Jump to content

TwiceHorn

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    34631
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    2

Posts posted by TwiceHorn

  1. As noted above by Dan Rydell, Walgreens is probably named to get the case out of Rock Island County and into Chiraq.  But I'm not cynical or anything.

     

    It appears that Walgreens' alleged tortious behavior had nothing to do with the events of the week of his death.  https://www.scribd.com/document/377222329/Wrongful-death-lawsuit-filed-by-Prince-s-heirs#from_embed

    That's a rather bizarre lawsuit in that regard.   Also an extremely conclusory one.  I hate Texas med mal reforms, most particularly the damage caps.  BUT, the requirement of having a medical professional give an opinion early on in the case, preferably prior to filing, that someone fucked up, is somewhat hard to argue with.  I am also of the belief that a plaintiff should have that anyway and should have as many ducks lined up as possible prior to filing suit.

  2. 2 hours ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

    I don’t do criminal, but it sounds like the argument that the government’s argument that “state of mind evidence” is sufficiently particular is weak.  

    Well, as I said, it really is startling how much or how broad a valid search warrant can be.  I didn't read the citations in the brief, but they seemed to have one for that (another huge advantage of the DOJ is that there are briefs from all over the nation on just about any conceivable topic that just need to be "Shepardized" and conformed to the facts), and, reading between the lines, it seemed to support their position.

    The fact that the government falls back on the "good faith" exception (officers entitled to rely on a faulty warrant sought and issued in good faith), might mean that the government is on slighly shaky ground, but I suspect that is boilerplate in most of these briefs.

  3. I have a hennesey hammock.  It's great.  A pad does work in moderately cool temps, say around 40, but much lower than that, and you need the other cold-weather solutions like the underquilt.  In warm weather, it's fantastic.  It also uses straps rather than rope or cord to tie to trees, so it minimizes the impact.

     

    The key to avoiding busting your back is to choose trees that are far enough apart.  If the hammock is hanging in a U, you are going to be in for it.  If you can get it to a reasonable catenary curve, it sleeps great.

    • Like 1
  4. 9 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    I have a lot of suspicions about Chinese construction methods and material quality.

    Noooo shit.  Ten year old buildings there look like 80-100 year old buildings in the US.  At least in southern China.  I suppose the humid and polluted atmosphere doesn't help, but is it really any worse than the East Coast around the turn of the century?

  5. As I said earlier, my intention wasn't really to denigrate Chinese innovation, just to explore the propensity for imitation and less-than-top-quality goods.  And I guess the answer almost always comes back to a collectivist mindset, reinforced by decades of oppressive communism.

     

    But, I did kind of lead into the broader question of "innovation," so my bad.

  6. 11 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

    The younger dude was a complete prick.  Why should they leave?  Seems they really had done nothing wrong, and in my many rounds of playing golf, many times drinking excessively, pace of play is addressed politely and responded to accordingly.  That whole thing was bullshit.

    He really was.  And you could tell he was just about to explode with some nbombs and shit.  As aggravating as slow play can be, his response was entirely disproportionate.

  7. 3 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

    Its not a victim mentality, its being honest that racial issues are not limited to the south and are actually pervasive in other parts of the country. It's not letting people get away with the attitude that blatant racism is confined to a certain few states and the rest of us get to point at them and laugh. 

    Exactly.  No one of good conscience likes to be called a racist or be told they live in a racist region.  Especially by someone who lives in an equally racist region.  The "north" has been lording its moral superiority on race issues over the "south" for 150-plus years.  Granted, the genesis of that was slavery, but after emancipation, the "north" lost any claim to current moral superiority on race issues.

  8. 22 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

    This is wishy-washy and a huge generalization, but culturally, copying is seen in some ways as admiration.  Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and all that...

    Also on the pragmatic side, it's just pure cutthroat capitalism.  Why spend $$$ and time on R&D and differentiation when you could just replicate?  

    In terms of manufacturing, they (or indeed anyone else) can produce almost anything at any quality.  They're just meeting market demands and specifications, whether that's dictated by Apple or Afghanistan.  If there's a brazillion shittastic bluetooth speakers out on the market... that's just because the market exists for ultracheap shittastic speakers. 

    So there's a great irony at play when "Westerners" are lamenting the proliferation of 'cheap' Chinese goods...

     

    Interesting observation.  As I said a couple of times above, kind of elliptically, in the US, absent valid and current IP protection, we are legally free to copy.  But, as any IP lawyer knows, "copying" can be the kiss of death in any IP litigation.  Americans just don't like copyists.  Any US hobby board where Chinese make competitive products is full of complaints and bitching about their copying and what scumbags they are, without any consideration of whether anyone bothered to seek protection for the design, or whether, as is often the case, the patents have expired, injecting their subject matter into the public domain.

    And maybe that compunction doesn't exist in Asian cultures.

    Curious thing.  Japanese companies file a shit-ton of patents in Japan, but they very rarely seek examination of those patents.  So, what happens is that the patent application is "laid open" or published but never examined and never granted, meaning there will be no enforceable patent on that invention, but it's right there for anyone to copy/steal.  The western interpretation of that is that the Japanese are more interested in receiving "credit" for the invention than obtaining an enforceable right to prevent its appropriation.  It's an invitation to be copied, basically, but at least the inventors and their employers have public "credit" for the invention.  Also has the beneficial effect of keeping others from being able to patent the same or similar things.

  9. 4 minutes ago, Ldogg53 said:

    Definitely a lot of this.  But I'd add that the business environment/cultural expectations(non govt) also weigh heavy.  The whole concept of "saving face" is something we simply don't have here.  The US specifically is a lot more of help me out or get out of my way, when it comes to innovation and growth.  In China you're not really supposed to one-up your boss or anyone senior to you.  So while you may be the 26 year old engineer with a great idea, you'll squash it most likely because you can't overstep your bounds.  You will have shown up your boss and he/she won't have that.  Healthy companies in the US embrace innovation and improvement on processes.  People are rewarded for it, including superiors who are able to recognize talent and bring them along to exploit it.  In China it's all about knowing your role and staying in your lane.

    I think this is a good statement of the business and "corporate" culture over there, but it still kind of begs the question, why don't the "higher ups" direct people to do more than imitate.

     

    In the US, I think a fictitious, but accurate, conversation in a product development segment of a business goes like this:  "Our competitor is selling the crap out of Product X.  We need a product X."  Then their might be consideration of how closely one can imitate Product X, given patent or other IP protection.  Even in the absence of such protection, there seems to be a moral compunction against just straight up copying.  The US competitor is going to change something and probably try to improve on Product X.  And similar conversations take place among several competitors and you get Products Y and Z.

    That conversation doesn't seem to take place in China.

  10. Here's kind of an interesting question.  The club has apologized and offered to meet to discuss the event and how to go forward.  One of the ladies says that is insufficient  and someththing else needs to happen.  Logically, I suppose, that something else is a lawsuit.  How helpful is that, really?

     

    I would submit that discussions like this are probably more fruitful than a lawsuit, which is just going to aggravate people and cause them to retrench their retrograde positions, but that doesn't seem to satiate the great American thirst for vengeance of some sort.

     

    Which brings to mind another topic that is slightly off-topic.  Americans really seem to thirst for vengeance for legitimate or perceived wrongs.  I think it's what drives modern "litigiousness" in the civil dispute setting and has led us to incarceration nation on the criminal side.  Taint healthy.

    • Like 1
  11. 4 minutes ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

    Our factory in China (Nanjing) is the most productive and best regarding line down situations than the shitholes in Juarez and Laredo.

    Probably helps when you have dormitories on site and a "security force" that is more geared to keeping the employees in line than protecting them or the premises.

     

    image5180018x_1.jpeg?w=360

  12. 2 minutes ago, msbesq said:

    Jeff Greenfield, the political commentator, once described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia to the East, Pittsburgh to the West  and Alabama in the middle.

    Very Appalachian, indeed.  The police seem to have handled this better than their Philly counterparts at the Starbucks, but there's one important distinction.  These ladies appear, by virtue of their membership at the club, to be "licensed or otherwise privileged" to remain on the property, despite the owners' or others declarations of trespass.

     

    I get that a slow group can be annoying af, but who calls the cops on a golf course?

  13. On 4/17/2018 at 11:50 PM, MadTrapper said:

    I mean, is it that hard to get a reasonable bike for less than 500? My old Specialized MB got stolen back on the day. Now I'm too cheap for that and want something low cost but where the derailleurs are semi reliable. Is an Academy Schwinn the main option? Got damn I hate Craigslist, but a used Trek would be ideal.

     

    Plus I want to get a trailer for my girls and a bike for my wife. Adds up quickly.

     

    Rant over.

     

     

    Bikesdirect.com is a good place for lower end bikes on the cheap.  A step up from big box, about the same as Diamondback, and low end Trek/Specialized, and probably a tad cheaper.  They have some oddball component mixes sometimes, but not "bad."  Frames are pretty solid Chinese aluminum, that seem to come from the same factories/are the same frames as Fuji and GIant.

  14. Back to the OP article.  One thing that kind of bothers me about federal sentencing, too, is that the vast majority of federal district judges are civil lawyers prior to appointment.  I'm not privy to all of their thought processes, obviously, but it has been my observation and sense that criminal cases can be an annoying afterthought to many of these judges, who are not "immersed" in criminal justice, at least prior to being appointed.  So, I think the Sentencing Guidelines give these judges an "out" on an unpleasant duty that intrudes, to one degree or another, on their civil work.  I think that makes a number of judges overly deferential to the Guidelines.

    One of the shocking things about the Sentencing Guidelines is that they can enhance a basic sentence by multiples or decades based on unindicted and unproven (to a reasonable doubt) criminal or bad conduct.  The justification for this is to consider the "true nature of the crime," unfettered by niceties like indictments, and jury verdicts on actual crimes after proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  Stunningly, an indictment can contain a count, or crime, that the jury refuses to convict on, while convicting on others.  But that same crime may be considered for sentencing purposes if the judge thinks it is proven to a preponderance of the evidence, and the sentence enhancement can be several years to decades on this.  It's not quite the same as sentencing someone for a crime for which they have been acquitted, but it is nauseatingly close to it.

    As originally conceived, the Guidelines were mandatory, meaning if a judge failed to follow them, or got the Byzantine analysis wrong, it was a near-automatic reversal, while following them to a T meant the sentence was untouchable on appeal.

    Because the Guidelines consider unproven criminal conduct, and without the availability of a jury trial on those issues, the Supreme Court ruled that they could not be mandatory, but only advisory.  The current appellate situation, though, is that a sentence according to the Guidelines is presumptively reasonable.  So, even though they aren't mandatory, a judge can't go very wrong by following them and can create a helluva mess (meaning appellate ping-pong back and forth) for himself by deviating .  So this further encourages judges to use them,  A few maverick judges have "gone to war" with the Guidelines when they are especially stupid and refused to apply them, which also means they have gone to war with the court of appeals.  I think this author is one of them.  That takes balls and I admire it.

×
×
  • Create New...