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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: March 30th, 2024

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  • The law has significant nuance whenever someone is killed. Each state uses different terms, but it generally runs along the lines of:

    • First degree murder: intentful and planned.
    • Second degree murder: intentful but unplanned.
    • Third degree murder: not by intent but also not accidental. Fit of rage type of thing.
    • Manslaughter: no intent, no rage, often negligence, and similar regrettable deaths.

    Each one carries a progressively lighter punishment. You can be found guilty of manslaughter and get off with a fine, probation, or even time-served. The courts will adjust punishment according to each crime’s circumstances.

    What ticks this community off is a special type of murder: Vehicular Manslaughter. It has all the hallmarks of regular manslaughter, except it’s much harder to prosecute and often with zero consequences. It’s, quite literally, a whole different section of law to reduce the consequences of driving. The exception-to-the-exception is intent! If someone intentionally kills with a gun or a vehicle, then they get charged first or second degree murder. But the consequences are different if someone with a gun negligibly kills (it does happen) and a driver negligibly kills. It’s not justice when a boss who didn’t maintain a ladder which killed his painter faces more consequences than the driver who didn’t maintain their brakes and ran over a child.



  • You’re being downvoted but what you’re raising is a common argument point. I’ll put in some effort here to explain what Japan’s system is trying to achieve. Let’s start with a simple concept: someone has to build and pay for each parking spot. That is, it’s impossible to order a parking spot to have it delivered and maintained to you for free.

    If you have a home that you bought, then it was included in the price of the home. That garage and driveway was built on land you paid for and poured by the developer.

    If you don’t have a driveway, then you’ll park on the street. That street was bought and paved by the developer or the city. Each year you’ll pay taxes to cover the expense of maintaining that street spot (sweeping, drainage, chip sealing, etc).

    These two cases present the same utility: a place to store a car. The difference is in how it’s priced: one is internalized and one is externalized. You directly pay to repair your driveway but you don’t directly pay to repair your street spot. Your neighbors, no matter if they drive or how many cars they own, pay for your street spot when it needs a repair.

    Japan’s system is designed such that the general public is not burdened with your choice to drive. Your choice to drive is yours to make, but it’s not something that you get to externalize onto others. If you wish to drive, then buy that extra lot of land and put a driveway on it. Heck, make it extra wide so you can park your daily driver and your fancy classic for nice weekend days. Do what you wish with your property.

    there’s no good way to actually ensure that an address has a parking space.

    Japan enforces their system through registration. A permit is needed to buy and register a car. These permits are issued by officers who will measure your private parking space. A dealer will not sell you a car larger than your space nor will you get tags for your car without sufficient space.

    States in the US also have registration but don’t require proof-of-parking to register a car. The change to adapt to Japan’s system would be to make a proof-of-parking permit a requirement to register a car.

    And what do you do with large families? Or people registering multiple cars at the same address otherwise?

    Each car gets a permit (it’s a sticker on the window). If you have a two car garage, then you can get two permits for each spot in that garage to stick on your two cars.

    It’s very similar to permitted street parking in the US. Typically you’ll get issued X number permits per house that you can affix to your car’s bumper. Japan simply takes parking permits a step further by including your car’s size and requiring a permit before registration rather than issuing permits post registration.

    There’s no limit in Japan (that I’m aware of) regarding how many permits a household can get. If you have a four car garage, then you can get four car permits. Or if you only have two garage spots, then you can lease two spots from a neighborhood parking lot to get to your ideal four car permits.

    It won’t work in the U.S. because people still have to drive everywhere anyway. Go over to a friend’s house? Get fucked I guess.

    Japan has metered general-public parking lots and there are not restrictions preventing a friend parking on your property.

    This is not too dissimilar from HOA developments in the US. Most HOAs require owners to put their cars in their garage and disallow cars sitting in the driveway, but are fine with guests temporarily parking in the driveway. They’ll also issue a limited number of daily permits for guests to use in a neighborhood lot.






  • Yeah, there’s a lot of pots that are coated and it sucks. However, the tests and methodology are not tied to them. It’s more about how to select different stoves and pots (e.g. lid or no lid?) than a particular product pick. For me, I didn’t even buy a new kit. All I did was learn how to optimize my existing kits.

    Regarding temperature, I luckily haven’t had too much of an issue. Gas gets to sleep with me or hang out in my jacket if it’s that cold out. No need for white gas stoves, yet! Maybe someday if the very high mountains call to me.



  • That’s probably a bug when translating forms or the ranger’s intent. Our rangers deeply understand the meaning of “paving paradise,” hence there’s limited parking at trail heads. Car details on permit forms are there so rangers can tow away parking abusers instead of cutting down trees to make a bigger parking lot.

    Traditionally you’d write “N/A” or “NONE” if you’re being dropped off or hiking through. I suspect that detail got lost in translation to the digital format by making all fields as required.

    All that said, thanks for being thoughtful and not driving into a national/state park when it’s not necessary. Rangers and us like-minded folk appreciate it.











  • You understand that OP and others are talking about R1 zoning, right? Splitting a single family home into two lots of homes? Or building an inlaw in the backyard? I’d truly enjoy a discussion for exceptionally high density city planning, but our missing housing isn’t from highrises. It’s legally mandated half acre lots of mostly lawn.

    Big corps and developers are not bidding on government contracts to pave over a suburban half acre. For sure they do big projects and what you point out is a problem with those, but it’s an independent problem from R1 zoning.

    Hell, corps are doing shitty things with today’s regulations! Why shouldn’t we change our laws to prevent housing exploitation and build more housing in R1 zones?