ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
it's mostly relevant in the sense of highlighting retroreflectors
IIHS's rationale document (page 4) states that the intended target of illumination is low-contrast objects, not retroreflective objects.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
I personally rarely drive in places where I have 70+ meters of unlighted space in front of me
I personally drive in such conditions regularly. Two weeks ago, I only narrowly avoided hitting a deer that was calmly standing in the middle of a three-lane, nominally-50-mi/h (actually-60-mi/h) highway, which is what prompted me to investigate this topic in the first place.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5d ago
White people's homeland is not America
For how many years must a people inhabit a location before that location counts as that people's "homeland"? I'm thinking that a timespan of 200 years sounds quite reasonable. Even 100 years or 50 years could be argued for.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
Why are you driving with your brights on?
It is mentioned in the IIHS article linked above that high beams are supposed to be used on roads with hardly any traffic.
Researchers from IIHS and the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found that drivers in and around Ann Arbor, Mich., didn’t use their high beams enough. Only 18% of drivers who were isolated enough to make use of their high beams did so.
you can't buy a non-lifted hatchback
*laughs in Mitsubishi Mirage*
But, seriously, there are tons of non-lifted hatchbacks on the market.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
TIL: According to IIHS (the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety), the stock headlights on many cars are inadequate. For example, the popular Honda Fit hatchback has headlights that are only "marginal" (2 stars out of 4) or "poor" (1 star), depending on trim. (Several different measurements go into the overall rating. Speaking very roughly, though, IIHS wants to see illumination of 5 lux out to a distance of 100 meters, while the Fit's headlights achieved that illumination only out to 72.4 meters.)
Headlight bulbs that are much brighter than stock while still remaining in compliance with laws regarding off-center glare (unlike some LEDs) are available for a few dollars from various sources—e. g., RockAuto. Note that illumination distance increases with the square root of brightness: 1 lux of illumination is 1 lumen of brightness per meter squared. For example, multiplying brightness by 2.3 will multiply illumination distance by only 1.5—but that's enough to bring the Fit up to IIHS's standards (from 72.4 meters to 110 meters).
ToaKraka
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8d ago
A plumber whose work catastrophically fails in six months will be sued and will go out of business.
ToaKraka
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13d ago
Typographical and English errors in judicial opinions can be somewhat funny to read—or, alternatively, somewhat worrying.
ToaKraka
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13d ago
Personally, I always click once on the upvote button (turning it to a pale blue color that's barely distinguishable from the default gray) and then once on the comment itself (turning the upvote button from barely-visible pale blue to very-visible dark blue).
ToaKraka
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15d ago
Misspelling of BDS (boycott, divest from, and sanction [Israel])
ToaKraka
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18d ago
ToaKraka
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19d ago
To format a poetic stanza properly in Markdown, you need to type two spaces at the end of each line.
This court opinion provides a very interesting summary of what liability a department of transportation has (at least in Pennsylvania) when a motorist is injured by a falling (not fallen) tree or tree branch.
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Snyder v. Harmon (1989): Adjacent to a state highway, outside the DOT's right of way, there is a deep mining pit. After getting into a crash on the highway, four motorists walk off of the highway, fall into the pit, and suffer severe injuries. Is the DOT liable for failing to install lighting, barriers, or guide rail in front of the pit? No, because the pit was not on DOT property, which is required by the state law that waives the default sovereign immunity in certain situations.
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Patton v. PennDOT (1996): Adjacent to a state highway, inside the DOT's right of way, there is a tree. A branch falls from the tree and kills a motorist. Is the DOT liable for failing to trim the branch? Yes, because the tree was on DOT property.
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Marker v. PennDOT (1996): Adjacent to a state highway, outside the DOT's right of way, there is a steep upward slope. A tree growing in the slope uproots itself, falls off of the slope, and kills a motorist. Is the DOT liable for building a highway underneath a steep slope? No, because neither the tree nor the slope was on DOT property.
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Clark v. PennDOT (2008): Adjacent to a state highway, outside the DOT's right of way, there is a tree. A branch of the tree overhangs the road. The tree—not just the branch, but the entire tree—falls onto the road, and a motorist is severely injured by the trunk. Is the DOT liable for failing to cut down the tree, especially when (1) the DOT's maintenance manual says that trees like this should be investigated and (2) the DOT was specifically informed of the branch by a concerned local before the injury? No, because the tree was not on DOT property. The existence of an overhanging branch is not relevant to this determination, since the motorist was injured by the trunk, not by the branch.
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Schmidt v. PennDOT (2024—the PDF linked above): Adjacent to a state highway, outside the DOT's right of way, there is a tree. A branch of the tree overhangs the road. The branch falls and kills a motorist. Is the DOT liable for failing to trim the branch? No, because the tree was not on DOT property. Under longstanding principles of property law, if a branch overhangs DOT property, then the DOT does gain the right to trim the branch, but does not gain actual ownership of the branch, so the injury was not caused by a dangerous condition of DOT property.
abortion views are relatively balanced between the two sexes (at least when compressed to one axis)
Source? According to Gallup, the pro-abortion side includes 63 percent of women but only 45 percent of men.
ToaKraka
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25d ago
Day-to-day expenses are already about as low as they'll get
You may still want to double-check against the numbers published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics—specifically, the "gross income less than 15 k$/a" column in the "size of consumer unit by income before taxes" table. (Note that these numbers were gathered in the 2022–2023 period, so they should be multiplied by something like 5.2 percent to account for inflation from January 2023 to today.)
ToaKraka
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27d ago
One example of the requirements is offered by New Jersey Statutes title 17 chapter 46B. (Different states will have different requirements.) Right at the top, there's a minimum capital requirement of 750 k$.
ToaKraka
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28d ago
The tentative agreement is for a wage hike of around 62% over six years, Reuters was told by two sources familiar with the matter, including a worker on the picket line who heard the announcement. That would raise average wages from $39 an hour to about $63 an hour over the life of the contract.
The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) workers union had been seeking a 77% raise while the employer group—United States Maritime Alliance (USMX)—had previously raised its offer to a nearly 50% hike.
ToaKraka
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29d ago
In an ideal world, a strong President would use Taft-Hartley and break the union much like Reagan broke the aircraft traffic controllers.
Or the existing exemption of unions from antitrust laws (1 2) could be eliminated. (Or, if we're talking pie-in-the-sky, the antitrust laws could be eliminated entirely. But "your rules enforced fairly" would be quicker than "my rules".)
ToaKraka
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29d ago
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The US loses the Battle of Saratoga. France and Spain develop no faith in the rebels' ability to win the war, and refuse to provide aid, so the US then loses the war. However, Britain recognizes its errors and reforms the US and Canada into a dominion-ish Confederation of North America.
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With no extra debt from fighting Britain in the American Revolution, France does not collapse into revolution (though it comes close after losing a war to Prussia and Britain in 1799), and Louisiana remains under Spanish, and then Mexican, control.
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The American rebels that have not been executed for treason emigrate to form the Republic of Jefferson (Texas fifty years early). In 1816, Jefferson (led by Andrew Jackson) intervenes in a Mexican civil war to form a United States of Mexico that later degenerates into dictatorship.
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The CNA abolishes slavery in 1841, after an economic depression with roots in London bank failures causes the price of cotton to plummet, making owning slaves uneconomical.
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Republicanism in Europe is crushed by the failure of the American rebels, and is not revived until 1879, when, after Louis XX abdicates in the face of advancing German troops, socialist rioters in Paris execute the royal family and, aided by defecting French troops, beat back the Germans. The ensuing continent-wide wave of republican/socialist spirit in 1880 (comparable to OTL's Springtime of Nations) overtakes all the major powers except Britain and Russia.
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Russia collapses in 1900, after losing Alaska and eastern Siberia to the USM in a conflict analogous to OTL's Russo-Japanese War.
Et cetera. The book extends to year 1970. It is written in the style of a textbook, with hundreds of footnotes and fake citations.
Reuters article to flesh out this low-effort comment
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