Law and reality in publishing and entertainment (seldom the same thing) from the creator's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into politics, military affairs, censorship and the First Amendment, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting.
Badgers in the UK are demonstrating their commitment to public service by tearing up golf courses that — unlike parks and recreational areas accessible to the great unwashed — are being allowed to water their greens during the worst drought in England in a century. Just don't tell Bill Murray or he might get ideas. It was stolen from Count Binface! Send Lindell! Send Eastman! The Clacton
There are babies involved in all of these link sausages, and really not in a cute way. Remember when actually talking about nepo-babies in H'wood was a thing? Nobody talks about them in publishing, but they're definitely there — on a slightly skewed axis, as the nepotism isn't all that often within publishing but mostly within the cultural-gatekeeper ecosystem. Both instances are not about
Taking a break from misanthropy today. Well, not really, just from the Anthropic settlement; recent events and announcements have more than justified disdain for at least certain segments of humanity — especially when they're not just tolerating, but celebrating, hypocrisy. From the all-too-densely-populated Department of Ignorant Politicians and Wannabes, there's an unusually ignorant screed
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The first question on the mind of Bartz claimants is going to be "When will I get paid?" In technical legal terms, It Depends. The first, and perhaps most obvious, barrier would be an appeal. But who can appeal, and when? Even that is very much an "It Depends" sort of thing: The obvious deadline is that established in the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure: Thirty days after judgment...
Before diving in to any of the details regarding the actual meaning of "final approval" of the Settlement on 20 July, it's fairly important to revisit a couple of context items. First, and perhaps most important, one must remember that any settlement is a least-worst-outcome compromise. By definition, a difficult-to-value harm has already occurred, and reducing that to certainty — a
There's only one Canadian product that merits a punitive tariff: Wildfire smoke. But then, I'd say the same thing about coal-fired electrical generators, the Tacoma Aroma, and other negative externalities with unclear cost factors. Whether that should be applied directly to real-estate developers is… complicated. Speaking of negative externalities, we just had a six-weeks-long event
(Not cicadian, no bugs approved here.) Given that this Sunday's big game is between two Spanish-speaking nations, I'm feeling somewhat copacetic about being forced to rely on Telemundo due to the incompetence of the local Fox station. It's become quite apparent over the last year and a half that we have endemic chemical imbalances at the top of this Administration, ranging from 'roid rage at
Fortunately, not all of these casualties have been fatalities. The VA will no doubt resist treating those that are just maimings as "service-related" — rather unusually, with substantial justification. The fatality involves the bafflingly (even though wilfully) ignorant Sen Graham. His ignorance extended far, far beyond the usual-for-politicians "I'll viciously attack members of a different
Well, FIFA has once again moved ahead in the battle to be recognized as the most-corrupt sporting organization. The irony here is that FIFA set itself up to fail, both with its "rules" regarding appeals (note: for all practical purposes, there are none… in particular, there are none regarding non-sporting-origin pressure tactics by oligarchical assholes) and the "rules" regarding the VAR
Fireworks are for those with the training, the appropriate equipment, and the appropriate location (and conditions). If you don't have all three — just don't, and leave it to those who do. Big-screen TVs make that a lot easier than when I grew up, when black-and-white console TVs were about the best thing there was… But I'm perfectly willing to give this King the finger (symbolically,
So the Supreme Court issued a pile of decisions this morning, including one in which the only good part was intellectual honesty about being disingenuous (of which more in the future). It is that time of year, after all; and there will be more tomorrow. I'll defer touch-typing anything for a few days, probably while the rest of the country is busy driving under the influence and blowing its
Two hundred fifty years ago — give or take a couple months, since it had to be sent by sail and not e-mail — a bunch of uppity colonials provided a convenient checklist of objections to their monarch, whom they accused of tyranny. Here's how the present monarch (however unjustified his assertion of monarchial powers may be) appears to be doing seventeen months into his reign: Historical
Burn sinners at the stake! OK, maybe not such a good idea. Next time, read your own bloody book before "peace negotiations" start. Better yet, don't go to war — excuse me, "exert irresistible 'murikan military prowess in pursuit of critical national objectives (not a 'war,' never that)" — without defining the bloody "critical national objectives" and determining whether military
In the quadrennial (off-year!) competition to determine which major sporting governing body is the most corrupt, FIFA seems to be winning. At present. And even though it will have another opportunity to demonstrate its superiority on this measure next year, the Olympics will have their own opportunity to excel in 2028. Meanwhile, the NCAA is just pathetically inept… especially as none of
Beware the ingredient labels! Not just the sausages, but the news… Since no one really knows what an emolument is anyway, I suppose it's just fine for the entire House of Orange evade IRS scrutiny. At least until some judge or another takes a closer look, and another judge limits branding opportunities, and still other judges determine that he has to pay damages assessed a couple years
If we needed any proof that Major Major Major has no clue about being an officer and has been promoted well beyond any trivial evidence of competence — much like the origin of that name — it was clearly demonstrated with the graduation speech given at West Point. “The battlefield does not grade on a curve, and you can’t throw your pronouns at the enemy,” Hegseth told the cadets. “Combat is the
So the DNC commissioned a "post-mortem" on its failures in the 2024 election… that even aside from its other flaws (like actually providing/citing evidence) failed to consider whether the deceased had multiple terminal conditions, and most especially whether any of the contributing factors had public-health implications. In no particular order, this purported death certificate
Almost no-one engages with the undercurrent: Isuzu was, in fact, selling not-so-great vehicles. Sort of like LLM-based chatbots† selling not-so-great answers ("if the minimum wasn't good enough, it wouldn't be the minimum"). Nor with the place that most deception takes place: The "Finance Manager," because deception includes intentional omission (especially when disclosure is
One of the memes put forth by ignorant narcissistic power-seekers — usually, but not always, from an extremist element (more often rightist than leftist) — is that their leader demonstrates that he's so much smarter than the inferior opposition by playing "multidimensional chess" instead of "checkers". The meme is ignorant not just because soundbites don't actually win
Not just to the news, either. Definitive evidence that the Arabian Gulf aggression is nothing but a dick move… The increasingly irrational statements from the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seem to be encouraging Democratic Party leadership to advocate for the 25th Amendment. (Unfortunately, there's no equivalent to deal with the party leadership, much of which
It's 04 May.† Fifty-six years ago today, ill-prepared and ill-led members of the Ohio National Guard fired on a group of protesters against the Vietnam War at Kent State University, killing four (including one quite some distance from the protest), overtly wounding nine (or more) others, and horrifying uncounted others. Unfortunately, it appears that some government agencies have learned
Unlike Director Comey, I don't think anyone could make a passes-the-laugh-test argument that that is a true and credible threat directed against a living person. That the allegations against him don't pass the laugh test either is either for another time or an exercise in projective paranoia — and I'm not at all certain which would be worse. (Nor is his utterly noncredible assertion, as a former
We know what's on the other side of the fence, given both the date and the policy decisions in DC, right? Or at least one might, rather forlornly, hope that those policy decisions are being driven more by overindulgence in mild hallucinogens and intoxicants than by, say, fundamental character defects — not excluding those sniping. Maybe we just disagree on definitions: I am still refraining
I'm afraid the ingredients have been piling up, but they've finally made it past the Strait of Hormuz for your reading pleasure. And their undoubted (and unpredictable) effects on the world economy. I'm not entirely sure which is less credible — Drumpf as Jesus or as a doctor. Depending upon which version of the propaganda one credits, Jesus was one or more of a rabbi (certainly in