Rov_Scam
1d ago
At the time of the revolution, the colonies had their own governments and their own courts, which courts subscribed to the common law. Since there was no existing tradition of comprehensive legal codes, upending the system entirely would have meant creating a new civil law system from scratch, which there was no reason to do, since the common law had worked fine for 99% of cases, and they always had the opportunity to enact legislation for the 1% of cases where the common law was inadequate. Even to this day, we still rely on common law for the vast majority of the things that courts actually deal with on a day to day basis, and it continues to evolve in the individual jurisdictions, such that law students are vexed by having to learn majority and minority rules.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
This is one of the areas where the current state of the market is objectively worse than in the pre-internet era. I remember when I was in college (the internet existed but hadn't subsumed everything) it seemed like every town had a video store that opened when the VCR came out in the 1980s, ordered every title that was available, and never threw anything out. The result was that you had independent shops whose archives included pretty much everything that was ever released on video. Sure, it might not be on DVD, and the tape might be in bad shape from having been watched 4 million times, but at least it was available. I remember they had a 5 catalog rentals for $5 deal, and the rentals were for a week, so it was kind of a weekly ritual to rent 5 movies every week whether I planned on watching them or not. They also had a byzantine setup that encouraged browsing because you never knew where you'd find anything, though they had a catalog you could consult. The new releases were obviously segregated, and they had the normal categories (comedy, drama, etc.), but the AFI 100 movies had their own section, as did "Black and White Classics", and there was something called the Video Vault that could have anything. I believe there was even a small LBGT section, definitely odd for a small town store in the mid 2000s.
They closed in 2007, well before streaming. I think it was a combination of OG Netflix and Redbox. I worked at a video store in high school, and 90% of our sales were newer releases, though the one I worked at didn't have much of an archive. It was part of a grocery store, and it became easier for the grocery stores to just put a Redbox machine in the lobby that would cover the dozen or so titles that actually made money. Netflix didn't make sense for new releases at the time, since you had to wait and could be on a list, but for movie buffs who would just put a hundred movies in the queue and watch whatever Netflix sent them, it was perfectly fine and didn't require as much effort. My roommate and I got the Blockbuster equivalent circa 2008 and I remember he spent an afternoon just inputting the entire 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list in, and we'd watch whatever came in. That was probably the peak of movie availability since they really did have close to everything you could think of, unless it was really obscure.
As soon as streaming became the main business it was over, because bandwidth considerations came into play, similar to the space considerations of Redbox, and it was thus impossible to keep an inventory of that size, especially when the licensing agreements were more complicated and probably required them to pay for rights even for stuff that wasn't in high demand.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
There's also Kanopy, which has the added advantage of being free to a point.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
If you seriously think that third world immigration is doing the kind of damage you're suggesting then I have some swampland in New Jersey that's for sale. Maybe you should consider moving to Pittsburgh? Only 4% of the metro population is foreign-born, compared to 14% nationwide and over 30% in places like New York City. We're also about 85% white, almost all non-Hispanic. I love my hometown, and the cost of living is low, but the population has been flat for a while, and before that it was actively declining. If you had been here 20 years ago I could have showed you working-class neighborhoods with high crime rates filled with drugged-out white trash. One neighborhood that looked like it was on the brink of collapse only turned around after the area's modest Hispanic population decided to settle there and revitalize the business district. The other one got significantly better once Bhutanese refugees moved to the area, though that area is still bad, and still 70% white.
Of course, none of these areas are that bad, and everywhere is full of people with names that end in vowels. If you want to see some real shittiness we need to go just down the road to West Virginia. And no, I'm not going to take you to hillbilly country, which would be too easy. I'll instead show you actual industrialized areas full of white Anglos that are shittier than anything you'll find in the Pittsburgh region. Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel ran 9 mills in the Ohio Valley—Follansbee, WV; Mingo Junction, OH; Steubenville, OH; Martin's Ferry, OH; Wheeling, WV; Beech Bottom, WV; LaBelle, WV; Yorkville, OH; and Benwood, WV. There was also a huge mill at Weirton, and several smaller facilities. Most of that is gone now, but the area is significantly shittier than Pittsburgh.
But that's the wealthier part of West Virginia. If we keep going south, I can show you Chemical Valley, which is even whiter and more Anglo than the Panhandle, and the chemical plants are still in production, though Kaiser Aluminum at Ravenswood closed a long time ago, and Ormet closed in 2013. Jamie Oliver filmed a show in Huntington after it was dubbed the fattest city in the US, and it also probably has more fentanyl addicts than any city in the US. Just remember that if you buy a house there not to leave anything in the yard, like grills or lawn furniture or even children's toys, because they'll steal anything that isn't under lock and key. I can assure you that this area is free from the negative influence of dirty third-world immigrants, though.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
I think that the "and" in the 14th Amendment, by imposing two conditions, makes it clear that one can be subject to US jurisdiction but outside of the United States. If the clause only referenced jurisdiction it would be a different matter. There are already people who aren't in the US by any definition of the term, but are nonetheless recognized as being subject to US jurisdiction. For instance, a man in Guatemala who enters into a business contract with a man in Texas might be subject to US jurisdiction even if he's never been to the US in his life.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
There's evidently an issue where the home club expects a lot of away fans to show up for this particular game, and they don't want them dominating the home side of the stadium. I can understand why they don't want their stadium full of away fans, but it seems to me that warranting that you are a supporter of the team is one thing, but requiring proof before you enter is another. This isn't reasonable. I'm a long time fan of the Steelers, at least to the extent that I don't care about other teams, but I don't have any photos of me in Steelers gear. I own a ballcap I rarely wear, and a t-shirt that I do where but it's an obvious bootleg with the Grateful Dead skull and roses logo modified into a Steelers logo. I don't attend Steelers games or "events", unless you count watching games in a bar, and at that, it's not like people take pictures of my while I'm there. The only such photos I can think of are ones taken after the Penguins won the Stanley Cup, and that was in 2017. Hell, I went to Charlotte to watch Pitt in the ACC championship a few years ago (twice, actually), and I don't have any pictures from either trip. I don't know why they would expect their fans to have these pictures. It essentially means that buying the ticket isn't enough, and that there's an expectation that you buy their merchandise as well.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
Here's the relevant terms and conditions:
Home Match Tickets are for the use of supporters of the Club only. By applying for the Home Match Ticket and/ or using the same you hereby warrant and represent that you are a supporter of the Club and/or that you are not a supporter of the Visiting Club.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
It's pretty rare for Brits to call football soccer. Rarer still for them to be concerned about the availability of team gear in the states.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
There were. The one that got me was the French colonies. I'm guessing that they wouldn't count India, and that most educated people wouldn't guess India, but only because most people don't know about the colony at Pondicherry.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
Consider telling them that you're an American tourist and therefore cannot provide the requested photograph, but if the team is willing to send your family complimentary apparel and other merchandise you will gladly wear it and root for them. I have Photoshop and like to think that I'm fairly good at it, though who knows if it will be enough to fool anyone looking for it. DM me if interested. That being said, I think being straight with them would be better, up to the point that it might be worth making an international phone call to get it sorted out.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
This article feels like the Chinese equivalent of trying to evaluate the dating marketplace based on "First Dates from Hell" segments on Morning Zoo radio shows.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
I know who Mr. Beast is, in that I recognize the name, but I've never seen any of his content. And content should probably be in scare quotes, since I'm pretty sure that it's all unwatchable filler that goes nowhere.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Because it's really hard to predict how the software is going to be used, and it's not something that can be reasoned out. If that were the case, software companies with full UI teams wouldn't still be responding to user suggestions 50 years into the industry's history. Watch some of Tantacrul's videos on music notation software. He's a software developer by trade and a composer by hobby, so he has tried pretty much every major program on the market, and his video on MuseScore a few years ago resulted in him becoming the head of the development team. Music notation software is particularly ripe for this kind of criticism because it's all notoriously difficult to use and people such as myself who occasionally dabble in music have tried pretty much all of the available programs in a desperate attempt to find something that isn't going to piss us off. Highlights from the comments:
Sibelius
I've been using Sibelius Version 1.4 for the past twenty years—really good, though I recently upgraded to pencil and paper!
Finale
I love how like 15% of this video is just figuring out how to change the font from Times New Roman.
Dorico
They can’t complain about the program if they can’t install it.
Muse Score
It looks like an insurance actuary's app. It looks like it's designed to be used by hundreds of gray-cubicle-bound 9-5 composers.
Watch the videos. They're long, but highly entertaining. And keep in mind that he's only scratching the surface with respect to the problems he describes, and they're all either deliberate design choices or the result of being bound by the limitations of the existing codebase. I don't think you can just get an LLM to figure this stuff out.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Those kind of things were always actionable under common law tort theories, and most of the discourse around them doesn't even go that far. The problem is that regardless of legality, they're scummy things to do, and they've only seen a lot of media attention in an era where it's easier to do them. It's not like you could do this stuff in the 50s without consequence, it's just that actually being able to do it wasn't really an option.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
They're there because RIDC built an industrial park there and is specifically courting them. It's as simply as that. As for how it's shaped the neighborhood, I'd guess that it's contributed to the push for more of these luxury apartments that keep popping up, but that's about it. The CMU lab has been there since 1994 but the push for more tech along the river didn't start until well after Lawrenceville became trendy. Incidentally, I was in Lawrenceville for dinner last night and it didn't seem like tech culture was having much of an influence on the overall vibe compared with a few years ago, though that may change with time and be the impetus that pushed it from the "gentrifying" category into the "upper middle class" category. Traffic was bad in Lawrenceville long before it became touristy. The issue is that it's an unbroken commercial stretch that's two miles long with 16 traffic lights, narrow roads, street parking, no turning lanes, and a lot of pedestrians. The only place I can think of that's comparable is the South Side, and that isn't known for great traffic flow, either.
I think a better strategy is to just limit your consumption to trusted channels. I'm reluctant to watch anything that isn't by someone I've seen before. I may not be able to tell when it's 100% AI content, but a low effort video is a low effort video. It's pretty easy to tell when someone doesn't know what they're talking about and are simply summarizing a Wikipedia article, or LLM output for that matter.
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