ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12hr ago
In a 100-page court opinion, six of the New Jersey Supreme Court's seven justices go on a deep dive regarding SBS/AHT (shaken-baby syndrome/abusive head trauma), and conclude that there is insufficient scientific evidence to support the pronouncement of the prosecutor's expert witness that "the only explanation for the children's symptoms, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, was that the children were shaken by the caregivers" (in these two consolidated cases, the children's fathers).
The State has not met its burden of establishing general acceptance in the relevant scientific communities because the research, studies, and testimony presented at the hearing reflect a lack of general acceptance in the biomechanical community regarding SBS/AHT without impact [as opposed to shaking with impact]. There is evidence of general acceptance by many in the medical community, but the State must also establish general acceptance in the biomechanical community, and it has failed to do so.
Surely, if there is physical evidence of trauma to a child or other evidence of abuse, the State can present such evidence to a jury. And, if new, reliable, scientific evidence is developed, the State can, of course, in a future case, make a showing under the Daubert standard this Court adopted in Olenowski I, that expert testimony regarding SBS/AHT without impact is reliable. In such a case, scientific evidence and research, both old and new, could be presented and considered. Science is constantly evolving, so the door is not forever closed on making such a showing of reliability
There is no dispute that child abuse is a serious and unacceptably cruel act against the most vulnerable and innocent in our society. There is no dispute that, when a young child presents at a hospital or other medical facility with symptoms including subdural hematomas, retinal hemorrhages, and encephalopathy, such symptoms present a worrisome and urgent situation. No one disputes that medical professionals, including pediatricians, radiologists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, ophthalmologists, and more perform admirable work every single day to care for severely ill children who present with the symptoms associated with SBS/AHT.
The question before this Court, however, is whether the State has met its burden of proving that an expert should be allowed to take the witness stand and testify, not only about the injuries observed on a child through medical examinations and tests, but also that the only explanation for those injuries is child abuse. We hold that the State has not met that burden, and that Dr. Medina's testimony is therefore unreliable and inadmissible at trial.
The lone dissenting justice spends another fifty pages arguing (inter alia) that (1) SBS/AHT is far more scientific than the other medical diagnoses that have been rejected by the court under the same standard (identifiable character traits common to rapists, voiceprint analysis, estimating a person's height from the size of his shoes, hypnotically refreshed testimony, child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome, and Alcotest machines calibrated without an NIST-traceable digital thermometer) and (2) completely banning expert testimony on SBS/AHT, rather than permitting the jury to decide between competing experts at trial, is an excessively harsh sanction.
The [Consensus Statement on Abusive Head Trauma in Infants and Young Children] was endorsed by the national and international professional societies of every major discipline involved in the diagnosis and treatment of SBS/AHT. That includes the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Society of Pediatric Neuroradiology, the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, the Executive Committee of the American College of Radiology, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, the European Society of Neuroradiology, the Swedish Paediatric Society, the Norwegian Pediatric Association, the Japanese Pediatric Society, the Society for Pediatric Radiology, the European Society of Paediatric Radiology, the Sociedad Latino Americana de Radiología Pediátrica, the Société Francophone d'Imagerie Pédiatrique et Prénatale, the Asian and Oceanic Society for Paediatric Radiology, and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Paediatric Radiology.
This more than suffices to show that SBS/AHT is generally accepted in every major discipline involved in its diagnosis and treatment: pediatrics, child abuse pediatrics, neurology, neuroradiology, neurosurgery, radiology, ophthalmology, and emergency medicine.
I note the sweep of the majority's decision. Acknowledging a debate and granting a new trial to allow experts to dispute the merits of a particular medical diagnosis is entirely different from prohibiting a trial from taking place at all. The majority has chosen the latter, holding that "expert testimony regarding SBS/AHT without impact… cannot be admitted at trial".
Under the majority's rule, unless "new, reliable, scientific evidence is developed… that expert testimony regarding SBS/AHT without impact is reliable", no person in New Jersey can be charged with child abuse for shaking or slamming an infant unless external evidence of impact is present. Similarly, the Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCPP) will no longer be able to bring Title 9 proceedings in such cases. The Attorney General and DCPP warn that this will be "a significant setback to public safety" and will "hamper DCPP's ability to fulfill its responsibilities… to 'immediately take such action as shall be necessary to insure the safety of the child' upon receiving a report of [child] abuse".
In my view, a better approach would be to allow a full exchange between experts on the merits of an SBS/AHT diagnosis in any particular case.
This case should inspire judicial modesty. It should call to mind Chief Justice Rehnquist’s warning that judges resist the temptation to believe themselves "amateur scientists". Yet the majority "step[s] beyond its role as gatekeeper of relevant and reliable information, and instead act[s] as the final arbiter of the correctness of Dr. Van Ee's" and other experts' conclusions. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
ToaKraka
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13hr ago
I realize that this probably is a joke (and if so it's a hilarious one), but just to avoid confusion I will link to the actual website.
ToaKraka
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14hr ago
A development tangentially related to a court case that I posted a few weeks ago: On roads where cyclists are present, the government of the UKGBNI is now discouraging the construction of 12-foot (3.65-meter) traffic lanes, which have been standard for approximately 150 years, under the rationale that they encourage motorists to pass cyclists in an unsafe manner (closer than the 4′11″ (1.5 m) that is required under the law). Under the new guidance, lanes should be (1) 10′8″ (3.25 m) or narrower, in order to make it clear that motorists should not try to pass cyclists, or (2) 12′10″ (3.9 m) or wider, so that motorists can pass cyclists safely. Critics point out that in most cases right-of-way constraints prevent existing lanes from being widened, so in practice this will force local governments to make existing lanes narrower in order to get funding for road-maintenance projects.
ToaKraka
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18hr ago
OMB accepts the recommendation to combine the separate questions on race and ethnicity into a single combined race and ethnicity question. Because respondents may perceive categories like Hispanic or Latino or MENA as either a race or ethnicity, the revised SPD 15 requires agencies to treat the categories equally and report them as “race and/or ethnicity” categories.
"Middle Eastern or North African" also has been separated out from "white".
ToaKraka
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1d ago
& #x223c; (without the space) = & sim; (without the space) = ∼
ToaKraka
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1d ago
All my money buys me a modest single family home where I live.
ToaKraka
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1d ago
ToaKraka
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1d ago
What Markdown still wrecks for me is the use of "[tilde]40" to indicate that the number is a loose approximation, which then sometimes turns into a big strikethrough if I use it a second time. Unicode gives us ≈, but that doesn't feel right to me when there's nothing to the left of it.
Fun fact: You can use the code charts (or software like BabelMap) to find official alternatives for problematic characters.
Alternatives to 007E ~ tilde (HTML named character reference Tilde) (not including combining characters):
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02DC ˜ small tilde (HTML named character reference
tilde) -
2053 ⁓ swung dash
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223C ∼ tilde operator (HTML named character reference
sim) -
2E1B ⸛ tilde with ring above
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2E2F ⸯ vertical tilde
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301C 〜 wave dash
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FF5E ～ fullwidth tilde
Obviously, HTML named character references are a lot easier to remember than hexadecimal representations, so & sim; (without the space) probably is the best alternative for use on this website.
It appears that bankruptcy fraud is a crime (1 2) punishable by a sentence of up to five years in prison. (The federal Sentencing Guidelines prescribe a minimum offense level of 10 for fraud of up to 15 k$ (base 6 for fraud, plus 2 for loss up to 15 k$, plus 2 for bankruptcy fraud). This corresponds to an actual sentence of 6 to 12 months for an offender with no criminal history.)
ToaKraka
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1d ago
28
low 7 figures saved up
That should be more than enough for you to retire.
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Expenses of a single man with income less than 15 k$/a: 26 k$/a
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Withdrawal rate: 26 k$/a ÷ 1 M$ = 2.6 %/a, which is far less than the general recommendation of 4 %/a
I'm not sure where you're getting the 90 cm from.
(4) Except as provided in Sentence (5), openable windows in buildings of residential occupancy shall be protected by
(a) a guard, or
(b) a mechanism that can only be released with the use of tools or special knowledge to control the free swinging or sliding operation of the openable part of the window so as to limit any clear unobstructed opening to not more than 100 mm (3.9″) measured either vertically or horizontally.
(5) Windows need not be protected in accordance with Sentence (4), where the bottom edge of the openable portion of the window is located
(a) more than 900 mm (2′11.4″) above the finished floor, or
(b) less than 1 800 mm (5′10.9″) above the floor or ground on the other side of the window.
ToaKraka
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2d ago
In The Phantom Menace, it seems that slavery is openly practiced on some worlds and the Republic just doesn't give a shit.
The opening crawl for that movie explicitly states: "The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute." Naboo is an outlying star system. Tatooine is even more distant from the capital than Naboo—possibly not even part of the Republic, as indicated by how Watto refuses to take Republic credits. These two systems are not representative of a "glorious republic", any more than Moldova and Transnistria are representative of Europe.
ToaKraka
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2d ago
ToaKraka
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2d ago
I haven't read any Star Wars books in maybe ten years, and The Crystal Star in particular in maybe fifteen years. But I do not remember The Crystal Star's being particularly bad (though I do recall thinking it was rather weird that the Solo twins were able to create light with the Force by vibrating air molecules in their prison cell). The point is that it is among a zillion books that are suitable for movie treatment.
I don't think it's possible to make another great Star Wars movie. All the good ideas were completely used up in the original trilogy. Back in the 90s they made a bunch of books to continue the story, and an awful lot of them were about the emperor coming back to life and then getting taken down again by Luke, Han, and Leia, because what else can you even do?
This is blatant misinformation. Only a single storyline, the comic series Dark Empire, featured a revived Emperor. There were lots of cool Star Wars books, running the gamut from standalone books like The Truce at Bakura, The Crystal Star, and I, Jedi to sprawling series (plural) like Rogue Squadron, New Jedi Order, and Legacy of the Force.
ToaKraka
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3d ago
An r/bogleheads bigwig says otherwise.
The Cash Trap
The way it might play out if you switch from a total bond fund to a cash equivalent is as follows. The economy goes into a recession, and the Fed signals and then implements significant rate cuts—for example, −1.5% over 2 years. Now you’ll find your HYSA or MMF may be suddenly yielding less than 3% while the total bond fund, thanks to its 5–6 year duration, is still yielding close to 5%. So you think you’ll switch back to the total bond fund after that happens. But what you missed is that, when the Fed cut rates, BND’s holdings became more valuable and the price will have shot up. How much? I can’t say exactly. But, as one indication, at the end of October 2023, the Fed only signaled that they were stopping rate increases—not even a signal of actual cuts—and BND’s value jumped 8% in two months.
Think about it—you are contemplating moving money from BND to an MMF to earn maybe 0.75% more yield over the course of a whole year, and when the Fed signals rate pausing BND increases in value by 8% in just 2 months. The December 12–13 Fed meeting alone caused a +1.6% daily increase in BND’s value. So the decision to chase a little more yield could cost you years’ worth of the spread you were trying to capture. As described in this post:
The cash trap describes the risk of investing in short-term bonds or cash instruments at higher rates that ultimately prove temporary. The Federal Reserve eventually cuts rates, and the high short-term yields disappear. Because the securities have short maturities, falling rates do not lead to material price appreciation. Once the securities mature, the cash flow stream withers and investors are left with a much lower return outlook. However, if investors lock in longer-term rates, unlike the short-term options, the yields do not go away. Not only does the cash flow stream stay steady, but the reduction in market rates also leads to price appreciation. The result historically has been significantly higher returns on longer-term securities, despite the lower starting yield.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
I think he mentioned a while ago that he does have a job and this website is just a side project.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF) is an ETF (exchange-traded fund) that covers the entirety of the US stock market. VTSAX (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares) is the mutual-fund equivalent. The previous commenter is recommending that you invest exclusively in US stocks. The more standard advice is to invest in a mixture that trends from 90/10 stocks/bonds (high reward but high risk) when you're working to 70/30 bonds/stocks (low risk but low reward) when you're retired—and also 60/40 US/foreign, so four different component funds in total.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
I tried keeping some friends between approximately 2012 and 2016, but found it not worth the effort.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
I find that extremely hard to believe. The bathroom door and the shower door should never be open at the same time.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
Just leave your doors closed or ajar rather than wide open, and there's no problem.
ToaKraka
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6d ago
D&D is under a Creative Commons license now
This is not a very informative phrasing, because there are several different Creative Commons licenses and some of them are very restrictive. More specifically, D&D is under CC BY 4.0, the Creative Commons attribution-only license, whose restrictions are minimal.
ToaKraka
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6d ago
Is this allowed by the fire code?
I see no prohibition in International Residential Code § R318. It does contravene International Building Code § 1010.1.7, but that doesn't apply to houses.
IMO, it's a terrible way to save space, too.
Maybe if you constantly leave doors wide open rather than ajar or closed. I personally do not do that.
Source, included in the record of a 2016 Senate hearing on this topic by John McCain
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