Ea Nasir is a really interesting case study of how one piece of information can be interpreted in two completely different ways.
One interpretation, and the one most people know, is that the authors of the clay tablets complaints are legitimate.
The other is that Ea Nasir kept them as a record of people attempting to harm his reputation. So he could remember who to avoid doing business with in the future.
Also ancient Sumer had a pretty decent legal system for it’s time, it’s entirely possible Ea-Nasir was keeping the tablets for a possible court case. So the ancient equivalent of saving texts from a shit customer.
Your honor, I have 500 lbs of receipts.
“What’s a pound? Some savages measurements from the east? We use mina.”
Mina? I barely mined’a!
I will go home now, don’t mind me, coming through, heyyyup.
So it’s like the Lemmy modlog. Maybe it’s a log of mods calling out bad users, maybe it’s a log of mods lying and power tripping.
^ this person has been horribly wronged.
Awww, thanks! ^^
It was meant as an observation, but I’m glad you take such passion in your work, Mummy’s Little Blood Slut! <3
- he was gathering evidence of an employee or delivery partner comitting fraud
Why don’t y’all just get to machine learn all those fucking tablets you dug up, like hundreds of thousands of them, and train a fucking AI on that shit and tell us what it says instead of sitting here being a besserwisser online, HMM? If there was one good cause for AI, cuneiform would be it. Just god damned saying.
Edit: just btw I happen to know that the problem is mainly the first training set, you need cuneiformers to correctly give the answers so the model knows what to train on, and there’s like seven people in the world who do that, but I’m thinking, what if we trained an AI model on all the cuneiform we do know? Hit me up for proposals, I’m serious about this shit
I would give this merchant zero stars if I could
Awful copper
Worst trade experiemce of my life. I will not be returning
Best copper
Best trade I ever had. I will for sure return.
deleted by creator
Suppliuppliuma II accepts your proposition, in spite of wearing nothing but an over-sized bath towel.
And flock cameras are apparently easily rooted and repurposed.
I heard the ones in school zones actually have 10lb of copper and a chocolate bar inside
Gonna be downvoted, because apparently this is car brain central, but the amount of mental gymnastics people will do to make red light camera enforcement “bad” is crazy.
The US’ private company control over these cameras notwithstanding.
Fuck me, so many people die on on roads, and especially at intersections.
The city I work for put up Flock cameras with specific instructions from Council that they were only to be used for identification of cars flagged in active warrants.
Within a week of their installation, police used the cameras to track the movements of someone who filed a complaint.
Fuck the police
Sounds like a police/privacy problem, not the idea of having cameras at all.
Police should need a warrant to access the videos.
The software should not log licence plates of every single car that comes past.
The software should be open source and developed by the public sector.
I agree what’s in place in the US is a privacy nightmare, but the idea of having cameras in general isn’t fundamentally bad.
Skill issue USA, git gud.
The US’ private companies
this is entirely the problem, because they’re turning over info to ICE and other agencies and it’s being used oppressively.
Hence my carve out. I don’t support the privacy nightmare the US has.
I do support road safety cameras in general, if managed properly.
People don’t have the right to have no consequences for their dangerous behaviour.
I do support road safety cameras in general, if managed properly.
yeah that’s the rub. what municipality do you trust to manage them properly in this day and age? I’ve seen horror stories from all over the US, UK…
I fucking hate, absolutely despise the vroom vroom dickheads who make these technologies desirable. I want them to be held accountable but am not sure it’s worth the ice goons and yokel yokels who will abuse their capabilities.
That is a voter problem rather than a camera problem.
I just don’t think having this kind of surveillance state apparatus is ever worth it I don’t want the government or private companies tracking my every move.
I don’t even own a car and I want these cameras gone.
I don’t want the government or private companies tracking my every move
This is an issue with how the cameras are operated. I’m taking issue with people complaining that these cameras exist at all.
People claiming no system could ever be privacy-preserving aren’t being very imaginative.
I agree the surveillance state is bad, but taking a picture of someone running a red light and sending them a fine is a good thing, sorry.
What’s bad is allowing cameras to passively record every single licence plate at all times and store that information. A speed or red light camera should only take a photo/video when it detects someone speeding/running a red light, and no other information should be stored.
Shout out to Road Guy Rob
Yeah, love this guy’s videos
People enjoy driving dangerously. They don’t see it as risky because they haven’t been killed in a crash yet.
Cops enforcing traffic? Bad.
Cameras enforcing traffic? Bad.
I can condone taking down pedestrian surveillance, but people who drive cars should follow the rules or get fucked.
It is not necessary to install photo enforcement cameras to get people to follow the rules.
What better ideas do you have in mind?
I mean, being anti-authority is fine, but even if you achieve your stateless society, don’t you still want your stateless society to still have traffic co-ordination somehow?
Stateless =/= rule-less
If only it were possible to transport humans and goods without a network of cameras invading everyone’s privacy.
If only that was the natural state of the world for more of human history until just a few years ago.
Hell even in Amsterdam they have traffic lights. This isn’t an issue about the lack of public transportation.
Traffic signals and traffic cameras are two entirely different things.
I swear people just jump to the comments they don’t even digest the picture to understand this is about the cameras and not the traffic signals
Photo enforcement cameras are problematic for several reasons.
A) It has been shown that yellow lights with such cameras are very often set to a yellow duration briefer than generally accepted engineering practices to increase revenue *1
B) They discourage a rare misbehavior, actually running red lights, whilst causing another to become common. That is slamming on the brakes even when it isn’t safe to stop. Exacerbated by A. Better slam on the brakes when it flicks yellow even if you are way too close to reasonably stop whilst going only the speed limit.
People who are caught up by it are almost always those who found themselves a bit too far into the intersection to safely stop. EG those who cross the threshold right as it is changing. There is for reasons of safety a few seconds between one light turning red and another green. At 30 mph (44 feet per second) someone will fully clear a 40 foot intersection in less than a second. That is to say the only people you catch aren’t those who would have collided.
They are those
- you fucked with the shorter duration yellow oops
- people who hesitated because of 1 and slowed but ultimately decided to proceed thinking they can make it
- People with poorer brakes and or dealing with rainy conditions reducing stopping time.
C) Most of the money goes to the contractor who owns the cameras. Essentially you are letting a private company prey on your citizens as long as government gets to keep the scraps.
*1 https://ww2.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
I’ll add one more. They subvert our right to a trial and seeing our accuser. The fines are all supposed to be viewed by some sort of officer that is supposed to show up if you challenge the ticket. The only one I’ve received didn’t have any info on how to challenge it. It was like a bill that obfuscated my right to a trial. Guilt is assumed and forgiveness is ignored. 28 in a school zone in an unfamiliar city, instant fine with no “oops I fucked up” recourse.
Crazy how car drivers all think they deserve one free pass for dangerous driving.
Pay more attention.
That aside, it’s bullshit that they allegedly made it difficult for you to understand how to take the matter to court. In all fairness I’m not sure I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, considering you missed the school zone as well.
This is always a hard conversation to have. There are drivers on the road who want everyone to be safe, and do their best to function in our bad infrastructure. I try to be one of them, partially because I commuted on a bike and public transit for a long time. I did miss the sign in this instance, it was one of those “when present” signs that doesn’t have lights.
Personally I want more fines for actually dangerous driving. Its hard to quantify how much dumb shit I’ve seen while driving as much as I do. Watching TV while driving should be straight to the drunk tank and yet i see it every day.
In some cases you don’t actually have an automatic court date as one would have with a normal officer issued ticket… This is the same with parking enforcement you can receive a ticket that if you don’t pay you lose your license but they can simply ignore you and if you want to fight it you have to front a few grand to a lawyer to fight it and initiate a lawsuit or represent yourself and commit to losing multiple days pay and risk your job which will not understand.
None of these are actual problems with red light cameras, and actually people run red lights all the damn time.
Shortening yellow lights to cause people to unintentionally run them, people slamming on the brakes and causing accidents, and a monetary transfer between citizens and a private company are not problem?
…with red light cameras.
Correct. It is a different problem.
I’m not arguing for police states and surveillance, but this is wrong:
a rare misbehavior
Nearly half of all motor accidents are at intersections. It’s estimated there are annually a quarter million red light running accidents, and somewhere between 700 - 1000 fatalities yearly from these accidents. I suppose you could argue that with the number of deaths yearly from auto accidents (30,000 - 40,000 in the US) that a thousand “isn’t that much” but I feel like if a thousand people a year died to anything else we would be up in arms and demanding something be done about it.
Red light cameras have been demonstrated to reduce crashes at intersections, actual studies and data, so maybe check for all sources on all angles of a problem. The reduction isn’t drastic but it is there. It shows that there are ARE things that can be done about intersection accidents, but whether or not it’s cameras is a separate debate. I don’t think the harm of illicit data collection or the instances of some cities using corrupt methods for collecting funds outweighs the lives saved, but I guess you can ask the families of people who died how they feel.
I am open to better ideas for reducing auto accidents but everyone seems pretty stuck on the idea that we should have the freedom to pilot thousands of pounds of steel as fast as we can as a method for compensating for bad time management, and I think it’s safe to say that a LOT of the opposition to automated methods for managing traffic laws irritates people because they don’t feel like they have a way to “get away” with breaking the rules.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10487344/
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05049/
As someone else pointed out, the traffic light itself isn’t being affected, just the automated enforcement mechanism of the camera. We managed just fine without those.
Plus, they’re not safer the way the government likes to claim. People slam on their brakes when they see one, and they can only ticket, it’s not like they’re stopping accidents or saving people, can only report on what happened.
Traffic enforcement cameras are one of the worst ways I can think of to coordinate traffic.
red light ones are not great due to increased rear endings from some idiot slamming the brakes on when they should have gone through / people rushing and assuming the person in front will go through the yellow.
speed ones work great, when placed appropriately (i.e. on a street with an appropriate speed limit for the road design and in areas of higher pedestrian activity). I hate that Ontario just banned speed enforcement cameras, because that means a loss of revenue to pay for the road network maintenance, more police activity enforcing speed (which a camera does automatically all day long) which means police aren’t doing more important stuff and also it’s a waste of my tax dollars, and they will have to spend more of my tax dollars putting shittier speed reduction methods in place like speed bumps (annoying as fuck, bad for fuel economy, loud because people race from speed bump to speed bump, ineffective because people pay attention racing from speed bump to speed bump instead of to what’s going on around them, annoying for bicycles and people with towing trailers, loud when people telling trailers go over them, loud when regular cars go over them, bad for snow plows…)
now, this is just for speed enforcement, not coordinating traffic flow. although in a properly designed network, there are times that this can actually be achieved, unlike those light cycles on arterial roads that let you go through if you speed just a little bit but if you go the speed limit you hit every single red light
There are plenty of areas where the speed that is safe and reasonable to travel is substantially different from the one set. This is only not wildly broken because everyone disobeys the law and the cops refrain from stringent enforcement because forcing the traffic to all slow down would completely break traffic flow.
Maybe this works well in Canada but America governments are about as stupid as Americans.
There is some political horseshoe theory that connects “People who cannot stand any kind of authority at all and start shrieking even when a forum mod removes their comments.”
It’s the weird far-left anarchists and far right libertarians finding common ground in wanting a society where mommy doesn’t tell them to not run with scissors. Some of the “sovereign citizens” who make for hilarious Youtube content are sincere in their their irrational hate for any kind of rules and laws.
I have had enough dealings with these folks that I have a pretty strong opinion that nobody has been able to change, that these folks just have serious authority issues and do not give a shit about a broader society and are just mad at their parents.
They are the absolute worst people you could ever have as neighbors. I sometimes think we should drive them into the sea via mobs with torches.
edit: let me double down - if you get angry at the idea of authority (not considering the enforcers or management of that authority, which is a separate thing) you need to be driven into the sea via mobs with torches. We need systems and rules and taxes for a functional society. Work on changing the way that society enforces and motivates people to follow those rules instead of blindly lashing out at anything designed to keep people safe.
Personally I have found authority in America to be stupid, abusive, incompetent or all 3. Do you live somewhere else?
Police officers and FBI directors are broadly stupid, abusive and incompetent, but that doesn’t encompass all authority.
You face authority every day. You follow systems and rules and contracts so that society functions. You use traffic laws. You don’t shoot people who make you mad, you don’t write bad checks or walk out of stores without paying. You are under a system of authority whether or not you agree with the values and enforcement of the people who enforce these rules.
I’m fine with throwing out the leadership and officers who enforce the laws, but we HAVE to have rules and laws, and this includes safety issues like speeding. I don’t care what motivates you to follow these rules, as long as you do, because I am also on the road.
I don’t need a system of law not to shoot people or walk out without paying. Some of us have ethics. I have found authority in America broadly garbage from bottom to top. It’s not just the top that is fucked.
I don’t need a system of law not to shoot people or walk out without paying. Some of us have ethics.
I cannot take your word for that, even if it’s true, I cannot trust everyone, and even if someone is a good person, every human is vulnerable to emotions and failures of judgement, so yes we do need laws and rules and nothing can change that short of some system of taking away everyone’s free will. I already said that the enforcers as, top to bottom, are a separate issue.
Honestly we would all be better off if we had somewhere we could deport these people to. Fascists to Russia, communists to Venezuela, sovcits to Somalia.
The fact that there are so many tankies who don’t in fact move to Russia is pretty telling. It’s not like there’s a huge barrier to entry, they are desperate for
more bodiesmore people who support their propaganda and nationalism :D
That can be done though street design. See: The Netherlands.
I mean this in a genuine way, why in your mind those are the two options available? Total anarchy without functioning transit or cameras pointing at drivers?
There are several different ways to control traffic. If privacy is an importanr factor for a culture, they’d rank privacy respecting alternatives higher.
First, don’t call it anarchy. But second, the other way to stop people from running reds is more cops.
I think the arguement is that the cameras are only there because people are running red lights. Don’t you want to catch people who habitually run red lights, and therefore represent a danger to the public? If you’re not the sort of person who runs the red lights then the cameras are irrelevant to you.
You think people pushing that thought further than “What’s the edgiest political personality I can use for posing online”
Yay! Crashes! 🥰
They would remove the camera not the traffic light. I don’t think that would cause an accident
The camera only snaps a picture when people blow the traffic light. If everybody obeyed the traffic lights then nobody would ever get their car’s picture taken with the camera.
They have speed and traffic light cameras made by the same companies and they are pushing them out indiscriminately.
Also why should that company get money if someone speeds or goes through a red light? Why do they get that privilege but no one else does? The government getting fines is one thing but a private company is another
They have speed and traffic light cameras made by the same companies and they are pushing them out indiscriminately.
Who’s “they”?
Also why should that company get money if someone speeds or goes through a red light?
Around here, the company doesn’t get money. The fine is sent by the government and the government gets paid. I don’t know why it’s different for you, sounds like you need to change your government.
I live in Atlanta so they is the city of Atlanta I guess. I got a random fine in the mail and it was from a private company I don’t remember their name but the same cameras are all over my town now.
The cameras are in places where people have to drive everyday and the flow of traffic is usually slightly higher than the limit. You can’t avoid going by them so you are tracked no matter what. And if you forget and follow the flow of normal traffic you are getting a letter from the company in the mail asking for $200.
The reason the camera is there is because of the crashes that happened when it wasn’t.
That’s not true. We have a ton of these popping up in my neighborhood in places where there haven’t been issues.
Also they are owned by private companies that pocket most of the money you pay the fine with.
Why do I need 5 of these on my way to work in the morning? That’s 5 times where if I accidentally went too fast I have to pay a private company $200. That’s up to 10 times a day I am at risk of a random fee to some company. Insane that you want that
This comment is provided to you by the “the light was really yellow” crowd
My only real issue with it is that there are a ton of them now and they are privately owned. If the fine went to the city that would be a different story.
Imagine if next they put a sensor right in your car so if you ever go over a limit you always get a fine. Would you still be into that? Would you buy that car?
That is actually a legitimate concern. Add it to the long list of “technologies that are cool and good except when capitalism”
privately owned
Sounds like a shithole country issue. Normal countries have a police and judiciary.
Would you still be into that?
Ow yes please. If that’s what it takes for people like you to drive according to the rules, absofuckinglutely yes.
Absolutely nothing there suggests any of it was done for profit.
It’s showtime
“Sir! The unfed masses are tearing down cameras to sell them for food!”
“BUT WHAT ABOUT PROPERTY VALUES? HAVE THEY NO SENSE OF COMMUNITY?!”
i mean, car crashes very much also often lead to death
i don’t think speed cameras are a good way to prevent car crashes, but straight up acting like car crashes aren’t a problem worth mitigating is extremely silly
The country’s “rugged, free individualism” is a fucking menace. It has given so many people the righteous feeling of being above the law, of being offended at the law applying to them, and especially the “social contract” a phrase that literally enrages some segment of the population on both sides of the political spectrum. I hate it here.
Christ. Calm down.
Look, I will tell you this: I hear you, and I will. I know, I read some of my general comments today and, well, I should chill out a little. Sometimes it’s a lot of stress about the state of the world you know, sometimes about my life situation, about existential musings, about this and that, sometimes I vex revolutionary, what are you gonna do about it, fight me? Just kidding, I just wanna let you know that I read what you said, and yes, I should calm down. Sometimes it just gets to you, you know? It just like a hollow echo inside your soul, bouncing from one point to the other trying to find its place, like, and it just won’t stop buzzing around in there, but I guess that’s the case for most people anyways, so, anyway, likewise, and may god have mercy on our souls.
I’m a little confused, do you want people running red lights in the name of “personal liberty, yeehaw” because that seems like a bad idea.
Big problem with these is profit motivation. They are usually operated by a for profit business that the city contracts to. One of the cities near me had a few installed. The company made 5 million a year in fines, city ended up with pennies. The road is built like a 40mph road but has a 25mph speed limit only where the cameras are. There is no money to update the road to actually make it safer because it all goes to the company operating the cameras.
That’s not to mention they usually change the timing to catch people off guard for more tickets. Someone went around in my area timing a bunch of different lights and found that every light with the ticket generating cameras had yellow lights shorter than the legal limit for the state.
The photo shows a traffic light enforcement, not speed enforcement.
There’s a road near me that has an unnaturally slow speed limit enforced by a camera. That’s a bit annoying. But, it also has red light cameras nearby. Those are great. I really don’t care what someone’s excuse is: I was distracted, I thought I could make the yellow, the light was taking too long… if you think you really do have a valid case, talk to the judge.
I made this point in another comment, but these cameras send you bills instead of tickets. They ignore our right to a fair trial and subvert our right to confront our accuser. The only one I’ve received had no info on how to dispute it, just pay or fuck you type of bill.
A red light camera is no different than a speeding camera in this regard.
I made this point in another comment, but these cameras send you bills instead of tickets
Maybe where you live, not where I live.
Canada? You really think you are somehow safe from this shit huh.
Well, yeah.
dude… red light camera infractions, or speeding infractions, just result in fines. No impact on the driver because the fines are tagged onto the vehicle. So, douchenozzles in Toronto just pay to speed and run lights without any impact.
Well, this is a meme. But I personally am anti-surveillance. With the way things are going, these will almost certainly be “upgraded” to ALPR/“AI” systems for 24/7 surveillance and tracking; I’m guessing some probably already are.
Wait until they find out about the gold-plated interconnects.
Way too much work, too much skill and chemicals and workbench required. Copper is = cut it off, bring to scrap yard, get paid cash no questions. We need meth, if we were able to profitably dissolve gold plating, we wouldn’t be meth heads, we’d be in charge of successful companies and snort coke all day.
Taking out speedtrap so driver can self regulate is like taking out
CDCFDA so big pharma can self regulate.FDA, but yeah.
Such a naive view how does a tax on speed regulate anything? You must be to poor to afford lawyers to get rid of your tickets, probably don’t even own a car that can accelerate faster than the limit.
how does a tax on speed regulate anything?
So what’s your alternative? Non-hidden speedtrap at least slow people down to desirable speed in the area while allow emergency vehicle to speed through, having no speed trap and people will just speed through the area with no friction.
You must be to poor to afford lawyers to get rid of your tickets
How many people in your country can afford to hire a lawyer for a ticket write off?
probably don’t even own a car that can accelerate faster than the limit.
Are the speed limit in front of the school or in the city in your country 90mph?
- Everything is black and white to you how surprising.
- I’m sorry you’re poor.
- 90mph is not very fast lol.
projection.
projection.
You’re so good at this your mother and I are so proud of you.
Lame. 🥱
That means a lot coming from a rush hour red lobster special meal on the corner of martin lutha blvd
Sure, remove the red light but please also remove cars.
There seems to be 2 main camps in this thread.
Fuck the police, and fuck shitty drivers.
Both camps are correct.
We should also state how much that is in dollar bucks.
Just about $23 per camera where I’m at
how much cameras until i can buy 1 portiom of black tar heroine?
4
Bright shiny copper is just under $4/lb where I am. It varies by location and what your recyclers will pay.
Government surveillance tracking device you mean? Enrich the local cops devices? Over half of violations monies collected goes to the corporations that market them to local and state officials with lavish dinners and vacations devices? Financial incentive to calibrate them to flag innocent drivers knowing there is little to no recourse against the company devices? 5.5 lbs you say?
That’s like $27 per camera or so.
That’s $27 of meth they wouldn’t have had otherwise
Pick yourselves up by your bootstraps, they tell us.
