litchralee

should

when it comes to legality

This needs clarification. Are you asking about the legal status of Character AI's chatbot, and how its output would be treated w.r.t. to intellectual property rights? Or about the ethical or moral questions raised by machine-generated content, and whether society or law should adapt to answer those questions?

The former is an objective inquiry, which can be answered based on the current laws for a given jurisdiction. The latter is an open-ended, subjective question for which there is no settled consensus, let alone a firm answer one way or another.

I decline to answer the latter, but I think there's only one answer for the objective law question. IANAL, but existing fanfiction does not imbue its author with rights over characters from another author, at least in the USA. But fanfiction authors do retain copyright over their own contributions.

So if an author writes about the 1920s Mickey Mouse character (now in public domain) but set in a gay space communist utopia, the plot of that novel would be the author's intellectual property. But not the character itself, which remains public domain. However, character development that happens would be the author's property, insofar as such traits didn't exist before.

What aspects of this situation do you envision would require different treatment just because it's the output from a chatbot? Barring specific language in a Terms of Use agreement that transfers ownership to the parent company of Character AI chatbot, machines -- and crested macaques -- are not eligible to own intellectual property. The author would be the human being which set into motion the conditions for the machine to produce a particular output.

In conventional writing, an author does not relinquish ownership to Xerox Corporation just because the final manuscript was printed using a Xerox-made printer. But just because an author uses a machine to help produce a work, that will not excuse plagiarism or intellectual property violations, which will accrue against the human being commiting that act.

I express no opinion on whether intellectual property is still a net positive for society, or not. But I will very clearly lay out the difference between objective conclusions from the law as-written, versus any subjective opinions on how the law ought to be reformed, if at all. After all, what is not understood cannot be effectively changed.

I have a morbid curiosity for UK law, as the progenitor of the common law adopted by California, the federal government, and 48.5 other US States (Louisiana is special). On one hand, the proposed bill would amend (see page 43) the Road Traffic Act 1988 (England and Wales) to be consistent between motorists and cyclists. On the other hand, as a matter of public policy, it is equating offenses by cyclists to be of the same order as offenses by motorists. This is logically and logically incongruent.

For reference, driving a motor vehicle in England/Wales means to operate a multi-tonne vehicle safely amidst a population of 61 million people on a small island off of mainland Europe, at speeds of some 30 MPH (48 km/h) in built-up areas but the speed cameras might have a tolerance of +10%.

Whereas cycling in England/Wales is similar to many parts of the USA, where a fragmented system of routes mean that only some parts of the population participate in the activity, where motorists and infrastructure are often actively hostile to cyclists, and where scores of cyclists (87 in the whole UK in 2023) are killed and tens of thousands maimed (>14,000 in the whole UK in 2023) per year. Bicycles simply do not have the mass, the speed, or quite frankly, the space to be anywhere as lethal as motor vehicles.

Of the road death total of about 1600 people in 2024, only four were caused by cyclists. The notion that motorist laws should be level with cyclist laws is to throw all the above considerations out the window, in a "spherical cow" notion of "simplifying the laws" or some such nonsense.

I compare this proposal with how California law -- as written and as charged -- treats the same. Over here, our Vehicle Code spells out that bicyclists have the same rights and responsibilities as vehicles "except those provisions which by their very nature can have no application". This spares the Vehicle Code from having to duplicate every law about stop signs or overtaking, and it's also very pragmatic: sections related to the aiming of high beams are simply inapplicable to bicycles, and we don't even need to go to trial to prove that's the case. The law is fairly easy to interpret.

That said, some sections are explicitly written for bicycles, such as the Bicycling Under the Influence (BUI) statute, which is a misdemeanor with no jail time and a $250 fine, and is the analog to the DUI law that would apply to motorists, which can be either a misdemeanor or a felony and almost always ends up being a 5 figure financial penalty. This distinction is sensible because, as a matter of public policy, it is far, far preferable to deal with drunk bicyclists than to deal with drunk motorists. The latter regularly cause death, mayhem, and sorrow. Whereas there is no recorded case of a bicyclist anywhere somehow drunkenly killing a family of five on the roads. Most often, drunk bicyclists are only noticed because they keep falling off their bike; bicycles don't just keep barreling forward when the rider is asleep at the handlebars.

For the few times that bicyclists cause death, prosecutors in San Francisco set the example, where a bicyclist who killed a woman was charged with vehicle manslaughter (the same felony as it would be for a motorist) but did not ask for prison time. The stigma of a felony conviction will follow that man for the rest of his life, as well as a total alienation from any bicycling community he was ever part of. That 2013 case was so rare and bizarre that now in 2025, eleven year later, it's still the reference case on how to deal with death caused by a bicyclist in this state.

Public policy should be the guidestar for legislating, and legal parity -- a nebulous notion that throws out the maxim of fitting the punishment to the crime -- should take a backseat.

There's at least [email protected]

I should clarify that my original comment -- foot traffic keeps paths in decent shape -- was in answer to the OP's titular question, about why vegetation doesn't grow atop the intended walking/hiking trail. But you're right that traffic will cause other impacts, even if plantlife isn't getting in the way.

I'm in 100% agreement that for trail upkeep, people have to be mindful how they step. The advisories here in California focus on not eroding the edges of the trail, such as by walking around muddy areas, which would only make the restoration work harder and damage more of the adjacent environment. We have a lot of "stay on trail" signs. We advise people to either be prepared to go right through the mud -- only worsens an existing hole -- or don't walk that trail at all.

Obligatory reference to desire paths: [email protected]

Traffic -- under foot or otherwise -- is one way to keep a path in decent shape

My understanding is that the de minimis tariff treatment for import shipments is different than the duty-free personal exemptions that apply for "accompanied baggage" when re-entering the USA and has the imported items with them.

Assuming this CBP page is accurate, the $800 exemption is one of three possible exemptions that can still apply. The $1600 exemption only applies when returning with stuff from Guam, American Samoa, or USVI, and the $800 can only be claimed every 30 day. The last resort is the $200 exemption, which is always available, and ostensibly is there to allow Americans living near Canada or Mexico to not have to deal with border taxation just because they had to buy lunch or gasoline during day trips.

I'm going to comment in two parts, starting with human behavioral and then later addressing physiology.

It feels like I don't have a real routine

I cannot underscore how important it is to develop a routine -- any routine -- since that's the trick towards a long-term approach to fitness. Humans are kinda weird in that regard, in that they have to be correctly conditioned to do something week after week. Humans don't approximate machines at all in this regard, and there's even less reinforcement when the activity in question does not have a logical structure.

To that end, it would behoove you to formulate a more rigorous routine, one which assigns certain exercises to specific days, ideally occuring at around the same time each day. If after a few weeks (3-4 weeks) you find that some days are too heavily-loaded while others are a cake walk, that's a cue to increase the sets, reps, or weights for the easy days, and ease up on the same for harder days. Mentally conditioning yourself to the strains of exercise is part and parcel to physically conditioning yourself for the same.

Correct me if I am wrong but I think it could be a better idea to just listen to your body and not to a routine?

It is correct to listen to your body, but the adjustment shouldn't be to just randomly throw in a rest day. But rather, fine-tune your routine so that your exercise regime matches what your body is presently capable of. As your body improves, adjust accordingly.

My recommendation for picking which days will be what is to form it around your existing work or life schedules. If, for example, leg day always leaves you totally exhausted, then maybe put that for Friday so you're recovering (physically and mentally) on a slow work day or over the weekend. What order you choose will depend on how you can optimize your fitness plan into your life plan, but whatever you end up with, stick with it for a few weeks and take notes -- ie hard copy -- about what is or isn't working.

Which brings us to the physiological side of things.

I came to the conclusion that I absolutely might not need a rest day if I have the energy and motivation to go to the gym.

The present understanding of human fitness is that rest days serve multiple valuable purposes, whether the objective is building muscle, functional strength, endurance, or weight loss. There's also the matter that -- disregarding performance enhancing interventions and their major side effects -- the human body cannot totally transform itself in short spans of time, there isn't much benefit in trying to rush a fitness program. If anything, it tends increases the risk of injury or developing poor form and habits.

With the exception of professional bodybuilders and athletes, whose occupation wholly surrounds their fitness, everyone else can and should take their time to achieve their fitness objectives. To be clear, I'm not suggesting one-month rests between exercises, but rather, the schedule or program adopted should not be unduly swayed by time pressures, instead guided by what your body is saying and what it can do. Skip days can and will happen too, and a few won't seriously disadvantage you in the long-term. Though a few weeks off could break the fitness habit, and you'll have to reestablish it.

For the routine you've written out, I'm somewhat concerned as you've got back exercises on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That doesn't leave a lot of days in between to recover. Biceps twice a week seems fine though, since the thinking is that 24-48 hour rest for biceps is acceptable. But seeing as biceps and triceps are part of the same logical body part, while remaining separate muscle groups, there wouldn't be an issue with having a general "arm day" that focuses on those groups, although some overlap into the other days would be acceptable.

In concrete terms, I would suggest that you orient your fitness routines into a schedule, whether that's still 6 days a week, or 5 days, or whatever. As general advice, make sure your water and diet intake is alright, and you're sleeping a decent amount per day.

I agree with this comment, and would suggest going with the first solution (NAT loopback, aka NAT hairpin) rather than split-horizon DNS. I say this even though I have a strong dislike of NAT (and would prefer to see networks using flat IPv6 addresses, but that's a different topic). It should also be fairly quick to configure the hairpin on your router.

Specifically, problems arise when using DNS split-horizon where the same hostname might resolve to two different results, depending on which DNS nameserver is used. This is distinct from some corporate-esque DNS nameservers that refuse to answer for external requests but provide an answer to internal queries. Whereas by having no "single source of truth" (SSOT) for what a hostname should resolve to, this will inevitably make future debugging harder. And that's on top of debugging NAT issues.

Plus, DNS isn't a security feature unto itself: successful resolution of internal hostnames shouldn't increase security exposure, since a competent firewall would block access. Some might suggest that DNS queries can reveal internal addresses to an attacker, but that's the same faulty argument that suggests ICMP pings should be blocked; it shouldn't.

To be clear, ad-blocking DNS servers don't suffer from the ails of split-horizon described above, because they're intentionally declining to give a DNS response for ad-hosting hostnames, rather than giving a different response. But even if they did, one could argue the point of ad-blocking is to block adware, so we don't really care if SSOT is diminished for those hostnames.

Well, since I've already linked to two of my not-quite-a-lathe projects, I might as well link to the one which started it all: https://sh.itjust.works/post/16087080

This one does have a motor, but not a conventional one at all. And this only worked because the thing I'm turning would need a center hole drilled through anyway.

Thank you for the kind words! All of the tools I used were things that were laying around. I'm marginally better at woodworking than metalworking, so that's why the jig holding the bar was all wood.

I did think about attaching the motor from a disused drill press to spin the bar, but that seemed like it would invite all manner of complexity.

Lathe is in my future, but I kinda want a CNC first. But a CNC lathe would be god-tier.

I am a big fan of makeshift lathes, for tasks that don't necessitate a full metal workshop. Though I do hope to have a small lathe one day.

They should fix and expand a comprehensive on-road bike network before enforcing and nitpicking regulations

Absolutely agree 100%. IMO, it is a public policy failure that we're not doing more to: 1) incentivize more people to use electric micro mobility that exists right now (compare with flying cars, hydrogen cars, self driving cars, so-called hyperloop, electric VTOL aircraft, etc), 2) discourage car dependency by taking it down a peg in terms of priority for space on the public roads, and 3) pursue land use changes that increase density so that micro mobility and public transit are the first-choice option for most people, not the last.

It is patently absurd to me that enforcement effort -- which in most American cities is a zero-sum game -- is being expended to go after ebikes and e-scooters for frivolous offenses like speeding (frivolous bc it's still slower than all the much-larger cars going by) while motor vehicles offenses get a free pass (eg the informal rule that 5-10 MPH over the limit is acceptable). It's very much screams "rules for thee but not for me" and it cannot be tolerated while this country fights for whatever remains of the rule of law.

As for genuine issues created by micro mobility, we're fortunately seeing some progress in that regard, where progress means bringing more currently-unlawful e-machines into the regulatory structure. As discussed earlier in this community, California has a bill which would create eMotos as a category, for things which otherwise would be burdened by onerous or impossible motorcycle registration.

Enlarging the micro mobility pie should be the objective. Anything that tries to discourage or shrink the pie should be shunned.

To that end, everyone in this community needs to be a thorn in their local government, and apply pressure and reminders where it counts. At least where I live, this effort is showing results, as my town has just published a bicycle/pedestrian improvement plan (timeline of 10+ years) which although not necessarily all funded, it outlines a proper grid of curb-separated on-steet bike corridors on arterial roads. None of this "circuitous back roads" nonsense, and because it follows the same road alignment, it would be most appropriate for Class 3 ebike speeds.

Having an adopted plan is valuable ammo to fight for building those projects, even in piecemeal fashion, when the road inevitably is due for repaving and the town needs to apply for state/federal funding. Here in California, towns can win additional grant funding if they actually build the bike and pedestrian projects they've already planned out. And money is persuasive.

Be the change you want to see.