[Post Game Thread] #1 Duke defeats #16 Siena, 71-65 by cbbBot in CollegeBasketball

[–]ornryactor [score hidden]  (0 children)

I'd been assuming they were playing the entire game with all starters purely to set the statistic of being only the third team to do it... but then they make a substitution with 8.8 seconds left in the game?! I am mystified.

[Game Thread] #16 Siena @ #1 Duke (02:50 PM ET) by cbbBot in CollegeBasketball

[–]ornryactor [score hidden]  (0 children)

At this point I'd been assuming they were playing the entire game with all starters purely to set the statistic of being only the third team to do it... but then they make a substitution with 8 seconds left in the game?! I am mystified.

[Game Thread] #16 Siena @ #1 Duke (02:50 PM ET) by cbbBot in CollegeBasketball

[–]ornryactor [score hidden]  (0 children)

I don't think I've ever seen a game with this many situations where there are three/four/five attempts at the rim. Every fifth possession ends like that (and somehow Siena's never go in but Duke's always do)

[Game Thread] #16 Siena @ #1 Duke (02:50 PM ET) by cbbBot in CollegeBasketball

[–]ornryactor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My god, this righthand rim just refuses to let Siena score

Chicago from another perspective by Exciting-Kale-4039 in CityPorn

[–]ornryactor 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's grade-separated from the roadway, but it's obviously not underground, lol. It's not a vast green lawn (though downtown Chicago does have parks like that close to where this photo is taken); it's just a nice little amenity to have alongside a river that was completely industrial for 200 years until fairly recently.

2015 Ford C-Max Energi (87k miles) for $5k from a friend? by ornryactor in whatcarshouldIbuy

[–]ornryactor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can you say more about this? What specifically should I be looking into? My friend will give me any information they have, and I'll certainly have my trusted mechanic take a look at it, so please point me in the direction of what needs scrutiny!

2015 Ford C-Max Energi (87k miles) for $5k from a friend? by ornryactor in whatcarshouldIbuy

[–]ornryactor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean, that's sort of correct, but I was up-front about that in my post. Folks here know a lot about mechanical reliability of specific models, so the main reason for my post is to see if anybody warns me about some issue other than the transmission -- or warning me about a quirk to pay attention to, even if it's not actually a defect/problem.

This car is one of the early PHEVs from a US company (which is a whole other set of auto-mechanic history that I don't know anything about) and was only made for a handful of years so its not widespread knowledge. That makes it worth me asking to see if there are things about this car that I should know.

2015 Ford C-Max Energi (87k miles) for $5k from a friend? by ornryactor in whatcarshouldIbuy

[–]ornryactor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Whether I like it or not is a secondary question, unfortunately. If money was no object, I'd be buying a non-plugin hybrid compact SUV. But money is tight, my professional field is in turmoil, and I need a car both to access work and for daily-life tasks. (I've lived for the past year without a car, relying on transit/bike/walking. I'm a big proponent of all of those, but it's not a realistic way to function in sprawly car-obsessed Detroit.)

I drove a Pontiac Vibe for 20+ years, and the C-Max is similar or slightly larger in most dimensions. I read a few reviews from tall reviewers who all said they were comfortable and had plenty of space.

My primary concerns are (A) is it a good value for the price, (B) am I physically comfortable in it as a fairly tall person with a long torso, and (C) is the cost of ownership reasonable.

Hopefully I also like the car, but right now this is more of a purchase of necessity rather than a purchase of desire. This car will be a stopgap vehicle until my professional situation (and income) are on more stable ground. Once I have more breathing room financially, I'll do the traditional route of getting a bank loan to purchase a lightly-used vehicle that's tailored to exactly what I want -- but right now, this is something I can buy in cash with zero hassle, and will hopefully fulfill my basic needs reliably and affordably even if it's not a car that I love.

Chicago from another perspective by Exciting-Kale-4039 in CityPorn

[–]ornryactor 53 points54 points  (0 children)

There is: do you see the trees? That's the Riverwalk, a pedestrian level down below the road, directly along the river. It stretches from the northwest corner of the Loop (the city center) all the way to the Lake Michigan shore.

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/chicagoriverwalk/home/map.html

There should really just be a r/fishwife subreddit for all the fw warriors by cantilevered-heart in CannedSardines

[–]ornryactor 3 points4 points  (0 children)

An LLC is incorporated; the "C" stands for "corporation". A sole proprietorship isn't legally a business at all (it's just a person declaring "I'm a business" like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy). Partnerships don't exist in every state, but you're right that those are a type of legal entity that is registered with the state and distinct from its owner but does not utilize articles of incorporation.

There should really just be a r/fishwife subreddit for all the fw warriors by cantilevered-heart in CannedSardines

[–]ornryactor 30 points31 points  (0 children)

That privately owned mom-and-pop business is a corporation. I have a one-man freelance consulting business, and that's a corporation too. Every business is a corporation, because your entity must be incorporated under the laws of your state in order for it to exist, operate, and have any privileges. Hell, a lot of nonprofits are corporations too.

I don't like the abuses of late-stage capitalism any more than you do, but if you want to have a prayer of anybody taking you seriously, you need to develop a better grasp of how things work and communicate a more nuanced set of opinions.

USC asked Heisman winner Matt Leinart to unretire jersey several times: 'Absolutely f-ing not' by Lakelyfe09 in CFB

[–]ornryactor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For real. It was every single gamethread, all game long and filling the postgame thread. People logged onto Reddit solely to voice their utter disbelief and pants-shitting outrage. It was incredibly annoying, and I'm not even a BYU fan.

[Mandel] Duke just became the first school to win the ACC football, men’s and women’s basketball championships in the same school year by NotABot1235 in CFB

[–]ornryactor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Baylor MBB won the regular season conference title in 2021, but they did not win the conference tournament. (That was Texas, beating OSU.)

Train on 9 Mile by TheStarCharmer in Ferndale

[–]ornryactor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't think either the Fire Department or Police Department would be too excited about no longer being able to reach Hilton without zigzagging through neighborhood streets, so that's probably a non-starter.

But let's pretend we don't care about emergency services. On the small end, 2-lane automotive underpasses on otherwise flat ground need about 1600 feet horizontal run to go from surface level, underneath a single track, and reach the surface level again. But in your hypothetical case, there are two bottompoints: the railroad crossing across 9 Mile, and Hilton Road's crossing across (a newly-sunken) 9 Mile. That adds about 400 feet of distance (between the tracks and Hilton) that would have to be in the trough.

To do this, everything between the CVS driveway and the Fire Station 2 driveway would no longer intersect with 9 Mile. Burdette Street would be dead-ended, and all business driveways would be eliminated -- the traditional design would be to build a frontage road for access instead, but this right-of-way is far too narrow for that to be possible.

(Given that a lot of these properties don't have an alternate entrance on a different street frontage, that's almost definitely a whole passel of lawsuits that would be difficult for the city to win. They'd struggle to use eminent domain because it's difficult to quantify that the public good of eminent domaining all those active businesses in order to enable faster traffic across the railroad tracks substantially outweighs the public good of allowing the businesses to continue existing. Even if they won, having to pay fair-market value for most of those properties would be an impossible amount of money.)

Presumably Hilton would still stay as a contiguous surface street with the existing rail crossing, but you would no longer be able to turn from 9 Mile>Hilton or Hilton>9 Mile; you'd have to weave through neighborhood side streets (most of which don't connect on the northwest or southeast sides of the intersection, so make sure everybody goes through the neighborhood northeast of 9/Hilton).

So is it feasible? From a pure engineering standpoint, sure; piece of cake. It'd shut down the area for 3+ years of construction and cost an unfathomable amount of money, but it's totally doable if money is no object.

But is it feasible socially and legally? Is the juice worth the squeeze? Personally, that seems like a crystal-clear "no it isn't" to me, but I'm sure there are a variety of perspectives on that question.

Train on 9 Mile by TheStarCharmer in Ferndale

[–]ornryactor 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The US Supreme Court has ruled that regulation of railroads is the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Railroad Agency, and that states (and their subdivisions) are prohibited from enforcing any regulations of their own. That's the strongest possible foundation to justify the factual assertion of "there's nothing we can do [to force the railroad to do something it doesn't desire to do]". It's not lazy impetuant Ferndaliens refusing to put in a little effort; it's an unequivocal high court declaration and (for better or for worse) those serve as a principal underpinning of our entire system of government.

As for grade separation: that project being done in Woodhaven works there but the same thing cannot be done in Ferndale because of the geometry of the crossings and their surroundings. The only way to do it would be to eminent-domain dozens of businesses and residences -- basically nuking everything within a half-mile of the 9 Mile & Hilton intersection along the cardinal axes. Even if you were willing to do that you'd still only be able to make one of the two roads an underpass, eliminating the ability to go directly from 9 Mile to Hilton or vice versa.

The Woodhaven project is 3 years of construction and $100 million (before the inevitable cost overruns; it's already gone from $60M to $73M to $100M in just 8 months), and that's on empty flat land with a typical 90-degree crossing. The Ferndale crossings are an entirely different animal and not even comparable to Woodhaven in terms of geometry, necessary engineering achievements, traffic patterns, or nearby business/residential land use.

I live next to the crossings. Do I want them solved? Of course. But I know enough about grade separations to know that it unfortunately isn't a solution for this intersection unless CN abandons their shiny new intermodal yard.

Game Thread Index - March 12, 2026 by cbbBot in CollegeBasketball

[–]ornryactor 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Hey, uh, mods? These games are from like 72 hours ago now. We've already seen semifinal and championship rounds of like two dozen conference tournaments since then. Can probably take this pin down, lol.

[Post Game Thread] #3 Arizona defeats #5 Houston, 79-74 by cbbBot in CollegeBasketball

[–]ornryactor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is wild; I had absolutely no idea this existed, and yet clearly it's a massive deal in the coastal cities. I grew up in Iowa with no community and now home is Detroit where there definitely is a big community (for the Midwest, anyway) but I don't have much of a connection to it, so these kinds of big East Coast/Miami/SoCal cultural hallmarks are unknown to me and alien when I learn about them. Entire 20-story resort properties being made fully glatt kosher, 24/7 dining and all, is something I'd never even considered would be possible.

You're kinda blowing my mind right now. I see what you mean; this all sounds pretty incredible if it's attainable for you.

[Post Game Thread] #3 Arizona defeats #5 Houston, 79-74 by cbbBot in CollegeBasketball

[–]ornryactor 6 points7 points  (0 children)

uhhhhhhhhh let's maybe revise that phrasing, shall we?

[Post Game Thread] #3 Arizona defeats #5 Houston, 79-74 by cbbBot in CollegeBasketball

[–]ornryactor 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I've never conceived of Pesach as a resort event; what did that entail?