ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9d ago
I purchased them out of sheer amazement and thankfulness that they exist. I don't have any spare time/energy to play them, though.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9d ago
If you're tired of the unrealistic peace treaties of Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, and Hearts of Iron, one enterprising company has published a board game about the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War One: Versailles 1919. Here are some of the 52 different "issues" that can be resolved as part of the game. (The players are UK, France, USA, and optionally Italy.)
Kurdistan (Middle East, 3 victory points):
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French mandate: +1 to French empire, −1 to USA happiness, +1 to Middle East unrest, +1 to Balkans unrest
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UK mandate: +1 to UK empire, −1 to US happiness, +2 to Middle East unrest
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Independence: +1 to self-determination, −2 to French happiness, +2 to Middle East unrest
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No Kurdistan: (no effect)
Palestine (Middle East, 4 victory points):
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UK mandate: +1 to UK empire, +1 to Middle East unrest
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French mandate: +1 to French empire, −1 to UK happiness, −1 to US happiness, +1 to Middle East unrest
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Arab state: +1 to self-determination, −2 to UK happiness
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Zionist state (28 years early!): +1 to UK happiness, +3 to Middle East unrest
Prussia (Europe, 5 victory points):
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Germany: +1 to industry, −1 to French happiness, +2 to Europe unrest
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Danzig corridor: +1 to German containment, +1 to Europe unrest
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Poland: +2 to German containment, +2 to Europe unrest, −1 to US happiness
Slovenia and Croatia (Balkans, 5 victory points):
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Both independent: +2 to self-determination, +1 to Italy happiness
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Slovenia independent, Croatia in Yugoslavia: +1 to self-determination, −2 to Italy happiness
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Both in Yugoslavia: +1 to German containment, −4 to Italy happiness
If unrest in a region gets too high (perhaps due to an event card—Eleutherios Venizelos, Ho Chi Minh, Ibn Saud, etc.), an uprising may cause a settled issue to become unsettled, requiring a new resolution to be agreed to. But keeping troops mobilized to quash unrest will make your people unhappy.
The same company has also published board games in the same vein for negotiations during (not after) the War of the Sixth Coalition (UK, Austria, Russia, and France) and World War Two (UK, USA, and USSR). These two games have slightly more military action. (Which is more important—achieving your long-term diplomatic goals, or actually defeating the enemy in the short term?) All three of these games have solitaire/bot rules.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9d ago
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Keith allegedly sustains injuries from a car crash in which Carlos is at fault. Keith sues Carlos for damages.
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In federal court, Carlos files for bankruptcy. In state court, Carlos moves to stay (pause) Keith's lawsuit, since Keith's claim must be disposed of as part of the bankruptcy case. Keith opposes the motion, arguing that, since Keith is seeking only Carlos's insurance coverage of 200 k$, and nothing from Carlos's actual funds (which now are part of the bankruptcy estate), Carlos's bankruptcy case will not be affected by Keith's lawsuit. The trial judge accepts Keith's explanation and denies the motion for stay. Likewise, the bankruptcy judge lifts the automatic bankruptcy stay that applies to all demands for payment made against Carlos, solely for purposes of Keith's lawsuit, and explicitly up to a limit of 200 k$. So the lawsuit continues in state court.
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At trial in state court, the jury finds that Carlos is liable to Keith, not just for 200 k$, but for 1.6 M$! Carlos moves to limit the damages award to 200 k$, in accordance with the prior agreement. But the trial judge rejects this argument, claiming that any limits on the verdict are the province of the bankruptcy judge, not of the trial judge.
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By this time, Carlos's bankruptcy case has been completed and closed. Keith goes back to the federal bankruptcy judge and moves that Carlos's bankruptcy case be reopened so that the entirety of Carlos's new 1.6-M$ debt to Keith can be ruled nondischargeable. But the bankruptcy judge rejects this argument. Having agreed that he would not seek more than 200 k$, Keith now is estopped from reneging on that agreement.
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With the bankruptcy judge's opinion in front of him, the state trial judge acknowledges that Carlos need not pay more than 200 k$ to Keith, but still refuses to modify the jury's damages award. Rather, the trial judge thinks that the official damages number should remain listed as 1.6 M$, and Carlos should first pay the 200 k$ and then submit a separate application to discharge the extra 1.4 M$. Carlos does so, but still appeals this rigmarole.
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The state appeals panel reverses and remands for the trial judge to reduce the official damages number to 200 k$, since the bankruptcy judge's stay was limited only to damages not exceeding 200 k$. (This is in 2025, regarding damages from a car crash that occurred in 2018.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10d ago
Just leave your car out in the rain, rather than letting it get dusty in the garage.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10d ago
A female football player (perhaps not literally in a pro league), a female programmer, and a female scrawny person, of course. I don't see the problem.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10d ago
Substack, Substack, Substack! People need to be less obsessed with centralization. Make your own standalone blog.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10d ago
A culture-war-adjacent court opinion that @The_Nybbler may find entertaining:
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An 80-year-old man applies for a permit to buy a rifle. The permit is denied, solely because he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital for four days forty years ago. He applies for expungement of the records of that commitment, so that he can get the permit.
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The judge denies the application for expungement.
T.B.'s problematic interaction with LifeStream staff raised questions in the court's mind about T.B.'s "candor to the [c]ourt and fundamental issues that are here."
[T.B.] told the people [at LifeStream] that he was suffering from anxiety and depression. And he said he did that because that’s what he thought he had to say in order to get this appointment so that he could get the evaluation. And a concern to me is that he was not particularly honest with these folks about why he wanted this evaluation.
In that vein, the judge took issue with T.B.'s dismissive characterization of the nature of his hospitalization at Ancora versus the hospital record—namely, that after questioning the staff released him.
In the report it says, "unable to contain on open unit; violent outbursts; threatening; severely agitated; threatening others; yelling; demanding; attempted to strangle his wife at home; violent outbursts; tried to tear side rails off of the [bed]". So, this is not a man who showed up at Ancora mildly agitated or upset, but was described by the doctors down there as threatening behavior, so agitated they couldn't talk to him and violent outbursts towards the people on the staff there.
Regarding his present condition, the court noted that despite the medical reports stating he was stable, T.B. exhibited signs of memory problems and a lack of awareness regarding his own medication regimen.
[T.B.] doesn’t even know what medication he’s taking for his [d]iabetes or for his high cholesterol situation or his [h]yperlipidemia. And that, to me, speaks volumes about not that he’s dangerous to the public safety, but why would we give an 80-year-old man, who can’t even be responsible for his own health, access to a firearm that he wants to use for target practice with his friends. You know, is he going to forget to put the safety on the firearm when he isn’t at the range doing target practice? Is he going to forget to secure it in his home so that people who come to visit don’t have access to it? That’s what’s really of concern to this court.
- The appeals panel affirms. "The trial court reasonably determined that defendant failed to meet his burden to demonstrate the expungement was in the public interest." No second amendment for him!
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11d ago
it's really annoying
I see that you forgot to disable the warning for 18+ content in your account settings.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11d ago
I was raised evangelical and converted to Orthodoxy and have never heard it suggested that swearing is somehow implicitly sinful.
Wikipedia cites Exodus 20:7 and Deuteronomy 5:11:
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12d ago
@ZorbaTHut, I've made two pull requests in the repository.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
13d ago
There's a button to mark your comment as 18+ after you make it (not while you're editing it), under the ellipsis button at the lower-right corner of the comment.
ToaKraka
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13d ago
What happens if there is a conflict between them?
The linked PAPSS page mentions bylaws, but they do not appear to be posted publicly. Afreximbank's charter (art. 17) states that a dispute between the bank and a member is resolved by a vote of the shareholders (i. e., the members), while a dispute between the bank and a former member is resolved by arbitration.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
13d ago
It is understandable that they may have different interests than the US, and thus want a monetary system that cannot be controlled by the US.
This is just a payment-processing system, not a whole new currency.
The question is, who will be controlling it, then?
PAPSS's governing council appears to be populated by the top officials of the central banks of its member countries. PAPSS operates under the auspices of the African Export–Import Bank, whose board of directors likewise is composed of various central banks' top officials.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
13d ago
This is prompted by [this Matt Yglesias post] talking about abundance politics
You forgot to add the link.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
14d ago
Look closely at the comments. The moderator imposed a ban, not on BurdensomeCount, but on the poster of a filtered reply to BurdensomeCount that you can't read.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
14d ago
This system is for transactions, not for savings. Sending money all the way to a European or Asian bank, and converting it to and from US dollars just so that it can cross a single border within Africa, adds a bunch of extra delay and extra fees.
Delay isn't mentioned in the news article, but an FAQ page on PAPSS's website says:
With Instant payment, participants no longer need to convert local currencies into hard currencies which then entailed the funds leaving Africa to be converted before being sent back again to the beneficiary bank—adding days to the transaction time. In addition, compliance, legal and sanctions checks are performed instantly within the system. Near-instant payments process within 120 seconds.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
14d ago
This company merely provides a method of sending money in different existing non-dollar currencies between different countries, without having to use overseas banks as expensive intermediaries. It has nothing to do with creating a hypothetical new currency as a competitor to the dollar.
Systems like PAPSS allow a business in one country (for example, Zambia) to pay for goods from another (like Kenya) with both buyer and seller receiving payment in their respective currencies rather than converting them into dollars to complete the transaction.
The ideal temperature for human comfort is around 20 °C (68 °F), which is why people set their thermostats around there. Anyone setting his thermostat to anything meaningfully distant from ~20 °C is doing it to save money.
According to my copy of ACCA Manual J (Abridged Edition), which is used by professionals to design HVAC systems: The target values used in design are 70 °F (21 °C) at 30 percent humidity for heating in winter, and 75 °F (24 °C) at 50 percent humidity for cooling in summer. The heating target actually is at the very edge of the "envelope of comfort" (presumably for energy savings), while the cooling target is right in the middle of the envelope, so only the cooling target should be considered the ideal temperature.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
16d ago
Climate data (expand the table)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
16d ago
What is ideal weather like where you are from?
New York–Philadelphia corridor: 70–75 °F (21–24 °C) and sunny
What times of the year do you like the most weather-wise?
The aforementioned temperatures prevail around May and September.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
16d ago
It seems like a pretty obvious joke to me (leading in a straight line from Hoffmeister25's joke and No_one's getting wooshed).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
16d ago
Particularly hilarious is that the father's three sentences were run concurrently, rather than consecutively—so he did not receive any extra penalty for the third pregnancy (or, indeed, for the second one).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
16d ago
Personally, I find it quite amazing and hilarious that hentai plots can regularly be found lurking in real-life court opinions.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
16d ago
Someone charged in my state with sex with two minors under 15 would be held without bond or with a million dollar cash bond.
New Jersey court rules appear to recommend bail of 150 to 300 k$ for this crime. I don't know what the judge's rationale was in not imposing bail.
Someone charged in my state with sex with two minors under 15 would be looking at life in prison with no parole.
Under New Jersey law, the maximum sentence for this crime (sex with a minor under 13, or with a minor between 13 and 15 by a parent/guardian/etc.) is life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. In this case, the criminal received the minimum sentence of 25 years without the possibility of parole, running concurrently for all three instances.
No, it's the limit on the amount that Carlos's insurance would cover.
To clarify: This situation arose solely because Keith was impatient. He asked the two judges to impose the 200-k$ limit because he wanted to get his money ASAP, without waiting for the bankruptcy proceedings to finish.
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