These are just the basic sausages. There's plenty of garlic in their souls, but you'll have to bring your own sauerkraut and toadstools.
- If we had an effective national health assurance system, we wouldn't be talking about the CEO of the insurer with the highest rate of claim denial among major insurers (except maybe for the VA, but that's a different issue entirely) getting shot in an apparent targeted assassination — and then seeing teh internets explode with schadenfreude over an act of vigilante violence.
The legitimate use of violence in pursuit of policy objectives is the exclusive province of the State. It can't be tolerated from private citizens, whether we're talking about a single targeted assassination or a much larger atrocity. Sure, States (and quasistate actors) make mistakes about it — like, say, the assholes on
bothall sides of the disputes in the Levant — but they're not unaccountable bullyionaires (well, not supposed to be). <SARCASM> Like the proposed cabinet for the incoming administration, some of whom clearly have no clue about how government officials are supposed to act.1 Oh, wait, maybe that explains why so many bullyionaires want to be in the new cabinet where they can direct violence, or at least the power of the State, against their personal enemies. </SARCASM> - I did mention unaccountable private citizens as a problem. Their power is especially problematic when it arises from accounting dodges in the first place, whether individuals or entire businesses.
- It's the holiday season so there's lots of dubious intellectual property news. The newly formalized reach of EU designs is highly technical and mostly concerns what we (over here) call "industrial design." But that doesn't — indeed, can't — make "Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй" on t-shirts protectable (for trademark purposes) on behalf of the Ukraine border guards; it's just not distinctive. Katy Perry had only a little bit more success in Australia.
- But that was better luck than the Kahlebros2 have had: They decided not to petition the Supreme Court to overturn their abject loss in the Second Circuit. The IA's attitude is extremely common among techbros (and too common among other activists) — "the law already must be what we want it to be to advance our interests, regardless of what that does to anyone else." Admittedly, the law is often ossified, stuck in assumptions (not to mention precedents, and poorly-worded legislation and constitutional provisions) that are overtly out of date, and frequently ignore problems never imagined. The public statements by the IA, however, reflect an almost theological arrogance, an unwillingness to conceive of personal error, an utter disrespect for those whose interests are not completely aligned with those of the techbros — even when the techbros proclaim that they know what those interests are better than do those who have them. This is especially so when what the techbros demand is theirs as of right is totally unencumbered use of what the law treats as someone else's property (literal copies here, creation of derivative works for the egregiously misnamed "generative AI" that has almost zero chance of passing the Turing Test in the next decade, let alone now). The law can certainly do better than it does with science — but one must also remember that the applications and self-interest of techbros are not a congruent set with "science." Or "invariable right."
- Or, for that matter, what "treason" is in the first place; one thing that it's definitely not is "providing testimony on personal knowledge in support of a complaint properly filed in the right place," or "filing a complaint regarding conduct that appears to violate clearly-established law." But then, that individual has a track-record with his own whistleblowers, so we shouldn't be surprised.
- What to call the advocates of conversion of printed books to electronic books without authority from either the publishers or the authors/successors, while the works are still in copyright, is itself an interesting question of deceptive labelling. Making it an even more interesting conundrum, none of the "groups" actually have unified interests in themselves. For example, the authors of mainstream novels have different interests and perspectives on how this conversion might matter to them than do, say, journalists employed by a periodical who knowingly signed an employment agreement containing a clear work-made-for-hire clause; and even within distinct segments, there is legitimate disagreement among members. And that's just the authors; the assumption that publishers' interests coincide with authors leaves me ROFLMAOing (because, well, I know too many of both). This is a problem, similar in nature to whether one wants to be called a "liberal" in today's political environment. So, because this group largely insists on insulting the interests of everyone else, the intelligence of those actually involved in creating original expression, and me rather personally, I'm going to be snide. Get over it.