ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
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
2mo ago
If you are capable of inflicting an incapacitating wound (including a temporary stun) from a longer distance, then you are more likely to win. That seems pretty obvious to me.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
Zero to sixty in 18 seconds sounds inadequate for merging onto a highway with posted speed of 65 mi/h. Even the unmodified Mirage can manage an 11-second time.
Also, it's my understanding that obtaining parts for imported cars often is difficult and expensive. That goes double for imported cars that are 25 years old.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
(1) Buy an ordinary fuel-efficient hatchback
(2) Have a body shop cut out the back half of the passenger compartment and weld the rest of the car back together
(3) Get a super-fuel-efficient two-seat car
Real-life example (pre-modification fuel-economy comparison)
Would you do it?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3mo ago
Document 146 on this page
The Court hereby certifies the following class:
All non-African American CTI graduates who:
(1) By February 10, 2014, (a) graduated from a CTI program at one of the 36 FAA-partnered CTI Institutions between 2009–13 and (b) passed the AT-SAT;
(2) Applied to be an ATCS trainee through the 2014 all sources vacancy announcement but failed the Biographical Questionnaire that was incorporated into the 2014 ATCS hiring process and was therefore not hired;
(3) Have never been offered employment as an FAA ATCS.
Excluded from the class are CTI graduates:
(1) Who were not US citizens as of February 10, 2014;
(2) Who by February 21, 2014 had reached 31 years of age (or 35 if they had 52 consecutive weeks of prior air traffic control experience);
(3) Whose academic records as of February 21, 2014 explicitly stated that they were ineligible to receive a letter of recommendation from their CTI school;
(4) Whose AT-SAT scores had expired as of February 21, 2014.
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!
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2mo ago
I don't think this is typical in America.
It's effectively mandatory under the NAR's current rules that the buyer's agent be compensated out of the 6-percent commission that nominally is paid to the seller's agent by the seller. But the NAR has encouraged buyers' agents to misleadingly state to buyers that their services are free.
Once again appears the age-old question: What would the ideal conversation platform look like?
Ideally, the edit history of a comment should be visible, as it is on Wikipedia or Github.
I can imagine a system where each user has his own Git repository, in which each post or comment is represented as a single file. I think submitting pull requests to fix another user's typos would be extremely funny, but also much less disruptive than pointing out typos in a separate comment.
<article data-inreplyto="meiklwuw/169 ajubeaox/foobar">
<p>Both of you are completely wrong. Rather, the correct answer is <span data-inreferenceto="kowupize/203406141409">Kowupize's</span>.</p>
</article>
Reinforced concrete deteriorates when the steel reinforcement rusts and expands. But a pyramid experiences exclusively compressive loads, and therefore can be constructed from plain (unreinforced) concrete. Non-rusting rebar also is available.
Concrete's resistance to freeze–thaw cycles can be improved by adding air. Its resistance to abrasion by rain and wind can be improved by simply using stronger mixes (including harder gravel). (source)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2mo ago
One fun and cheap pastime is converting books from print or PDF to HTML+CSS (using Markdown as an intermediary if you don't care enough to learn HTML+CSS). Imagine Distributed Proofreading (the input for Project Gutenberg), but entirely on your own terms, modifying the original text to suit your personal preferences.
If you care about providing a meaningful service to other people, then making illegal high-quality digital versions of older works that (1) still are under copyright but (2) have not been made legally available in electronic form by their publishers (examples: 1 2 3) may fit that criterion.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
You need to escape the underscores. https://twitter.com/_Escapekey_/status/1748317807006118335
I think the whole discourse has been poisoned by Zionists who regard criticism of Israel as a state as criticism of Jews as a people, which is an absurd notion.
Note that the House of Representatives has now passed a resolution endorsing this interpretation, by a vote of 311 yeas (69 % Republicans) to 14 nays (93 % Democrats), with 92 abstentions (all Democrats).
Resolved, That the House of Representatives—
(4) clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5mo ago
Coincidentally, Randal O'Toole just published an article on the same topic. He thinks the lack of low-density housing is a contributing factor.
South Korea’s high-rise housing and low birthrates are closely related. People don’t have children if they don’t have room for them. High rises are expensive to build so living space is at a premium. Birth rates are declining throughout the developed world, but they have declined the most in countries like South Korea, Russia, and China that have tried to house most of their people in high rises.
South Korea became a high rise country when it rapidly industrialized after the end of the Korean War. People moving from rural areas to the cities to get jobs created a housing crisis, and then-current urban planning theories held that high-rise housing was the best way to house people. Remember that, even though South Korea was the “good guys” in the Korean war, the country was still a dictatorship until about 1990, which meant the leadership could direct the country into one style of housing even if residents might have preferred otherwise.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
I can't easily find a reference for it, but I think Scott asked for his full comments to be inlined his deal for moving his blog there.
Possible source (after holding the "end" key on my keyboard for five minutes to overcome the infinite scroll on the "archive" page)
I know some of you are skeptical. I was too at first, but Substack has gone above and beyond in allaying my concerns. They've let me test out a "no popup telling you to subscribe" feature. They've changed the comment section to be more like WordPress. We've agreed I'm here for a year, but if it goes badly I can leave in 2022 with no hard feelings.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
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.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
Beyond financial considerations (depending on your lifestyle): You get the satisfaction of no longer being forced to lug around three extra seats that you literally never use. Parallel parking on city streets becomes easier. And you may be able to fit more cars into your house's driveway.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
8mo ago
Note that Carter also won on several union-related counts, not just on religion-related counts.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
Source for anyone interested in the details
See also:
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The Unincorporated Man, in which every person is "incorporated" at birth into tradable shares, of which the parents get 20 percent held jointly, the government gets 5 percent, and the person cannot sell the last 25 percent (which is enough for him to support himself in this high-productivity future setting; the percentage might have to be higher in the present day)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1mo ago
To be fair, documents submitted by parties to a lawsuit are not "the law". The judicial opinions that constitute "the law" are uploaded to the individual courts' websites plus GovInfo, not just to PACER.
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