ToaKraka
Dislikes you
User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12hr ago
I obviously am not an illustrious doctor, but it appears to me that the ICD has more or less retained Asperger's syndrome in its table of diagnoses.
| 6A02 = autism spectrum disorder | Functional language | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mildly impaired or not impaired | Impaired | Completely absent or almost completely absent | ||
| Disorder of intellectual development | Absent | 6A02.0 ≈ Asperger's syndrome | 6A02.2 | — |
| Present | 6A02.1 | 6A02.3 ≈ childhood disintegrative disorder | 6A02.5 |
| Category | Rating |
|---|---|
| German | 47 % |
| Autistic | 58 % |
| Overall | Wittgenstein |
You have, apparently, both the cultural formation that produces systematic people and the neurological substrate that makes systematic thinking feel like breathing. This is either a significant advantage or an explanation for certain recurring difficulties in your life. Probably both.
Schopenhauer also fits here. So does Ramanujan, though he wasn't German. The category isn't German or autistic—it's people for whom the gap between how things are and how they ought to be is not an abstraction but a constant, low-grade irritation.
My mother tells me that I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at some point, but she doesn't have any of the court files to prove it.
I doubt that I have any German heritage, though my mother does hail from a former Danish colony.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
20hr ago
Civil-engineering problem of questionable importance: What is the best definition of "intersection"?
The illustrious lawyers among us will recite the legal definition (1 2): the area within the extended gutterlines of the intersecting roadways. Or, more exhaustively (the green lines in this example PDF, a rendition of this cursed location):
- For each point where a road's gutterline stops running parallel with the road's baseline: From the point, draw a line parallel with the road's baseline. The largest shape enclosed both within such lines and within the gutterlines is the intersection.
But this definition obviously is terrible. It's wildly underinclusive, as it fails to include the large area of pavement between those extended gutterlines and the rounded corners of the intersection. And it can produce nonsensical results on oddly-shaped corners (as illustrated on the southeast leg of the example).
Civil engineers and avid pedestrians may prefer this definition (the blue lines in the example):
- For each point where a road's gutterline stops running parallel with the road's baseline: From the point, draw a line perpendicular to the road's baseline. The largest shape enclosed both within such lines and within the gutterlines is the intersection.
However, this definition can be rather overinclusive on corners with large radii (as illustrated on the north leg of the example).
One of the more questionable achievements of my civil-engineering career was coming up with a third definition (the pink lines in the example):
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Within the intersection, draw as many inscribed circles as possible, each osculating (tangent to, touching, kissing) three corners of the intersection. (Generally, the number of circles will be equal to the number of legs on the intersection minus two.) The largest shape enclosed both within lines joining intervisible tangency points and within the gutterlines can be considered the lower bound of the definition of the intersection.
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For each tangency point: For each road baseline visible to that tangency point: From the tangency point, draw a line perpendicular to the baseline. The largest shape enclosed both within these lines and within the gutterlines can be considered the upper bound of the definition of the intersection. Typically, use the upper bound to determine paving limits.
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If you need to pave farther up the side road (e. g., in order to paint a crosswalk or construct a curb ramp), just move your paving limit up the side road accordingly (still perpendicular to the side road's baseline).
Finding the center point of each inscribed circle requires an iterative solution with the parallel-offset tool, since CAD software does not have a function to find it automatically. But, IMO, this definition does a great job of drawing something that at least looks good intuitively. It still can be considered underinclusive, but it serves as the least inclusive solution that doesn't leave huge lacunae (unlike the first definition). If you want to be a little more inclusive, you can do so easily (without having to go to the extreme of the second definition). And, unlike both of the first two definitions, it works well, not just with the clean lines and arcs of proposed gutterlines, but also with the ragged line strings of a survey of existing gutterlines.
Pragmatic addendum to the third definition:
- In rare situations, a leg of an intersection may have two corners with wildly mismatched radii, causing the triangular area of difference between the upper bound and the lower bound on that leg to be very large. In such a situation, use your engineering judgment to determine whether the lower bound, or even the first definition, rather than the upper bound, should be used as the paving limit on that leg.
The small, boring box (1 2*) that will serve as my glorious custom house is approximately halfway through its two-month construction schedule.
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Photograph 1: Foundation walls; sewer pipes
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Photograph 2: Slab; wall framing in progress; air compressor for nail guns
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Photograph 3: Walls without siding; siding ready for installation
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Photograph 4: Fancy roof trusses, eliminating the need for interior bearing walls; water pipes and electrical wires in ceiling
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Photograph 5: Wall framing; electrical boxes
I think I overheard one of the workers joke that his shed is bigger than this house. 😈
*For room dimensions, I measure to the face of the drywall, while the contractor measures to the face of the stud. Any other discrepancies between these two drawings should not be considered material.
Months ago, I posted about how (1) South Seaside Park, a discontiguous and neglected neighborhood of Berkeley Township, had won in court the right to secede from Berkeley Township and be annexed by the contiguous municipality of Seaside Park Borough, but (2) the Seaside Park Borough council still needed to vote to accept the land transfer. Now, the Seaside Park Borough council has finally voted in agreement.
- Mostly-paywalled news article
- Annexation-impact study conducted by a contracted consultant (finding that annexation would decrease the property-tax rate in Seaside Park Borough by 8 percent, from 1.774 mills to 1.631 mills annually)
- Video of council meeting
- 5:22: Start of relevant discussion
- 15:25: A councilor mentions that, despite widespread criticism of the impact study, she did an informal sensitivity analysis on the figure of 8 percent using a spreadsheet provided by the consultant, and "we can be off by quite a bit before it turns into a negative scenario".
- 16:45: The mayor discusses the fact that, regarding topics that the state's sloppily-drafted neighborhood-secession statute fails to cover (e. g., debt transfer), advisory judicial opinions on those topics are not available, so Seaside Park Borough will just have to negotiate in good faith over those topics with Berkeley Township, and hope that no lawsuits emerge from those negotiations.
- 25:39: A representative of Berkeley Township points out more sloppy drafting. South Seaside Park is defined in the secession petition as including only the inhabited part, so that's the only part that Seaside Park Borough is annexing. But Seaside Park Borough, as part of annexation, has copied-and-pasted a Berkeley Township ordinance that imposes a particular zone, not just on the inhabited part, but also on an adjacent state park that will not be annexed. (See the map that I drew previously. In drawing that map, I erroneously assumed that South Seaside Park included the state park, but it actually does not include the state park.) Seaside Park Borough's lawyer says the error will be corrected.
- 36:11: The petition organizer makes a speech.
- 40:58: A person points out that annexation will overturn the budget that Seaside Park Borough just adopted. The mayor explains that, after annexation, Seaside Park Borough will have to get permission from the state government to adopt an amended budget.
- 1:43:18: The big vote
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
We are exurban, and the houses have moats, in the form of fenced yards with dogs that go all the way around their house, such that there isn't a way to do neighborly things like knock on the person's door and yell at them.
There still should be a government-owned grassy verge right next to the driveway where it meets the road, so that there is no need to sit in the road. Even if there's no government-owned sidewalk to mark an obvious boundary, you presumably can check your county's GIS website (or the county's tax map in conjunction with Google Maps) to determine the exact spot where the neighbor's land ends and the government's land begins.
It's unclear whether the early morning revving is technically illegal or not
You presumably can check your municipality's noise ordinance. (Though I vaguely remember hearing somewhere that many municipal noise ordinances have been found unenforceably vague in recent years. If you feel like taking a long shot, you could nag your municipal government to enact an enforceable noise ordinance.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
The following sequence of events might be funny.
(1) Antagonist starts truck and goes back inside his house.
(2) Protagonist walks outside, sets up a folding chair on the government-owned grassy verge between the sidewalk and the street-parked truck (or on the government-owned grassy verge near the driveway-parked truck), and sits down.
(3) Antagonist hides inside his house.
(4) Protagonist remains comfortably seated, and summons a police officer to come and listen to the noise.
(5) Either antagonist emerges to be confronted by the protagonist and the officer, or his truck runs out of gasoline.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
I don't think it's unreasonable advice for a depressed person.
They may not be able to keep up in the depths of winter, depending on local climate
This is solved if you just buy the right heat pump.
According to IRC § N1108.2.2(14) (part of a complicated section where you have several options for earning 10 "additional energy-efficiency credits"), the recommendation (worth up to 16 credits by itself, depending on your climate zone!) is to buy a heat pump that, at 5 °F (−15 °C), maintains at least 70 percent of the heating capacity that it has at 47 °F (8 °C). You can read the heat pump's specifications to determine whether it meets that requirement. For example:
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This heat pump has rated capacity of 24 kBTU/h at 47 °F and 19.2 kBTU/h at 5 °F, for a ratio of 80 percent.
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This heat pump cheats with a backup electric-heating system to maintain 70 percent of rated capacity all the way down to −5 °F (−21 °C).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
Fun image-format-conversion shenanigans:
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Image obtained from Twitter: 147-KiB JFIF
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Image obtained from Tumblr: 167-KiB PNG
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Image obtained from Tumblr and converted to a palette: 13-KiB PNG
Four-panel edit:
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Blurry image obtained from Twitter: 103-KiB JPEG
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Image obtained from Tumblr, converted to a palette, and edited in a non-blurry manner: 16-KiB PNG
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6d ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6d ago
Glancing at a random team's terms, it looks like you can buy a home ticket only if you are a fan (§ 1.2) and you can buy an away ticket only if you are a fan (§ 5.1)—so a person who is a fan of neither team in a game just isn't allowed to buy tickets at all. Maybe @Bartender_Venator can point out this problem, assert that he is a fan of neither team, and beg to be let in on that basis.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7d ago
The purchaser specifically has to be, not just a non-scalper, but a fan? That's just unreasonable, IMO. But I guess there's no recourse.
US usage seems to be inconsistent.
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Newegg: Wireless → "router", no wireless → "modem"
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Random Internet provider: Wireless → "gateway (modem + router)", no wireless → "modem"
Many economically illiterate people hate scalpers. Presumably, when Bartender_Venator bought the tickets, the terms of service said something like "resale is forbidden and scalped tickets may be canceled", and this challenge is a roundabout method of checking whether he is a reseller.
The challenge is slightly overinclusive, since it catches not just scalpers but also those few purchasers who are neither fans nor scalpers. As a different commenter points out, Bartender_Venator presumably could try using that argument to invalidate the challenge—though I don't know how much success he can expect if he does so.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7d ago
How do you upload an image?
There's a button underneath the text-entry field.
He also mentions:
Of course, this test has massive cultural bias!
There also seem to be a lot of typos in the options.
| Knowledge | Score (out of maximum possible) | Percentile out of USAians of ages 50–69 | …out of Anglosphere* people |
|---|---|---|---|
| Computational | 58/60 | 99 | 99 |
| International | 47/50 | 97 | 97 |
| Cultural | 74/80 | 55 | 76 |
| Aesthetic | 41/50 | 42 | 53 |
| Literary | 24/30 | 70 | 68 |
| Technical | 39/40 | 96 | 97 |
| Total | 293/320 | 97 | 98 |
*US, CA, IE, UK, AU, and NZ. (Insert angry Éire noises?)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7d ago
Properly formatted:
| Position | Name | Followers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | DaseindustriesLtd | 77 |
| 2 | FCfromSSC | 35 |
| 3 | 2rafa | 24 |
| 4 | doglatine | 20 |
| 5 | KulakRevolt | 20 |
| 6 | SecureSignals | 19 |
| 7 | TracingWoodgrains | 18 |
| 8 | FiveHourMarathon | 17 |
| 9 | ZorbaTHut | 16 |
| 10 | Dean | 15 |
| 11 | self_made_human | 15 |
| 12 | ymeskhout | 14 |
| 13 | ScottA | 14 |
| 14 | gattsuru | 13 |
| 15 | naraburns | 11 |
| 16 | cjet79 | 11 |
| 17 | HlynkaCG | 11 |
| 18 | JTarrou | 11 |
| 19 | Sloot | 10 |
| 20 | Hoffmeister25 | 10 |
| 21 | coffee_enjoyer | 10 |
| 22 | Amadan | 10 |
| 23 | Chrisprattalpharaptor | 9 |
| 24 | netstack | 9 |
| 25 | Stefferi | 9 |
Reuters:
In London's pubs, love gets a PowerPoint makeover
Fed up of swiping left or right on dating apps, young London singles are returning to a classic British way of meeting people—the pub—with a modern twist: a PowerPoint presentation by a close friend pitching them as dating material.
Putting together a slide deck is second nature for many younger millennials and older Gen Zers. Now, they're using that skill to enhance their mates' love lives, just as dating apps are losing their appeal.
"I hate the swiping," said Annie, 27, adding she was keen to see if her friend's two-minute pitch at a 'Date my Mate' event could land her a boyfriend—or at least a first date.
Organisers said all 150 tickets for the event, held at a north London pub, were sold in less than five minutes. And they're planning to roll out more, aiming for one a week across the country.
Having seen similar events in Australia and the US on social media, Emily Churchill, head of marketing at wine company Nice [1 2] who helped arrange the event, said she knew she had to bring the concept to London.
"It's just so much fun," she said, adding it gave coupled-up friends a way to help their single mates find love and escape "horrible dating stories."
Premise: The point of posting on an online forum is to accumulate prestige—upvotes on Reddit-based websites, reaction points on XenForo-based websites, etc.
Problem: This website does not list your upvote total on your profile. How are people supposed to determine who the most prestigious users are?
Solution: This website does list your follower count on your profile. In theory, following a user gives you an alert whenever that user makes a standalone post (not a comment). However, in practice, nobody actually makes standalone posts on this website, so following a user has no effect other than increasing that user's prestige. Therefore, follower count can be used as a yardstick to measure a user's prestige.
Making a fancy program to scrape everybody's profile and make a list of all users sortable by follower count is left as an exercise to the reader.
(This is approximately half a joke.)
I am once again asking for your cool house designs. If you think my designs are stupid, why haven't you drawn any better ones? 🫵🫵🫵*
I use QCAD for my drawings, but you don't need to be a CAD aficionado in order to draw a floor plan that consists of nothing but rectangles. GIMP (at 6 inches per pixel if you're feeling lazy or 1.5 inches per pixel if you're feeling exact), or a pencil on a Post-It Note, works nearly as well.
You don't need to be a lawyer in order to understand the relevant building codes (1 2 3), either. Walls are 4.5 inches thick, floors are something like 9 feet apart, doors are 32 (normal) or 36 (accessible) inches wide, stairways have 10-inch treads and 7.75-inch risers, one window in each bedroom has a 20″×24″, 5-ft2 opening 44 inches from the floor so that you can clamber out of it in an emergency, blah blah blah. Once you've drawn a few floor plans you'll memorize the most relevant stuff.
*These three characters are "index pointing at the viewer" emojis. However, they unfortunately show up only as "this character is missing from your browser's font" boxes on my screen.
Speaking of building codes, here are some interesting definitions from the IPMC (International Property Maintenance Code).
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Dwelling unit: Must include provisions for sleeping, living, eating, cooking, and sanitation. (Total: 5)
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Housekeeping unit: Must include provisions for sleeping, living, eating, and cooking. Must not include provisions for sanitation. (Total: 4)
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Sleeping unit: Must include provisions for sleeping. Must not include provisions for both cooking and sanitation (but may include provisions for only one of them, or for living or eating). (Total: 1–4)
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Rooming unit: Must include provisions for sleeping and/or living. Must not include provisions for cooking. (Total: 1–4)
Obviously, in addition to the five uses enumerated above, many dwelling units also include provisions for circulation, laundry, utilities/mechanical/water heating, and storage.
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Sleeping: Bedroom
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Living: Living room
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Eating: Dining room
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Cooking: Kitchen
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Sanitation: Bathroom
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Circulation: Corridor
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Laundry: Laundry room
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Utilities/mechanical/water heating: Utility room
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Storage: Closet
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9d ago
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran says:
There are also significant disparities in reports of casualty numbers during and in the aftermath of the nationwide protests. According to a statement of 22 January by the National Security Council, 3,117 people were killed. Of these, the State describes 2,427 as “innocent civilians and defenders of public order and security” allegedly killed by “terrorists”, and the remaining 690 as “terrorists”. Figures submitted to the Rapporteur from non-State sources run into the tens of thousands, including reports from health professionals and information from families who visited overwhelmed morgues across various cities. A conservative estimate from 15 February records 7,015 confirmed deaths (at least 6,508 protesters including 226 minors; 214 security force members; and others), with a further 11,744 deaths under review. Even this conservative estimate is more than double the figures published by the State. The discrepancy between official and grassroots figures only deepens the anguish of families still searching for their loved ones. The Rapporteur stresses that even a single death resulting from the exercise of the right to peaceful protest is one too many.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9d ago
The Motte is the best place I thought of to post an ad like this.
Astral Codex Ten's weekly open threads and occasional classified threads may also be of use.
NCII
I haven't seen that abbreviation before, so I'll explain it for lurkers: nonconsensual intimate images—a category that originally was just revenge pornography (public posting of privately-shared explicit content), but now has been expanded to include explicit and suggestive edits of publicly-posted nonsuggestive content, and sometimes even mere spotlighting of unedited publicly-posted suggestive content.
This website's Markdown implementation does not support the fancy hyphens-and-pipes table syntax that Reddit's implementation supports, so users are forced to type the table HTML manually—and that's a good thing™. More people should learn (X)HTML. Typing HTML in a plaintext editor often is more relaxing than typing in a WYSIWYG text editor.
You don't have to mess with Character Map or AutoCorrect in order to type en and em dashes, subtraction, multiplication, and division symbols, directional quotation marks, etc.; and you don't have to guess at what specific character a horizontal line is when you see it long after you typed it. Instead, you can just type a character reference (picked from a default list in HTML or a fully custom list in XHTML)—& ndash; & mdash;, & minus;, & times;, & div;, & ldquo;, & rdquo;, etc. (without the spaces)—and it will remain perfectly legible in the plaintext forever.
You don't have to mess with invisible section divisions and style changes, constantly having to guess whether Word has actually done what you wanted it to do. Sections are clearly visible elements, and styles are clearly visible classes. Nothing is ambiguous.
I think there was recently a discussion here regarding how learning a second language enables a person to better understand his first language. Likewise, learning HTML enables a person to better understand what Microsoft Word is trying to do behind the scenes while you clumsily interact with its interface.
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