ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
Prostitution is entirely illegal under state law in 48 of the US's 50 states. (Nevada has devolved to its less populated counties (not including Las Vegas) the ability to permit brothels. Maine punishes only the buyer of sex, not the seller.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
8hr ago
It's a bit annoying that a person who has been in zero romances can't just skip all the pages past the first one.
(
Anecdotes on this topic:
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I once received a consumer survey. It was a paper booklet with dozens of pages, including (probably literally) a dozen for the respondent to indicate how often he watched different television shows. After two or three pages of marking "did not watch" for every single show, I got tired of it and just scribbled a line through the checkboxes.
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I once received an electronic survey from my university. It had (probably literally) a dozen different pages for the respondent to indicate which sports teams he paid attention to. After half a dozen pages of marking "do not pay attention" for every single team, I got tired of it and just closed the survey.
)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
8hr ago
An article
It says "a small group of high-end companions" right at the top (before the paywall). These numbers obviously are not representative. A cursory Internet search indicates that, in places where prostitution (including advertising) is legal, prices are 200 US dollars per hour, not 5000.
ToaKraka
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8hr ago
If it is, mods feel free to delete.
Stand-alone submissions start removed by default. If anybody other than the submitter can see it, it's already been approved by the moderators.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10hr ago
any preparation used as a preventive inoculation to confer immunity against a specific disease, usually employing an innocuous form of the disease agent, as killed or weakened bacteria or viruses, to stimulate antibody production.
any preventive preparation used to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific disease, using either messenger RNA or killed or weakened bacteria or viruses to prepare the body to recognize a disease and produce antibodies.
It can be argued that the word "usually" in the older definition always hid more treatments than the one that the layman was taught about in high-school biology class. But it is not deniable that the dictionary definition (and the CDC definition) did change.
ToaKraka
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20hr ago
Presumably for IPOs, there's some sort of delay before they get plugged into the indices?
That's what the linked article says.
ToaKraka
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1d ago
They already made a video announcing the pregnancy, so they couldn't just pretend that nothing happened.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
Who's that guy that said (incorrectly) history ended in the 2000s?
That's a misinterpretation of what he said.
The End of History is about the philosophy of political and economic systems. "Humans have tried many systems, but we no longer need to keep searching: liberal democracy is the last system of government we’ll ever need." If Fukuyama had wanted to be less provocative, he could have named his book The End of Political Systems Other Than Liberal Democracy. But here we are.
Most of what was eliminated has less to do with "job creation" and more to do with specific circumstances that only apply to certain industrial processes.
I think this applies to the deleted portions of the IFC (composed mostly of parts 4 (Special Occupancies and Occupations) and 5 (Hazardous Materials)), but not to the deleted portions of the IBC (generally applicable provisions).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
Probably more, considering some users might have downvoted, so it might be +10 vs. −5 or whatever—I wouldn't know.
If you hover your cursor over the score, you can see the upvote and downvote counts. (Allegedly, Reddit used to have this feature many years ago, but removed it.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
As I understand it, there is nothing illegal in the US about depictions of illegal incest, and the payment-processing companies are just puritanical for complicated reasons. (The same apparently is not true in the UKGBNI.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
Maybe I'm in a bubble, but I've never met anyone who doesn't have the default maps view on all the time. Is satellite view more common in the US?
On my computer, I use satellite view most of the time. Seeing urbanized areas, mountain ridges, and golf courses is fun, and I don't have a data cap. (On my phone/car, I use non-satellite view for better legibility.)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
Very interesting document from ICC (International Code Council): The EFSP (Essential Fire Safety Provisions)
Apparently, the goal is to provide an entry-level, stand-alone document that can be adopted in undeveloped countries without all the complexity of the full-fledged IBC (International Building Code) and IFC (International Fire Code). Editor's note:
During my career as a fire-safety consultant, I have had the opportunity to promote the adoption of modern fire codes outside the United States. On many occasions, when I engaged with authorities, I received comments indicating that these codes were too overwhelming. I remember a meeting with the mayor of the city of Asunción, in Paraguay, after a devastating fire in a supermarket in which 428 lost their lives. After I suggested to the mayor that his city should adopt NFPA 1 [an IFC competitor], he told me in no uncertain terms that, if he were to propose adopting such a voluminous code, his days as a democratically elected politician would be numbered.
Years later, I came to understand that the mayor was right, and I began exploring different approaches to making modern building codes more accessible in emerging nations with limited implementation capacity.
The EFSP appears to consist of abridged versions of the following items.
| EFSP | Original |
|---|---|
| Chapters 1–6 | IBC chapters 1–6 |
| Chapters 7–10 | IBC/IFC chapters 7–10 (they are not identical, but do have a lot of overlap) |
| Appendix A | IBC chapter 33 |
| Appendices B–D | IFC appendices B–D |
| Appendix E | IFC chapter 32 |
In print, it amounts to 363 pages—a whopping 75-percent reduction from the combined 1444 pages of the IBC and the IFC. The price of a watermarked PDF is just 56 dollars, versus 322 dollars for IBC+IFC—an 86-percent reduction.
All three of these documents have official Spanish translations. ICC also has worked with governments that are neither Anglophone nor Hispanophone, such as Oman and Pakistan.
Fun fact: Incest between consenting adults is legal in New Jersey. In recent years, bills that would ban it have been submitted by politicians of both major parties (Democratic 2024–2027, Republican 2014–2021, Democratic 2014–2017), but have died in committee.
According to Wikipedia (1 2), incest between consenting adults is illegal in almost all the other states of the US, including Pennsylvania (example conviction) and New York (example conviction).
Interesting report from the United Nations Secretary-General on the UN's drive for multilingualism
Websites under the purview of the Department of Global Communications continued to demonstrate a high level of parity across official languages. As at 30 September 2025, 90 per cent of the 318 web properties on the un.org domain were available in the six official languages. User engagement data for 2024–2025 show that page views remained highest in English, followed by Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese and Arabic.
UN official language Proportion of page views on un.org (%) English 61.5 Spanish 17.7 Russian 7.6 French 5.4 Chinese 4.7 Arabic 3.2
For several entities, multilingual web and social media activities were increasingly constrained by resource limitations. Funding cuts and staffing gaps led to the suspension or significant scaling-back of updates to non-English web pages, the accumulation of translation backlogs and greater reliance on prioritization of essential content. As a result, in those cases, if content was made available in more than one language, it was often the more stagnant content, and short-lived content was not being translated. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that the ad hoc and limited updating of its multilingual web content may have contributed to the decline recorded in readership and website traffic.
The 60 United Nations information centres played an instrumental role in conveying the Organization’s messages in multiple languages, including non-official languages to address the needs of local audiences. Information centres translated and disseminated over 4,500 informational materials in 45 languages, produced press releases and press statements in 27 languages, disseminated over 300 local op-eds in 15 languages and produced 150 podcasts in Arabic, English and Spanish. They also produced videos in 24 languages, which were widely shared on social media platforms, and organized 130 Model United Nations simulations in 17 languages, reaching approximately 40,000 students worldwide. Information centres maintained websites in 36 languages and social media accounts in 31 languages. [lengthy footnotes listing the languages omitted]
See also the Strategic Framework on Multilingualism.
Languages spoken confidently Proportion of Secretariat staff (%) 1 9 2 39 3 or more 52
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
You have to add two extra spaces at the end of a line in order to make a line break.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
I am very surprised to find a survey claiming that, in year 2012 (14 years ago), 76 percent of USAians would address a stranger at least 10 years older than themselves as "sir" or "ma'am". This article explains that in year 1980 (46 years ago) this practice was extremely regional—80 percent in the South but only 25 percent in the Northeast.
In my Northeast location: While working, I was considered a bit of a stick-in-the-mud for using "Mr./Ms. Lastname", as implied in my previous comment. And I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that, to the best of my recollection, I've never called anybody "sir" or "ma'am" in my entire 32 years. (Though I did once have occasion to call a judge "your honor".)
ToaKraka
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4d ago
ToaKraka
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5d ago
(1) My intent was to point out that both you and VIM were making overbroad claims. Iraq did "fire chemical weapons directly into an Iranian town" (not a city), though those weapons did not "kill hundreds of thousands of people".
(2) The second linked article indicates 100 Iranian civilian deaths.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
Wikipedia indicates a few tens of thousands of civilian injuries from Iraqi chemical weapons, some Iranian and some Kurdish in an Iraqi city recently captured by Iran.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
Yes. It is unreasonable for a person to take seriously a "threat" made by a random person, when it is overwhelmingly likely that the random person has no actual willingness or capability to follow through on that threat. 1 2
It can be argued that, in the modern context of high-speed travel and remote SWATting, it is less unlikely that the random person is willing and able to harm the target. But it still is extremely unlikely.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5d ago
US Supreme Court on this topic
Sending a hyperbolic "threatening" communication does not count as intimidation if you are not in a position to actually follow through.
Wikipedia says:
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