ToaKraka
Dislikes you
No bio...
User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
See the recent controversy over Chinese billionaires who allegedly are buying literally hundreds of surrogate children in the US.
Some Chinese parents, inspired by Elon Musk’s 14 known children, pay millions in surrogacy fees to hire women in the U.S. to help them build families of jaw-dropping size. Xu calls himself “China’s first father” and is known in China as a vocal critic of feminism. On social media, his company said he has more than 100 children born through surrogacy in the U.S.
Another wealthy Chinese executive, Wang Huiwu, hired U.S. models and others as egg donors to have 10 girls, with the aim of one day marrying them off to powerful men, according to people close to the executive’s education company.
The market has grown so sophisticated, experts say, that at times Chinese parents have had U.S.-born children without stepping foot in the country. A thriving mini-industry of American surrogacy agencies, law firms, clinics, delivery agencies and nanny services—even to pick up the newborns from hospitals—has risen to accommodate the demand, permitting parents to ship their genetic material abroad and get a baby delivered back, at a cost of up to $200,000 per child.
One wealthy businessman in China, who like Wang is also in the education business, wanted more than 200 children at once using surrogates, envisioning a family enterprise, [Nathan] Zhang[, founder and CEO of IVF USA,] said. “I asked him directly, ‘How do you plan to raise all these children?’ He was speechless,” said Zhang, who said he refused him as a client.
Other surrogacy professionals described similarly head-spinning numbers. The owner of one agency in California said he had helped fill an order for a Chinese parent seeking 100 children in the past few years, a request spread over several agencies.
A Los Angeles surrogacy attorney said he had helped his client, a Chinese billionaire, have 20 children through surrogacy in recent years.
Amanda Troxler, a Los Angeles-based surrogacy lawyer, said her firm consulted with a hopeful Chinese parent who said she wanted eight or 10 surrogacies and asked for a discount. “I was like, ‘No, we’re not Costco,’” said Troxler, who didn’t take the client because she rejects those looking for more than two surrogacies at once.
Last month, Xu’s ex-girlfriend, Tang Jing, alleged in a post on Weibo that he had 300 children, living across numerous properties in multiple countries. Xu has previously accused Tang of theft and the two have ongoing lawsuits. Tang didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In a statement on Weibo at the time, [Xu's company] Duoyi Network said the 300 figure was wrong but confirmed a stunning fact: “After many years of effort” through surrogacy in the U.S., Xu has “only a little over 100” children.
Later in November, the [pseudonymous Weibo] user linked to Xu posted a video of more than a dozen toddler or early grade-school-age children playing on an outdoor patio in an unknown location. “What the truth is, everyone can see for themselves,” the user posted.
As the camera panned around the patio, the children—who appeared to be mostly boys—began running toward it. “Daddy!” they yelled. “Daddy!”
The appellant says the sentencing judge made legal errors by: failing to apply Gladue principles in a meaningful way; placing minimal weight on the recommendations of the Sentencing Circle [a special pre-sentence report from members of the defendant's tribe, in addition to the usual pre-sentence reports from the defendant and the prosecutor]; overemphasizing denunciation and deterrence, and underestimating the restraint provisions of the Criminal Code that specifically apply to Indigenous offenders; and failing to place adequate weight on the mental illness he was experiencing when he committed the offences. He seeks a new sentence of time served and “a period of residual probation with conditions that encourage rehabilitation”.
As these reasons explain, I agree the sentencing judge erred by not sufficiently accounting for the appellant’s serious mental health and addictions issues at the time of the offences. I find these factors, viewed in the context of the appellant’s Gladue factors, were underemphasized, which constituted an error in principle. The principle of restraint should have had more resonance in this case.
Anecdote: The unionized civil-engineering office in which I worked had a complement of around half a dozen surveyors. Most of them were industrious, but one was lazy and a troublemaker.
-
The survey coordinator (engineer in charge of the surveyors) had to constantly check on this surveyor to make sure that she was actually doing her assigned work in an industrious manner.
-
One of my engineer coworkers warned me that I should never trust this surveyor because the surveyor once told the coworker that getting in a minor crash with an office car was an easy way to get out of work.
-
After the survey coordinator gave her a bad performance review, she filed an HR complaint accusing him of threatening her with violence during the performance review's closed-door face-to-face meeting. It was totally frivolous, since the boss of the office was in the same meeting and could vouch for the survey coordinator's innocence! But the investigation still dragged on for many months. IIRC, I once overheard the survey coordinator discussing with the office boss how the surveyor's union-assigned lawyer would even commiserate over the phone with the survey coordinator about how the surveyor couldn't even keep her story straight.
-
She had a reputation for treating her two subordinate surveyors poorly. I wasn't too aware of the details, but I overheard the survey coordinator discussing with the office boss how he would look out the office window into the parking lot and see her subordinate surveyors running to the survey van in order to avoid being late.
-
Once I even overheard her loudly joke in the office's coffee area, "I like my coffee like I like my men—hot and black", which I as a nigger easily could have reported her to HR for (and maybe should have).
She was finally forced to resign (not even fired!) when, during the pandemic, she coughed into her hand and intentionally used the same hand to smack one of her subordinate surveyors on the back, after which the subordinate (who IIRC had a wife with a compromised immune system of some kind) filed an HR complaint and threatened to report her assault to the police on top of that.
Scrolling back through my Amazon and Royal Road accounts for highlights:
-
Thresholder ("rational" worldhopping; Royal Road, Amazon): 5 stars, very fun
-
The Stubborn Skill-Grinder in a Time Loop (Chunin Exam Day, but progressing into xianxia power levels rather than regressing into a Sasuke poop incident; Royal Road, Amazon): 5 stars
-
Tenebroum (evil genius loci happens to become a necromancer; Royal Road, Amazon): 4 stars, fun
-
The Systemic Lands (Earthlings are dumped into an extremely harsh "system" world at regular intervals and struggle to form a civilized society; Royal Road review, Amazon): 5 stars for books 1 and 2, 4 stars for books 3–9, 3 stars for book 10 (see details at the linked review)
-
Death After Death (Earthling is dumped into a world with multiple interlinked "levels" of history that must be "solved"): 5 stars, very fun
-
The Years of Apocalypse (magic student is dragged into a time loop and must use it to save the world): 5 stars, very fun
Also, the first half of the acclaimed Worth the Candle (books 1–6 of the original AO3 version, now apparently reorganized into books 1–4) has been made available for purchase on Amazon if you want to support the author.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6d ago
Can you check your default sound device?
It was the motherboard's RealTek audio chip, same as always. I even reinstalled the RealTek driver from the motherboard manufacturer's webpage, but that changed nothing. With my headphones attached to the 8BitDo controller, the default output device now is "Headphones (Xbox Controller)".
Very common problem where it defaults to HDMI or DisplayPort, especially when going to monitors without speakers or where the speakers default to no volume.
Actually, the Windows interface used to show audio outputs to my two monitors, but now those two outputs have disappeared. I don't know whether that happened when I reinstalled Windows 10 or when I added the PCIe-to-USB card.
But none of this matters, since I always use headphones anyway.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6d ago
It's slim pickings sometimes. My normal procedure is to check the following listings in order on Thursday afternoon and try to find one or two interesting or funny cases.
-
New Jersey: Supreme, published appellate, unpublished appellate, published tax, unpublished tax, published trial, unpublished trial
-
Pennsylvania: Commonwealth appellate (includes zoning and workers' compensation stuff), superior appellate (includes most civil and criminal stuff)
For today's posting, I went through all of New Jersey's opinions for the last week and found nothing either interesting or funny, so the opinion that I ended up posting was a good way into Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court. Twice in recent months, both New Jersey and Pennsylvania were totally barren, forcing me to post opinions from Ohio or the feds.
Court opinion:
<del>Adam and Steve</del><ins>Richard and Michael</ins>become romantically involved in year 1991, and exchange rings in year 1992. However, they live in Nevada, which neither permits in-state same-sex marriages nor recognizes out-of-state same-sex marriages. In year 2008, California legalizes same-sex marriage, and the two men get married there. But Nevada does not recognize the marriage until the federal supreme court forces it to do so in year 2015.In year 2020, Michael files for divorce. However, there is a snag. For purposes of determining what property is community property gained during the marriage and subject to division in the divorce, when did the marriage begin—1992 (when the men would have married if Nevada had permitted it), 2008 (when the parties entered into a marriage that was recognized in California but not in Nevada), or 2015 (when Nevada started recognizing their marriage)?
The state supreme court finds that (1) the federal supreme court's decision does require Nevada to retroactively recognize the 2008 California marriage, but (2) Nevada's courts are not authorized to create out of thin air a 1992 common-law marriage for these same-sex romantic partners when Nevada's legislature has explicitly refused to recognize common-law marriages even for opposite-sex romantic partners since 1943.
Court opinion:
A person is pulled over for driving an unregistered car. He immediately starts shouting (among other things) "I'll fuck you up" at the two police officers, repeatedly tries to get out of the car while the officers tell him to stay in the car and physically hold his car door shut, and eventually successfully exits the car, fights with the officers, and has to be restrained. He is acquitted of assault, but is convicted of making terroristic threats.
The defendant argues that the conviction is not supported by the evidence. He points to a case where a person arrested for public drunkenness told police officers he was going to kill them, but his conviction for making terroristic threats was vacated because, in his "obviously inebriated" status and "agitated and angry state of mind", he merely "expressed transitory anger rather than a settled purpose to carry out the threat or to terrorize the other person".
The trial judge rejects the defendant's argument. In this case, defendant actively engaged in a fistfight with the officers, showing that he indeed was willing to carry out his threats to harm them. The trial judge imposes a total sentence of four years (with the possibility of parole after two years) for the two threats. The appeals panel affirms.
ISO 1496-1:2013 (Series 1 Freight Containers—Specification and Testing): 200 dollars (160 Swiss francs)
Master Grade Ex-S Gundam/S Gundam plastic model kit: 160 dollars
Three weeks of food at home: 170 dollars
60 minutes with a jade-like beauty: 160 dollars (240 Australian dollars)
The market (ﷺ) has determined that these vastly different items have roughly equivalent values. Isn't money wonderful?
More options
Context Copy link