Warning: Some contents satirical. The humor- and/or intellectually-impaired are severely cautioned.
- Professor Tushnet describes a consumer-deception case involving claims that A and B were separate entities when they were in fact the same. This is disturbingly parallel to this morning's 9–0 Supreme Court decision (3 concurring opinions) regarding potential liability for wire fraud by deceptive identification of a "separate" minority-owned "subcontractor".
- I ran into some white refugees from South Africa this afternoon. They appeared fairly comfortable to me, although their name doesn't sound very "white." However, when I asked for any documentation concerning a risk of genocide, I got no response.
At least they were refugees. This… individual from South Africa was not a refugee so much as a draft-dodger. That makes him a good fit for this Administration, with its occasional focus on the military accomplishments of others. At least it wasn't an attempt to rename Memorial Day, which would be a bit too much regarding a holiday originally about Union soldiers. (I tried to link to the VA's explanation, but as of this afternoon it's returning a 404 error…)
- When a newspaper long known for its hostility to "creatives" (notwithstanding the "new ownership") prints a page of "book recommendations" from one of its "content partners" filled with AI hallucinations, things are getting just a little bit too weird — and disturbing. It's not so much the "we were fooled by an AI hallucination" as "we did no review or factchecking whatsoever on something from a 'content partner' — nobody tears off and prints from a teletype any more, but we tried!" Then, of course, they blamed their own failure to follow journalistic standards on someone else. I guess I'll need to go elsewhere trying to find literary immortality, or even prestige — let alone a reading list likely to be available through the public library (which only actually acquires and circulates real books).
- Note to executives at Universal Music Group: It's not a good-faith effort to "resolve" a dispute or disagreement when you reject a claim that arose from your overt and intentional deception and violations of law. Those works couldn't have been "works made for hire"… unless they were by (a) employees within the scope of their duties, in which case I'd like to see the W2s you issued to them at the time, or (b) a freelancer's specifically commissioned work falling into one of nine categories, none of which can be mangled to include "phonorecordings" either at the time of the creation or now. Since it was after 01 Jan 1978, just declaring "work made for hire" in the contract was insufficient (and the transferee/recorded music industry's near half-century of refusing to acknowledge that 1909 Act precedents were statutorily overruled is not, I'm afraid, an AI hallucination).
- Sympathy to President Biden regarding his recent medical diagnosis… and a kick in the crotch for those attempting to turn it into continued criticism of Vice-President Harris and others for not "disclosing" this or any other "health challenge." WTAF? If they had, y'all would have screamed about violating Biden's medical privacy. We still wouldn't have had younger candidates in presumably better health… oh, wait, he's not exactly younger himself, is he?
Everybody is entitled to a voice in democracy. Not everybody is entitled to be on the ballot. If your birth year appears in the "presently eligible to draw Social Security benefits" table (like mine does!), get off the ballot. Otherwise, events like this are inevitably accelerated, or at least more prevalent.