Rov_Scam
21hr ago
I think that one key difference is that your landscaper worked hard to be able to afford that 80k truck, and the fact that it's probably a business expense if he's using it for landscaping and he's making payments that come out of company revenues complicates matters further; relatively poor people who own businesses often have surprisingly expensive pieces of capital equipment or real estate that they wouldn't otherwise own. But even if that's your landscaper's personal vehicle, he didn't just get the money for it as the result of one meeting that didn't involve him doing anything other than making a few phone calls. Asking for preferential treatment during a bidding process probably doesn't result in much more work, if any, than the person with authority has to do anyway. Your landscaper probably does a lot more work for a lot less money in the normal course of business than a corrupt public official does. $2,000 requires at least a solid week of work for most people. There's obviously a premium if the work is illegal, but how much do small-time drug dealers make? What's the overall risk of being caught? The Homan case didn't even involve as much risk as a normal case—if Trump wins and he's in a position to act on the bribe, there's a good chance Trump will kill the investigation. If Harris wins or he doesn't get the position in the Trump administration, then there's no case against him because you can't bribe someone who doesn't have the power to do anything (I will gladly accept $50,000 from anyone here to give them favorable treatment in government contracts). When you break down all the contributing factors and ignore the moral dimension, it would be more surprising if he didn't do it for the relatively large sum of $50,000, which is a good chunk of most Americans' annual income.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Tri bikes aren't really made for riding around town; they're made for riding hard in races where you can't draft. They don't have traditional handlebars but "aero bars" where you lean so far forward your forearms sit on rests. The aggressive aerodynamic design means they aren't comfortable, don't climb well, and don't descend well since you don't have easy access to the brakes. They're made for getting an extra 5% speed advantage on closed race courses, not casual rides on roads with traffic where you're going to have to stop fairly regularly, not once at the end of the ride. In addition to the weight problem noted below, their disadvantages are numerous enough that some tri riders will use regular road bikes, especially if the course involves significant elevation change. On a group ride they would be annoying at best and dangerous at worst.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
I suck on phone keypads generally, so yes,. though my phone keypad isn't laid out like you're suggesting.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
I worked for an inventory service in college and we used machines that were nothing but a numerical keypad with a one-line LCD display, and asa result I'm one of the few people whose typing is mediocre but can scream on the keypad—I use it almost every time I need to put a number in, even if I'm typing something. So I couldn't imagine having a keyboard without one. To be fair, some laptops don't, which incidentally included the ones the supervisor used to download the data and run the reports, so they carried a usb keypad with them to make manual entry easier.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
Alt + 0151 will produce an em dash in whatever program you're using. Alt + 0150 will produce an en dash if you're brave enough to use it.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
The Supreme Court just ruled unanimously that the CRA is not a one-way street, and the same standards apply regardless of whether the plaintiff is a member of a minority group.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
For al milquetoast speaker the media networks memorializing him are suspiciously avoiding showing clips of him saying anything.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
You can talk about edge cases all you want, but there's a Chesterton's Fence element here too. Hostile work environment doctrine was introduced to prevent employers from evading discrimination laws by, say, hiring black people but making fun of them for their race at work so that blacks simply wouldn't want to work there. "You can work here, but it will be hell" doesn't exactly advance the aims of the Civil Rights Act. You can argue that in some instances courts have gone too far, but you can do that with respect to any doctrine. When discussing tradeoffs, guys being able to look at porn at work isn't going to win against making it difficult for women to be employed there.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
Maybe, but it's hard to tell. If I'm an employer I have reasons for not wanting employees to tell nigger jokes at work or request blowjobs from female staff regardless of the liability situation, and as a matter of public policy we don't want employers to encourage the above as an end-around to avoid anti discrimination laws. The law involves tradeoffs, and most people's desire to bring politics into non-political jobs, or hear about other people's politics, is outweighed by the desire to prevent real discrimination. Talking about the apparatus of oppression only makes sense in this instance if you're talking about the employer's interest, because there's no free speech guarantee when you're on somebody else's time.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
And you think that if the hostile work environment doctrine were removed then you'd feel free to speak your views? Or is this just the zeitgeist among people you happen to work for?
Rov_Scam
10d ago
What do you want to say at work that you think you're being prevented from saying because of potential employer liability under "hostile work environment" standards? What makes you think than your employer would have no problem with you saying that even if the potential liability didn't exist?
Rov_Scam
10d ago
It's not so much that they got bombed as it is the circumstances. If Israel bombs a country nobody likes or even is neutral about, it's a minor news item. It's different when they bomb a US ally with whom we have various agreements involving keeping a military base in their country and selling them advanced weapons. Even in the absence of a mutual defense agreement, one would expect that a "key strategic ally" would get more than a warning that another country would attack them.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
You might say that but I doubt the American government or indeed the American public would feel the same way. Media would report it as the only time the US mainland has ever been bombed and the first bombing of US territory since WWII. We would respond militarily, even if it was just a Doolittle-style raid to show we could do it.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
There seems to be a fundamental difference, though, between a traditional assassination and one using military means. If a foreign actor shot someone on American soil for political reasons it's different than them sending their air force in and bombing their house. One is a criminal act, the other an act of war.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
For a trained sniper, no, but I doubt the assassin was a trained sniper. For the typical guy with a scoped rifle who hunts deer a few weeks out of the year, anything beyond 100 yards is dicey enough that they'll think twice about taking the shot.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
This isn't a change in anything. There will always be a certain number of people on either side of the aisle who will celebrate violence against the other side, and the only thing that's different now than 15 years ago is that more of them are on the internet by virtue of fewer of them being too old to go on Reddit. I couldn't tell you the number of crabby old guys in bars who talked openly about the "ten cent solution" during the Obama presidency.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
I understand as much as I understand that none of these scenarios involving population bombs ever happen. I'd be willing to bet any amount of money that there will be at least 1 million Han Chinese in 100 years, which is more than double the population of Amish at present, a population that's doing incredibly well by your metrics.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
I guess next you'd also tell them that they can't take credit risk into account when issuing loans.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
I don't know that bringing up one of the largest countries in the world is a great idea when talking about a "death sentence" for an ethnicity.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
Not really. Most medical records I look at have too much information, not too little, and that appears to be a consequence of computer programs that make it really easy to generate a ton of data ever yfive minutes. Office notes are usually pretty good, but if the guy was in the hospital it seems like they provide daily updated medication lists and ongoing reports of vital signs. Plus the complete record includes all the discharge instruction for how to care for your wound, etc.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
I look at a lot of medical records for work, and what was posted is the evidentiary equivalent of damning with faint praise; unless there's more that isn't shown here, it's evidence that there was no injury. First, the entire time from sign-in to discharge was about 90 minutes, which has to be some kind of record. In the US the average wait time is 2 1/2 hours, and that includes people who are seen immediately. Maybe the NHS is better about this than the hospitals where I live, but given their reputation and the fact that this was 8 pm on a Saturday... it seems a bit of a stretch. And there's no indication that this girl was treated or even examined. Just a note of head injury and that she was discharged home without followup. Again, I don't know, maybe the NHS just doesn't bother to document anything, but in the US I'd expect a brief narrative of how the injury happened plus physical exam findings plus a diagnosis and any instructions they were given at discharge. Here, even the stuff that looks like it should be filled in is left blank.
My own take, made with the full admission that I have no special knowledge of the situation and am not a doctor and with the caveat that the records I look that are the ones the hospital has and not necessarily the ones the patient would automatically be given upon discharge,is that they went to the ER and complained of a head injury to the triage nurse, got tired of waiting, and left. Maybe @self_made_human can shed some light on what standard practices are considering that he might be a doctor at the same hospital and would at least be familiar with Scottish medical records, but assuming they're substantially similar to American records, I'm not seeing much here.
If your budget is only $200, then you can't be picky about features. Hell, if your budget is only $200, offer that for the Trek, because that's about as good as you can reasonably expect for that price. The public has for some reason come to expect that a relatively complex item with a lot of moving parts, some of which need to be machined, shouldn't cost more than $500. It's like expecting to get a decent new car for $10,000.
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