ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
@fmac thinks that you (plural) would be interested in the following summary of the several mods that I've written for Victoria 3. I am inclined to think that this comment is both too narcissistic and too niche to be interesting, but whatever. Maybe I'm a bad judge and you'll find this comment more interesting than this week's court-opinion summary, which seems to have fallen rather flat.
In an effort to make this comment less narcissistic, I will emphasize that you do not need to be a 1337 h@xx0r to mod this game. It's just editing plaintext files, not compiling code like some other games.
Premise: In the vanilla game, slaves are created from poor people in countries with the Debt Slavery law, and thence are exported to countries with the Slave Trade law.
Problem: It makes no sense that countries with Slave Trade do not enslave their own low-acceptance (i. e., discriminated-against) people.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, a country with Slave Trade now will enslave its own low-acceptance people (using the same logic that the vanilla game uses to re-enslave recently-freed people when slavery is abolished and then reinstated).
Premise: In the vanilla game, a colonizing AI country will spread its focus across up to five different colonies, depending on how much population it has. Colony growth also is capped, so focusing on a single colony is detrimental.
Problem: I don't see any reason for these mechanics. Splitting focus between multiple colonies only increases the chance that multiple countries will split a colonial state, which I dislike. And what's wrong with rushing a single colony?
Solution: In a mod that I have written, a colonizing AI country now will focus on only a single colony, and the cap on colony growth is removed.
Premise: In the vanilla game, the AI will never incorporate a state that contains fewer than 100,000 people.
Problem: I'm not really a big fan of this limitation. Yes, the sparsely-populated territories of northern Canada and northern Australia are legally "unincorporated" even in year 2025. But Rhode Island barely had reached a population of 100,000 in the time period of Victoria 3. Am I really supposed to believe that Rhode Island should not have been incorporated until after year 1830?
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the minimum population for incorporating a state is set to 1—i. e., effectively removed.
Premise: In the vanilla game, several different fonts are used—Garamond, Open Sans, Noto Serif, a custom font called Paradox Victorian, et cetera.
Problem: I dislike seeing a zillion different random fonts.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the game uses only Open Sans.
Premise: In the vanilla game, in order to avoid losing its "civilized" status (as opposed to "uncivilized", like China and Egypt), the Ottoman Empire must complete four of seven available missions. One of those missions, "Tanzimat: Urbanization", requires that 75 percent of the Ottoman Empire's states be both incorporated and urbanized.
Problem: This doesn't make much sense to me. What's wrong with having unincorporated states?
Solution: In a mod that I have written, "Tanzimat: Urbanization" requires that 75 percent of the Ottoman Empire's incorporated states be urbanized.
Premise: In the vanilla game, an AI country will incorporate a state if a culture that calls that state region a homeland shares a trait (whether a heritage trait indicating race or a cultural trait indicating a non-race characteristic) with a primary culture of that country.
Problem: Under this criterion, both a fascist Britain with the Ethnostate law and an open-minded Britain with the Multiculturalism law will incorporate all European states and all Anglophone states (including the black ones in the Caribbean), with no regard for whether the cultures living there are actually accepted. That doesn't make any sense.
Solution: In a mod that I have written: The AI incorporation logic is disabled. Instead, a country (whether AI or human) will automatically incorporate a state if a culture that calls that state a homeland is accepted under that country's current laws, and will automatically disincorporate a state if no culture that calls that state a homeland is accepted under that country's current laws.
Premise: In the vanilla game, most countries start with all or nearly all of their states incorporated. It is generally expected that a country will have most of its states incorporated.
Premise: In the vanilla game, once a civilized country has acquired a bunch of land in Africa, it can organize that land into a "colonial administration" country, which is created with all its states incorporated.
Problem: These two mechanics are completely contrary to the AI incorporation logic (whether vanilla or modded) that I described in the previous section! It makes absolutely ZERO sense that the British and Dutch East India Companies have incorporated all of their states at the start of the campaign, despite having NOTHING in common with the Indian and Indonesian cultures. Also, when the mod that I described in the previous section is enabled, the complete absence of incorporated states in the two aforementioned countries causes some problems.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, if a subject country has zero incorporated states, then it is automatically annexed by its overlord. In a different mod that I have written, the colonial-administration mechanic is disabled.
Premise: In the vanilla game, up to five autosaves will be retained, and any older autosaves will be deleted.
Problem: A campaign of Victoria 3 lasts for a hundred years! If you've set your autosave interval to six months, you will not be able to look back even one decade to see how the world has evolved.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the autosave limit is set to 99999—i. e., effectively removed.
Premise: In the vanilla game, if a state region is split between multiple states that belong to different countries, a state will receive the unmodified name of the state region (e. g., "Guyana") if it includes a majority of the state region's provinces, and will receive a modified name ("British Guyana") otherwise.
Problem: If one country owns almost all of of a state region and another country owns just one or two provinces (such as a treaty port) in the same state region, it can be difficult to realize that the state is split, because the first state will have an unmodified name and the second state will be very small and unobtrusive.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the threshold for a state to have an unmodified name is increased from 50 percent to 99.9 percent—i. e., effectively never.
Premise: Several different factors affect an AI country's enthusiasm about the prosecution of a war. In the vanilla game, one of these factors is time. An AI country becomes more interested in ending a war as time passes: −100 when the war starts, increasing quickly to +0 at 10 months, and then increasing gradually to +100 at 110 months.
Problem: The quick increase in peace desire before the 10-month mark (before the battle fronts and the participants' economies have had a chance to get settled) makes sense, but the gradual increase in peace desire after the 10-month mark does not make sense (is duplicative of the factors for angry population, war-ravaged land, and high debt; often causes an AI country to make a white peace when it is on the precipice of victory).
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the gradual increase in peace desire after the 10-month mark is eliminated.
Premise: The USA starts the game with the Legacy Slavery law. In the vanilla game: If the USA experiences a civil war caused by the anti-slavery movement, then the other side becomes the FSA (Free States of America) and enacts Slavery Banned immediately (without going through the normal law-change process); and, if the USA experiences a civil war caused by the pro-slavery movement, then the other side becomes the CSA (Confederate States of America) and enacts Slave Trade immediately.
Problem: These forced law changes are unnecessarily heavy-handed. If the CSA wants to enact Slave Trade or the FSA wants to enact Slavery Banned, then let it; if it doesn't, don't force it.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the aforementioned forced law changes are eliminated.
Premise: In the vanilla game, some important countries are formed through the "major unification" mechanic. Most prominently, in order to form Germany, Prussia normally declares a "Unification War", which automatically (1) annexes all German members of its sphere of influence and (2) declares war on any non-sphered, non-former-unification-candidate countries that hold German states (i. e., France, but not Austria-Hungary).
Problem: This is disgustingly ahistorical. Historically, Prussia did not attack France for Alsace-Lorraine. Rather, Bismarck tricked France into attacking despite being weak!
Solution: In a mod that I have written, all major unifications are eliminated and must be formed the normal way (by acquiring the required states through means other than a unification war).
Premise: In the vanilla game, different still-uncolonized states in the North American frontier are claimed by different countries, and therefore are not colonizable by other countries. The USA claims Wyoming, Nebraska, and Kansas; Mexico claims Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas; and the Republic of Texas claims New Mexico and Texas; while Nevada, Colorado, and Oklahoma are claimed by no one.
Problem: Historically, Nevada was claimed by Mexico, Colorado was claimed half by the USA and half by Mexico and Texas, Oklahoma was claimed by the USA, and only half of New Mexico was claimed by Texas.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, Nevada is claimed by Mexico, Colorado is split into two state regions of which one is claimed by the USA and the other is claimed by Mexico and Texas, New Mexico is split into two state regions of which one is claimed by Texas and both are claimed by Mexico, and Oklahoma <del>is claimed by the USA</del><ins>is not claimed by the USA (because that causes problems with premature annexation of the Indian Territory, due to the game's limited mechanics), but instead the state region of Texas is extended through the Oklahoma panhandle (as it historically was prior to 1850) and the Indian Territory is expanded to eliminate all uncolonized land in Oklahoma</ins>.
Premise: In the vanilla game, canals can be built in the state regions of Panama and Sinai, and nowhere else.
Problem: Historically, the USA actually picked Nicaragua for a canal, and switched to Panama only after getting a lower price for the assets of France's bankrupt Panama Canal Company.
Problem: Due to Victoria 3's focus on states rather than on provinces, if Colombia refuses to sell the Panama Canal Zone to a great power that wants to buy it, the great power then receives a claim, not just on the Canal Zone, but on the entire state region of Panama. The same applies to Sinai. This is absolutely nonsensical.
Premise: In the vanilla game, armies can march from Colombia proper to Panama.
Problem: Historically, this was impossible.
Solution: In the same mod (necessary due to limitations of map modding): Panama has been split into three state regions, western, central (Canal Zone), and eastern, and the eastern state is disconnected from Colombia proper in the invisible pathing system. Nicaragua has been split into two state regions, northern and southern (Lake Nicaragua), and the Panama Canal events have been copied-and-pasted for a Nicaragua Canal. [Sinai has been split into two state regions, eastern and western (Canal Zone).](not yet complete)
Premise: After the USA annexes northern Mexico, the annexed states become homelands of the USA's primary cultures. The Yankee culture gets California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, while the Dixie culture gets Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
Problem: Historically, California could have been divided into a free north and a slave south. And I find it unfair that Dixie doesn't get a window to the Pacific.
Solution: In the same mod (necessary due to limitations of map modding), California is divided into two state regions, northern and southern, and the southern portion goes to Dixie rather than to Yankee after the Mexican–American War.
Premise: In the vanilla game, the Corsican culture has three traits: European, Francophone, and Italophone.
Problem: Francophone??
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the Francophone trait is removed from the Corsican culture.
The mods can be downloaded here, if anybody cares.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
In surveys like this, "household" normally is defined so that 15 unrelated adult occupants of a single house count as 15 one-person households. For example, here is the definition used by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A consumer unit (CU) is the measurement unit collected for the eligible individuals represented in the expenditure reports.
The CU is defined as
all members of a particular housing unit who are related by blood, marriage, adoption, or some other legal arrangement, such as foster children;
a person living alone or sharing a household with others, or living as a roomer in a private home, lodging house, or in permanent living quarters in a hotel or motel, but who makes independent financial decisions; or
two or more unrelated persons living together who pool their income to make joint expenditure decisions.
In publications, and with [Consumer Expenditure] respondents, “household” is occasionally used for simplicity, but nevertheless refers to the CU.
So your link is not useful in this context.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
IIRC, you looked pretty smexy when you posted a photograph of yourself (with face censored) with two soon-to-die-by-methanol tourist women. How many dozens of hawt gurlz have you fucked in your 25 years, you tiger? Lord it over this forum of incel chuds.
Slightly more (but still not very) seriously: When are you going to improve your goddamned English punctuation skills?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
Court opinion with map:
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Within New Jersey, Berkeley Township* contains 41,000 inhabitants. Within Berkeley, the neighborhood of South Seaside Park contains 490 inhabitants. Prior to year 1875, the entire area was a contiguous mass called Dover Township, with South Seaside Park sitting at the tip of a barrier
<del>island</del><ins>peninsula</ins>that was connected directly to the rest of Dover with a bridge. However, over the years, the creation of Berkeley from Dover's land, and the creation of other municipalities from Berkeley's land, caused South Seaside Park to become separated from the rest of Berkeley by a 13-mile (21-kilometer) drive that takes 30 minutes at the best of times, and during summer can be as long as 45 minutes due to beach traffic. -
Under New Jersey law, a neighborhood can secede from its municipality if (1) three-fifths of its registered voters sign a petition requesting secession, and (2) (a) the municipal council grants consent by a two-thirds vote, or (b) the municipal council refuses consent but (i) the refusal is arbitrary or unreasonable, (ii) the refusal is detrimental to the well-being of the neighborhood, and (iii) the secession would not significantly injure the rump municipality. Accordingly, in year 2014, two-thirds of South Seaside Park's registered voters sign such a petition, seeking to secede from Berkeley Township and join Seaside Park Borough, which is South Seaside Park's sole neighbor on the barrier peninsula. The resulting hearings last into year 2019. In year 2020, the Berkeley council finally refuses consent, and the petitioners file a lawsuit, alleging that the refusal met the aforementioned criteria i–iii.
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In year 2022, the trial judge rules for the petitioners. (i) The members of the municipal council were supposed to be impartial arbiters, but instead they were vociferously opposed to the secession, and even enlisted the municipality's contracted licensed planner to help them argue against it. (ii) "Substantially all" of Berkeley's services are based in the mainland, a zillion miles away from South Seaside Park. Inhabitants of South Seaside Park can't even watch Berkeley's council meetings on their cable-television subscriptions because South Seaside Park has a different cable provider. It would be much more convenient for South Seaside Park's inhabitants if they could get municipal services from Seaside Park Borough instead. (iii) Despite constituting only 1 percent of Berkeley's population, the beachfront community of South Seaside Park contains a whopping 11 percent of Berkeley's taxable property value. So it is true that the secession would cause taxes in the rump Berkeley to rise by 3 percent. But that does not rise to the level of "significant injury" that the law requires, and the calculation of 3 percent does not even take into account the ameliorating facts that (1) secession would let the rump Berkeley save money by ceasing to provide any services to distant South Seaside Park, and (2) South Seaside Park already is completely developed, while rump Berkeley still would have lots of empty land to be built on**, so South Seaside Park's proportion of Berkeley's taxable property value would shrink in the future. Therefore, South Seaside Park must be permitted to secede. The appeals panel affirms in year 2024, and the state supreme court follows suit in year 2025 (linked at the top of this comment).
Note that Seaside Park Borough has not actually agreed to annex South Seaside Park. It would be a hilarious anticlimax if Seaside Park did not agree. Apparently, though, this anticlimax really did happen fifty years ago, after a similar petition-plus-lawsuit rigmarole was won by the father of the leader of the current secession initiative.
**The empty portion of South Seaside Park that is visible on the map is an unbuildable state park. The empty portion of rump Berkeley does have a lot of overlap with New Jersey's protected Pinelands area, but that makes building merely difficult, not impossible.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
Add the following code to your custom CSS: button.m-0{display:none;}
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
if you use Ublock Origin
This website also has a built-in custom-CSS feature in the settings.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
When I expressed interest in having a custom house built, my mother nonjokingly suggested that it might be nice to have a house whose interior looked like a Costco warehouse's, with exposed electrical conduits making diagnosis of problems easy. My design has a "flat" (1:12) roof, but no exposed conduits. Still, the wiring should be easy to access through the suspended ceiling.
The majority party/coalition draws the first straight line that bisects the population of the state.
See also the shortest-splitline algorithm.
The shortest-splitline algorithm for drawing N congressional districts:
(1) Start with the boundary outline of the state.
(2) Let A = ⌈N/2⌉ and B = ⌊N/2⌋.
(3) Among all possible dividing lines that split the state into two parts with population ratio A:B, choose the shortest.
(4) We now have two hemi-states, each to contain a specified number (namely A and B) of districts. Handle them recursively via the same splitting procedure.
pak chooie
I think the typical English onomatopoeia for spitting is "ptooie" or "ptoo". It has a rather childish connotation, though, and I don't think I've ever seen it used for spitting in disgust. In such a situation, a native Anglophone normally would just write "(spits in disgust)".
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7d ago
−10,000 social-credit points for hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7d ago
Goshdarn whippersnappers… they used to have RESPECT for proper punctuation⋮ back in my day the teacher would hit the back of your hand with a ruler if you put spaces inside your ellipses⋱
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7d ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7d ago
Real punctuation:
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Hyphen-minus: -
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Ersatz em dash: --
Mental illness:
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Hyphen: ‐
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Minus sign: −
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En dash: –
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Em dash: —
t. sufficiently mentally ill to use everything but the hyphen
He killed the guy simply by hacking his leg? That's unexpected.
Just a few days ago I read a court opinion where somebody died from being slashed in the face. He didn't bleed out; rather, an air bubble got into his blood vessels and he died of a heart attack. <del>(I unfortunately don't have the link on hand.)</del><ins>Link</ins>
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10d ago
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A company owns a nine-acre (four-hectare) piece of land (comprising three lots) that straddles the boundary between two municipalities, Allentown and Bethlehem. (This Google Maps link shows the location. This screenshot of the county's GIS map shows the municipal boundary.) The company wants to build a complex of four apartment buildings on the land. On this piece of land, Bethlehem's zone allows apartment buildings, but Allentown's zone does not, so the company is getting all the zoning approvals through Bethlehem.
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More specifically, Bethlehem's zone allows an apartment building to be built only if there is a commercial use on its first floor, but this requirement is waived if the apartment building faces a "local street" rather than an "arterial street". The company asks the Bethlehem zoning board to rule that all four buildings in the complex count as facing North Wahneta Street in Allentown, which is a local street, even though building 4, when considered individually, actually faces West Broad Street in Bethlehem, which is an arterial street. Bolstering this argument, the complex's main entrance will be on North Wahneta Street, while there will be a fence blocking access from West Broad Street.
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The Bethlehem zoning officer recommends that the petition be rejected, but the Bethlehem zoning board approves it anyway. Since the piece of land counts as a "corner lot" (indeed, it adjoins five different streets), the zoning code allows the company to choose whichever street it wants as the street that the entire lot faces, without considering individual buildings. And judicial precedent states that a zoning board can acknowledge the existence of land in a different municipality without being guilty of exercising its jurisdiction outside its own borders.* The Bethlehem government appeals**, along with several disgruntled single-family-residential neighbors who don't want to live next to an apartment complex, but the trial court affirms.
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The appeals panel reverses. (1) Under the unique circumstances of this case, the Bethlehem zoning board actually is exercising its jurisdiction outside its own borders, because it is giving the nod to an apartment building that "faces" an Allentown street and sits partially on Allentown land but would be forbidden in Allentown's zone, enabling an end run around Allentown's zoning code. And (2) the designation of building 4 as facing a street that actually lies behind building 4 would run afoul of other parts of Bethlehem's zoning code (e. g., a prohibition on putting an apartment building's parking lot between the building and its front lot line), which the zoning board completely overlooked. Finally, even if those first two points were not valid, (3) there is not even any evidence in the record that North Wahneta Street counts as a local street under Bethlehem's zoning code in the first place! Therefore, building 4 must be considered to face West Broad Street in Bethlehem, not North Wahneta Street in Allentown.
*In that case: A company owned a 43-acre (17-hectare) piece of land straddling the boundary between two municipalities, Cheltenham and Springfield. Cheltenham's zoning code required a 100-foot (30-meter) setback from the property line. The Cheltenham govt. argued that this setback should also apply to the municipal boundary in the middle of the piece of land, but the Cheltenham zoning board rejected this argument**, and the trial court and the appeals panel affirmed. "Hamilton Hills is clearly distinguishable because it pertained to [whether a developer could count open space in one municipality toward another municipality's open-space requirement], not setback provisions. The zoning board simply found that the municipal boundary line was not a property line for measuring setbacks. In so concluding, the zoning board did not exert any control over land located in another municipality."
**Yes, in each of these two cases the government and the zoning board of the same municipality were opponents. Apparently, a zoning board is considered a quasi-judicial entity that is independent of the government that appointed all of its members.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10d ago
Quote from the opinion:
Respondents object to the inclusion of “future persons” in the class, arguing that “‘future persons’—i.e., persons who have not yet been conceived—lack either standing or capacity to sue”. As petitioners note, the fact that a policy will continue to harm future class members is relevant to numerosity.
Including future class members is no bar to class certification. Although the future class member children in this case have yet to be born, as soon as they are born, they will join the class and their claims will be ripe. In other cases involving children, the fact that some of the potential future class members had not yet been born was not a bar to certification.
Finally, more children will continuously populate the class as they are born, and, where “an influx of future members will continue to populate the class... at indeterminate points in the future, joinder becomes not merely impracticable but effectively impossible”.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
14d ago
Many years ago, I read a Goosebumps book in which it was a plot point that the protagonist liked liver. (
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
14d ago
IRC § R306 (Flood-Resistant Construction):
Buildings and structures in non-coastal flood-hazard areas [i. e., with waves < 1.5 ft] shall have the lowest floors elevated to or above the base [100-year] flood elevation plus 1 foot.
Buildings and structures erected within coastal flood-hazard areas [with waves ∈ [1.5 ft, 3 ft]] and coastal high-hazard areas [with waves > 3 ft] shall be elevated so that the bottom of the lowest horizontal structural members supporting the lowest floor, with the exception of piling, pile caps, columns, grade beams, and bracing, is elevated to or above the base flood elevation plus 1 foot.
Buildings and structures erected within coastal flood-hazard areas and coastal high-hazard areas shall be supported on pilings or columns.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
14d ago
This statistics-laden article is applicable to Duolicious, a free (gratis and libre) dating website recently developed by a 4channer.
Fun, mildly interesting—what's the difference?
I think the Hussen case in particular is fairly funny. He submitted oodles of evidence, but the government still refused to believe that his marriage was genuine.
In addition to these two affidavits, Hussen submitted seven affidavits of family members and friends, many of whom had traveled great distances to attend the wedding, stating that the family members and friends had witnessed both the development of Hussen and Houndito’s relationship and the wedding. Hussen also submitted a copy of the signed marriage certificate and Islamic marriage contract, with the latter obligating Houndito’s family to pay a $10,000 dowry; numerous photographs depicting the wedding ceremony and honeymoon; a receipt for payment of more than $4,000 for his purchase of a diamond ring; copies of two plane tickets and a receipt showing that the couple paid more than $300 to fly to Miami for their honeymoon; a receipt showing that the couple paid more than $1,400 to place a four-night reservation at a hotel in Miami; a copy of a lease agreement they signed for an apartment in Virginia, dated three days prior to the wedding; a copy of an automobile insurance card that named both Hussen and Houndito as the policy’s insured; and finally, photos that depicted Hussen’s family meeting Houndito’s family in Ethiopia and the celebration that Hussen’s father hosted in Ethiopia to celebrate their marriage.
The BIA denied Hussen’s motion to reopen, stating that the standard to reopen proceedings to seek adjustment of status based on a marriage entered after the commencement of removal proceedings required Hussen to submit “clear and convincing evidence of the bona fides of the marriage.” While the BIA acknowledged that Hussen had attached photographs of the wedding, honeymoon, and gathering between families, as well as affidavits from friends and family and the couple’s lease agreement, it concluded that this was only “some evidence of the bona fides of [the] marriage” but was “insufficient to establish the bona fides of his marriage by clear and convincing evidence.”
Also, don't forget about the context of past discussions of marriage fraud on this forum (1 2).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
17d ago
Some marriage-fraud cases:
Plaintiff Sotir Libarov is a Bulgarian citizen. After entering the United States legally, Libarov married Elizabeth Alonso Hernandez, a lawful permanent resident. On March 15, 2016, Libarov applied to become a lawful permanent resident based on that marriage. USCIS issued a Notice of Intent to Deny Libarov’s application in March 2022, concluding that Libarov and Hernandez had entered into a sham marriage for immigration purposes. In the Notice, USCIS explained that Hernandez said under oath that the marriage was arranged by an acquaintance and that she “was offered $10,000 to enter a fraudulent marriage” with Libarov. USCIS ultimately denied Libarov’s application for permanent resident status on June 15, 2022.
Jin Yin Zhou, a Chinese citizen, married a US citizen in 1996. In 1997, Zhou entered the United States as a conditional permanent resident, ostensibly to live with her husband in New York. But, not long after her arrival, Zhou began living with her boyfriend in Kentucky and had three children with him. Zhou never lived with her husband and eventually divorced him in 2001. Throughout her immigration proceedings, Zhou concealed these facts repeatedly, including when she submitted a petition to remove the conditions of her residence and when she applied for naturalization. Eventually, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) officials discovered Zhou’s marriage fraud and recommended to the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) that she be placed in removal proceedings.
On January 15, 2014, Ansar Hassen Hussen, a native and citizen of Ethiopia, was admitted to the United States on a B-2 visitor visa which authorized him to remain in this country for six months. However, he has never left.
In June 2014, Hussen applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), claiming that he had twice been imprisoned and beaten for belonging to a minority political party in Ethiopia. An immigration judge (IJ), however, found Hussen’s account implausible and rejected his application, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed, agreeing that material aspects of Hussen’s story did not add up. Hussen filed a petition for review.
While that petition was pending, Hussen married a US citizen, who then filed an I-130 application for an immigrant visa on his behalf. Hussen then filed a motion with the BIA to reopen his proceedings so that he could seek an adjustment of status based on his marriage. He attached affidavits, photographs, receipts for items like a diamond engagement ring, an Islamic marriage contract, and a lease agreement showing that the couple jointly rented an apartment in Virginia. The BIA, however, denied Hussen’s motion to reopen, concluding that Hussen’s evidence was “insufficient” because he failed to provide “clear and convincing evidence of the bona fides of [his] marriage”. From the BIA’s denial of his motion to reopen, Hussen filed a second petition for review.
While Hussen’s second petition for review was pending, he filed another motion with the BIA to reopen the proceedings and to reconsider its denial of his earlier motion to reopen. He attached evidence showing that his wife was pregnant, that they were living together, and that they shared a joint bank account. The BIA denied Hussen’s motion for reconsideration and second motion to reopen, and Hussen filed a third petition for review.
For the reasons that follow: we deny Hussen’s first petition; we grant his second petition, vacate the BIA’s order denying Hussen’s motion to reopen, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion; and we deny his third petition as moot.
In October 2013, Plaintiff Roberto Martinez Olivera filed a Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, on Givovich’s behalf, and Plaintiff Nicole Givovich correspondingly filed a Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status. After interviewing Givovich and Martinez Olivera regarding the petitions in January 2014, USCIS investigated the bona fides of Givovich’s prior marriage with Doroteo Caldera Rodriguez. On April 9, 2014, USCIS Immigration Officers interviewed Mr. Caldera Rodriguez, and he provided a written sworn statement (translated from Spanish to English) in which he stated that he had married Givovich “as a favor so she could obtain her legal residency”. Specifically, he explained that he and Givovich had met when they were taking English classes and were friends for about two years before getting married. He said that Givovich had asked him to marry her to help her obtain her residency status. Mr. Caldera Rodriguez stated that he and Givovich never lived together and were never intimate.
USCIS ultimately denied the I-130 visa petition in April 2023. USCIS explained that the two sworn statements of Mr. Caldera Rodriguez, and the corroborating statements of Ms. Trejo, Ms. Munoz, and Mr. Rojas, provided substantial and probative evidence that Plaintiff Givovich had “entered into marriage with Mr. Caldera Rodriguez for the purpose of evading immigration laws”.
How often does everyone here wash his cars? Do you hand wash or car wash?
I let the sky wash my car whenever it rains.
What conditions are they put through?
No garage; a daily commute of 40 miles each way in the New York–Philadelphia corridor
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
19d ago
As the meme goes, despite making up only 13% of the population, blacks commit 52% of the crimes. But blacks can't be deported.
IMO, allowing Corsicans to have two different languages is unreasonable when other cultures do not get such an opportunity. It enables gamey behavior like playing as Germany, releasing the country of Corsica as a puppet, and granting to it both French land and Italian land. And it makes Corsicans more accepted by the French govt. than they should be.
For an analogous situation, look at the Ashkenazi culture. Realistically, Ashkenazi should speak German as well as Yiddish. But a comment in the game files explicitly notes that the German-Speaking trait was not given to the Ashkenazi in the game because it would increase their acceptance to an unrealistic degree.
Normally, the USA will be in the middle of enacting Slavery Banned, the CSA will secede rolled back to Legacy Slavery through the normal secession mechanic, and then the events will immediately force the USA into Slavery Banned and the CSA into Slave Trade. If the forced law changes are removed: It is possible but unlikely that a CSA politician with the Slaver ideology will enact Slave Trade. (Note that the Pro-Slavery ideology espoused by the CSA's Landowners interest group likes Slave Trade no more strongly than it likes Legacy Slavery, so without a special Slaver leader it will not go all the way to Slave Trade.) And it is possible but unlikely that the USA's in-progress natural law change to Slavery Banned will fail, causing it to keep Legacy Slavery.
Likewise, I imagine that a pro-slavery USA could enact Slave Trade, and then a seceding FSA could roll back only to Legacy Slavery rather than going all the way to Slavery Banned. But that's just speculation, as I haven't actually seen it happen.
If there are any other forced law changes, I haven't noticed them.
Essentially, Victoria's "incorporated states" are the same as Europa Universalis's "core provinces" and Crusader Kings's "de jure subject titles". The people in incorporated states have to pay taxes, but also can vote and receive the benefits of govt. policies like schools and hospitals.
In the words of Wikipedia: "American territories are under American sovereignty and may be treated as part of the U.S. proper in some ways and not others (i.e., territories belong to, but are not considered part of the U.S.). Unincorporated territories in particular are not considered to be integral parts of the U.S., and the Constitution of the United States applies only partially in those territories."
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