux: Historically, Mussolini declared that fascism was "no export article", and the various fascist movements of Europe developed largely independent of one another. In this alternate-history book, in 1929 he changes his mind and organizes a Fascist International, akin to the USSR's Communist International (Comintern).
Legally: The cited New Jersey law does not define "solely as a residence for himself". However, if you live in the house for two years before selling it, the federal IRS will refrain from taxing the first 250 k$ of profit that you make from the sale, and presumably the state authorities would use the same guideline. (Pennsylvania has no restriction at all.)
Practically: Even if the plans are not "signed and sealed" by an architect, you still have to abide by the building code in order to get a building permit from the municipality, so insurance and mortgage companies should still be perfectly willing to deal with the house.
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