ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
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The US loses the Battle of Saratoga. France and Spain develop no faith in the rebels' ability to win the war, and refuse to provide aid, so the US then loses the war. However, Britain recognizes its errors and reforms the US and Canada into a dominion-ish Confederation of North America.
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With no extra debt from fighting Britain in the American Revolution, France does not collapse into revolution (though it comes close after losing a war to Prussia and Britain in 1799), and Louisiana remains under Spanish, and then Mexican, control.
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The American rebels that have not been executed for treason emigrate to form the Republic of Jefferson (Texas fifty years early). In 1816, Jefferson (led by Andrew Jackson) intervenes in a Mexican civil war to form a United States of Mexico that later degenerates into dictatorship.
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The CNA abolishes slavery in 1841, after an economic depression with roots in London bank failures causes the price of cotton to plummet, making owning slaves uneconomical.
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Republicanism in Europe is crushed by the failure of the American rebels, and is not revived until 1879, when, after Louis XX abdicates in the face of advancing German troops, socialist rioters in Paris execute the royal family and, aided by defecting French troops, beat back the Germans. The ensuing continent-wide wave of republican/socialist spirit in 1880 (comparable to OTL's Springtime of Nations) overtakes all the major powers except Britain and Russia.
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Russia collapses in 1900, after losing Alaska and eastern Siberia to the USM in a conflict analogous to OTL's Russo-Japanese War.
Et cetera. The book extends to year 1970. It is written in the style of a textbook, with hundreds of footnotes and fake citations.
ToaKraka
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1mo ago
TIL: The split between offensive, defensive, and special-teams rosters of players was not instituted until 1949 (and temporarily from 1943 to 1946). Prior to this rule change, every football player was like a baseball player (other than the pitcher), participating both on offense and on defense in a system called "one-platoon" or "ironman"—a jack of all trades rather than a specialist.
ToaKraka
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1mo ago
I guess maybe he didn't know how to use the ATM properly, but that doesn't feel likely to me. He was a younger man in apparent possession of all his mental faculties.
I hear the whippersnappers nowadays prefer newfangled contraptions like CashApp and Venmo over physical bills, so it isn't that unlikely that they would be unfamiliar with ATMs.
ToaKraka
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1mo ago
Building codes (including Florida's) do contain guidance for designing houses that are resistant to hurricane-force winds. The Wood Frame Construction Manual, incorporated by reference into the code sections linked above, permits prescriptive design for wind speeds all the way up to 195 mi/h.
The interesting book The Box describes how the same union (the International Longshoremen's Association) fought containerization seventy years ago.
ToaKraka
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1mo ago
I'm not sure what your angle is here.
I just thought people in the football thread might find this football-related court opinion interesting.
ToaKraka
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1mo ago
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A professional football player who makes 2 M$/a (Christopher Maragos of the Philadelphia Eagles, in 2016 "the highest-paid special-teams player in the NFL") experiences a knee injury (the MRI appears to show complete tear of one ligament, partial tear of another ligament, and tear of a meniscus root). He gets a surgery from an orthopedist (who reconstructs the completely-torn ligament, but considers the partially-torn ligament "stable" and amenable to natural healing, and finds the meniscus root not torn at all) and starts the process of rehabilitation.
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After more than a year of ineffective rehabilitation and continuing pain, the player, frustrated by his knee's lack of recovery, gets a second opinion from a different orthopedist. The second orthopedist informs him that the first orthopedist should have conducted a second surgery (to fix the meniscus root, which in fact was torn and has been getting even worse over time), and the first orthopedist's failure to do so has caused the player's knee to degrade to the status of career-ending injury.
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The player sues the first orthopedist. The jury finds the orthopedist liable and awards 44 M$ of damages. The appeals panel affirms (in year 2024, seven years after the injury and five years after the lawsuit was filed).
ToaKraka
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1mo ago
You are literally five feet from a garbage can
To be fair, I personally have not seen public garbage receptacles spaced anywhere near so closely in the cities that I have frequented. But I still think that failing to carry one's garbage for an extra quarter-mile of walking is pretty lazy.
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
The comment was intentionally phrased in an inflammatory manner for laughs (since this is the Friday Fun Thread). Seriously, though, as a reasonably-well-off person living in the US, I personally have little need of garages, closets, and pantries.
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I have no pantry. All my room-temperature food is in the kitchen cabinets.
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I have a closet, but I hardly use it. Rather, I keep all my regularly-used clothes in a large plastic basket or haphazardly around my bedroom. And a wardrobe can serve the purpose of a closet anyway.
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I have no garage. I can see how it might be useful for working on a car, but I personally just go to a mechanic.
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
(1) It would maintain the threaded format beloved by so many
The threaded format does not allow a comment to have multiple parents (forcing a person who wants to reply to multiple comments simultaneously to use username alerts instead), and is not compatible with chronological viewing (forcing a person who wants to view all comments chronologically to open a separate chronological view, sometimes called "firehose"). For that reason, I prefer the imageboard (4chan) style.
Note that parallel-parking spaces are 8 ft * 22 ft rather than 9 ft * 20 ft, so the lots have been changed from 60 ft * 100 ft (6000 ft^2) to 66 ft * 91 ft (6006 ft^2). Also, the installation of underground utilities presumably will require a lot of easements somewhere.
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
Actually, the International Codes indeed do see some use outside the US.
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The ICC Releases 2021 International Codes in Spanish (en español)
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Jamaica Collaborates with ICC to Develop Ten Building Codes and Corresponding Training
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ICC partners with the Pakistan Engineering Council to develop the Building Code of Pakistan; Pakistan Engineering Council Releases Green Building Code Based on the International Codes
Is there a particular reason for all the side yard space and front drives?
Under the International Zoning Code:
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The densest single-family residential zone has lots of at least 60 ft * 90 ft and 6000 ft^2. The lots in this image are 60 ft * 100 ft.
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At least two 9 ft * 20 ft off-street parking stalls must be provided for each dwelling unit. I've made the driveways double-width for the larger houses, to accommodate multigenerational households.
Is it supposed to be generally preferable to row homes or town houses?
I didn't consider anything but single-family houses in this particular flight of fancy.
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
Would you want to live in this cute, perfectly-code-compliant neighborhood?
(Yes, I was too lazy to add radii to the driveway corners. Sue me.)
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
Volokh: Security Clearance Denied for Watching Furry Porn Depicting Animated 16-Year-Olds
Bierly confessed that some of the furries in the videos he watched were depicted as minors as young as age 16. The SOR advised that Bierly's history of "engaging in criminal sexual behavior by viewing and masturbating to pornographic images of minors" and intent to continue doing so constituted a "security concern". For his part, Bierly objects to characterizing the videos as child pornography because they featured animated characters rather than actual 16-year-old people.Bierly's constitutional claims are as follows:
Count I claims that viewing animated furry pornography is protected speech under the First Amendment, and that DCSA's suspension of his security clearance therefore infringes this right.
Count II argues that DCSA's suspension of his security clearance abridges Bierly's First Amendment freedom to associate with others who share his political, religious and cultural beliefs.
Count III contends that SEAD 4, which allows the DCSA to withhold clearance based on sexual behavior that "demonstrates a lack of judgment or discretion or may subject the individual to undue influence of coercion, exploitation, or duress", is unconstitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment.
Count IV challenges the same language in SEAD 4 as unconstitutionally vague.
Count V is a substantive due process claim, arguing that the viewing of legal pornographic material is a protected liberty interest that the DCSA has wrongfully abridged.
Count VI is a Fifth Amendment Equal Protection argument, alleging that the defendants have unequally and arbitrarily applied SEAD 4 against Bierly, and that this uneven application fails strict scrutiny.
The court avoided the substantive constitutional questions, in part because federal precedent provides that "the grant of security clearance to a particular employee is committed by law to the appropriate agency of the Executive branch" and therefore "employment actions based on denial of security clearance are not subject to judicial review", especially when it comes to requests for injunctions seeking the grant of a clearance (to oversimplify in some measure).
The court also rejected Bierly's separate statutory claims under the Administrative Procedure Act, Freedom of Information Act, and Privacy Act. Note that Bierly's Complaint states that, "Mr. Bierly admitted to watching 16 year old Furry pornography when he was 15 years old, and the polygrapher used that age for all subsequent Furry pornography that Mr. Bierly admitted to watching," though that wouldn't affect, I think, the court's analysis.
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
Some municipal zoning codes explicitly forbid any new house under a certain size. For example, the capital of New Jersey has a minimum of 1200 ft^2.
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
Maybe it's a combination of the terms "human wave" and "meat grinder", which both have been used to describe Russia's tactics in the current war.
ToaKraka
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2mo ago
Clarification for lurkers: A single union is allowed to control workers at "60 percent of the nation's ports" because unions are specifically exempted from the antitrust laws (1 2).
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