How would your parents feel about me showing up?

My understanding is that PA has some stupid laws that make it difficult to impossible for municipalities to build and maintain sidewalks, forcing most of the expense onto the adjacent property owner.

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/LI/uconsCheck.cfm?txtType=HTM&yr=1933&sessInd=0&smthLwInd=0&act=069&chpt=24

And local governments often seem pretty reluctant to force local property owners to bear potentially thousands of dollars in expense to repave sidewalks.

The numbers also seem to be a combination of sugary foods + drinks.

According to these numbers PA is #1 in both categories, but a bottle of Pepsi is going to be way worse for you than a cookie.

Surveys are generally self-administered, the bigger concern is whether the manner in which the respondents were recruited forms a representative sample or not. Pretty much everything is done online these days, even the big well respected pollsters are mostly online now.

Probably because it requires an extra step to enroll, beyond just paying the bill that shows up every month. Most people regardless of the process just stick with the defaults.

I know you can enroll in it through your eAccount but I wonder how many people ever actually setup an online login versus just paying the paper bill that shows up.

What they're really observing is where suburbia gives way to rural areas. In the bigger metros suburbia is just much bigger, so it might be a longer drive to get to "downtown", but that transition will always exist.

In LA you can drive an hour and basically never leave suburbia, but you'll still get to the juncture eventually. Go to the Los Angeles area in Google Maps and search for Tractor Supply Co and you'll see they start popping up in the "inland empire" at the edge of San Bernadino. Because that's roughly where suburbia starts to give way to farmland.

> About 80 per 300k or .00002% of the population are considered to been the victim of violent robberies.

Might want to double check your math. You forgot to multiply by 100 to get the percentage. That's .02%.

Not sure where you got your data from but it's likely that your stat is an annual rate, if so over a lifetime the cumulative risk would be nearing 1%.

You can go to the subreddit for pretty much any state/city and you'll find people complaining about the same things.

Including the jokes/memes about the state flower being the orange traffic cone. Pretty much every northern state with a freeze/thaw cycle bitches about the potholes.

I'm having trouble making sense of a lot of this recent drama the Pa House, since most of the public has little knowledge of the normal internal processes and procedures of the legislature. I have no idea what is normal business in the state house, and what isn't.

This is all further complicated by the fact that the GOP will technically continue to hold the majority until special election are held to fill Democratic vacancies.

> It's PA taxpayer money that existed in those accounts to do the business of the legislature. It's theft. Imagine if an outgoing president transferred all the taxpayer money to fund the operations of the white house and executive offices to their own accounts and those of their political party!

It's worth noting that none of these transfers are leaving accounts internal to the structure of the state legislature.

Fight for control of Pa. House rages on as Republicans move $51 million in state funds >In the Pennsylvania House, the caucuses of both parties are allocated separate funds to be used for things like payroll, office costs and more.  > >In 2022, “Caucus Operations” for both parties were allocated a total of $140,044,000. According to Cutler, this total is usually divided into 52% for the majority party and 48% for the minority party, which would mean Republicans got about $72,822,880 and Democrats got about $67,221,120. > >Cutler said Republicans have allocated some of their funds into various accounts that benefit both parties, such as an account used to pay for technology upgrades in the Capitol. For example, it was used to pay to upgrade the House chamber voting board last summer. Republican leadership said they planned future projects like upgrading the Capitol media office, which still has an entrance sign reading “Newspaper correspondents” and only has a men’s bathroom. > >Funds from the information technology accounts made up most of the $51 million transfer to the Republican House Special Leadership account. Republicans said because the money was allocated to and saved by the Republican Caucus, they should get to keep control of it. > >“It’s essentially 12 years’ worth of surpluses that have accumulated because we’ve managed our finances very responsibly,” Cutler said.

The devil is in the details.

Just because you declare a piece of legislation is anti-something-bad, doesn't mean it gets a pass from basic scrutiny.

Seemed like a lot of the vendors back then were semi-permanent semi-professional operations.

Closer to the people you might see setting up booths at a convention or something. They just maybe couldn't afford the rent for a traditional retail space.

I guess those kinds of folks are probably running eBay or Etsy shops now.

> They finally razed the entire thing when Amazon showed up.

It was an empty demolished lot for over a decade before Amazon showed up.

I've heard (but have not personally driven by) that Amazon finally broke ground, but Street View doesn't even have any recent enough photos to show that.

Google Street View - May 2012

Google Street View - Sept 2021

Edit: At least according to Wikipedia, the flea market shuttered in 2005 and the mall was demolished in 2007. So it was an empty lot for quite a while before Amazon finally came around.

I'm not old enough to remember the actual mall, but my parents took me to the flea market semi-regularly.

It was interesting though because it was half indoor and half out in the parking lot, and there were a fair number of semi-permanent vendors setup inside.

Maybe it's just the rose colored glasses of youth, but it seemed like there was actually some good stuff for sale. Compare it to the flea market nearby in the old movie theater next to the Walmart, which is just sad and depressing.

> At least this has "pepperoni" for a lot of states, so it appears mostly real.

See, that's part of what makes me suspect it's not real.

Because if it were based on any real data, literally every state in the US is going to have pepperoni in the top spot.

I've had it a few times.

Not from a pizza shop, but it was a grocery store specialty frozen pizza (from a brand that I think no longer exists) that was Mexican-style street corn. So it had corn, diced green peppers, cotija cheese, some seasoning. It actually wasn't bad.

Regular pepperoni will always be my go-to, but sometimes an unusual specialty pizza is fun to have.

Seems the answer was in the rest of the sentence?

> “Indeed, boards must certify the result of election returns regardless of any error or fraud that is discovered during the count or certification process,” the suit states, noting a Pennsylvania statute that instructs boards to instead file reports about fraudulent or erroneous returns to a district attorney.

Even their first names are weirdly similar: Kevin Crew / Calvin Crew

Found myself wondering in the other thread about this incident if they might be related.

There's always a relevant XKCD.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1845:_State_Word_Map

These maps, if they aren't just straight up fake, are usually picking up on very minor statistical differences in a noisy data set.

I don't see the problem?

If there's a fire or hazmat situation or something in one tunnel, then you can just cross into the other tunnel which is likely safe.

Main problem is just getting any traffic in the other tunnel to stop so you don't get splatted while fleeing.

Certain people could be "pre-verified" for Real ID and not have to produce any additional documentation, and could apply for their Real ID entirely online, because they first applied for their ID after PennDOT had made those documents part of the standard process.

https://www.dmv.pa.gov/REALID/Pages/default.aspx > If you received your FIRST Pennsylvania driver's license, learner's permit, or photo ID card AFTER September 1, 2003, PennDOT may already have your REAL ID documentation on file.

Basically if they're under the age of 35, they probably didn't need to supply any additional documentation in person because PennDOT already had it from when they first got their license.

There's also the Brewery at Lucianos, where Rivertowne used to be.

Kind of a mix of Italian and bar food (burgers and such).

> they might be vegetarian only

They are. Mintt and India Garden are your non-veg options in Monroeville.

Verily.

I wasn't sure what you were talking about specifically, but I guess this article confirms a bystander was hit:

Trib - Bystander struck by bullet in Downtown Pittsburgh, police say > A woman was grazed by a bullet in Downtown Pittsburgh Tuesday afternoon during a dispute between two men, police said. > >Police responded to the intersection of Smithfield Street and Fourth Avenue around 12:10 p.m. Officers found a woman with a gunshot wound to her lower leg. > >“The shooting occurred during a dispute between two individuals on Smithfield Street,” police said in a news release. “The shooting victim was not involved in the dispute, and was walking past.”

So many of these incidents seem to be stupid arguments between people and then they start shooting wildly.

Mastriano was a speaker at the Stop the Steal Rally on Jan 6th, paid to bus down a group of protestors, and was pictured outside of the Capitol as it was being breached. He was one of the conspirators who attempted to put forth a slate of "alternate electors" to hand PA to Trump after he lost the state in 2020. He attempted to get PA to follow Arizona with a fraudulent "audit". He's bragged about how he could use his authority as Governor to change election results.

He's a Christian nationalist and has attended QAnon events.

I say without exaggeration this guy is an outright fascist.