Maybe, but third party presidential, when there is no legislators is never going to happen, never going to be elected, and never get any bills passed. Aiming for the white house as the first stop is just silly.

And I thought my cat’s purr was loud. Is quiet by comparison.

What I meant by cents on the dollar is usually, they broke rules, make $100 billion from it (imaginary scenario), and then the settlement from that wrong doing sees them pay out $2 billion to the affected customers that joined the class. It may be due to the fact that I’ve not paid attention to too many class action suits, but it seems like the settlement never comes close to the harm they caused.

I can tell you that I have arbitration on going, and it’s been well over a year that it has been happening. To assume that the arbitration wraps up in a month, when you’ve got lawyers involved is non-sense. I don’t believe arbitrators are in anyone’s pocket either. The arbitrators aren’t in-house council for Valve, they are a company Valve has contracted with, and they’re going to be neutral, and rule based on law, not who’s paying. As a lot of arbitration rules state that if you take the case to arbitration and lose, the one that is ruled against pays for the cost of the arbitration. Based on the “mate’s rates”, I’m guessing you’re UK based. I don’t know that legal system, so can’t say how fee structures work. But a great deal of lawyers that are suing on behalf of you, in the US, take a percentage of the settlement. So the biggest cost is all to the person being sued, as they do pay the lawyers by the hour instead of a cut of the ruling.

I don’t think Valve is changing their rules to screw customers, I think they’re doing it because they’ve found separating each case into a different arbitration claim is too expensive. And it would have been better for them all to be in one group. I believe Valve is the best game distributor, as it turns out. But if people with law degrees think they’ve broken rules, I’m all for punishing rule-breaking. In this particular scenario, it seems like it might slightly improve things for consumers, and greatly benefit small studios.

If you push everybody into a class action, it will be cheaper. Have you ever gotten more than a cent on the dollar from a class action settlement(unless you’re the class representative)? Sure the seem like the settlements are a lot of money, but if you can get the class action settled with very few claimants, no one will be able to sue over that particular issue again, so it puts it behind the company. Instead of being dogged by individuals for however long.

My family also ended up with a clipped ear cat. She came up to us one night, and was friendly, then for the next two weeks she showed up everyday we got home from work. So, now she’s our inside cat, and we all love her, she is so friendly to everyone. Even followed an AC tech around the house trying to get love from him too. One of the best cats I’ve ever had.

Very curious what fur that is. I can’t think of an animal that is orange at the tips but has a black under coat. Looks to big to be fox, but feel like that’s red/white.

Handy guide, but this whole USB situation is a cock-up, since it needs the freakin guide in the first place.

I think there’s different personalities involved here. The other thing that I’m personally curious about, did you play the sim and then think, “I should get this gear” or did you get the gear before ever playing it?

I think what’s mostly the target of ire is people that have the mindset of having to buy their way to the top. Or trying to make up for lack of skill not by continuing to try the sport/event/game out, but getting the best of everything trying to avoid ever looking ‘not good’ at it despite it being obvious to everyone play that they’ve not done this thing before.

And not everyone is like this obv, but a lot of these people don’t want to put in the effort to get better, just want to buy their way to the top. Somewhat related are the poor folks that put in huge amounts of time trying to get better but can’t afford good gear. And then someone shows up with the top notch stuff, plays once and never uses the stuff again. Obviously it’s their money, but is a shit feeling when you’re cash strapped to see good gear rot.

We didn’t domesticate cats, as it turns out. They domesticated themselves, or so I’ve read. Something about the rats eating our grain and the cats coming around to eats the rodents and then getting comfortable being around us humans.

This is amusing, as while watching Clarkson’s Farm, I find myself constantly yelling at the TV that he’s being dumb. But seems like every time he is interacting(in person) with someone he doesn’t know intimately he is extremely kind and deferential. With the exception being people that are antagonizing him in some way, even if they’re not being malicious about it.

Baby has done it’s time?

Apparently, the classification levels in the US are illegal! Snowden will rejoice, he can come home, as the first amendment allows free speech, even when it damages national security.

I did not read the article, but the summary made me actually laugh out loud. Hell the supreme court has already said the government has the right to intern a whole class of US citizens based on national security. The SCOTUS rulings do seem rather crazy at times to me though, so perhaps this is a winning strategy for ByteDance.

This is dumb, diplomats have been talking to each other the whole time. Not like they just started asking the Houthis to stop targeting ships, they’ve been asking the whole time, and will continue to ask for it to stop, even as missiles fly on both sides.

I think there are two YouTube vids that are worthwhile:

Critical Drinker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDHgA5e2du8

Pitch Meeting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzczijDtnFY

I must admit, I saw the videos before watching the movie. Based on the content of the videos, decided I could skip watching the movie. I imagine PipedBot will be along shortly with the other links.

I still miss having a physical keyboard for messages. If HTC had kept making slide out keyboard phones, I woulda kept buying. Though it seems, based on market trends, I might have been one of the very few.

Dungeons & Dragons (2000)

One of the few movies I’ve gotten more than a few minutes into, but stopped watching. Seem to remember my breaking point being when some female char was supposed to be struggling to crawl forward, but instead looked like she was swimming on the floor. Seems to me the actors aren’t bad, but the director must have been.

Spiderman 2 and Mario Bros Wonder.

Mainly Spiderman, but play the other when my daughter is playing her SM2 game.

They towed the boat out of the environment.

I think you’ll find that Kennedy is the one that really ramped up the Vietnam war/conflict. He even knew the intervention would fail, but committed more troops anyway. Many southern democrats did indeed try to stop democracy also, during reconstruction. I realize that both of these things are decades or more old, but this goes back to the overconfidence in our group that the article was just describing.