I had a 30' tall tree of heaven with about a 1' diameter trunk fall over in a storm and land on my used school bus (aka a skoolie). The bus was completely undamaged, not even scratched anywhere. Those things grow really fast but they're very light, basically balsa wood.

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  • [–] 3 points 18 hours ago

    Do they matter to cops? If they get paid, they get paid by tax money, no?

    As I mentioned in another comment, apparently the PD splits the ticket revenue with the school district after the camera company gets their installation and profit margin covered. Cops get paid their salaries from the PD budget which is mostly from tax revenues but also from other sources like tickets and these cameras. A higher PD budget means more perks including higher salaries and paid overtime and more benefits, so while they can't just stuff the money in their pockets (usually) they do benefit from these alternative revenue sources.

    does that make you a roving part of the survailance system, too?

    Probably. There's nothing I can do about this without losing my job.

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  • [–] 5 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

    The cameras are from a company named Bus Patrol. They haven't really told us much about how the program works, but as I understand it the district pays nothing in upfront costs. Supposedly Bus Patrol pays for the installation and then they get all the revenue up to the point where the cameras and their profit margin are covered; after that the ticket revenues are split evenly between the local police department and the school district. A figure of a million dollars as the cost for installing cameras on our 40 buses was thrown up by somebody, but that seems a bit unlikely as that means the cameras cost $25,000 per bus. Maybe that's correct, I dunno.

    I have nearly no info about the legality of this, but they're pretty common at this point. I know one difference is that if you're caught by an actual cop speeding past a bus' red lights you get a fine and points on your license, but if you get a mailed ticket from one of these cameras it's just a fine. Presumably it's because they can't always tell who was actually driving the vehicle. It might be a case where they can't really take any action if a person just refuses to pay the fine, and they just send out tickets because some or most people will just pay it.

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  • [–] 82 points 22 hours ago* (8 children)

    I'm a school bus driver and a few years ago I had a cop pass me while my red flashers were on and the stop sign was out and kids were about to get off the bus and cross the street. He was driving with one hand and looking at his phone in the other hand. He could have easily run a kid over. And then they probably would have found some way to blame me for it.

    We have cameras now that automatically detect this and send out tickets, but we didn't at the time. It wouldn't have mattered anyway since the cops have to review the footage before any ticket goes out.

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  • [–] 2 points 22 hours ago* (3 children)

    U-boats, unlike modern submarines, very rarely went underwater

    I've read a lot of memoirs from WWII submariners (German, American and British - not sure if there are any Japanese memoirs in existence) and they always made test dives at the start of a trip, just to make sure everything was shipshape. Even if they somehow hadn't noticed Indy clinging desperately to the conning tower, he would have been left behind pretty early on. Unless he had gills like Kevin Costner in Waterworld.

    Even a lot of the attacking happened above the water. Yes, they had torpedoes, but they also had deck guns.

    Fun fact: the British experimented with subs that mounted a (fixed) 12" gun taken from a decommissioned battleship. The idea was that they would surface just enough to expose the gun and then blast enemy merchant ships. This actually sort of worked, except that the remote-firing mechanism tended to get water in it and the gun would shoot its own barrel off. And since the barrel was wire-wrapped (a technique the Brits loved) the blown-off part would stay attached and act as an anchor.

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  • I live in the US and I would love to buy an electric vespa-style scooter that can do 45 mph. They are virtually non-existent here (there is something called the Aventura-X which costs $5000). Even if I could get one, there are no places around that could service it. And it's not like I live in rural South Dakota or anything - I live in a Philly suburb.

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