Rov_Scam
3d ago
Also add in the fact that you don't know where the game is going to be until shortly before, and the semifinal games were on weeknights for some reason. I went to Charlotte both times Pitt was in the ACC Championship, and unless you have some flexibility with work, it's hard to make plans at the last minute, and God help you if you have kids. I was able to drive down Friday afternoon both times, but some people left after work Friday, and some drove down Saturday, which is doable when the game starts at 8. I wouldn't even attempt a Monday game, which requires taking two days off work, or a game that wasn't within reasonable driving distance. The National Championship is different because enough rich people will buy tickets well in advance because they don't care who's playing. In the unlikely event Pitt has a title shot in the future, I'll go to the ACC Championship but that's it.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I have no idea either but it probably doesn't matter since I doubt Anthropic will litigate it. Then again, it suspiciously comes the day after the SpaceX IPO, and with Anthropic gunning for an IPO of their own, it seriously hurts their business prospects if the US government is throttling what products they can release. The industry has already spent a ton of money on a technology that hasn't proven any ability to make money as it is, and it doesn't bode well for the industry if they spend ungodly sums only for their products to be deemed a security risk and effectively unmarketable. On the third hand, maybe this is just payback for the whole DoD thing.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
the business continuity risks of Anthropic's demonstrated willingness to silently cripple models and USG's demonstrated willingness to now arbitrarily cut off access are simply going to be too much.
In the long term, maybe, but in the short term, I don't know that this is bad for Anthropic. Mythos first entered the conversation with the press release about all the vulnerabilities it found and how they're too scared to release the model to the public. This prompted more criticism than these companies normally receive, with several commentators pointing out how the claims were exaggerated and that they were just repeats of similar claims about products that were released and didn't end up being dangerous at all. So now they have the US government saying that this product is too dangerous for the public. Never mind that this is the same government that unsuccessfully tried to tag Anthropic as security risk because they didn't like purported limitations on the use of their software, but never mind that. Also, these names are a little too on the nose. Mythos suggests a product that's meant to inspire but doesn't actually exist. Fable suggests something mean to impart a moral lesson but is likewise nonexistent. The only similarly named product I can think of is the Mitsubishi Mirage, which feels like a similar thought exercise in how much you can cut from a vehicle and still be permitted to import it into the US.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
You should know that when it comes to these things I'm a terminal pragmatist, and I actually started reading that book, though I haven't made it past the introduction yet. For that reason, I won't comment about any particular scheme, as I don't want to go off half-cocked. By that measure, from what I've read so far and can glean of the author's philosophy, I'll tell you right now that any scheme that involves charging residents market rates to park in front of their houses may make sense from an economic perspective, but politically isn't any better than just eliminating the minimums. In fact, it's probably worse. I personally live in a house with an integral garage in a suburb where overnight street parking is generally prohibited so I have no horse in this race.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
No builder outside of a dense urban area would go without one. Builders within a dense urban area might, which will mightily piss off residents of that neighborhood who already rely on street parking, generally because their houses were built prior to parking requirements.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
My suspicion is that the address rules are to prevent people from renting them out. In recent years, the armchair urbanists have gotten goopy about ADUs, acting like they're some panacea to the housing problem. They're usually prohibited in most subdivisions, but they've tried to make a case for them by claiming that it's so your mother-in-law doesn't have to go into assisted living or whatever. Municipalities don't want to approve them so they can be used as a back door to allowing multi-family in neighborhoods zoned for single family. Allowing them with the provision that they have to share an address means that the only people who live in them will be friends or family of the occupants of the main unit, which is more in line with the intention of the zoning code. I suspect that the concern about the restaurants is more aesthetic than traffic-related. This is a residential district, and there's a difference between living in close proximity to a storefront that happens to have a sub shop or pizza place and a McDonald's on its own lot with a wraparound driveway and cars idling in line.
I don't know if you read my recent award-winning writeup on East Liberty, but in it I discuss Jane Jacobs and how more serious academics (particularly sociologist Herbert Gans) tended to criticize her urban theory as being based more on aesthetics than anything else. I think the same applies to the armchair urbanists of today, who have waged war against the parking minimum. I have no strong opinions on any particular policy, but I can tell you right now that no builder outside of a dense urban area is going to build an apartment complex without adequate parking, regardless of what the law says, and even in urban areas there's little demand for car-free living. While it may be true that eliminating parking would reduce the per-unit cost of an apartment, it would most likely just shift that cost from the developer/occupant onto the public at large, as the residents would park on the street. They also say nothing about the possibility that very few developers would be willing to forgo parking completely and would still surround their complexes with huge lots and garages that the armchair urbanists like to bitch about, much in the way they also include pools and rec rooms as amenities to residents.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I understand what you're saying, but I doubt the people paying top dollar for these sets are doing so because they intend to build them.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Star Wars ones that nobody bothered to remove the shrinkwrap from. I'll never understand the point of collecting something that you don't intend to use for its actual purpose. Jay Leno's car collection is worth a lot more than some old guy's toys, and he actually drives the cars. I collect records, and I'm glad that community is a little more level-headed. Sealed copies aren't necessarily worth more than ones that have been opened and played, because the records can be damaged anyway and there's no way of visually inspecting them or verifying that that there aren't any defects that will affect playback. Years ago, a record store in Pittsburgh ended up with a rare Robert Johnson 78 that was part of an auction lot of miscellaneous records. Did they put it under lucite? Sell it at auction for top dollar? No, the owner kept it in his personal collection and played it in the store every Saturday at 1 pm to create a reason for people to come in.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
To be clear, I don't credit it that heavily, just more than somebody yammering away on YouTube. I've since learned more about this case and it's clear that the facts alleged in the complaint are selective at the very least, but that's to be expected. It's also clear that both Bam and the new franchisees aren't entirely free from blame in terms of how they handled themselves, but I'm still skeptical as to whether they actually had as much of the inventory as Bryan claims they did.
It would be really weird if Chrystal had control of the consignment for nearly a year and didn't sell anything from it.
Apparently about half the collection was sold at the time of the takeover. This is why even if the collection was correctly valued at $200k, making a demand for that much is ridiculous. Bryan was entitled to 65% of the sale price, and with $100k of inventory presumably remaining, his damages would be in the neighborhood of $65k, which is nothing to sneeze at but well under half of what he's alleging was stolen. Anyway, Chrystal was supposed to pay Bryan monthly and provide some kind of sales statement. Apparently there's some dispute over the amount he was actually paid, and I don't know if these statements were itemized or if they just listed the dollar amount. One of the few advantages of litigation is that it forces you to put the evidence on the record or shut up about it.
So there are two possibilities here. The first is that Chrystal either stole the product or sold it and underreported the sales to Bryan. She did suddenly discover some of it at her house a year after the dispute started. I agree that if this is the case, then a lawsuit isn't likely to accomplish anything. I still think it would have been worth going after BAM, though, because from what I've since learned, even if they didn't do anything, they certainly didn't act in a way that would suggest they did nothing wrong. Chrystal claims that the product was in the store when corporate evicted her. Video evidence shows what appears to be some of it on the shelves the night she gets kicked out, and she's telling them about the consigned merchandise and the new operators don't seem to care. When Bryan went to the store to ask about it, he was given the bum's rush, and Josh and Brandon took the position that since they weren't a party to the consignment agreement, we don't owe you anything and get off our property. I saw enough of the video that it's clear that these guys are assholes in general.
And from what I've seen there's probably enough to keep BAM in the case. What one would normally expect after a franchise foreclosure would be for corporate to run the store while a new buyer is found, and then transfer the store to the new franchisee at a later date. From November 2024 to March 2025, the BAM location in question was in a sort of limbo where the successor franshisees were operating the store but didn't actually have the franchise yet. If any of the items were sold during this period, then BAM is responsible. But it gets better. The new franchisees were running the store beginning the night of the foreclosure, and continued to run it while it was legally owned by corporate. The goods were the subject of a dispute throughout the entire period in question. The nature of the arrangement creates a legitimate question as to whether the franchisees were acting as an agent of BAM corporate, which if proved, would expose corporate to liability even after the new franchise agreement went into place. There are enough factual questions involved here that BAM isn't going to get out on an MSJ, which means settlement is a real possibility. And if they stick by their story blaming Chrystal they'd have to make a case against her for conversion, which is a tall order.
But that's really neither here nor there, because my ultimate point is that this guy had better options than running his harassment campaign, and this isn't some justified act of vigilante justice to protect the little guy when the legal system is inadequate and expensive. The consignment agreement required that the collection be insured. The guy would be nuts for not obtaining his own policy, but it looks like someone was paying for insurance on these items, and it looks like Chrystal was cooperating with him, so the proper thing to do would be to file a claim, the same as you would if someone had broken into the store or if the collection had been destroyed by fire. This is why you get insurance. The claims handler is certainly going to question the circumstances of the loss, and if they think that BAM or the successor franchisees are liable, then they would be able to file a subrogation claim against them, but Bryan would get paid, Chrystal would get paid (though possibly sued if BAM claimed they were entitled to the commission), and neither would care if the insurance company was reimbursed. The claim could, of course, be denied, but if that happens you're back where you started in terms of having to litigate, except it's a lot easier this time. An insurance bad faith claim is a lot easier than the conversion claim they were dealing with, as there's only one party, the facts are a lot simpler, and you know the money's there.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Having looked at the case further since posting and seen what legal commentators are saying, they all seem to believe that the UCC filing requirement wouldn't apply in this case. The purpose of the filing requirement is to protect creditors from finding out after a default that the property in which they have a security interest isn't actually owned by the debtor. Hence the requirement that the debtor business not be known to its creditors as typically selling consigned merchandise. It would be difficult to argue that a store dealing primarily in used and resale items wouldn't fall into this category, especially when the creditor in question executed a franchise agreement that explicitly contemplates consignments. Furthermore, courts have proposed a cutoff of 20% of inventory value, and the value of the consigned product in this case was allegedly 50% of total inventory value. There's also the possible consumer goods exception, though this is a weaker argument because the Legos in question were in sealed boxes that had arguably been held for resale and not purchased with the intention of using them for normal consumer purposes.
Honestly it's an outdated rule that should be nixed entirely, since no banks are extending credit based on a visual inspection of the store's inventory. At the very least, they're looking at the average running value of inventory on the books, which would exclude anything held on consignment. But I don't think BAM has a credible argument that they had no idea that the store might accept goods on consignment, which would defeat any argument over a UCC filing. I also don't have much sympathy for Mansell for not making such a filing. I understand the argument that Joe Consumer isn't going to be sophisticated enough to make a UCC filing, but Joe Consumer doesn't generally consign $200,000 worth of goods. I know lawyers have a reputation for saying "should have talked to an attorney" in situations when no normal person would, but I don't think I'm out of line to suggest that when you're entering a complicated transaction that involves entrusting property worth as much as a house to a stranger, it might be worth spending a couple hundred bucks to make sure you don't get taken advantage of.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
That language is more convention than anything else. The FRCP, along with a lot of state rules, only specify that:
Before testifying, a witness must give an oath or affirmation to testify truthfully. It must be in a form designed to impress that duty on the witness’s conscience.
A witness is certainly under no obligation to volunteer information that isn't asked of him. Witness prep 101 is that the witness should answer the question asked and only the question asked, and to limit answers to yes, no, I don't know, and I can't remember wherever possible. In other words, if the attorney asks if the witness knows the time, the preferred answer is "yes", not "4:00". There are obviously exceptions for responses that require additional clarification, though in my experience witnesses generally volunteer too much information as it is, and I've been in too many depositions that took longer than they should have because the witness couldn't answer a question without going off an an irrelevant tangent.
Ah, I was about to say parts driver but you beat me to the punch. 12–8 weekdays. The perfect job for getting drunk every night while in college. That job paid $8/hour 20 years ago, which comes out to $13.21 in today's money, though the guys who had been doing it forever made comparable money to the other shitty jobs at the time that didn't require college education, and they didn't require working in an industrial facility. The best days were the ones where we'd have to drop off a trade-in at the auction, which required two of us driving an hour away and taking the least efficient route possible, which may or may not have included stopping at the end of a dead-end street for a nap. The one truck had satellite radio in it, too, which was luxury at the time.
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