ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
link to category "digital signage", filtered by "size: 24 inches"
Better links:
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Category "digital signage", filtered by "feature: TV tuner" and sorted by price (360 $ for a 43-inch 3840×2160 screen)
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Category "hospitality TV", sorted by price (200 $ for a 16-inch 1920×1080 screen or 360 $ for a 32-inch 1366×768 screen)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9hr ago
Your link is not sufficiently informative to enable a reader to form an opinion. This press release is a bit more enlightening.
Coverd, a new fintech startup reimagining personal finance for the next generation, today announced the official launch of its mobile app—now available for download on the App Store and Google Play.
Coverd transforms routine purchases into engaging opportunities to win back real money. Each transaction, whether it's game day tickets, a table at a club, or groceries, unlocks a chance to play a mini-game and win up to 100% of that purchase amount back.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9hr ago
TIL that in recent years the government of Brazil has laid thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable, not underground or at the bottom of the ocean, but at the bottom of the Amazon River!
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
15hr ago
I see that Best Buy and Amazon have flat screen TVs (24") for $50. These are strictly superior to the old 20" CRT TVs.
"Strictly superior" may be a very slight overstatement, since IIRC these super-cheap televisions are subsidized by built-in advertisements. Maybe "strictly superior in 95 percent of graded areas (all except built-in advertisements)" would be more accurate.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
18hr ago
The official SEC filing says:
Prior to the consummation of the Merger [with Netflix], WBD [Warner Bros. Discovery] and a newly formed subsidiary of WBD (“SpinCo”) will enter into a Separation and Distribution Agreement (the “Separation and Distribution Agreement”), pursuant to which WBD will, among other things, engage in an internal reorganization, including the Holdco Merger, whereby it will transfer to SpinCo its Global Linear Networks business and certain other assets, and SpinCo will assume from WBD certain liabilities associated with such business (the “Separation”). WBD will retain the Retained Business, and all other assets and liabilities not transferred to SpinCo, including WBD’s Streaming & Studios businesses.
Presumably, the devil is in the details of "associated with such business".
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
18hr ago
Funny special report from Reuters: Assad's exiled spy chief and billionaire cousin plot Syrian uprisings from Russia
Assad, who escaped to Russia last December, is largely resigned to exile in Moscow, say four people close to the family. But other senior figures from his inner circle, including his brother, have not come to terms with losing power.
Two of the men once closest to Assad, Maj. Gen. Kamal Hassan and billionaire Rami Makhlouf, are competing to form militias in coastal Syria and Lebanon made up of members of their minority Alawite sect, long associated with the Assad family, Reuters found. All told, the two men and other factions jostling for power are financing more than 50,000 fighters in hope of winning their loyalty.
Details of the scheming are based on interviews with 48 people with direct knowledge of the competing plans. All spoke on condition of anonymity. Reuters also reviewed financial records, operational documents, and exchanges of voice and text messages.
It was on March 9 that Makhlouf started calling himself “The Coast Boy,” declaring in a statement that he had been entrusted with a divine mission to help Alawites. “I’m back, and blessed be the return,” the statement read. It did not mention that he was in Moscow.
Makhlouf now lives on a private floor in a luxurious Radisson hotel in Moscow under tight security, according to nine aides and relatives. He quotes frequently from the Quran. They said he became deeply religious during house arrest, using the time in isolation to write a three-volume series on Islamic lore and interpretation.
According to Makhlouf’s Facebook posts and WhatsApp messages to associates, he believes God gave him money and influence so he can play a messianic role in a Shiite prophecy involving the battle of Armageddon in Damascus. In his interpretation, the apocalypse will arrive after the end of U.S. President Donald Trump’s term. He publicly calls Sharaa “Al Sufyani,” the prophecy’s chief villain, who dies when a fissure in the earth swallows his army.
One of his financial managers told Reuters that Makhlouf has spent at least $6 million on salaries. Payroll tables and salary receipts created by financial aides to Makhlouf in Lebanon claimed he spent $976,705 in May, and that one group of 5,000 fighters received $150,000 in August.
The total force numbers are real, according to five leaders of military groups in Syria who are on Makhlouf’s payroll and lead about a fifth of his following. But Makhlouf’s funding falls short of their needs, amounting to just $20 to $30 a month per fighter.
Altogether, the five local military leaders said they command about 12,000 men in various stages of readiness. One of them told Reuters the time wasn’t yet right for action.
Another of the five commanders derided Makhlouf as trying to buy loyalty with “crumbs of money.”
All five said they had accepted money from both Makhlouf and Hassan, the spy chief. They saw no issue with overlapping paymasters.
“Thousands of Alawites, whether former Syrian soldiers or civilians dismissed from state jobs, live in extreme poverty,” one of the men said. “There is nothing wrong with taking some cash from these whales who sucked our blood for years.”
Since the March killings, the Damascus government has relied on a point man to counter the plotting: Khaled al-Ahmad, a childhood friend of President Sharaa.
Four aides said al-Ahmad is funding and coordinating job creation and economic development because he believes they are the solution to the destabilizing high unemployment that followed the fall of Assad, when the army was dissolved and Alawites lost government posts.
In late October, the Interior Ministry announced the arrest of a coastal cell it said was funded by Makhlouf that was plotting to assassinate journalists and activists. In all, Tartous governor al-Shami said, the number of arrests of people linked to Makhlouf and Hassan was in the dozens.
Along that same coast, stockpiles of gear are quietly gathering dust in underground rooms, according to the [previously quoted anonymous] field commander, who personally keeps watch over several of them.
They’ll be ready when needed, he said, but so far he sees no side worth choosing.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
A cursory search of the DC Code and Regulations indicates that marijuana dispensaries are required to have surveillance systems and to keep footage for 30 days, but does not reveal any such requirement for electronics stores.
(I am aware of one city that requires apartment buildings to keep footage for 60 days.)
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In February 2020, a police officer responds to a medical emergency at a nursing home, and remains in the same room as a coughing person for thirty minutes. "Within days of responding to this medical call, petitioner began experiencing symptoms, including severe migraines, vertigo, lightheadedness, and chest pains, resulting in sick leave from work. Over the ensuing months, he tried several times to return to work, to no avail as his debilitating symptoms persisted. He was eventually diagnosed with post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, otherwise known as 'long COVID', and his department agreed he could no longer perform his duties as a police officer." In June 2020, the officer files for "accidental disability" retirement, with payout equal to two-thirds of salary. Both his expert doctor and the state retirement board's expert doctor agree that the officer's disability is the direct result of a coronavirus infection contracted in the February 2020 incident.
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In March 2023, the board rejects the application and instead grants "ordinary disability" retirement, with payout equal to only two-fifths of salary (a reduction of 60 percent). The board points out that the officer provided zero evidence of ever actually testing positive for the coronavirus, so he has failed to prove to the required preponderance-of-evidence standard that the February 2020 incident caused his disability. On administrative appeal, in September 2024 the board's administrative pseudo-judge recommends that the board grant accidental-disability retirement, but in November the board rejects the recommendation and once again grants only ordinary-disability retirement.
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On judicial appeal, in December 2025 the appeals panel reverses. No coronavirus testing was available in February 2020. In the absence of that hard evidence, the board's rejection of the officer's "overwhelming" circumstantial evidence, with no rebutting evidence of its own, was arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.
Court opinion regarding the persistent, obstinate failure of a tire shop to stop storing 1500 tires in an unsafe manner
A Township law enforcement officer certified that "Harry's Tires, LLC, is a New Jersey corporation engaged primarily in the sale of 'affordable used tires' for cash". He asserted that "[t]he official business address [of] Harry's Tires, LLC, is 24 Hilltop Ave.,… but it also stores used tire inventory and scrap tires at 1016 N[orth] Black Horse Pike". The officer certified that drone footage showed "approximately 1,000 scrap tires lying on the ground at the N[orth] Black Horse Pike location and approximately 500 at the Hilltop Ave[.] location", demonstrating the hazardous conditions. He further certified that, in November 2021, "the Township Fire Department responded to a fire at" defendants' North Black Horse Pike location because a single tire had caught fire and "spread to some scrap lumber and a tree branch before it was extinguished". The officer attached a police report stating that "stacks of several hundred new and old tires" enclosed the fire area, "making it a difficult area to access". On the date of the fire, Harry could not be reached, despite several attempts.
The Township's emergency management coordinator certified that "[a] fire from any of the Harry's Tires sites would pose a major environmental and logistical nightmare for emergency responders". He explained the "site locations for defendant Harry's Tires in the Township are in close proximity" to both State highways, the Big Timber Creek tributary, and "heavily-populated residential areas". "Both of the Harry's Tires sites contain hundreds of easily-combustible tires haphazardly strewn around the property, making it a death trap for anyone attempting to exit the buildings on the sites in the event of a fire, as well as causing very serious hazards for emergency responders." Based on his years of experience, he opined that "[t]he illegal storage of hundreds of tires on the sites will undoubtedly cause a catastrophe".
Blah blah blah, default judgment, permanent injunction. A whopping 16 months later, the owner moves to vacate the default judgment, claiming that he didn't respond earlier because he was "destitute, in a state of depression, and involved in other kinds of abusive behavior". The trial judge rejects his arguments, and the appeals panel affirms.
A multigenerational household, assuming 25 years per generation and three children per couple:
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Great-great-grandparents, age 100–124*: 2 people → 1 couple
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Great-grandparents, age 75–99: 3 people → 2 couples**
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Grandparents, age 50–74: 6 people → 3 couples
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Parents, age 25–49: 9 people → 5 couples
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Children, age 0–24: 15 people
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Result: Eleven 2-occupant bedrooms and five 3-occupant bedrooms; a 16-bedroom, 37-occupant mansion
| Standard deviations from the mean | Age at death (a) |
|---|---|
| −3 | 0 |
| −2 | 27 |
| −1 | 60 |
| +0 | 80 |
| +1 | 91 |
| +2 | 98 |
| +3 | 103 |
This probably is a gross misinterpretation of the linked table, as I haven't taken any statistics classes in about fifteen years. The point is that centenarians are rare, and it is not unreasonable to think that centenarian-helmed six-generation households are too rare to need accommodation. (This goes double for places like the US, where the generation time is closer to 30 years than to 25 years.) If you choose to stick with a five-generation household, you will require six 2-occupant bedrooms and three 3-occupant bedrooms, or a 9-bedroom, 21-occupant mansion.
**I conservatively assume that, of each generation's children, ⌊half⌋ leave the household, while ⌈half⌉ stay inside it and bring in spouses from outside. But feel free to insert an incest (or polyamory or polygamy) joke here.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
I have found the relevant code. Apparently, the buttons were always supposed to be right-aligned, but badly written HTML and/or CSS prevented that from happening. @ZorbaTHut fixed the HTML to match the intent.
If you want, you can submit a pull request to undo the change by deleting the text "justify-content-end" from this line of code.
Sea Anenemies (HTF do you pell that I've tried like 6 ways and can't get any spellcheck suggestions) seem fairly plant-like, but does anyone actually eat them?
In southwestern Spain and Sardinia, the snakelocks anemone is consumed as a delicacy. Anemones are also a source of food for fisherman communities on the east coast of Sabah, Borneo, as well as in the Thousand Islands of Southeast Asia and in Taizhou, Zhejiang.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
Canada's immigration policy is so insane that the India's foreign minister himself has formally warned Canada that they're granting visas to the worst of the worst.
[Indian Foreign Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam] Jaishankar said Canada has been welcoming people from India with links to organised crime, ignoring warnings by New Delhi.
"Often, when I see for example these kinds of attacks, threats to our embassies, because they concern me very deeply and I tell the foreign minister, suppose if (they) happened to you, if it was your embassy, your diplomat, your flag, how would you react. We have to keep our position strong on this particular report which has come. I also saw it yesterday night, I was coming to Odisha in the morning, somebody may have been arrested, their police may have done some investigation," Jaishankar said at the event.
"But the fact is that a number of gangland people, a number of people with organised crime links from Punjab have been made welcome in Canada. We have been telling Canada, saying, look these are wanted criminals from India, you have given them visas. Many of them have come in false documentation and yet you allow them to live there. If you decide to import for political purposes people with very dubious, actually, very negative backgrounds, there will be issues, they have in some cases created problems in their own country as a result of their own policies. No, why would we fear? If something happens there, it is for them to worry about," he added.
Overstays according to the aforementioned report:
| Source countries | Visas | Absolute | Relative to expected exits for this source–visa combination (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| VWP (Visa Waiver Program) | B-1, B-2 | 99,000 | 0.62 |
| Non-VWP, non-CA/MX | B-1, B-2 | 310,000 | 3.2 |
| Non-CA/MX | F, M, J | 49,000 | 3.7 |
| CA, MX | B-1, B-2, F, M, J | 79,000 | 0.73 |
| All | B-1, B-2, F, M, J | 570,000 | 1.5 |
| Turkmenistan | B-1, B-2 | 142 | 15 |
| Turkmenistan | F, M, J | 45 | 22 |
| Turkmenistan | B-1, B-2, F, M, J | 187 | 17 |
That's just disputing the definition of "third world". IMO, lumping into the "third world" category every country that is not classified as an "advanced/developed market" by the IMF is far from totally unreasonable, though people may complain about the inclusion of Poland and Hungary in such a category. Another definition might be "every country that is not classified by the World Bank as a 'high-income country'", which excludes Poland and Hungary but also Panama and Guyana.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3d ago
If your browser window is narrower than 768 pixels (with zoom taken into account), then this website's CSS switches from desktop mode to phone mode. This is called "responsive web design".
As the kids say, "notabug wontfix".
According to the [Fiscal Year 2023] Overstay Report, Turkmenistan had a B-1 [business]/B-2 [tourist] visa overstay rate of 15.35 percent and an F [student], M [vocational], and J [exchange visitor] visa overstay rate of 21.74 percent.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
this viral Substack series
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
Second Geneva Convention of 1949 art. 3:
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed 'hors de combat' by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.
Commentary ¶ 489 (applying to the first-quoted paragraph):
The object and purpose of common Article 3 supports its applicability in non-international armed conflict reaching beyond the territory of one State. Given that its aim is to provide persons not or no longer actively participating in hostilities with certain minimum protections during intense armed confrontations between States and non-State armed groups or between such groups, it is logical that those same protections would apply when such violence spans the territory of more than one State.
Commentary ¶¶ 893–896 (applying to the last-quoted paragraph):
This provision confirms that, while humanitarian law provides for equal rights and obligations of the Parties to the conflict in the treatment of people in their power, it does not confer legitimacy on non-State armed groups that are Parties to a conflict.
Furthermore, it serves to underline that, as international humanitarian law applies based on the facts, regardless of whether a State qualifies the members of a non-State armed group as ‘terrorists’ or its actions as ‘terrorism’, humanitarian law applies if and when the conditions for its applicability are met.
The denial that groups that a State has labelled as ‘terrorist’ may be a Party to a non-international armed conflict within the meaning of humanitarian law carries the risk that the non-State armed group loses an incentive to abide by that body of law. This in turn reduces the ability of humanitarian law to serve its protective purpose. Humanitarian law seeks to protect civilians and all those who are not directly participating in hostilities; it does this in part by obliging Parties to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects and military objectives.
Nothing since the introduction of common Article 3 in 1949 has altered the fact that the applicability of humanitarian law to situations of non-international armed conflicts does not affect the legal status or enhance the legitimacy of non-State armed groups. This remains as essential today as it was at that time, as any other interpretation will almost inevitably lead States to deny the applicability of common Article 3 and thereby undermine its humanitarian objective.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5d ago
Legally binding documents:
International Criminal Court Elements of Crimes art. 8 (2) (a) (i):
War crime of wilful killing
Elements
1. The perpetrator killed one or more persons.
2. Such person or persons were protected under one or more of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
3. The perpetrator was aware of the factual circumstances that established that protected status.
4. The conduct took place in the context of and was associated with an international armed conflict.
5. The perpetrator was aware of factual circumstances that established the existence of an armed conflict.
Second Geneva Convention of 1949 art. 12:
Protection and care
Members of the armed forces and other persons mentioned in the following Article, who are at sea and who are wounded, sick or shipwrecked, shall be respected and protected in all circumstances, it being understood that the term “shipwreck” means shipwreck from any cause and includes forced landings at sea by or from aircraft.
The person featured in the original PogChamp emote on Twitch was canceled after he expressed support for the January 6 rioters.
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