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PaperclipPerfector  10hr ago (text post)   361 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 17, 2026

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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Item 1 of 5

In 2023, California enacted a law allowing (city and county governments to allow) ADUs (accessory dwelling units) to be converted into condominiums that can be bought and sold separate from the lot's principal dwelling. According to the legislators:

The statewide median home price is nearly 800,000 dollars. At that price, only 17 percent of households can afford to purchase the median-priced single-family home. This figure is less than half of the national average, and less than half of the rate at the start of the pandemic.…

…The average size of a single-family home in California is 1860 square feet. By comparison, the average size of an ADU in California is less than one-third of that, at 615 square feet. Presuming a commensurate reduction in price, the purchase of an ADU would be affordable to lower-income households.

According to a news report, the municipality of San Jose now has become the site of the first actual sale of an ADU condominium under this law—750 ft2 of house according to the Zillow page and 2000 ft2 of land (plus a long driveway easement) according to the tax map, for 530 k$. (The property as a whole (principal dwelling plus ADU) is assessed by the county govt. at 715.4 k$ (494.6 for the land and 220.8 for the improvements).)

Item 2 of 5

  • A paraplegic is a “tester” of accessibility under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act): he visits, and then sues, businesses that fail to measure up to the ADA's requirements (the ADAAG, ADA Accessibility Guidelines). His latest target (he testifies that it's his 83rd) is a strip mall. He alleges: (1) Of the property's two accessible parking spaces, one is immediately adjacent to a driveway, with no access aisle for safety; (2) of the property's several curb ramps, one is too steep; (3) the sidewalk in front of the businesses is not sufficiently flat, making it difficult for a wheelchair user to open a business's door without rolling backward into the parking lot; and (4) a different curb ramp often is blocked by parked cars.

  • The paraplegic demands that several changes be made. The trial judge rejects most of them (removal of bollards in the sidewalk, addition of two more accessible parking spaces, reduction of parking-lot slope, etc.): they are not “readily achievable” within the meaning of the ADA, as they would drive out tenants (by exacerbating the property's existing parking shortage), jeopardize the property's grandfathered status under the municipal code (it has only 88 parking spaces rather than the required 104), expose the company to liability (businesses have been sued for not having bollards), etc. The company implements one demanded change voluntarily before the case is even over, moving the accessible parking space without an access aisle to a safer location (right next to the other accessible parking space, so that they share an access aisle). The judge finds that the company must accede to one more demand: changing the too-steep curb ramp from perpendicular (protruding from the sidewalk into the access aisle) to parallel (taking a 3-foot-deep chunk out of the 8.5-foot-deep sidewalk in front of the businesses).

  • The company moves for a new trial, complaining that a parallel curb ramp (1) would be too expensive and too difficult to get permits for and (2) itself would violate the ADA, but the trial judge rejects these arguments. (1) The company has presented insufficient evidence of the expense of the modification or the difficulty of getting permits. (2) The company's expert misread the ADAAG! He looked at the bathroom guidelines, under which door swings cannot encroach into required clear areas. But the sidewalk guidelines have no such provision, so the parallel curb ramp is fine. (The judge's opinion includes helpful diagrams.)

Item 3 of 5

Australian airline Qantas has announced plans for non-stop Sydney–London and Sydney–New York flights, using an Airbus A350 variant specially designed for long range. If these flights enter operation (expected for London in October 2027 and for New York at a later date not yet announced), they will surpass Singapore Airlines' Singapore–New York and Singapore–Newark flights (which use an older variant of the same Airbus plane) as the longest commercial flights in the world.

According to Google Flights, the current non-stop Singapore–New York flight reduces travel duration from 24–21 hours (with a stop in Manila, Hong Kong, San Francisco, etc.) to 19 hours, but boosts price from 1000 dollars to 1500 dollars. These Qantas flights presumably will involve a similar money-for-time trade-off.

Official marketing materials on the topic from Qantas are available on this page. See also the Wikipedia page on the longest non-stop commercial flights.

Item 4 of 5

[Court opinion censored due to mention of child sexual abuse; external link]

Item 5 of 5

New J⁎rsey is the only state in the US that forbids motorists from pumping their own gasoline. Legislative attempts to eliminate this ban regularly die in committee.

Surveys consistently show that New J⁎rseyans actually like this state of affairs. According to the latest one, a whopping 64 percent of NJ residents want to keep gasoline pumps full-service-only. This support holds across all population segments surveyed.

SegmentSupport (%)
Affiliation: Democratic71
Affiliation: Republican62
Affiliation: Independent58
Age: 18–3068
Age: 31–4466
Age: 45–6464
Age: 65–∞61
Gender: Woman74
Gender: Man56

New J⁎rsey is the only state in the US that forbids motorists from pumping their own gasoline. Legislative attempts to eliminate this ban regularly die in committee.

Wait, Oregon changed their laws? I had no idea. Apparently it's been 3 years.

My guy, can you please explain to me what you find consistently entertaining about underage sex and abuse related litigation?

The censored opinion for today is extremely tame—just a 17-year-old's allegation that her 19-year-old ex-boyfriend distributed their sex video without authorization. I find it quite hilarious that the entire controversy hinged on whether a locker-room joke made to the plaintiff's brother ("Yo, did you see the video of your sister?") was a sly reference to a video that the joker had actually seen (as the trial judge thought) or just a genuine joke that coincidentally happened to land on a sensitive topic (as the appeals panel thought).

It's less about any particular instance and more about the pattern.

A generic locker-room joke's leading to a restraining order is funny. Repeatedly impregnating your girlfriend's underage daughters (including while out on zero-dollar bail) is funny. Accidentally fingering your daughter because she replaced your wife in the marital bed in the middle of the night is funny. I don't know what else to tell you.

Perhaps you have not sufficiently <del>desensitized</del><ins>refined</ins> your sensibilities by reading thousands of pieces of (predominantly non-loli) hentai manga and erotic literature.

This is the fun thread so we should quickly move past this but I would delicately suggest some consideration for the fact that some things are broadly funny or fun, some things are niche, some things fail to land, and some things would be considered the blackest of humors or outright horrifying (especially when in real life instead of fiction).

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