ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
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Small weapon and small shield
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Small weapon
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Two small weapons
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Big weapon
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Small shield*
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Two small shields*
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Big shield*
Which do you find the coolest to look at? Which do you find the most fun to use in games?
IMO, "small weapon and small shield" is coolest, but "big weapon" has ended up being the most fun to use in the action-focused video games that I've played (e. g., Dark Souls 2, Nioh 1, and Gundam Breaker 4).
*Among video games, those in the Dark Souls series are the only ones of which I am aware in which these setups are semi-viable (not counting Captain America–style shield throwing). Among tabletop RPGs, GURPS provides a fair amount of detail for shield users (1 2 (a b)).
Surely a "regular car" can't be one of the two cheapest cars on the market?
I still see a lot of cheap 20-year-old Civics on the roads. And the US market is not the only market in the world.
One of which is discontinued due to lack of demand?
If the government has made all the regular cars unprofitable to sell, and effectively mandated that only bloated, expensive vehicles be sold, do the bloated vehicles become regular cars? I think the answer is "no".
(1–5) 0 %
(6) 15–20 %, rounded up to the next integer (maybe a little higher if the waitress is hot; I guess it could go lower for bad service, but I've never gotten bad service, since I almost never go to full-service restaurants)
(7) 15–20 %, rounded up to the next integer (I guess—I never order delivery; I guess it could go lower for bad service)
The UN Security Council has reiterated its desire that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus reunify with the Republic of Cyprus in "a bicommunal, bizonal federation with political equality". It cites a resolution from 1991 in which it "reaffirmed its position on the Cyprus question":
The fundamental principles of a Cyprus settlement are the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and non-alignment of the Republic of Cyprus, the exclusion of union in whole or in part with any other country and of any form of partition or secession, and the establishment of a new constitutional arrangement for Cyprus that would ensure the well-being and security of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities in a bi-communal and bi-zonal federation.
Did anybody notice that Somalia now has a third problem area? The southern region of Jubaland has suspended relations with the federal government after the contested reelection of its president. Some skirmishes were won by Jubaland.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10mo ago
It seems that, in the court case, bills of attainder were not discussed at all. Rather, after the private law was passed and the postmaster general still refused to pay, a district court issued a writ of mandamus ordering the postmaster general to pay. The entire discussion is centered on whether the district court was empowered to issue that writ of mandamus.
When an act of Congress imposes on an officer of the executive department, for the benefit of a private party, a duty purely ministerial, the performance of that duty may be coerced by mandamus, by any court to which the necessary jurisdiction shall have been given.
(1) The Honda Civic is a bit bloated nowadays (base price 24 k$). Some people would say that a "regular car" is more like a Mitsubishi Mirage (17 k$) or a Nissan Versa (19 k$ with CVT).
(2) Cheap Civic-ish cars used to be available in convertible form. See, e. g., the Geo Metro.
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
A bill of attainder is legislation that imposes punishment on a specific person or group of people without a judicial trial.
A law that imposes a benefit, rather than a punishment, on a specific person is perfectly permissible.
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
"Private laws" that affect only a specific person are pretty rare nowadays, but they do sometimes get passed. The most recent example, from year 2022: "Notwithstanding other laws, these three people shall be eligible for immigrant visas."
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
It would be funny if this were the first step in a rehabilitation of "population transfers".
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
We're just over a week into the administration. Legislation doesn't move this fast.
Specifically, this page shows that literally zero substantive bills have even made it out of committee so far.
(Votes have been taken on a few dozen relatively minor bills by suspending the rule that requires a bill to be approved by a committee first. You can see the details by clicking on one of those bills—e. g., the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act—and selecting the "Actions" tab.)
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
I think the 10 % on China is on top of existing tariffs, so that the total is bigger than 25 %.
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
a thorough audit of DMs and forum posts
You seem to be making the erroneous assumption that an outraged mob would make such an audit.
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
Probably DeviantArt, which has sizable amounts of erotic literature
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
According to a more literal translation (obtained via Google Translate), the original version could be interpreted as promoting violence against women:
Man and dog—how you teach them. Woman and cat—how you hit them.
Maybe Claude had the original version in its databanks and recognized the translated version as matching it, or something.
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
Over the last several years I've come to believe economics is a more fraudulent field of study than social science. As I'm not an economist, I asked GPT for what economics has contributed to mankind and the best I saw in its list was game theory. Meanwhile car manufacturers are shipping car seats "multiple times" across the border before they're actually put in a vehicle. It all feels so incredibly fake.
Are you saying that the economists who advised politicians to implement NAFTA and USMCA are frauds, and in reality there are no economic benefits to free trade?
Trump issued an Executive Order that almost all federal workers will have to return to office five days a week
Apparently, at the last minute Biden signed some union contracts that explicitly codify the right to remote work for certain departments—and Trump is attempting to ignore those contracts. As authority he cites a decision where the Supreme Court stated that "the President cannot choose to bind his successors by diminishing their powers". However, that ruling was about a situation where the members of a board within the Securities and Exchange Commission could be removed only by the SEC commissioners rather than by the President, so it doesn't seem super relevant at first glance, and the largest federal union disputes its applicability.
ToaKraka
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11mo ago
having some new DC-centered state stretch all the way to I-81 and then down past Fredericksburg is fucking insane
I drew this map on the basis of the Census Bureau's delineation of metropolitan areas, which in turn is based on objective commuting statistics.
ToaKraka
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11mo ago
According to this Reuters article, TCAS does not function below 1100 feet, which is where this crash occurred.
ToaKraka
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11mo ago
There has been some discussion of the DMV (DC/Maryland/Virginia) area recently. Does anyone have any opinions on this proposed reorganization of that region?
ToaKraka
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11mo ago
government bureaucrats. They literally can't describe what they do at all
all they really do is ritualistically go through meetings where check boxes get ticked by the performative act of repeating managerial chants and "delegating" anything that requires knowledge, expertise, action, or even the assumption of responsibility down a memory hole where presumably it becomes somebody else's problem on the other side
Just to be clear, you are excoriating only the managers who do (or claim to do) nothing but coordination, and not the engineers, scientists, planners, etc. who do the actual work? Because some would include those engineers/scientists/planners in the "bureaucrat" category as well.
ToaKraka
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11mo ago
"DMV" can stand for "DC/Maryland/Virginia area" as well as for "Department of Motor Vehicles".
ToaKraka
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11mo ago
ToaKraka
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11mo ago
This article indicates that donations made by federal employees to presidential campaigns were 95 percent Democrat in 2016, but only 60 percent Democrat in 2020. This article indicates that donations were 84 percent Democrat in 2024.
It is not unreasonable to exclude crossovers and SUVs from the word "car". The US government calls them "light-duty trucks" and imposes on them more-lenient fuel-efficiency standards.
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