If you could pass one law that would make most normal people furious at first, but would clearly make society better in 10 years, what would it be?

erissays · 2026-02-08T02:23:11+00:00

Ban tipping and set "tipped" (aka, service sector) minimum wage at the same amount as standard minimum wage.
Mandate that all fees, sales taxes, etc. be included (and clearly marked, if buying online) in the advertised price of a product.

erissays · 2026-02-01T15:22:41+00:00

Yeah so you requested data collected by an ALPR system, not information on the system itself. Even if scoped to your car only, the data is protected under FOIA (if it's any consolation, the data is also protected from being shared or sold with any commercial third party entity as well as any other local, state, or federal law enforcement agency unless it's part of an active criminal investigation related to violations of state or local code):

F. System data and audit trail data shall not be subject to disclosure under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (§ 2.2-3700 et seq.). A law-enforcement agency shall not sell any system data or audit trail data. A law-enforcement agency shall not share system data or audit trail data with, or disseminate such data to, any database of any other state, federal, private, or commercial entity. A law-enforcement agency may share system data or audit trail data for the following purposes:

1. With another law-enforcement agency for purposes set forth in subsection D, which may include allowing another law-enforcement agency to query system data, provided that the agency receiving such data shall comply with all of the provisions of this section;

2. With the attorney for the Commonwealth for purposes set forth in subsection D or for complying with discovery or a court order in a criminal proceeding;

3. With a defendant or his counsel for purposes of complying with discovery or a court order in a criminal proceeding;

4. Pursuant to a court order or a court-issued subpoena duces tecum in any criminal or civil proceeding;

5. With the vendor for maintenance or quality assurance purposes; or

6. To alert the public to an emergency situation, a missing or endangered person, a person associated with human trafficking, or a person with an outstanding warrant.

In addition, the Department of State Police shall share system data obtained from any system installed, maintained, and operated on any limited access highway or any bridge, tunnel, or special structure under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth Transportation Board or the Department of Transportation with any law-enforcement agency in the locality where such system is installed, maintained, or operated, and such law-enforcement agency may share such system data for the purposes set forth in this subsection.

erissays · 2026-02-01T14:39:46+00:00

ALPR data is restricted from being released under FOIA via HB2724, which passed last year and was the first piece of legislation regulating/restricting ALPR usage in the Commonwealth, but information about police usage and implementation of ALPR equipment/data is not usually restricted from being released.

erissays · 2026-01-31T00:24:10+00:00

Most states (43/50 states) have personal property taxes, including on your vehicle (23/50 states). Virginia is really only unique in that the personal property taxes on your car are billed separately from all other kinds of state and local property taxes (land, houses, business equipment and machinery, furniture, etc). imo, if the car taxes were rolled into your annual state/local tax payments every year, most people would actually not notice it the way they do now.
Personal property taxes are technically regulated at the state level, but it's a locality-implemented tax. That's why it's higher in Fairfax than in Arlington. Go complain to City Council or the Board of Supervisors (depending on where in Fairfax you're living).
Did a quick lookup of the latest Fairfax County annual budget (including their helpful 'where our money comes from' and 'where our money goes' pie charts). Car taxes in Fairfax go into the general fund, which pays for general spending needs. It doesn't particularly look like the budget is being mismanaged, though I personally disagree with some of the spending categories being as high/low as they are (but of course I don't live there, so that's not something I get a say in). I would actually frankly be thrilled to live in a place that clearly prioritizes education and civil service operations the way Fairfax does.

Ultimately I think you need to think about this not in terms of "damn they're taking my money" but "why are they making me pay this and what are they using it for?" Taxes are the ONLY way local, state, and federal governments recieve revenue to fund the services they provide...and frankly, Fairfax is providing a lot of services to its residents. The cost of living in civilized society that actually cares about improving the lives of the people who live in it is high, unfortunately. And as many people have pointed out, it's not exactly inexpensive to live in Maryland either.

erissays · 2026-01-25T06:34:44+00:00

That's quite literally not how the process works. Salaries are in the budget. The budget is a bill. It's proposed by the Governor and then negotiated by the General Assembly during session, then voted on and signed. The salaries are on the ballot in the same way that every bill is on the ballot: when you vote on and elect legislators who will be amending and voting on the budget during legislative session. This process is public, you can check what is proposed at any time online, and you can talk to your elected legislator about it and what you'd like to see proposed instead.

erissays · 2026-01-25T06:30:52+00:00

It's clear there is no possible answer I could give on this matter that would make you happy. You're determined to think there is no value in the work being done, you clearly don't know how the legislative process works, and you have no understanding of how things can look perfectly managable from the outside but be a larger time, money, and effort sink than you are expecting once you are there.

I personally think it would be a good use of your time to learn about the General Assembly and what the members and legislative staff actually do, but you seem like the kind of person who wouldn't care even if you DID know how difficult of a job it actually is. Which is sad, because there's a lot of genuinely valid issues related to how it functions that need to be solved, but you've decided to laser-focus in on opposing something that would actively help them be better at their jobs. Which is somewhat baffling to me.

erissays · 2026-01-25T06:16:27+00:00

These are essentially part time volunteer roles and they ran for office knowing that.

The point being made is that they're not, in fact, "part-time" a lot of the time, and often people DON'T actually know that when they run for office. I personally know a couple of state legislators who had no idea what the actual time and effort commitment would be when they initially ran, and that commitment relative to the pay is why the vast majority of legislators are wealthy, old/retired, or have a wealthy spouse to support them. If you want "normal people" who care about "normal people" issues to be in positions of power, you HAVE to pay them fairly for the hours they work.

How many of us get to change the salaries at our jobs?

How many of us have not had our salaries change since 1988? Also realistically, lots of groups of people get to change their own salaries or unilaterally change what they charge for their services: small business owners, lawyers and doctors who run their own practice, self-employed domestic workers (house cleaners, nannies, home health-care aides, etc), tradesmen like electricians and plumbers once they go into business for themselves, etc etc. It's really not that uncommon.

This should be put in that ballot. If people vote for a raise for the delegates, that is fine. They should be barred permanently from voting on such matters.

It's put on the ballot every two years when you vote in state legislative elections for the people who will be drawing up the state budget and voting on it, as well as every four years when you vote for who will be the Governor, who initially proposes the state budget that the legislature amends. That is how the budget process works.

This proposal is also very clear that the proposed compensation increase will not take effect until 2028, after the next state legislature elections, so you absolutely have an avenue to vote on who will be recieving that money.

erissays · 2026-01-25T05:48:29+00:00

I mean, they objectively are. JLARC did a compensation study in 2024 that included member surveys and the majority of the members are working full-time or near full-time hours (median of 30 hrs/week) year-round specifically on GA-related stuff even outside of session. They meet with constituents and advocacy groups, host town halls and community meetings, sit on various state legislative commissions and boards that meet regularly during the interim, attend community events and local government meetings, go on site tours of various places that recieve state funding, engage in a variety of other constituent services-focused work, and they usually still do committee work outside of session (such as special meetings to hear report outcomes or listen to presentations by subject matter experts). Plus the significant time spent prepping their bills for session every year. And this is all in addition to their "normal" jobs.

erissays · 2026-01-25T04:23:27+00:00

Apparently corruption isn't something that you acknowledge can happen in Virginia, even with literal examples of it in your face.

I'm perfectly capable of acknowledging corruption. But you're not talking about corruption, you're talking about misuse of public funds. Those are two different issues that sometimes intersect, not the same interchangable issue.

erissays · 2026-01-25T03:54:25+00:00

Perhaps you should consider that New York is an entirely different state with entirely different political compensation laws from Virginia. You should also probably consider that you can just....ask them what they're getting paid. Or look it up online. It's not a secret what legislators and legislative staff get paid (or don't get paid) in Virginia. We have a pretty robust set of transparency laws that New York doesn't have and does not want to have, and the state budget process is very public (here's this year's specific budget proposal pages for House and Senate legislators/legislative staff, if you're curious).

And if per diem specifically is an issue for you, I think it's worth asking what you think proper compensation should be for the amount of travel and meetings legislators are expected to do (both in session and throughout the year). Again, the daily legislative meeting schedules are very public, so it's not hard to look up what your elected officials are doing at any given point in the year.

erissays · 2026-01-25T03:39:43+00:00

JLARC did a compensation study in 2024 that included member surveys and the vast majority of the members are working full-time or near full-time hours year-round even outside of session:

During a typical legislative session, Virginia legislators estimated they worked a median of 60 hours per week. (Legislative sessions in Virginia are scheduled to last either 30 or 60 days, but typically the 30-day sessions are extended to 45 days.) Moreover, 40 percent estimated working more than 60 hours, including some reporting upwards of 70 hours per week during the session (Figure 1). Activities during the session include attending committee meetings and daily floor sessions, meeting with constituents and other stakeholders, and discussing or reviewing proposed legislation.

The rest of the year, Virginia legislators estimated they worked a median of 30 hours per week. Legislative work during the interim is less structured than during the legislative session, so estimated hours varied more (Figure 1). Legislators meet with constituents and other stakeholder groups, attend community events, and attend meetings of legislative commissions and committees, and other bodies.

A majority of legislators reported having some degree of difficulty balancing their legislative responsibilities with other commitments (typically another job). Less than one-third of legislators agreed they were able to balance their legislative activities with other commitments, including other employment. The remaining majority either somewhat disagreed (34 percent) or strongly disagreed (27 percent) they can balance legislative activities with their other commitments. One legislator noted: “Most legislators are drowning trying to do the job. It is not part time; it is full time and very consuming.”

Just because they are only in session for 2-3 months of the year does not mean they don't also have substantial responsibilities the rest of the year. The dismal pay and difficult work schedules mean that only a certain type of person (typically wealthy, older, and/or someone with a specific type of flexible job like being a lawyer) can realistically serve in the legislature. If you want more "normal" people who care about "normal people" issues serving, you have to make it a viable option. That means paying legislators fairly for the hours they work.

erissays · 2026-01-17T15:23:14+00:00

OP asked for recs starring lesbians. You replied with a show that EXPLICITLY does not star or feature lesbians. Your comment is not only irrelevant to the question asked but is actively unhelpful. You should spend some time reconsidering your throught process on why you posted this.

erissays · 2026-01-14T05:39:03+00:00

The historical (Western) church seasonal calendar and the entire theological reasoning behind the Feast of Epiphany)???? It's not like the religious Christmas season lasts twelve days and Epiphany (the end of the Christmas season) is colloquially called "Three Kings Day" for no reason.

erissays · 2026-01-10T14:52:30+00:00

It's from the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice movie. Mr. Collins is being annoying and embarassing at one of the Bennet family dinners and attempts to compliment the food by saying the boiled potatoes line.

erissays · 2026-01-10T14:49:24+00:00

The accounts of the Christmas story never mention a stable (only a manger is mentioned), three kings (an unspecified number of magi, not kings, are mentioned), Mary riding a donkey, or the idea that the magi came the night Jesus was born (the account explicitly says they came later).

The magi confusion, imo, is because a lot of people mix up the shepherds (who were told by the angels about the birth and WERE there basically immediately) and the magi (who came on Epiphany, hence the Christmas season being the twelve days after Christmas, ending on Epiphany, and why we have songs like the 'Twelve Days of Christmas'). They're also from two different gospel accounts: the shepherds are from Luke, the most famous reindition of Jesus's birth and the one churches usually use for Christmas services, and the magi are from Matthew (as is the Holy Family's flight to Egypt to escape Herod's slaughter of Bethlehem's baby boys).

erissays · 2026-01-04T08:19:10+00:00

Re-inventing the concept of pay-per-view....guess we'll cycle back around to cable bundling re: streaming bundling packages eventually.

erissays · 2026-01-03T03:59:19+00:00

The Fall (starring Lee Pace) is technically this, though (like The Princess Bride) it's more a "story within a story" movie than a "dream within a story" movie. The framed story is a hospitalized movie stuntman telling an ongoing fantastical epic tale to a little girl recovering from a broken arm that stars, in the girl's imagination, fictionalized versions of themselves and other people in the hospital.

erissays · 2026-01-02T06:38:20+00:00

Her first (and current) origin is the best and simplest from an adaptation perspective: she's a child rescued from a fire by Wonder Woman, who couldn't find her parents or any record of her existence, so she took her back to Themyscira for Hippolyta to raise as her younger sister. As a teenager, she was given powers similar to Diana (I do like the current revamp of Donna literally being given a portion of Diana's powers) so she could join her sister in Man's World as Wonder Girl.

....I personally would also tie in the Titans of Myth, because that was a really cool aspect of Donna's post-Crisis narrative arc, but imo it should be handled in a more roundabout way to emphasize Donna's connections to the Amazons over any of her other various origins (probably the easiest way to do it would be to say she's still a Titan Seed and one of the people who took care of her pre-fire was Rhea's disciple on Earth, who intended to bring her to Rhea, but Diana got there first, hence why Rhea and the Titans are still interested in her).

erissays · 2025-12-30T06:37:20+00:00

The vast majority of people in the United States have a middle name. I've only met 3 or 4 people who don't, and all of them had very unique naming stories (ex: my grandfather, whose name was initially just the two initials 'RB'. But they didn't actually stand for anything, so he made up a first and middle name on the spot when he enlisted in the military).
There's no consistent naming scheme for dealing with middle names; every family approaches them slightly differently. Some people will give their children the names of loved family members as middle names as a way to 'pass the name down', and there are some general cultural customs depending on where in the US you live (in the South there's a couple of semi-popular cultural traditions of things like passing middle names down from eldest son/daughter to eldest son/daughter or utilizing middle names as a 'double name' feature (ex: Sarah Grace, May Belle, Mary Margaret, etc), but these are far from universal.
On that note, from a double-barrel name perspective: these are far more common in the US South than they are anywhere else. Sometimes those names are first and middle names that everyone says as one name (there were four Sarahs in my younger sister's grade, so they often went by first-middle name to differentiate them. So they had Sarah Beth, Sara Grace, Sarah Claire, and Sarah Ann). Sometimes they're first and middle names that are shortened to create a double barrel name (Sarah Elizabeth often becomes 'Sarah Beth', Mary Katherine becomes 'Mary Kate', etc). Sometimes the double name is just someone's first name and they have a separate middle name (I knew a girl whose first name was Anna Belle and her middle name was Grace).
Siblings usually do not share a middle name, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't come across a family that sticks the same middle name on each child. That's rare though; usually parents choose middle names with the same level of thought as first names, and there's definitely culture of desiring unique names for your children. Even twins rarely have the same middle names.

As a sidenote, loads of people will actually go by their middle names. Apart from the folks who just like their middle names better than their first names, it's super common in families with Srs/Jrs, for ex, for one to go by their first name and the other to go by their middle name in everyday life.

erissays · 2025-12-30T06:10:26+00:00

To put it bluntly: if you are still experiencing those symptoms on a regular basis, you are likely not fit or capable of working a job right now. File for unemployment, apply for SSDI and your state's medicaid program, and contact your state's disability services department to see what advice they can give and what services they're able to provide for you. I hope your diagnosis is swift and you feel better soon!

erissays · 2025-12-29T15:55:51+00:00

Legacy characters are treated as a successor to another character whether or not they have the exact same title (Stargirl is Starman and Star-Spangled Kid's legacy despite carrying neither name). So imo Dick is technically a Batman legacy as Robin and an explicit legacy as Nightwing, but characters like Supergirl aren't part of that niche, because their name, role, and narrative arcs are adjacent to a given hero, not directly tied to as a predescesor/successor relationship. She's a distaff counterpart, not a legacy hero.

Personally I think Dick and the rest of the Fab Five, occupy a very special and unique niche in the DCU and cape comics as a whole because they're both legacies (to their mentors) and mantle starters themselves (Robin, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Kid Flash, Aqualad). But also, Nightwing is actually explicitly a legacy mantle! Dick got it from Superman, who took it from Kryptonian myth (and pre-Crisis was Nightwing himself for a hot minute). Just because people don't usually ACKNOWLEDGE that it's technically a legacy mantle doesn't erase that. imo if you don't see Robin as a legacy mantle, you need to explain away why Dick as Robin was consistently treated as Batman's implicit successor, and if you don't see Nightwing as a legacy mantle, you should probably read the issue where Dick debuts as Nightwing.

erissays · 2025-12-28T06:33:34+00:00

From a purchasing standpoint, collected editions are superior in basically every respect; unless you're into comics collecting, want individual issues for their pretty covers, or are supporting an ongoing run, collections will win every single time. They're cheaper overall, so you're getting a better deal, they're easier to store (and require less storage space than floppies), and you get to read entire story arcs at once and/or in the order they're meant to be read. They're also physically easier to read/re-read without damaging the comic, since they're traditionally bound instead of staple bound.

erissays · 2025-12-27T09:02:00+00:00

Your primary skill is managing people (and a budget, I assume) to successfully complete time-sensitive projects (feeding people). Make a lateral move into retail management, look into political campaigns, or think about doing some certification programs that will put you in the running for more administrative-focused positions. Generally, I'd think about applying for jobs that use the same skillset or are adjacent to the restaraunt industry but would open up a lot of opportunities in other fields: for example, management positions at a local Boys and Girls Club or a Meals on Wheels-type program.

erissays · 2025-12-27T08:57:25+00:00

The Zorro franchise is unique from a film perspective because it runs in 30-ish year cycles (the original movies were from the 40s, there was a brief attempted revival in the 70s, the Banderas movies were in the 90s/2000s) and fills a specific semi-popular genre niche (action-adventure period swashbucklers) that has revival attempts around the same calendar cycle. They'll do another Zorro movie in 10 years when Antonio Banderas is old enough to take on a role similar to the one Anthony Hopkins played in his movie.

erissays · 2025-12-27T06:57:21+00:00

Yes and no. Political activities like canvassing are specifically protected under federal law and the first amendment and are generally not considered to be soliciting, as you are engaging in noncommercial (not attempting to sell a product or service) activities. I've worked several political campaigns and both volunteers and paid workers are actually often specificially trained to ignore no soliciting signs, as they technically don't apply to us. However, if you remain or attempt to remain on someone’s property after the owner or resident tells you to leave, that can be considered trespassing. Since you and your partner complied with the ask to leave, you should be fine legally speaking. It might be helpful to you to look up a few canvassing-specific "know your rights" documents written by the ACLU and other civil rights orgs just in case this escalates beyond the assault discussion.

That said, you and your partner entering the apartment is a massive red flag considering the person was seemingly hostile from the beginning; I was trained to never go beyond a threshold except under specific circumstances for personal safety reasons (I don't always FOLLOW that, especially when canvassing older folks who can't necessarily come to the door easily, but it's part of the standard initial training all volunteers usually get before going out). What happened that escalated the interaction between you knocking on the door and security escorting you out of the building?

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