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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   910 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 11, 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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The week in AI fun:

Give me suggestions about mocking name for ai doomerists - in the line of branch covidians and trustafarians. To hint that they are religious cult mostly

Some of the better suggestions:

Doominicans

Singularitarians

Yudkowskites

Yuddites

LessWrongians

Effective Apocalyptists

Pdoominicans

Doomish

Personally my favorite is Yuddites

If AI is going to rule us all and into darkness bind us, I do hope that it will be from OpenAI or China. There are at least hints of humor in their model.

I've had this stupid app idea for a while, and few weeks ago I finally decided to vibe code it. Took me about 8-ish days/16 hours to get it fully up and running. Getting it approved on the app store took another week, in the meantime I made a promotional site for it. This week it got it's first few paid users. Pretty incredible turn of events. I haven't looked at a single line of code. I'm now motivated to just full send any small idea I have since turn around time has been reduced from months/weeks to days.

Inspiring controversy on Reddit today is an extremely long-winded comic, "I Don't Like My Boyfriend". Each of its 12 panels was posted as a separate image, so here are some consolidated renditions for your convenience.

In this comic, a woman contemplates how she doesn't like her boyfriend (who is drawn as a short, fat Chudjak). She finds him boring and annoying. However, he is smitten with her, and she has never had any friends, let alone romantic partners, other than him. She wonders whether she is just an unlikeable person, and should be more grateful for having hooked a person with such low standards. The general opinion of commenters seems to be hatred for the woman.

This actually matches my personal experience with attempts at friendship (1 2) somewhat well! I eventually couldn't tolerate my pseudo-friends any longer and kicked them all to the curb, and the commenters seem to think that the woman depicted in the comic should do the same with her romantic partner.

Do you have any thoughts on this topic?

She should break up. She’s displaying poor judgement and communication, and telling her that is OK (though unlikely to communicate it to her); but I don’t think shaming her is productive, because the alternative is her keeping these feelings to herself and maintaining a broken relationship.

On the surface she’s insulting her boyfriend, but the “insult” is poor judgement and self-contradictory, so logically it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Emotionally it’s not so easy, unfortunately; but again, if you were the boyfriend and care about her, wouldn’t you rather her admit this than keep it to herself?

some random thoughts:

  1. in a friendship, there needs to some sort of see-saw of the status. (status games like mentioned in Impro - Keith Johnstone). in this comic, the boyfriend is "lowering" himself by all the moves like paying for everything, will take care of her, you are in my dream, never mean. But that is a permanent lowered side of him and she is always high. In general, higher status is a good thing, but not when it is permanently done.
  2. in a deep friendship (or love relationship), the most important point becomes: shared register. matching of interests. recognition. "i see you", and "i see you too". In this comic, the GF feels (correctly) that he doesn't see her actually. there is no common register for them, nothing shared, nothing discussed together, no to and fro exchanges. whatever she says, he never sees that, ignores that (error of commission or omission), which is why she feels so bad. but because he is doing lot of other status lowering (and hers higher) things, that whole discrepancy lands in the way of "am i the wrong one, am i spoiled".

Zhuangzi story: A bird of sea landed in Lu. The king was ecstatic. He put the bird in the royal palace, gave a 15 course feast in its honour, played the best classical songs for it, and best wines. The bird was sad, refuses to eat, and then dies in 3 days. Moral: the king never saw the bird as it was or what it needed. no recognition. he did what he considered the best (from his POV). the GF is the bird here.

Same for you probably. without a common register (even if it is some sort of 700 questions), you don't feel an acquaintance as "true"-friend. you don't feel "seen". and that correctly dissatisfies you.

So much for "serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics".

The general opinion of commenters seems to be hatred for the woman.

Perhaps. I thought this was just surface-level analysis of the average marriage, or what loveless relationships/marriages ultimately devolve into.

There's a mismatch between can't and won't, too; is it just a complete lack of mental horsepower/effort (incuriousness), or something else? And while a lack of mental horsepower is concerning for a long-term relationship- both in the sense that you're going to be more alone than he will, and that it'll make those promises more difficult to depend on (in the sense that if he's not smart/paying that much attention he'll be outcompeted by others, which by extension means you will be outcompeted as well)- the Fiddler on the Roof-type marriage as means seems like it's actually the average human experience. (19th and 20th century drinking culture is another data point.)

Maybe that's actually the scary part, when there really is nothing more, that this is all there is and all you can expect out of life. I guess that's why people buy dogs and kids and say it saved their marriages- if only because it exposes a new facet of whoever it's with, but because at that point the relationship has shifted to means rather than end.

I've come to that point with a few people in my life: that this is all it's ever going to be, and they're never going to be any different. Sure, there are some barriers to communication, but the flip-side is the Copenhagen ethics problem where, if I don't have a better idea, then I feel that complaining about it is just more a one-sided vent than anything else.

The more interesting ones are those you can build on/up, which I think is what normal people call "getting along well". Especially if they build you up; those ones are keepers.

But the difference is that I'm not interested in resenting any one of them for this; they're not enemies that need to be destroyed. I'm not sure why I should (and I'm sure that doing this would kill the friendship even deader than just constantly complaining about things). Sure, there's limits on time and resources (and obviously you're more interested in some of them for reasons that have to do with sex), but that's true for everything else.

Maybe that is more sociopathic than anything else, I dunno- I guess you could call that being a giant slut "vers" of sorts, since I tend to search/select what (as far as I can tell) people are expecting as part of the way I get to know them. Of course, that also leads to some problems, where time is treated as ante just to see if the build-up will occur, which also results in me not quite behaving the way anyone really expects.

(Which makes actually being appropriately attractive/dominant on my own something I have to actively remember to do- as I understand it, this is more common in women than men, which is something that makes accepting... certain friends' claims unusually difficult. I only know better than everyone else once I know it's actually helpful or important to do so and tend to hedge harder than I should- probably sub-optimal, but so's the alternative.)

I wonder if the chudjak bf has an engineering degree. Recently I learned that the "not asking personal questions" thing is a stereotype about engineers.

Ah yes, "engineers."

I appreciate your usual output of strange court cases.

I eventually couldn't tolerate my pseudo-friends any longer and kicked them all to the curb

Well what was the issue? They didn't want to fill out your forms or they didn't want to send you a form to fill back?
I think a friend is just somebody who is willing to give you a little piece of their day in exchange for the simple pleasure of spending time with you.
You can be friends with different kinds of people in different ways. Maybe there's somebody who you only talk about sports with, or anime, or strange court cases.
If you already thoroughly know somebody, how are they going to surprise you, how are they going to teach you anything? Making them fill out a form to give you the information you care about is in a way spoiling the fun out of the friendship. Ideally this is somebody you can be sincere with and you can be humble with, you are not worrying over the way you are phrasing your thoughts not to sound dumb or offensive, in a way one would rewrite a paragraph to avoid modding on themotte.

If the spreadsheet-filling game is a core friendship need for you, I'd suggest frequenting fans of map-coloring or 'productivity' games like factorio, I assume they'd be more likely to be into spreadsheets.

Well, what was the issue?

I hated myself more and more for continuing to interact with them in a close, friendly manner despite disliking them. (See my flair.)

They didn't want to fill out your forms or they didn't want to send you a form to fill back?

Making them fill out a form

spreadsheet-filling game

I think you've misunderstood what I said. The participants in my pseudo-friendships didn't send forms full of questions back and forth. Rather, we sent each other questions and answers via Facebook messages, perhaps one to five at a time. The spreadsheet was only a tool to ensure that both parties participated more or less equally, rather than allowing (or forcing) one person to spam a zillion questions.

While I was not necessarily implying that you were literally making people fill forms, sending questions back and forth is loosely similar, considering that that is not how people usually communicate.
Consider how people go to a therapist for talk therapy, not 'answering questions' therapy, which could potentially be a more effective way of systematically diagnosing and treating mental illness.

The ideal conversation for me is that they tell me something sincere, that matters to them, that strikes my interest and for which I can find an interesting aspect to ask about. Then they can fill in some details, and perhaps I have some kind of related experience I can bring up that could be of interest to them. If they don't respond in a way that indicate that they have interest in what I'm bringing up, then we can stay silent, or go back to the previous topic with a different angle, or try something else.

Reading some of your questions, I don't really know where the conversation possibly could go from there.

Do you have a preference for the texture of facial tissues when you use them to wipe your nose?

Are we trying to find out if I have some kind of touch sensitivity? Unless you're a genetics researcher looking for people with a specific phenotypic trait to sample, I don't get what's the point of this question.

Why did you dislike the people you attempted friendship with?
You clearly have a social side considering your communications here, but you have standards I don't understand and you're not satisfied with what you're getting.

Reading some of your questions, I don't really know where the conversation possibly could go from there.

Do you have a preference for the texture of facial tissues when you use them to wipe your nose?

Are we trying to find out if I have some kind of touch sensitivity?

That particular question actually was asked by the other party (Pseudo-Friend Six), not by me. (I'm referring back to the original spreadsheet in saying this, as I did not copy from the spreadsheet to the Pastebin text file the identity of who asked each question. Remember that approximately half of the questions in that text file were asked by each party.)

Why did you dislike the people you attempted friendship with?

It's been more than a decade since all my pseudo-friendships were terminated, so it's hard to remember specifics. But in general: In the long term, there always end up being far more reasons to dislike (or at least distrust) a person than to like him.

Example reasons to dislike a person:

  • Is religious

  • Uses "they" as a singular pronoun for a person of unknown gender

  • Uses line breaks rather than paragraphs for no good reason, on a platform that differentiates between them (e. g., Markdown or raw HTML, not email or BBcode)

  • Places a hyphen between a number and its associated noun for no good reason (e. g., "after 10-years of imprisonment" rather than "after 10 years of imprisonment"; note that "a 10-year term of imprisonment" is fine)

  • Has authoritarian political views

And of course anybody who disagrees with you at all, even on something as minor as favorite food or preferred HVAC temperature, must be distrusted at least a little.

Has authoritarian political views

I find it amusing that you'd have such criteria when 2 or 3 of your other criteria sound like something a grammar-nazi would care about. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I suppose you can find some grammar-appreciative people to be friends with, perhaps in the editing or copy proofing world?
I used to be more mindful of language rules myself.
Now there are language mistakes that I like. How my daughter says 'bloopy' instead of 'bluey' and calls her brother by the second half of his name. How endearing! Perhaps if you care to not be so hung up on what most people consider trivial language mistakes, taking up a foreign language would help?
When you are the one desperately trying to express yourself in a foreign language, begging native speakers not to immediately switch to English or ignore you, perhaps you will feel more inclined to be magnanimous toward others' mistakes?

Is religious

What's the problem with that? We all hold some beliefs we can't justify from the ground up. I've never seen Antarctica, I have to believe that it exists if anybody talks about it.

And of course anybody who disagrees with you at all, even on something as minor as favorite food or preferred HVAC temperature, must be distrusted at least a little.

Distrusted in what sense?
Do I trust that they will keep the AC at the exact 'right' temperature when I'm not around and they have control of the thermostat? Perhaps not, but why 'dislike' them for that?
I think it's important to respect that other people's preferences might be as arbitrary/determined as mine, and I shouldn't dislike them for that. Unless we're talking about extreme levels of causing discomfort to others.

Has authoritarian political views

I find it amusing that you'd have such criteria when two or three of your other criteria sound like something a grammar Nazi would care about.

Is religious

What's the problem with that? We all hold some beliefs we can't justify from the ground up. I've never seen Antarctica, but I have to believe that it exists if anybody talks about it.

People who make things worse for everybody else:

  • Those who deny the validity of scientific investigation (including supply and demand)

  • Those who don't bother to avoid ambiguity (i. e., foisting onto others the burden of reconstructing their intended meaning) in communication

And of course anybody who disagrees with you at all, even on something as minor as favorite food or preferred HVAC temperature, must be distrusted at least a little.

Distrusted in what sense?

For Alfred to assume that his random classmate/coworker/whatever Beatrice agrees with him on everything is charitable, but naive. Inevitably, if Alfred interacts with Beatrice, he will learn that she disagrees with him on minor topics—perhaps a few, perhaps a zillion.

If Beatrice disagrees with Alfred on a zillion minor topics, those minor disagreements are not in themselves sufficient cause for Alfred to dislike Beatrice. However, those minor disagreements do indicate an underlying difference between Alfred and Beatrice, and should lead Alfred to assume that Beatrice probably disagrees with Alfred on a zillion major topics as well—i. e., to distrust Beatrice. Even if those major topics are not known to Alfred, it is well-advised for him to assume that, if he bothers to learn more about Beatrice, then he eventually will come to learn her opinions on those major topics, and to dislike her. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Those who deny the validity of scientific investigation (including supply and demand)

Well there's all kind of scientific investigation. Is scientific investigation the highest course of action no matter what? Should we be scientifically investigating something right now instead of having a conversation?

Those who don't bother to avoid ambiguity

There's a trade-off between avoiding ambiguity and time. Users of this website are obsessed with avoiding ambiguity but it makes every discussion longer to read / longer to respond to.

Even if those major topics are not known to Alfred, it is well-advised for him to assume that, if he bothers to learn more about Beatrice, then he eventually will come to learn her opinions on those major topics, and to dislike her.

The implication being that if you get to know somebody you will inevitably end up disliking them. While I don't think that is necessarily true, if you do believe that to be true, why do you want to speedrun that inevitability by throwing lists of questions at them?
You should enjoy not knowing them that well for as long as you can.
Also if you stopped constantly inquiring about various topics you would be less likely to form an opinion that would lead you to dislike somebody over it. ie touch grass

I mentioned this in one of the last AI culture war threads, but I've decided to use some of my vacation time to have Claude code a game for me. I went with tactical RPG (Final Fantasy Tactics inspired) for my genre.

I'm having a lot of fun with it. I'm focusing entirely on the game design part, so much so that I haven't even looked at the code. Will the code end up being a mess? Maybe. Will this game ever be finished? Probably not.

/images/17891648231560235.webp

Can Claude write a story for FFT minus the Lucavi Zodiac demons? The political intrigue and backstabbing was the best part of the plot to me, the fantasy demons were honestly a distraction.

KISS is fun, right? Everyone likes KISS.

Okay, maybe not, but I think they get way too much crap. Their '74-'77 material has the classic 70s dual guitar sound and is generally fun. Sure, they rapidly descended into rock star excess and became horrible parodies of themselves, but the early stuff has plenty of highlights.

Some videos from The Midnight Special in July 1975:

  1. Deuce. Simmons almost rolls his ankle in his giant boots around 0:07 but recovers, so it's okay to laugh at the almost-disaster.

  2. She. Note Frehley ripping some two-handed tapping during his solo.

  3. Black Diamond. Simmons carefully moving the mic out of the way around 3:25 cracks me up.

hmmmm, the SS part of their band logo looks like the nazi SS thing.

They were Jewish but I’m not sure it was intentional, actually I googled it and apparently there was some controversy.

I just read a Chuck Klosterman novel with some of his articles and one of them was about KISS and how they’re his favorite band - which I remember him talking about before but forgot and it blew my mind.

So I listened to some off the non hit albums and yea, pretty good !

Kiss is unironically one of the best disco bands in history.

It’s time for my annual listen of Cat System Corp’s News at 11. Looking at the comments, I am far from the only one. If you aren’t familiar, it’s a vaporwave album filled with clips of shows and news reports in the moments leading up to the attack, cutting off seconds before it is announced. The author has stated in an interview that the album is an attempt to suspend history in a moment, right before the peaceful days ended. It’s an interesting read and I recommend it if you’re interested in the subject. I find it especially fascinating since the artist is Dutch, yet the impact of 9/11 seems no less haunting for him.

I was very young when 9/11 happened. My memory of it is more a memory of my mother’s reaction; we were in the living room, and something on the tv had happened that had her distraught. I remember that very clearly. It wasn’t until I grew older that I really understood the event that would frame the rest of my childhood.

Another piece of media I revisit each year on this day is That episode of Lain that aired after 9/11. There’s something especially haunting about this one, something that captures the feeling of that time to me. It feels like falling leaves, the air growing colder, “visiting the doctor on a school day” as one commenter put it. I didn’t witness this as it was broadcast, but I can so easily imagine myself doing so; being a child and sitting in front of the tv as this strange cartoon broke the scheduled programming, not truly understanding the meaning behind the words scrolling across the screen. It’s almost pure simulacra on every level, but no less meaningful for me.

It’s been 25 years now, and as difficult to grasp as that is to me, I know it will be much more so for many of you here who were older when it happened. The world has changed so much, not just technologically, but in our attitudes as well. Sometimes, I will watch ground level footage on YouTube of when the towers fell, or footage of news stations covering the event. It is difficult to imagine us reacting the same way as a country should a similar event happen today, in a post Internet post irony poisoned culture war environment. Would that shock and anger express itself the same way? Would we just shrug and move on? Would we argue over whether it was a good thing or deserved?

I’m not sure. To all of you — do you have any rituals or traditions like this? Media you go back to, or ways of commemorating the tragedy to yourself? Those outside of America, do the events of 25 years ago hold significance to you at all, like they did for the Dutch artist behind News at 11?

OpenAI is name-mogging Anthropic.

It wasn't too long ago that the reverse was true. With OpenAI you had models like "text-davinci-003", "GPT-4o mini" and "o1-preview". And their flagship product, ChatGPT, was created by accident with an accidental name as well.

Meanwhile with Anthropic, you had "Opus", "Sonnet", and "Haiku", fun and illustrative words to demonstrate the sizes of the different models. They obviously missed an opportunity to create a porn-centric "Limerick" model, but we can't really fault them for that. Anthropic's nominative dominance peaked earlier this year with the release of "Mythos", a model which was so powerful they had to hold it back for testing, not because of lack of compute, never that, but because of the extreme danger such a powerful, nay Mythical, model might pose to humanity. Sadly, you didn't get to use Mythos. Instead you got a version called Fable, which is like a bedtime story for children. Don't act out though, because if you say the naughty words, you get downgraded to Opus, which is now considered trash.

OpenAI meanwhile got its mojo back with its 5.6 models, named "Luna", "Terra", and "Sol" model. Okay, obviously they are stealing Anthropic's small, normal, big convention but this naming scheme has legs. That was demonstrated when they released GPT-6 "Astra". Now that's a frickin' cool name.

Rumor is the next version will be called "Aeon", which is a step backward in my book, but they've got some potential big guns to release in the future. GPT 7 – "Nova". GPT 7.1 - "Supernova". They're unlikely to use "Galaxy" due to the Samsung connection, but your own personal bot swarm might be GPT 7.2 - "Constellation". All of this sets the stage for the final hurrah GPT 8 - "Light Cone".

Anthropic's IPO is on the rocks. What can they do to reclaim nominative dominance?

They need to name a model "Black Hole" just before they start defaulting on their contracts and are unable to meet their financial obligations.

Rumor is the next version will be called "Aeon", which is a step backward in my book

To be followed by the Demiurge model? I'm not sure I like where this is heading.

Sorry, but Astra isn't a good name. It just means "star". We've got Sol already.

Astra is a cool name but it does create the risk of #asstra when they nerf it.

We’ve got Sol already.

If it ever asks you to authenticate.

Having any non-Sol star within your grasp is obviously cooler than just Sol.

I hate to over-explain, but the luna/terra/sol name ladder is not in order of how easy it is to grasp.

>OpenAI
>Models aren't open

>Anthropic

>Wants to end the human era on Earth

>X AI
>does nothing

Well, I guess this checks out at least

I'mma let you finish, but Misstral / Mistrial has the most useless AI product of all time.

An acquaintance is temporarily losing his band's bassist and has asked me to fill for several shows over the next two months. I said yes as a personal favor to him, and now I'm ass-deep in an entirely new repertoire which mostly consists of 1970s - 1980s rock and pop.

It's really interesting to see how musical composition has developed over the last 50 years.

Take Warren Zevon's "Splendid Isolation": it has a lot going on. The track contains harmonica, multi-voice vocals, guitar, bass, piano all in the same piece. Despite that, it feels noticeably more "open" and than a lot of modern music. Rather than anchoring the song on guitar riffs, Zevon anchors it on a simple backbeat and a repetitive bass riff on the bottom end. Once he establishes the groove, he uses the harmonica and piano sparingly on the high end, but leaves a space in the sonic environment for vocals that's big enough to drive a truck through.

It's not a style you really see anymore. Like a a few other things, Phil Spector killed it.

That punchline was so good I suspect the rest of the post of being a setup!

I'm actually being earnest in the post. The evolution of music composition is something I find fascinating.

I'm also never going to pass up a tasteless joke, though.

More "Friday" than "Fun", but my fault for not thinking to ask last Sunday:

What's the best short (ideally 10-30min) video documentary/summary of the events of 9/11? I ran across the Tom-Hanks-narrated "Boatlift" and showed my kids a few nights ago, and that was excellent but covers only a small part of the story.

Not exactly what you’re asking, but I’d probably just show them news clips from that day. The shocking plane accident (maybe terrorism?), the second plane hitting the building, Bush being informed of the attack, the Pentagon being hit, confusion around the fourth plane, Bush’s speech, members of Congress returning to the Capitol and spontaneously singing “God bless America,” reactions from the UN and other countries, and so on. Give them something of the feel of the event as it was happening. You can probably fill in details about al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc., on your own.

Give them something of the feel of the event as it was happening.

I've been considering this. https://x.com/25YearsAgoLive (mirror) seems to cover (and re-enact) the level of confusion in a way that doesn't get reflected as well by documentaries written in hindsight.

"The fire at the North Tower of the World Trade Center has spread, and the hole is certainly the size of a larger plane than a Cessna, as has been previously reported.

CNN Vice President of Finance Sean Murtaugh says that he saw a Boeing 747 fly “straight and deliberately” into the Tower, which would make this an unprecedentedly-disastrous and tragic accident."

Any of the Corbett report ones are the best. My personal favorite is follow the money but I think that’s a bit longer

This might fit better on sunday, but it's not sunday, and the topic is mostly for fun anyway, so here it goes. Who here generates images/comics with AI? What are you using/recommending?

I'm currently trying to generate a small comic book. The idea is, every time we watch a movie or series together and my daughter sees someone do something that would be a bad idea IRL, she says that's dumb, and she would just stay home and eat cookies (or whatever else is appropriate for the situation; In another movie, she basically just said she wouldn't save the princess, bc she got into the mess through her own stupidity).

So as a gift, maybe for christmas or birthday, I thought about making a short picture book titled "[daughter] doesn't go adventuring", where on every side there is a different well-known story, with my daughter as the main char, and she just refuses about everything in a blunt, matter-of-fact way. There's gotta be some small twist somewhere I'm not sure about yet though, otherwise it's going to be to boring.

But unfortunately I'm hitting a roadblock much earlier. Namely, the (chatgpt for now) AI is extremely trigger-happy to block pic gen for popular movies and the like in anything even just approaching the original artstyle. It only seems to work for the super-generic AI style that I don't want to use. I'm currently trying some workarounds, but it's tedious and seems to involve first starting with an original image and then progressively moving that into the desired direction with very specific prompts like "crisp inked outlines", "flatter color palette" and "simplified background".

Also, even after modification, it's recognizably AI drawn, but that is fine by me for now.

Seaart.ai gives zero fucks about IP. It's free for about 10 images a day.

/images/1789142942365896.webp

I mostly stopped using AI to generate humorous images after they finally fixed the "generate a cartoon sponge character" loophole.

I find that it's helpful to attach a reference image and ask it to copy the art style closely, on ChatGPT or Gemini. Much more effective than verbally describing the style. You can use multiple different references, in case you don't want it to crib too closely.

I hired a human artist for a similar project once. It might be worth looking into, depending on the art style that you want and the size of the project. For simple projects, it can be cheaper, faster, and easier than you might think.

Try Fooocus. With Pony and the right LoRA, you can insert any character or copy any style you want. Find LoRAs on Civitai.

Guidance for generating images with uncensored/decensored AI models is available in the "Local Diffusion General" and "Stable Diffusion General" threads on 4chan's technology board. (I haven't personally tried it.)

I'd like to stick with non-local models at first, since it's otherwise very convenient. It really feels like working with a personal artist. But yeah, that's an option for the future.

To clarify, the /sdg/ thread provides links to uncensored non-local services.

  • A person has been convicted of "sexual battery". He is on the sex-offender list, and is required to register his "place of employment" with the county sheriff's office. His employer is a janitorial service: every day he shows up at a central location and is transported by the company to an assigned jobsite. He registers the central location as his place of employment.

  • The service assigns him to work at a children's camp in a different county. After several weeks of being transported to that location every day, he is charged with the felony of failing to update his registered workplace. He argues that (1) the law is unconstitutionally vague, and (2) it defies common sense for the law to require him to update his registered place of employment every time his employer changes his jobsite. But the trial judge rejects his arguments, and he pleads no contest and is sentenced to three years of probation. The appeals panel and the state supreme court affirm.

Originally published in year 1727, recently uploaded to Project Gutenberg:

The BENEFIT of FARTING EXPLAIN'D:
OR, THE FUNDAMENT-all CAUSE of the Distempers incident to the Fair Sex Inquir'd into:
Proving à Posteriori most of the Disordures in-tail'd on them are owing to Flatulencies not seasonably vented.
Wrote in Spanish, by Don Fart-in hando Puff-indorst Professor of Bumbast in the University of Craccow.
AND Translated into English at the Request and for the Use of the Lady Damp-Fart, of Her-fart-shire.
The Thirteenth Edition, with Additions, revis'd by a College of Phyzz-icians, and approved by several Ladies of Quality.
To which is added, a Certificate of its Virtues, from the Court of the Princess ARSEMINI.
Together with some Verses on a Lady's Fart, in the Philippic strain.
ALSO a Meditation on T——d, wrote in a Place of EASE.

(It appears that "T——d" stands for "Turd".)

  • 1967: A railroad company acquires a railroad line, including a tunnel. (I can't figure out the tunnel's exact location, but it's somewhere in this rectangle.)

  • 2000–2001: The company asks the federal STB (Surface Transportation Board) for permission to abandon service on the line. The STB grants permission.

  • 2001–2002: The company asks the state PUC (Public Utility Commission) for permission to "abolish" 29 rail crossings, including the tunnel. However, the PUC grants permission to abolish only 27 crossings. The two remaining crossings, including the tunnel, cannot be abolished because negotiations between the company and the state DOT (Dept. of Transportation) for "final disposition" are ongoing.

  • 2002, later: Despite lacking the PUC's permission, the company sells to a third party a large property that contains the tunnel.

  • 2012: The PUC erroneously assumes that all 29 crossings have been abolished by now, and closes the case.

  • 2019–2025: The PUC opens a new investigation of the tunnel, which has fallen into disrepair. It finds that the company cannot weasel out of responsibility just because it sold the tunnel (without govt. permission) back in 2002. It assigns to the company 2.8 M$ of repair costs, as well as future maintenance costs.

  • 2026: The appeals panel affirms.

Weird anecdote:

>Be me
>Visit 85-year-old grandfather
>He complains that he hasn't been feeling very motivated to do stuff lately
>Ramble at him regarding how designing code-compliant houses and subdivisions is a fun retirement hobby
>He mentions that his uncle gave him two vacant lots in Florida a while ago (he lives in New J⁎rsey), but he doesn't want to give them to anybody else because the property tax would be a burden
>Look up the county property records later
>Somebody (presumably grandfather's uncle) bought the lots for 4 k$ in 1977, and gave them to grandfather for free in 1984
>For each lot, assessed value is 30 k$, and "burdensome" property tax is 300 dollars per year
>This fogey has been letting perfectly good land sit overgrown, 900 miles away from him, for literally 40 years without either building something on it or selling it
>MFW
>Send him an email explaining that the lots are buildable under the municipality's zoning code (minimum house size 1200 ft2—example design is attached), but I would just sell them since they're so far away

This map shows the location of the tunnel under Route 268. It is a very short tunnel.

Sex offender case is interesting. I am not sure how burdensome registering is, but my first instinct was that it's pretty unfair to have to register where you are when that changes daily. If anyone should be managing the sex offender registration for an employee that works in various places, it should be the cleaning service or the criminal-employee NGO that's facilitating the work. And either of those entities shouldn't be sending sex offenders to clean up children's camps.

For those curious, the sexual battery charge was probably a plea deal from raping 2 kids under 10: https://sanduskyregister.com/news/31340/man-accused-of-raping-2-children-arrested/

2019–2025: The PUC opens a new investigation of the tunnel, which has fallen into disrepair. It finds that the company cannot weasel out of responsibility just because it sold the tunnel (without govt. permission) back in 2002. It assigns to the company 2.8 M$ of repair costs, as well as future maintenance costs.

Why does it matter if a disused tunnel is in disrepair?

This fogey has been letting perfectly good land sit overgrown, 900 miles away from him, for literally 40 years without either building something on it or selling it

How much do you think the land is worth?

Why does it matter if a disused tunnel is in disrepair?

The opinion indicates that the tunnel's failure is causing subsidence in a roadway above it.

How much do you think the land is worth?

As I said above, each of the two lots is assessed by the county govt. at 30 k$. Zillow does not have Zestimates for them, but does show that many comparable lots within a few hundred feet have recently sold for 30–40 k$.

Finally, a fitting companion to Ben Franklin’s Letter to the Royal Academy.

good land sit overgrown

I assume since gramps hasn't been getting constant notices about the lawn being overgrown, they are not in an incorporated area?

lots are buildable

Like based off of minimum size and setbacks, or did you also check the hydrology? Selling someone an unseen ½-acre (20 Qb) parcel of Florida swamp is a tale as old as time.

I would just sell them

fun retirement hobby

Since you are retired and associated with New J⁎rsey, aren't you constitutionally required to snowbird, even if you hardly go outside of your climate-controlled shack?

I assume since gramps hasn't been getting constant notices about the lawn being overgrown, they are not in an incorporated area?

They are in a municipality. They're filled with trees, not just bushes, so I guess they've been promoted from "unkempt lawn" to "random patch of forest".

Like based off of minimum size and setbacks, or did you also check the hydrology?

They are surrounded by houses, and do not appear to be in a federally-designated flood zone or a state-designated wetland.

Since you are retired and associated with New J⁎rsey, aren't you constitutionally required to snowbird, even if you hardly go outside of your climate-controlled shack?

(1) If I had known about these properties prior to buying land in Pennsylvania, I might have considered purchasing one (though I'm not a big fan of living in Hurricane Land). But I definitely am not rich enough to own two houses.

(2) Infuriatingly, my climate-controlled shack STILL is not complete, as the electric company needs to upgrade the transformer on the nearest utility pole before it can provide service. It's now two months past the "tentative completion date" in the contract.

If I had known about these properties prior to buying land in Pennsylvania, I might have considered purchasing one (though I'm not a big fan of living in Hurricane Land). But I definitely am not rich enough to own two houses.

"Florida real-estate developer" seems like a great intersection with your retirement hobby tho?

I don't have a college certificate on the topic. But, as I understand it, the business of single-family-residential real-estate development consists of several different paths.

(1) Buy a medium-sized lot; subdivide it into a few small lots; and (a) sell the small lots to people who want to build custom houses, or (b) collaborate with a homebuilder to build on the small lots "speculative" houses that you'll sell to people who want to buy new houses.

(2) Buy a large lot; subdivide it into many small lots, plus drainage features and new roads; give the new roads to the municipality; give the drainage features to a homeowners' association; and (a) sell the small lots to people who want to build custom houses, or (b) collaborate with a homebuilder to build on the small lots "speculative" houses that you'll sell to people who want to buy new houses (getting a bulk discount with the homebuilder either way).

Regarding options 1b and 2b, people tend to dislike my house designs. Regarding all four options, I do not have access to a small loan of one million dollars.

Nah, you can totally buy a single lot and contract the building (on spec) with reasonable margins -- my wife did it for quite a few years. You just need enough seed for the bank to write you the construction loan, and a real estate market that isn't actively dropping. (I think Florida is mostly OK ATM?)

In your case I would definitely include an architect in the budget (or just buy some blueprints from Jenish or something) -- it's not so much that your designs are terrible, it's just that they are pretty specific to your tastes. This will make your house hard to sell, but I'm pretty sure you could build one that isn't.

Nah, you can totally buy a single lot and contract the building (on spec) with reasonable margins—my wife did it for quite a few years.

This doesn't make sense to me, though.

  • I can see why a consumer would want to take advantage of the economies of scale inherent in buying a speculative house in a large subdivision.

  • And I can see why a consumer would want to avoid the hassle of buying a medium-sized lot, subdividing out just the small piece that he wants to build on, and selling the rest of the lot back into the market.

  • But why would a consumer buy a developer's random spec house with no economies of scale and no subdivision, when he can just get a construction loan that converts into a mortgage all by himself? My own experience shows that getting a custom house built involves some hassle, but it isn't that much hassle (so far, at least), and it must be far outweighed by the comfort of having designed precisely to your preferences the home that you will inhabit for the next several decades.

But why would a consumer buy a developer's random spec house with no economies of scale and no subdivision, when he can just get a construction loan that converts into a mortgage all by himself?

Most people are afraid of it, and/or aren't competent to get it done themselves -- seems to me that you kind of like it (in a pig-wrestling way) and are certainly competent.

As you say it's not that much work; seems like a feasible hobby is all I'm saying.

General contractor margins tend to be in the 30%+ range for custom work (custom work is a PITA; I personally would want more!) -- if you come off as a pro doing a spec house and say "just get these plans done" they will build it for a lot less; the difference is your margin.

Check out Zillow on existing houses and go get a quote I guess?

a small loan of one million dollars.

Almost $10MM now, using CPI adjustment.

people tend to dislike my house designs

Assuming you could solve the "small" problem of how capital-intensive this is, there's probably some class of people looking for custom houses where they have an off-the-shelf plan requiring modification / site-specific edits or something in mind and need someone to make plans and stamp them. I don't recall if you are/were a Civil PE, but I assume it would not be an automatic transfer to Gatorland SE anyway. Though I think their structural engineering recognition program is supposedly less onerous than some other states, excepting the hurricane/wind-loading note you already made. The prospective clients would presumably also be expecting you to handle most of the project management stuff too. But this is all starting to look like real work and not a retirement hobby at that point.

I don't recall whether you are/were a Civil PE

I technically am eligible to take the exam and obtain a professional engineer's license, but while I was employed I saw no reason to go through the process, since my employer offered no incentive for it. Previous discussion

(It was hilarious to see all the best employees constantly leaving for private employment in part due to this reason. Compare this recent announcement of special bonuses, and even special positions, for licensed employees at NYSDOT.)

If he plays his cards right, maybe he can secure the Republican nomination in twenty years?

I have seen Florida subdivisions built around drainage (alligator storage) systems about the size of a lot. It’s a possibility.

According to the federal and state GIS maps, the nearest flood zone is 900 feet away, and the nearest wetland is 1000 feet away.

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