PrinceWith999Enemies @ PrinceWith999Enemies @lemmy.world

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606

Joined

2 yr. ago

First, the court decided the damages after Trump repeatedly disparaged Ms Carroll, even after having been found guilty of doing so previously. If there is a consensus among legal scholars that the amount will be reduced, I have not seen it. This wasn’t some jury awarding an arbitrary high amount to a sympathetic plaintiff.

Second, the other offense that Trump has also been found guilty of is inflating the valuation of his real estate holdings, which again is a behavior he has engaged in repeatedly and has even boasted about. When questioned about his net worth, he stated in court that he declares his worth based on his assessment of his brand as Trump, rather than actual real estate values. He’s on the hook for half a billion dollars for that one.

If the Chubb decision to back this was related to the person’s personal friendship or financial relationship to Trump, then he may be liable to a suit as well, but realistically he’s not putting up his own money. This is a personal friend and confidant of Trump backing Trump’s play. If he accepted the Trump valuation of a property to secure the bond amount, then he’s definitely made himself vulnerable. If it’s based on a realistic valuation, then Chubb is probably off the hook for that.

Trump’s valuations are just straight up bananas, and he has been found guilty of doing exactly that. I’m looking forward to finding out more about this deal.

He absolutely did not invent CA. His book was published well after it had become an established modeling technique. Conway’s game of life was published in 1970. Complexity theory modeling had moved well past CA by the time Wolfram’s book came out, to the point that most of us didn’t know why he bothered writing it, much less thought it would revolutionize science.

Several US states have requirements on a minimum bumper height and restrict things like how far tires can extend from the wheel well.

There is scientific consensus - to the point of being unanimous as far as I know - that these raised vehicles pose a significantly increased danger to pedestrians and to other vehicles. There is entirely a legal precedent to pass laws that say things like bumpers can be no more than six inches from the ground and that driver visibility must be cleared to within a foot of the front bumper.

In the US, these issues are largely handled at the state level, although there are some federal regulations in place. When I was a teenager in Jersey, they required annual inspections that included testing for operational lights, braking efficiency, emissions, and so on. In New Mexico, there were no inspections at all, and you simply had to pay for registration.

As these quasi-monster trucks become more prevalent, there’s an increasing need for legislation. Manufacturers are driven solely by consumer demand unless regulated, and politicians are more worried about upsetting Dodge Ram drivers than they are about public health and safety. I literally could not imagine a nationwide 55MPH law passing today (there were complications with doing it when they did do it, but it was successfully executed when it happened).

What we need is this generation’s Ralph Nader to go after the industry to get the public to support and demand political action.

By whom?

Do you think the Palestinians are going to fire on aid vessels? Do you think Israelis will fire on American military vessels?

Yes. These should be made illegal, or restricted from on-road use. As trucks increase in size and height, there are studies that they become more and more dangerous. They should be banned for safety reasons.

Return it as it was shipped with a hardware bug.

“No stupid questions” is intended to be a topic, not a challenge.

He’s not too popular. He’s running unopposed. There’s a difference. No other remotely serious candidate has made a campaign against him, no one has offered a contrasting vision.

He’s either neck and neck or losing among independent voters, depending on the poll you look at.

I’ll be honest with you. I’m going to vote for Biden. I also think he’s going to lose this election because he’s a horrible candidate. If that happens, I’m going to put in for an international transfer within my company and then look for permanent visa status in a European golden visa program. It’s now just a matter of figuring out the finances. I live in one of the most wealthy and most liberal areas in the US, so I think we have a little more lead time than some others, but when the federal government falls - and they’ve literally written down and distributed their plans for doing exactly that - it’s not an island that’s going to last for long.

I don’t know if it’s too late to replace Biden yet. It might be. But I as someone who deals with probability theory and human behavior for a living am feeling 2016, not 2020.

The US - or enough of it to matter - is simply done with democracy. It’ll be studied for several centuries, if anything is.

The DSA in my memory always endorses the Democratic candidates in the general, and tend to endorse the most progressive candidates in the primary. Because Biden is running unopposed, the primary election doesn’t matter except if it sends a signal.

Calamari is indeed squid, but that just raises questions about what we would find in Finnish underwear.

I have an Army background (from a long fucking time ago). I was always amused by “Front Towards Enemy,” and we were trained to click three times.

I still think the joke works though.

No, man. My comments are like jazz.

I think you mean Prisoner 24601.

The Mandarin from Iron Man 3 was obviously Jack Dorsey. He would win by selling his criminal gang for more than it was worth to someone stupid enough not only to buy it but to then crater its value by 90% in the first year, and use that money to found a competitor.

Ah, yes. Nadja’s reincarnated boyfriend Jesk. Now in a form that cannot be decapitated.

1. Chainmail provides little to no protection against impact damage. As we saw in Fellowship, evil beings who attack heroes in bed use slashing attacks with broadswords or similar weapons. While it might prevent cuts, it’s basically like being beaten with an iron rod that will break bones and rupture organs. It is unsuitable as armor. That’s leaving aside weapons like maces, hammers, and clubs, or a Seal Team Six scenario.
2. It’s aluminum. Or aluminium, if you’re that kind of person. This is basically a blanket designed by Jony Ive. It doesn’t warm. It doesn’t protect. But it’s thin and lightweight. Which is the opposite of what you want in a weighted blanket.
3. You can buy weighted blankets that come in a variety of weights and warmth characteristics for a fraction of the time investment used to make this. The money you save could be used to buy a home security system that includes a minefield or electric fence. If you’re impressed by what a claymore sword can do to an orc, wait until you see what a claymore mine can do.

Rushed to production multiple years behind the announced release date?

Good call.

It’s a bit more spread out than that. Half or more of the country is the magazine, although some weapons that are ready but not actively deployed might be considered a bandoleer or something, being stored in places like New Jersey.

Also, the trigger is mobile and can go pretty much wherever it wants.

I’m actually pretty well read on the subject, both from the 18th to 19th century literature and from modern Marxist and other socialist economists. I’m also a biologist who has a bit of a specialization in pro-social models of behavior from a mathematical perspective and who derives data from real world observations and experiments.

The idea that capital controls the labor market is fairly central to the Marxist approach to capitalism. Both Marx and Adam Smith attributed dynamics to conscious actions that today we, as sophisticated systems theorists, would come up with better models to explain. They had an attitude towards human action that in some ways were the forerunner to modern sciences of collective behavior, but they’re still ridiculously primitive compared to modern theory.

Again, I am not the only academic to make this point. You find it is ubiquitous in modern Marxist literature. There are still some traditionalists, of course. I’m sure you know a particular white bearded professor who has what I honestly believe is the best introduction/course on Capital ever created. I honestly really like his work.

But what I don’t like is when communists or socialists refer to themselves as “Marxists.” I particularly don’t like it when they shoot down an idea using something that was written by someone in the 19th century, as if we haven’t had multiple revolutions in understanding economics and the science of complex systems since then.

What I’m saying is that you can read Marxist forums on line, and you can read Marxist academics publishing papers in Marxist journals, who argue that so-and-so is wrong because Marx(or whomever) said X. Nobody, and I mean nobody, quotes Darwin to refute a point in biology. Darwin was a genius, but he was a product of his time and got some very basic and very important stuff completely wrong. Ask a biologist about it and they’ll tell you it’s completely wrong and we figured it out a hundred years ago. They won’t canonize Darwin, even if they really really want a Darwin bobblehead for their desk.

Again, and I cannot make this more plain and I am not the only academic to say this: it’s called evolutionary biology, not Darwinism. I have friends and colleagues at places like the econ department at the New School, and they refer to what they do as “economics.” That’s where I’d prefer things to go.

Yup! I really love the whole story there. It was sort of like the space race but with tall masted ships and pirates and such.

I mean, you also had the slave trade, but if you blithely ignore the discomforting parts of history, reading about it can be fun.