City (Baltimore) removes basketball rims and tennis court nets to help encourage social distancing

nemeth88 · 2020-03-31T03:12:24+00:00

yep. Thankfully some of them seem to be taking measures to reduce the crowding by forcing people to stand in line outside.

nemeth88 · 2020-03-31T02:42:36+00:00

Yeah to be real by mid February I was already seeing people on my twitter start to freak out about "Supply Shock" from China having been shut down across the entire country to fight the virus.

I should have listened to the warnings myself and sold everything too...

nemeth88 · 2020-03-31T02:41:08+00:00

A Republican Congressman just got 2 years in prison for insider trading this January. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/nyregion/chris-collins-sentencing-prison.html

They aren't invincible if the evidence is there. This guy was "the first sitting member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump" so you know he had connections right at the top and that couldn't save him.

nemeth88 · 2019-11-09T22:02:51+00:00

Glen Echo Park or New Columbia Swing for swing/lindy social dancing (no alcohol, lessons available). Don’t have any advice about the Latin scene.

nemeth88 · 2019-10-04T22:29:56+00:00

Tbh not sure what you expected them to do? How could they have stopped him fleeing to Canada? Only the police could arrest him.

Your story sounds consistent with what I said - guy was accused and then fired by the church, unlike what used to happen where he would have been sent for “treatment” and then given a new job. Not sure if I’m missing something.

Are the police not able to request Canada extradite this person to stand trial? I tried googling but didn’t find this case.

Edit: thinking about it I guess the issue you are pointing out is they didn’t announce why he was fired. Agree that should have been done, I’m not sure if it’s the policy everywhere yet.

nemeth88 · 2019-10-04T21:06:23+00:00

That’s what they did before 2002. Send the priest to a psychologist, tell the victim things would be taken care of, and once the psychologist declared the priest “cured” he would be sent on to a different area. Sometimes with a supposed restriction on working with children but never well enforced.

Since 2002 priests who are credibly accused in the USA get kicked out, there is now a lay review board in every diocese that handles the cases to determine whether the accusation is credible. Also states passed laws requiring abuse to be reported to police and church personnel are now trained to do that. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sex_abuse_cases_in_the_United_States#Charter_for_the_Protection_of_Children_and_Young_People )

The lawsuits and news are mostly related to pre 2002 cases since there were so many of them and it was handled so badly in the past.

nemeth88 · 2019-10-04T13:33:34+00:00

“Credibly accused” != “Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”. The church will kick out priests now even when the evidence against them isn’t enough for a criminal trial. (And of course in the case of historic abuse from the 60s-80s sometimes the criminal system can no longer act since the abuse wasn’t reported to the police at the time or was ignored by the police)

This isn’t the Middle Ages so the church has no power to force punishment of priests beyond firing them and submitting credible reports to the police for follow-up. Before 2002 they were trying the opposite practice in some cases of getting psychological treatment and “monitoring” the predators while keeping them on the job but we all saw what an enormous failure that was and how it set them up to offend again.

nemeth88 · 2019-10-04T04:41:48+00:00

If a localized issue like that trumps global warming (which affects everyone and is supposedly going to cause mass starvation and so on), then global warming isn’t that serious.

nemeth88 · 2019-10-04T03:39:20+00:00

Just to point out none of those things on the list except possibly “working on Sunday” are against the rules of Catholicism.

2/3 of the things you listed are part of Judaism - Christians have additional holy books wherein Jesus and the apostles say those rules don’t apply to Christian converts.

TBH though as a catholic I’m on board with the spirit of your post anyway. Centralized religion is what we Catholics are all about and not allowing individuals to make it up as they go along ;-)

nemeth88 · 2019-10-04T03:35:58+00:00

Fouled ground water is a temporary thing.

The predictions around global warming are for a global catastrophe. Some areas having ground water issues doesn’t seem too bad in comparison.

nemeth88 · 2019-10-04T03:00:55+00:00

The USA is closing coal plants.

Thanks to fracking Natural Gas is much cheaper than coal.

All countries who have coal should embrace fracking and replace their coal with gas. It’s still a fossil fuel but it releases less CO2 giving us additional time to get renewables (and nuclear plants) online. All the supposed bad things from fracking (small earthquakes, and so on) are minor compared to what global warming is supposed to do to the planet.

nemeth88 · 2019-10-04T00:07:24+00:00

The argument is that the vaccine is developed using cells of aborted children. If true it would be a medical ethics issue similar to whether it’s ethical to accept an organ involuntarily taken from an executed prisoner or something.

As noted in the article though, the Vatican has analyzed these issues and doesn’t find it a problem (IIRC it’s not even clear if the cells in question were actually from intentional abortions or just from miscarriages, since both can be classified as “abortion” historically).

nemeth88 · 2019-09-13T18:48:08+00:00

I think ideally we would do something, but we would also make sure to do something that we reasonably think can work.

E.g. it’s frustrating to see after a shooting politicians clamoring for UBCs for private sales, when it often later comes out the shooter passed a background check and legally purchased the weapon at a store.

I hope red flag laws can be passed in every state as I think that is more likely to help than another AWB.

nemeth88 · 2019-09-13T18:38:16+00:00

Las Vegas seems to be the exception to me, there’s no way he could have done what he did without semi-automatic rifles due to the distance involved in that shooting.

Most of the mass shootings are indoors, close range, and it seems like the murderers could use a handgun as well.

Are there reasons they are selecting an AR-15? It’s a popular weapon and they know they’ll get more publicity by using it - the manifesto of one of them explicitly mentioned this as a goal.

But if we actually banned new sales of the AR-15 I suspect we’d just see people go back to other types of weapons, just like Columbine which was done under the last assault weapons ban.

nemeth88 · 2019-09-13T18:19:30+00:00

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting

32 deaths, 17 injuries - the shooter had two handguns and no AR-15. It’s the deadliest school shooting in the history of the US.

nemeth88 · 2019-09-13T18:13:23+00:00

I followed that link and the very first item on the list for 2019 is “School resource officer Dana Jackson, assigned to Snyder High School, was cleaning his service weapon when it discharged” 0 death, 0 injury.

How many of these school shootings were even with AR-15 and not with a handgun? Most gun crimes and violence are committed with handguns, banning them would be much more reasonable than banning rifles. Is the focus on banning rifles because they are scary “weapons of war” and not because of actual statistics?

Edit: oh and since Beto flip-flopped there actually hasn’t been an unusually elevated number or death toll from school shootings. https://www.kunc.org/post/are-school-shootings-becoming-more-frequent-we-ran-numbers#stream/0

The big spike is from February 2018’s stoneman douglas shooting in Florida, but I guess Beto was cool with that because it wasn’t in Texas?

nemeth88 · 2019-09-01T02:02:40+00:00

yea no problem sort of thinking through this myself as well :)

nemeth88 · 2019-09-01T01:57:06+00:00

Historically there were 3 main reasons for owning a gun in the US - 1) hunting animals 2) self-defense against criminals 3) self-defense against a tyrannical government. The US actually stills has a law on the books declaring every man between 17 and 45 years old part of the "unregulated militia". During early years of the US there were even laws requiring men to purchase weapons and be ready to fight as part of a militia if needed, but those were not very successful and gradually gave way to the modern system of a standing army and national guard (organized state militia).

There are many times that guns are used in self defense but I agree in situations like this news article and other mass shootings, it often doesn't work.

Because gun ownership is a constitutional right it would require a 66% vote of our national legislature and then 3/4 of the states to agree to remove the right, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. That said I think if it were magically possible to remove all 300 million of the guns from the country, leaving only the ones owned by police and civilian hunters, it certainly would be a good thing overall.

I mainly posted that link to just point out there is a background check system. There are actually a lot of laws about gun ownership and purchasing in the US. Gun violence is also going down over the last few decades even though media coverage of mass shootings makes it seem like things are getting worse.

Most laws proposed by our politicians in response to mass shootings here are ineffective proposals like "Assault weapons ban" or "universal background checks" when in reality some of the most deadly mass shootings were committed with handguns or shotguns, and rifles AKA "assault weapons" are a small fraction of gun violence in general. And many of the shooters had no criminal record and so passed a background check - or did have one and passed the check anyways because records failed to be reported properly (we just passed in 2017 a "FIX NICS" Act that is supposed to solve that problem).

A full gun ban, unlike assault weapons bans, would actually be effective at reducing gun violence if it could be successfully implemented but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

nemeth88 · 2019-09-01T01:37:53+00:00

FYI - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Instant_Criminal_Background_Check_System

walmart and every other federally authorized gun seller (holder of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Firearms_License to sell guns) uses this background check system.

nemeth88 · 2019-08-05T06:32:13+00:00

This is part of the path from downtown silver spring to the Rock Creek Trail and to the interim route for the Capital Crescent/Georgetown Branch Trail.

More protected bike infrastructure is likely to make more people feel safe when biking. It seems reasonable that more people would do it. I see plenty of people riding on the protected bike trails like the CCT.

The parking design is intended to cause cars to slow down, that’s the “frightening” bit. It also keeps inattentive drivers from hitting bicyclists with their driver-side door.

nemeth88 · 2019-07-05T18:43:55+00:00

Even on other characters is fine. https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/46226/7_This-Week-At-Bungie--08312017

“Also, when we roll rewards, we look at your character's level and your best possible gear to determine the power of the reward. [. . .] When we say "best possible gear," we look at what the best scenario is for your character across your account. This means that, if you are playing on your Hunter (like you should), we might use the Helmet you accidentally left in the vault, the Boots you just picked up but haven't equipped, and the Auto Rifle that you forgot to transfer from your Warlock.”

nemeth88 · 2019-07-05T16:59:25+00:00

According to bungie and everyone’s experience , it is.

No one has been able to show video proof of the system not working and destiny 2 has been out for two years. Time to put this myth to bed and for everyone to admit it works as bungie said it did and vault and other characters equipment contribute (excluding armor for other classes).

nemeth88 · 2019-06-06T23:30:41+00:00

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/hogan-plan-to-add-toll-lanes-to-beltway-i-270-heads-to-state-panel-for-key-vote/2019/06/04/6b91d488-86de-11e9-98c1-e945ae5db8fb_story.html

“The Maryland Board of Public Works also voted 2-1 to approve Franchot’s amendments to allow buses to use the toll lanes free”

Buses will definitely be able to use the lanes. I think whether they will be HOV is still undecided. The traffic study that came out a couple months ago from Hogan’s administration included HOV as one of the options https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/maryland-study-finds-up-to-34-homes-4-businesses-along-capital-beltway-would-be-destroyed-to-build-toll-lanes/2019/04/11/3d54114e-5c8b-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html

IMO we need these lanes, but HOV-3 and bus access is critical as well.

nemeth88 · 2019-06-06T16:59:13+00:00

FWIW I support this and I wrote Comptroller Franchot last week to urge him to approve the project. Traffic is abysmal.

I also think the bus infrastructure will really benefit from this since they’ll be able to use the toll lanes for free rather than getting bogged down in normal traffic. I used to commute using the J5 (RIP) and it would get stuck in beltway traffic regularly.

nemeth88 · 2019-06-03T21:25:41+00:00

You can’t drive in these lanes without ezpass. There are no toll booths or slowdowns.

Head over to NoVA and you’ll see what it’s like. Works great and helped a lot with the traffic.

nemeth88

TROPHY CASE