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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   1160 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 1, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Well I took the bar exam this week. It sucked, but it's over. Fortunately my test center was relatively undisturbed, but many other test centers had a bunch of shit go laughably wrong and I'd like to regale you all with some of the stories I've accumulated from some of my friends who took the exam in other states and from reading the /r/barexam subreddit.

1 - DC. DC was apparently Ground Zero for the shit-storm this year. Day one they failed to do any bag searches for prohibited items, and I guess DC has a reputation for being incredibly lax on security, so multiple people brought cheat-sheets with them to the exam and would study them in the bathroom during the exam. People had friends and family bring them outlines during the lunch break. This led to much (justifiable) complaining on reddit, so on Day 2 the proctors chewed out the entire group and conducted bag searches, leading to about a dozen people getting written up for having prohibited items. Also on Day 2, perhaps as some form of protest perhaps out of sheer stupidity (I believe stupidity for reasons that will become clear) four different times people tried to walk out the wrong door and set off the fire alarm. Someone fired up a joint in the bathroom, and half the testing center reeked of weed. At least one person, and possibly more, filled out their scantron for the multiple choice in highlighter.

2 - Virginia. Virginia was apparently mostly well-proctored, but the building that the exam was conducted in, which is the same building the July bar exam has been conducted in every year for something like 10 years, conducted fire alarm testing during the afternoon session of Day 2. The building also had multiple toilets back up on both days, because the convention center the exam was being conducted in claimed they were unused to the demands of a few hundred people using the shitter at the same time.

3 - Iowa. Someone crammed their lunch into the toilet, which caused it to back up and spew raw sewage all over the bathroom floor.

4 - New York, Hofstra Center. This one is actually pretty horrific, a student had a heart-attack during the exam, and the proctors apparently made every wrong decision they could, including shush-ing people who were begging them to call 911, chastising students for trying to provide first aid, and ultimately causing a delay of several minutes before the student could receive medical attention. All students who didn't suffer a heart attack were expected to continue working on the exam. Reddit link with most of the facts.

5 - Hawaii. Tsunami warning meant the center evacuated. No word as of yet as to how they'll be addressing that.

There's probably more that I missed, but I think those are the highlights.

Someone crammed their lunch into the toilet, which caused it to back up and spew raw sewage all over the bathroom floor.

How does this even work? Is American plumbing significantly different?

Over here the tighest spot is the S-shaped curve at the bottom of the toilet itself, so that anything that gets past it cannot cause further blocks. Thus at worst you get (mostly) clean water spilling on the floor if you insist on flushing a blocked toilet multiple times.

In home or small business settings, or modern construction, that's the typical failure mode, and it's possible that the reporting is just conflating things. That said, in older construction of large buildings, it is very common to have choke points well in grey or blackwater pipes well after the restroom itself, either because of pipe narrowing around fittings, because of bad slope, or because of partial obstruction (roots, partially collapsed piping). When clogged at those points, you'll get wastewater from all of the points above it backfeeding over time.

This still isn't technically sewage, since it hasn't made it to the sewer, but it's still going to end up being quite a large number of toilets backing up at once.

I'm completely unsure, but the comment I saw said there was "raw sewage" everywhere as a result of the aforementioned lunch-smushing.

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