#good way to get someone in trouble

[beardedmrbean]

Some Big Apple motorists were recently spotted with license plates subtly obscured using ultra-low-tech methods — which could potentially be used to evade New York’s wildly unpopular congestion toll that just went into effect.

The Post spotted a variety of these sneaky, DIY tactics in action — often deployed on newer or high-end vehicles — reminiscent of the ongoing “ghost plates” problem that costs the city hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

While it’s not known whether the observed trickery is a direct result of the new $9 toll being imposed when entering Midtown Manhattan, many of the altered plates were sighted near the perimeters of the congestion zone on Sunday, when the fee went into effect.

The most basic method involved covering up or modifying a single digit on a license plate.

This was often done by scratching out a letter or number, like a car seen with an L painted over in white in an apparent attempt to blend it in with the background color of the current New York plates.

Another vehicle spotted near the toll zone had a letter E and a zero partially concealed with blobs of what appeared to be gray paint.

The subtlety of this method makes it difficult for cops to notice anything is amiss while at the same time rendering the plate unreadable to cameras. 

The MTA’s gantry-mounted toll readers attempting to spy a license plate modified in such a way would likely misread it and be unable to charge the driver’s account.

A handful of similarly altered plates were seen by The Post around the area of Lexington Avenue and East 61st Street in Manhattan not far from the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, as well as near Canal Street.

Others were seen with a prominent bend or white streak of paint spanning the width of the plate and passing directly through all of the letters and numbers, which could alter its appearance just enough to flummox a toll camera without drawing the attention of law enforcement.

Some drivers — perhaps borrowing a trick from their days altering their grade on middle school test papers — changed one number to resemble another using paint or tape. One such plate had affixed a bolt over a number 6 in such a way to make it look like an 8.

LED flashers are positioned directly on either side of the VAS plate (issued to members of volunteer ambulance services or their spouses), which could temporarily “blind” a license plate-reading camera as it attempts to read the digits to charge the toll.

The Post also saw a number of license plates coated with some kind of translucent goo that makes them harder to read, including by the human eye.

Plates coated in this manner will usually appear cloudy from behind, and produce a refraction effect when hit by a toll reader’s camera flash, which would make it more difficult to record the full plate number.

Bronx Councilman Oswald Feliz, who has pushed laws to crack down on ghost plates, said Monday that drivers using fraudulent and concealed license plates are a “widespread” problem around the city.

“If drivers obtain these ghost plates to run red lights and engage in speeding, just wait until they think about the congestion tolls they’ll need to pay to enter 60th Street,” he noted.

One well-known tool of the trade is attaching bogus dealer plates to the back of a car, which are easily removable when needed and can be acquired from an unscrupulous auto dealer or even printed out at home.

Would-be toll evaders also sometimes utilize high-tech methods featuring elaborate devices straight out of a James Bond movie, such as a “plate flipper” that enables the driver to rotate their license plates with the push of a button from inside the car.

At a press conference Monday, The Post asked Gov. Kathy Hochul to weigh in on how the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or the state plans to determine the efficacy of the new toll scheme, which aims to raise billions to fund the transportation network’s $15 billion 2020-2024 capital improvement plan.

“There’ll be more data than you can imagine. Today is the first day, I wouldn’t count today’s data. Let’s give it a few days to sink in and get a trend,” Hochul told The Post.

“We’re going to be analyzing the data to see what the impacts are. I’m looking at everything: response times for emergency vehicles, I’m going to be looking at the length of drive time, I’ve got a lot of data I’ll be analyzing,” she assured.

Asked whether the data will be made available to the public, Hochul said, “Of course,” saying they could be published as soon as Tuesday or later this week.

[sukibenders]

Intersectionality is something that, sadly, is often pushed to the side in Arcane discussions, specifically from a certain side of that fandom. They will go on and on about Viktor, as they usually do, talking about how he suffers from classicism and ableism within the show and fandom respectively (as they should as these are issues, but there is a catch when it comes to these fans as well), but when others in the fandom, especially Mel or even Sky fans, point out the racism and misogyny (misogynoir) that is often rampant in this fandom, particularly from said fans mentioned prior, all of a sudden its not possible or being overdramatized. Like they suddenly can't understand how some of their rhetoric includes or invites the same thing black fans have been calling out since the beginning, because how can you discuss the ableism and such that Viktor faces, but laugh or joke around with people who call Mel slurs or just denounce her to a trope? I thought you were for calling out forms of hate within fandom, or does your "activism" only stretch so far? And back to a previous statement, about the catch regarding those particularly fans----some of them regurgitate the same harmful rhetoric towards Viktor that they say they supposedly hate, just in mode subtle ways. How are you going to say you hate when Viktor is infantilized, but will be quick to forget he's a grown man who can defend himself (often when trying to pair him against Mel, framing her as the aggressor, and sometimes even Jayce too but to a lesser degree)? Not saying Jayce doesn't get equal amounts of hate, but his more so gets pushed aside along with his character to ultimately frame Viktor in higher regard, often making him ooc. It's like they pick and choose when the issues are prevalent, and when they aren't, and it's so frustrating.

[tritoch]

i'm such a fake bitch because i'm like "it's okay to like problematic characters (◡‿◡✿) it is also okay to dislike them (..◜ᴗ◝..) your opinions on fictional characters do not reflect anything about you as a person" and then someone will say something mildly critical of venat finalfantasy and it's like hm. i may have been lying earlier.

[neige-leblanche]

i honestly think the stress of my job is bad for my health tbh

[seriousbrat]

personally I find it unlikely that sev was a prefect. first of all if he'd had a badge I think it would've been brought up somehow in SWM (unlike Lily whom Harry barely paid attention to) and I also just don't think he would have been chosen. I doubt Slughorn would have chosen him if he had any say in the matter and I don't think Dumbledore would have either

[turtlespancake]

me when i write a character who is prone to dooming themself and then they run off and doom themself. core traits are stubbornness and a willingness to disregard their own humanity gET BACK HERE IM NOT DONE WITH YOU

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

gratitude list time I'll go first

[katsigian]

I'll be straight up with you lads I miss when the cyber / punk fandom was a community and was fun for everyone and not just the established groups. Everybody interacted with everybody and everyone was so excited to share their vp and lore with each other. I miss all of my cool cp/77 mutuals. Some are gone, some are taking breaks, some moved on. And that's alright, let me be clear. I just miss my cp/77 friends that I'd be excited to share with. I miss how it used to feel good here.

[justicerikai]

official-kun,

why desuka.

explain kudasai.

[eluvixnsarchived]

hi my week away was nice did u miss my stupid ass

[angeltism]

"spar.kle is fictional who cares" I have seen people praising her for her racist anti-romani comments what the fuck kind of world do you live in

[smile-files]

(looking at inanimate insanity under a microscope) hmmmm i know there's a moral orel au in here somewhere......

[embarressment-erradicated]

if anyone says pixel art is easy, and you should do it if your making a game and don't want to put much effort into it, I will actually smite thee with the powers of the concept of art. fuck you, do not act like a medium so deep in nuance and style is just a simple thing you can mess around with.

you can mess around with it of course, and should, it's very fun, but it's as simple or as complex as you want it to be, and acting like it's easy is like saying just cause you can draw a stick figure, means drawing is a simple, easy to learn medium.

everything has it's difficulties and skill ceilings, and that's what makes art fun, but acting like just cause it has only a few hundred pixels makes it easy is fucking horrendous, and I will not listen to anything else you have to say.

[mr-independent]

you know, its not brought up in fics often but ted is extremely well read. he doesnt brag about it, but hes read everything from f scott fitzgerald's b sides to ayn rand's doorstoppers to the sixteen book Ender series, etc etc etc. Ted reads about as much as we see Beard reading (which. in my head is a trait that was passed on, a new focus to sharpen the mind and keep him out of trouble and his mind off drugs, something Ted offered up as a coping mechanism for when his own dad died, a way to have fun and adventure and escape without ending up in jail like Ted himself had a handful of times before, scaring the bejeezus out of his ma.)

this turned into a mini fic and i lost my train of thought but point is, Ted reads So Much and more people need to pick up on this in fics please and thank you.

[daz4i]

you know how sometimes you will randomly unlock a memory that doesn't actually mean much. anyway i just now remembered one of those. for context when i was. i wanna say 15. i nearly got into this fancy boarding school for arts and science we have here. and this memory was from the final stage of entry. i was "auditioning" for humanities and for art. and in art they had us draw this combination of objects in front of us with pencils. and they gave us an hour i think? but i finished in 30 minutes (the finisherrrrr). and mind you it was a very decent drawing. a bit too dark but still p accurate. but the teacher there saw that i finished early and went "...try to correct stuff" and i asked what and he said "find them yourself" which only caused me to ruin that drawing bc i tried correcting the dark areas smh. anyway all this was to unlock another part of my backstory for you guys, i was actually an artist before, at a relatively high level for my age back then even. yeah i dunno what went wrong in the years since either

[bmpmp3]

becoming exclusively a traditional artist in the past 3-4 ish years is really fascinating because nowadays i see people do huge detailed polished digital pieces and im like damn how do they do that without dying on impact but then i remember my usual medium is watercolour and if you saw some of the shit i do to attempt to recreate digital techniques with it........... maybe im the insane one