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Silly geographical comments (or whatever you'd call this)

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Comments

  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    Me: Oh I booked out the tennis court and couldn't make it. That's the second time this month, I'd better get my act together or-
    Hong Kong: You're banned!
    Hong Kong authorities will toughen anti-touting rules and penalties from next month in a further attempt to stamp out abuse in the booking of sports grounds and public recreation facilities.

    The Leisure and Cultural Services Department on Monday announced several new measures set to be implemented from November 1, after previously introducing anti-touting rules earlier in May.

    The department said anyone who booked a facility and failed to show up twice within 60 consecutive days would be banned from making new bookings for 90 days. Currently, those who fail to be present during a 30-day period are prohibited for 90 days.

    The suspension of booking rights for fee-charging facilities has been extended from 180 days to 360 days for anyone found to have transferred a user permit for a facility without authorisation.

    Users of internet booking service Leisure Link will also be required to provide the numbers of four other patrons when submitting balloting applications for natural and artificial turf football pitches.

    The hirer and three of the other users will have to sign in and show up for the booked session. They must also provide their original identity documents and other necessary information for verification and registration purposes at the check-in counter before using the football pitch.
  • edited 2022-10-17 04:00:29
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    ...what is "touting" in this context?

    Edit: oh wait i should just check the article

    Edit: it seems like it probably refers to the practice of hogging reservations for sports facilities, which seems to be a problem there. And it wouldn't surprise me that it is given how densely populated built areas of Hong Kong are, so demand for facilities is probably quite high, leading to some people who try to take advantage of systemic quirks.
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    Well the sentiment seems fine but the measures they've taken are a bit extreme. I don't think people 'tout' on purpose, though they may be flaky or forgetful.

    Otherwise I'm surprised there isn't a secret black-market trade in spots at public facilities if it's this much of a concern.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    If there's high enough demand for time using these facilities combined with a relatively dearth of them, there's definitely room for malfeasance.

    Though I still am not entirely sure what "tout" means here.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
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  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human


  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Hey @glennmagusharvey what is this speaker of the house mess about? I don't even know if it's more of an important role or a prestigious one. From what I could gather the Republicans got the dumb again, but I failed to understand the details.
  • edited 2023-01-07 02:13:56
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    long post incoming lol
    lrdgck wrote: »
    Hey @glennmagusharvey what is this speaker of the house mess about? I don't even know if it's more of an important role or a prestigious one. From what I could gather the Republicans got the dumb again, but I failed to understand the details.
    The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is actually an important role. (This is unlike the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, which is analogously the head of the Senate but has remained largely ceremonial.)

    Basically, the Speaker is the leader of the majority party (or coalition) in the House, outranking even the Majority Leader. The Speaker has various powers and other influence, including over the selection of which members get to serve on various committees, including the very powerful Rules Committee. (Bills are generally considered in committees and passed by them before being brought to the floor of the whole House to be voted on.) Thus, the Speaker basically has a big say in what bills even get voted on. (This ability can be, and is, used to avoid bills that make the majority party look bad, and instead bring bills that serve the majority party's agenda and/or try to make the minority party look bad (based on how they vote for it), for example.) The Speaker also has various other powers, see the Wikipedia article for more details.

    The issue is that the rules of the House basically say the following:

    First, the Speaker of the House is elected by a majority of the members-elect who vote for a specific person.
    Then, the members-elect are sworn in, and become members, at which point they're allowed to discharge the duties of being bona fide members of the House of Representatives. (N.B. I am going to call everyone a member-elect even if they've been elected before to a previous term. As of right now, without the election of a Speaker and the swearing-in of the members, there is no U.S. House of Representatives, legally speaking. This is kinda fucking hilarious if your sense of humor is sufficiently cynical.)
    Then, a package of rules for how this two-year term will be organized is passed by the (now) members. And they can also do other things.

    The Republican caucus (technically the House Republican Conference, going by what they call themselves) in the House has a sufficient number of crazies to gum up the works of step 1.

    Right now, there are 222 Republicans and 212 Democrats (not counting temporary absences, but counting the absence of Rep.-elect Donald McEachin (D-VA-04) who passed away before term began); a total of 434 means that 218 votes are needed for a majority. And it's normal for each party's members-elect to vote only for candidate of their own party for Speaker. So that means that a Republican nominee for Speaker needs at least 218 of all 222 Republican votes, and only up to 4 can do funky stuff, by which I mean vote for someone else. (The majority threshold goes down slightly if members-elect are absent or vote "present" (i.e. no particular person, but the vote just records their presence).)

    But there are up to 20 crazies in the Republican caucus. On the first ballot (i.e. first time everyone voted) for Speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy (who had been the minority leader when Democrat Nancy Pelosi was previously Speaker) tried for the Speakership, but got only 203 votes. He got 203 votes on the second ballot, then 202 on the third ballot and several subsequent ballots on subsequent days. (This number fell as low as 200 due to some absences and/or one "present" vote.)

    Today, after some more negotiations, on the 12th ballot, McCarthy finally...got a plurality, 213 votes, but that's still not enough. On the 13th ballot, McCarthy...got 214 votes, which is still not enough.

    (Meanwhile, Democrat Hakeem Jeffries (the nominee of the Democrats) has consistently gotten 212 votes from all 212 Democratic members-elect, except for the one time today on the 12th vote that Rep.-elect David Trone (D-MD-06) was out for a medical reason. He's back in now.)



    But Glenn, why can't they just let whoever has the most votes wins?

    Short answer: the rules.

    Long answer: they could change the rules, but doing that requires a majority vote itself. So let's see the incentives each faction faces:

    Non-crazy Republicans: want McCarthy. Would vote for a plurality if they think McCarthy can win. Note that in all votes before today's, Jeffries (D) got the most votes...so supporting this is risky.

    Crazy Republicans: they hate McCarthy, and/or they want to force the leadership to cave to their demands -- which is basically stuff like the rules of the House during this term (including how easy it is to (at least try to) yeet the Speaker) and some things about how committees work. There are enough of them that they are able to hold the Speaker vote hostage to their demands. A plurality vote would make them give up this leverage and instead put them in the hot seat (either vote for McCarthy or let a Dem win), so they have no incentive to support it.

    Democrats: they don't want McCarthy either, but as today's votes prove, they don't necessarily have a plurality either, if (as has already happened) McCarthy is able to somehow reunite more of the Republicans to support him. So it's a risky play for Dems too.

    So yeah, a plurality is a risky play for everyone except the crazies, and a downright disadvantageous one for the crazies.



    Enjoy your popcorn while this lasts.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Thanks mate, that's the kind of reply I've been hoping for.
    This is kinda fucking hilarious if your sense of humor is sufficiently cynical.
    You can count on me there, rest assured.
    Crazy Republicans: they hate McCarthy, and/or they want to force the leadership to cave to their demands -- which is basically stuff like the rules of the House during this term (including how easy it is to (at least try to) yeet the Speaker) and some things about how committees work. There are enough of them that they are able to hold the Speaker vote hostage to their demands.
    See, that's the part where I was most confused about. "Party faction holds entire party hostage by abuse of parliamentary procedure" is a concept clear enough even if I don't know the procedure, but the motivation of the Crazy was elusive to me.

    As in, as I understood, the trumptards and related nutters were on the side of the McCarthy guy, which meant that the most logical internal opposition would be the remnants of the saner elements of the party, but by what I know of American party politics, they are virtually extinct. So, I didn't know what flavour of crazy they were. Like, also trumptard, but personally hostile to the McCarthy guy? With your explanation it makes some sense finally.

    Also, we've had enough crazy of our own over the last... three decades, I guess, but the stuff you guys have going on in there is the kind of deliberate stupidity that still seems quite apart. I mean, it looks like we've only had genuine idiots, where you have folks who deliberately make themselves into idiots, sort of like that.

    (I'm reminded of a rock song from like a decade ago: "those were such beautiful times, when we were ruled not by thieves, but by idiots". But right now, it feels like there happened some Hegelian synthesis of thieves and idiots.)
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    The "trumptards" are...not quite that, to be honest. See, Trump was never an ideological "true believer" the way some of these folks are. He was never in it for the ideology, and frankly his actual political ideology is some mix of variably less conservative and just plain more idiosyncratic, but filtered through a lot of pragmatism on his part from using his ideological flexibility to get what he wants, namely attention and power.

    The "MAGA"/"America First"/[other names] faction is sort of a mix of diehard ideologues whose faction/ideology was supercharged by Trump's influence but who don't even necessarily listen to Trump himself. Like, in this particular fight, Trump actually endorsed McCarthy and there's a now-famous picture of Marjorie Taylor Greene (reportedly) having Trump on the phone basically telling one of the diehards (Matt Rosendale) to get on the phone with him. (MTG herself is actually one of the crazy ideologues but in this case she chose to side with McCarthy for whatever reason, so there's also some cleavage between said ideologues.)

    Also I think some of these diehards were basically just intending to troll the process. I'm pretty sure that's how Kevin Hern got nominated repeatedly (despite he himself supporting McCarthy), particularly considering how some of the holdouts would say his name ("Kevin!!......Hern!!"). Meanwhile, one of the holdouts even actually tweeted to seemingly imply that he was satisfied that the House failed to organize, because it helped "US Taxpayers" and hurt "Zelensky" [sic]. So intentionally preventing government from functioning, and doing it for the lulz, are not off the table for these people.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Oh well. Turns out this is not the politics thread, which I for the last few posts thought it were.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    ...oops

    sorry about that -_-
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    It's funny the content is (apparently) not available in my country/region, but the quote tells me so much. Are Texan homeless just so hostile to the classics? Would they flock in if they played country instead? Are the storeowners not afraid of the occasional homeless opera fan?
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Sadly, it's a lot more mundane than that. It's just played EXTREMELY LOUD. So much so that even local homeowners are upset about it.
  • edited 2023-01-21 04:33:57
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    (almost) literal dumpster fire

    https://apnews.com/article/us-environmental-protection-agency-kay-ivey-alabama-climate-and-environment-0ae21074db2008f1071f1326c6e7f346

    The state of Alabama is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help put out a fire in an underground landfill. It's been burning for two months now.
  • edited 2023-01-24 18:40:02
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_National_University
    Name dispute
    In May 2013, Florida International University sued Florida National University over the similarity of the institution's names.[11] Florida International University lost the lawsuit because it was deemed frivolous and was forced to pay FNU's attorney fees.[12]

    FWIW, Florida National University is a small for-profit university in Miami-Dade County founded in 1988. Florida International University is a much larger public (and thus not-for-profit) university in Miami-Dade County founded in 1972.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    The state of Alabama is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help put out a fire in an underground landfill. It's been burning for two months now.
    Everybody gangsta for states' rights until your landfill is burning.

    Florida U Sues Florida U Over Similar Name
    (I kinda hope they're, like, on the opposite side of the same street.)

    Also, you remind me it's been a while since I saw a proper Meanwhile in Poland story. Fortunately, though that's not a piece of news, I still find the occasional picture once in a while.
  • edited 2023-01-24 22:44:37
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    No they're not; one (FNP) is located in an older part of the county, in Hialeah, I think right next to a major highway (the Palmetto Expressway) that runs through the county, while the other (FIU) is located much further west next to a different highway (the Turnpike).
  • Workman dies after being crushed by pop-up urinal in central London
    TIL about pop-up urinals. No wonder the British Empire declined.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    TIL about pop-up urinals too
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    TIL about pop-up urinals too
    Ah, the wonders of modern science!

    Also, that honestly kind of sucks, to die by a toilet. I mean, of all things.
  • edited 2023-01-28 21:48:00
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    FWIW at least one person has died in a portable toilet stall before.

    Sadly, this number cannot decrease.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    In the Victorian era, there was a perceived risk of toilets exploding. These scenarios typically include a flammable substance either accidentally or deliberately being introduced into the toilet water, and a lit match or cigarette igniting and exploding the toilet.
    Fug, I know this urban legend! My father told me a version with, IIRC, paint thinner, and an epilogue about the victim getting his arm broken by orderlies who were laughing too hard to carry the stretcher straight. But I had no idea it's as old as the 19th Century. There was also a related story about unusually heavy emissions of all-natural gasses, which in some versions, possibly by cross-contamination, had the gasses catch fire when the next toilet occupant threw a lit cigarette into the toilet.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    and now, time for a post i ran across praising poland and dissing the US

    mohet3a1273v.png
  • edited 2023-01-29 07:27:44
    @Exploding toilets: Mythbusters tested some of these myths and IIRC yeah, probably false.
    Somewhat related, the other day I learned about the prestigious, privileged and profitable job of royal ass wiper.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    I've read about a position of "a guy with a really warm and fluffy cloak who warms up the royal feet whenever the king feels cold", but I couldn't find any confirmation elsewhere. It was a children's history book, but not one known for making stuff up.

    On the topic of Poland, I might have coincidentally stumbled upon a story which, while not exactly meanwhile-in-Poland, is just close enough to mention. It's more of a meanwhile-in-Russia, really: apparently Russian state media have just aired a report on special LGBT formations being actively established by the Polish army. Katechons worldwide, soon you will fear the Polish gay battalions!
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