ToaKraka
Dislikes you
No bio...
User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6hr ago
When I look up this case by its two docket numbers in the Pennsylvania court system, the appellate docket sheet includes an order sealing the record, and the trial docket sheet doesn't show up at all. So this juvenile proceeding presumably is closed to the public.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
I find learning about random legal stuff like the necessary evidence for conspiracy and murder to be reasonably fun, personally.
My grandpa got a case of the molesties when I was a kid, and I am horrified that people's objection to this is that it was sexual and not that he was forcing me to do something I didn't want to do. Eight-year-olds don't want to French kiss their grandpas! They don't want to get sticks shoved up their noses or wake up at 7 AM either. If we children had our agency respected, none of that stuff would have happened.
This is in the context of discussing school as an imposition on autonomy, so it should not be assumed that the molestation occurred at age eight.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
Try engaging in exercise that results in a reward at the end. I like walking for 2.5 miles (4 km; 5 miles (8 km) for the round trip) to the nearest Dunkin' Donuts or Chinese restaurant. There's also the pleasure of seeing all the different buildings.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
-
Some 14-year-old urban youths are hanging out on a Philadelphia sidewalk. As a 73-year-old man walks by, a boy and a girl decide to hit him in the head with a traffic cone. He is hit once by the boy and twice by the girl, and dies of the resulting brain injuries. The entire incident is captured on surveillance video. The boy and the girl are charged with murder and conspiracy to murder.
-
The trial judge dismisses the charges against the boy. There is no evidence of conspiracy between him and the girl. Rather, after he delivered his blow and dropped the cone, she independently chose to pick up the traffic cone and deliver her own, totally separate blows. And the boy merely hit the old man once and then walked away, so there is no evidence of the "malice"—either intent to kill or reckless disregard for a high risk of killing—that murder requires (as opposed to the negligence that can support a charge of manslaughter).
-
The appeals panel reverses and remands for trial. The surveillance video clearly shows that (1) the boy dealt his blow immediately after the girl handed the traffic cone directly to the boy, and (2) while the girl was delivering her blows the boy only walked away for a few seconds, and soon returned with a smile on his face. That is evidence of conspiracy. And hitting an old man in the head with a heavy traffic cone even once is evidence of reckless disregard for a high risk of killing.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
This is a fascinating list because it is so short. I can't even tell you the models of all the cars I have driven, much less the years—too many rentals to count!
I have clarified my comment to say "driven on a regular basis". (I have never driven a rental car. And I've been driving only since 2017.)
It appears that this forum is filled with city slickers in fancy German cars. What cars have you driven on a regular basis? If they were expensive, have you found them to be worth the extra money?
I have driven the following cars on a regular basis.
-
2023: 2023 Mitsubishi Mirage (purchased new for 18 k$)
-
2019: 2015 Honda Fit (purchased from my mother for 14 k$)
-
2017: 2007 Pontiac G6 (borrowed from my father for free)
I have been driven around by my parents in the following cars.
-
The aforementioned Fit (mother's) and G6 (father's)
-
2013 Honda Civic (mother's)
-
2001–2010 Volvo S60 (father's)
-
2000–2005 Dodge Neon (mother's)
-
1993–1997 Mazda MX-6 (father's; manual)
-
1993 Toyota Tercel (mother's)
I have never found fault with these cheap (not including the S60, I guess) cars (other than the Civic's poor rear visibility; I prefer hatchbacks to sedans) or seen any reason to get anything more expensive.
(Note that I purchased the Mirage, not to replace the Fit with it, but so that (1) I could sell the Fit back to my mother, and then (2) she could expunge from our household the Civic that I disliked. Another motive for getting the Mirage was FOMO on a car that was soon to be discontinued in the US market despite obviously being the best car there.)
Just to clarify, /pol/ does appear to have a stickied post with multiple Israeli posters claiming to hear sirens, but Reuters, the Associated Press, and Google News do not reveal any reputable articles at this time.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
-
Harassment = disparaging the target to his face, or intentionally disparaging the target in an area where he is likely to hear the disparagement
-
"Talking shit" = disparaging the target without regard to whether he will see the discussion
As the 4chan comic goes: If you enter a thread about stuff you do not like, and now you are mad, then you have nobody to blame but yourself.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
To me, it seems like a perfectly reasonable description of one possible thought process of an onlooker.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
Possibly relevant link: AI Child Porn Will Probably Save Real Children
Child porn is created when people get paid to make child porn. The rarer you make it, the more they get paid. The best way to protect children is to kill the economic demand. Flood the market with AI generated, freely accessible stuff that's created with zero harm to kids.
This is by far my most controversial tweet, for reasons that are now obvious to me but were not at the time I tweeted it.
People somehow have interpreted this as me supporting child sexual assault, which is confusing to me but makes more sense if I model people as being LLMs that get triggered if you say too many negatively-flavored keywords too close together.
There's a pretty big difference between these three claims:
-
Active prostitutes are considered low-status (@toakraka, I guess)
-
Active and former prostitutes are considered low-status permanently and indelibly (@faceh)
-
Active and former prostitutes are considered so extremely low-status, permanently and indelibly, that they can be said to have "ruined their lives" (@southkraut)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
whores are disrespectable and they will ruin their lives if they whore themselves out, be it for money or attention, because they will be considered at least damaged goods if not somewhat subhuman by most people anywhere and ever
Source? Maybe I'm just in a bubble, but I can't imagine that public opinion of prostitutes is that low.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
I think I read somewhere that surface ships actually experience drag proportional to the cube of speed, due to the bow wave.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
Sidewalks and bike lanes keep getting wider. Very old neighborhoods often have 24" sidewalks (if at all), while now they seem to be 36 or 48 inches. Bigger new roads (like your 11 lane freeway) have 6 or 8 foot sidewalks, getting closer to the width of a car lane.
IIRC (I don't have my books in front of me): The federal ADA requires new sidewalks to be 4 feet wide, with 5-foot-wide passing areas every few hundred feet. In areas where the sidewalk goes right up to the curb, the designer normally will make it 6 feet wide (including the 9-inch curb), to prevent trucks' side mirrors from clipping pedestrians.
AASHTO has issued different, wider guidelines for bike lanes, as well as for "shared-use paths" occupied by both pedestrians and bicyclists, but I don't recall the specifics.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
I can't imagine a pedestrian's dying if I hit him regular speed on a bike.
Lots of people die from falling and hitting their heads on the ground.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
I'm arguing not that we should ticket everyone who takes five or ten miles per hour, but just that those people can't turn around and complain when a cyclist does something that's technically illegal but otherwise makes sense and isn't particularly unsafe.
I think the commenters in this thread generally are complaining about cyclist behavior that doesn't make sense and is particularly unsafe. Most pertinently, the comment to which you replied stated:
There is an obvious problem with some bicyclists thinking that stop signs, red lights, and all other forms of traffic control don't apply to them [presumably even when the street is carrying non-negligible motorized traffic].
This morning I [presumably a motorist on a street with non-negligible motorized traffic] saw a bicyclist veer into the street even though there was a dedicated empty bike lane and an empty sidewalk.
(I personally do 95 percent of my driving on the freeway, so I almost never encounter bicyclists, and I don't have an opinion on whether the other commenters' observations are valid.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?
75 mi/h (120 km/h)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
To be fair, a large part of stopping sight distance is the built-in full second of driver reaction time, which is independent of car technology.
Your statement is not supported by your link. The article says:
Barges are less efficient than rail with any appreciable speed.
The graph in the article says that barges still are more efficient than trains below around 10 km/h (6 mi/h).
In Railroads and American Economic Growth, an economist estimated that, if 12-mi/h (19-km/h) railroads had never been invented and instead the Midwest had been connected to oceanic trade with an extensive 7-mi/h (11-km/h) canal network during the late 19th century, the cost of the resulting increased inventory requirements would have been essentially negligible. Most freight transportation does not need to be fast.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
A friend of mine, who is a retired engineer from PennDOT, said of speed limits that "they aren't suggestions; they're requirements".
As a civil engineer: LOL.
-
If a road has a posted speed of X mi/h (Y km/h), its actual design speed on which the civil engineers base all their designs is (X + 5) mi/h ((Y + 10) km/h).
-
When a civil engineer designs a curve, he can't make the curve too tight, because the "side friction factor" between the pavement and a car's tires will be too small to provide the required centripetal force, resulting in skidding and loss of control. But the side friction factor that's used in design is based on poor weather conditions—ice, rain, et cetera. I don't have the AASHTO Policy on Design in front of me at the moment for the exact numbers, but friction obviously is a lot higher on a dry road than on a wet road, and therefore you can go a lot faster quite safely.
-
A hill, or a roadside forest on a curve, may block your view of an upcoming intersection or crosswalk. You probably learned in your high-school driving class that your "stopping sight distance" increases with the square of speed, so you do want to slow down at these locations. But these claustrophobia-inducing segments don't really have anything to do with your speed on segments of the road that have good visibility.
-
Obviously, at high speeds it's harder to keep your car going where you want it to go. I personally don't feel comfortable driving faster than 75 mi/h (120 km/h), or 80 mi/h (130 km/h) if I'm in the left lane of a three-lane freeway and there's somebody right behind me. But I don't bear much ill will toward people who flash past me at 90 mi/h (145 km/h) in the left lane when I'm in the middle lane (of three).
Example laws in this vein:
NJ Statutes tit. 39 ch. 4 § 97.1
PA Consolidated Statutes tit. 75 ch. 33 § 64
IN Code tit. 9 art. 21 ch. 5 § 7
More options
Context Copy link