Spyke

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world

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The Delaware House will vote today on a bill that would allow hundreds of LLCs to vote in local elections in the small town of Seaford

In other towns where this is allowed, a representative of the entity, not the actual owner, was able to cast the ballot for the company after signing the necessary affidavit. Delaware allows for the owner of the LLC’s identity to not be public.

Yep no way this doesn't-

In a Newark referendum election in 2019, a property manager was able to vote 31 times because he was in control of 31 LLCs, which owned 31 parcels of land. The city then changed its regulations after this became public.

Ah it already did cause problems.

Why in the world would you put business on the same legal basis of actual citizens?

reddit

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Reddit mods discuss forming a union and suing for back pay

I'm not seeing any serious suggestions of that there. Looks more like hypothetical talk.

I actually had a similar thought to that yesterday. Could moderators be classified as employees for the work they do?

However, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the FLSA was not intended "to stamp all persons as employees who without any express or implied compensation agreement might work for their own advantage on the premises of another."

I think you would have a massive uphill struggle to argue Reddit's moderators are employees in court. Without that no back pay and no union.

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Going to be a busy day

It's really location dependent. Some places you'll see the birds in seconds and others never. You'll need to know the climate, local weather, soil conditions, what else is growing in the area, time of year, etc. to get an accurate answer.

reddit

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TechCrunch mentions Lemmy / Kbin migration: Reddit CEO lashes out on protests, moderators and third-party apps

Huffman defended business decisions made by the company to charge third-party apps saying the API wasn’t designed to support these clients.

Then what exactly is it for?

We're happy to have API clients, crawlers, scrapers, and browser extensions

We want to allow developers to build great products powered by Reddit and we recognize our developer community is integral to the success of the Reddit platform.

Seems you were happy with third party apps and products for quite a while.

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[All y'all] the misery of airport security theater

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mtf

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In search of a guide

I think it's next to impossible to write a guide on how to transition. It's so multidimensional and personalized that any guide saying do x, y and z is going to be wrong for someone. But maybe something very, very general can be written.

You've actually been at this longer than me so maybe you have a better idea of what transition is to you but I split mine into three broad categories; mental, social and medical.

Mental transition is working on how you view yourself and how you fit into the world. For me it mainly involves reflection on what exactly do I want, how do I get it, and why haven't I. Usually unpacking internalized transphobia for me but also involves integrateing 'girl me' me into my view of myself. Slots in with medical transition in that you may want to talk to a therapist to assist you with it and helps you decide if and how you want to medically transition. Fits in with social transition in it is how you decide to transition and overcome inhibitions to transition. Maybe the hardest easy thing to do.

Social transition is changing how you interact with the people and the world around you. Probably the first thing most people think of when they say transition. Covers a huge range of things like how you groom yourself, clothes, pronouns, voice training and many many more. How, when and why someone does one thing or another is going to be very personal and specific to them.

Medical transition is basically anything you need a doctor to help you with. I include feminizing HRT here even though you could technically do it by yourself in a lot of jurisdictions. I would also include any mental health consoling here. My advice here is to basically get in line the second you have an inkling that you are going want or need help from the medical community. The wait times for it can be months or years depending on location. If when you get to the front of the line and decide you don't want anything you can always decline and they'll go to the next person.

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Trump finds no new lawyers in time for Mar-a-Lago documents arraignment

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Meh. Lawyers represent unsavory clients all the time. I think Trump's treatment of his lawyers is the issue for most. Using them as political spokespersons and his reputation of not paying.

My guess is it'll go like this:

Trump: Judge, I can't find a lawyer with the skills to represent me.

Judge: Give me the list of people you tried to get to represent you.

The judge looks over the list see someone they knows.

Judge: Mr. X is appointed to Trump's lawyer team and will be paid 1.2 x [standard rate]. Trump will put Y amount into escrow to ensure payment.

Add some rules about what exactly the appointed lawyer will do and done. Trump can't argue for improper representation later.

world

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AI-generated narrators threaten voice actors hoping for audiobook gigs

"I refuse (voiceover) work that states they'll take my voice and make an AI model from it," voice actor Brad Ziffer told CNBC. "The best way to protect myself is to just stay away."

As you should. There is a big difference between narrating and giving away personality rights.

But the article kind of negates the title.

However, experts say seamlessly replicating the way a human talks with AI is still a ways away. Human beings offer unique intonation, cadence, and emotion when they speak.

Voice artist narration for big title releases isn't going away anytime soon. And if it does the job is going to be replaced with technical/artistic jobs fine tuning the generated narration.

What I actually see happening in the short term is it becoming profitable to do generative narration of smaller authors and books that would be profitable using traditional voice work.

In time I could see this working it's way up the budget ladder into larger projects but that's still a way off.

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Trans women have no advantage in elite sport, new report finds

I think this article is overstating the report's findings. From the executive summary of the report:

The research findings in the biomedical area are inconclusive. Studies which make conclusions on pre- and post-hormone replacement therapy (HRT) advantage held by trans women athletes have used either cis men or sedentary trans women as proxies for elite trans women athletes. These group references are not only inappropriate for the context but produce conclusions that cannot be applied to elite trans women athletes. Further, there is little scientific understanding about the attributes or properties of HRT, namely testosterone suppression and estrogen supplementation, on the physiology and athletic ability of trans women athletes. This ignores the potential for estrogen supplementation to reduce Lean Body Mass (LBM), and for testosterone suppression to produce holistic health disadvantages.

Which in my reading basically says all the current data is invalid for elite level athletes and shouldn't be used for policy making. That's not quite as powerful as the conclusion as saying there are no differences.

I hate to say more research is needed since it's an argument made by people who just want to exclude trans athletes until it can be definitely proven there are no advantages, but I don't feel like I can't come to a conclusion from this.

My gut feeling is that there is probably a very complex relationship between an individual historic hormones and their performance in any given sport. And that performance is probably very dependent on the sport in question as well, e.g. any potential difference between trans women and cis women will present differently in long distance running vs weight lifting.