anon6789

I agree. In a way, I’d prefer the majority of the bad takes I see to be from bots or paid actors, but from listening to family and coworkers long enough, it’s easy to see you don’t need to script or pay people to get terrible opinions. Just give them a platform and they’ll unfortunately provide themselves to no end.

If it was fake, it’d be easier to write them off. It’s much harder to accept that we share the same reality.

I never thought I’d say this, but can we channel a little Andrew Jackson energy in regard to the courts?

We have so much empty space in much of the country, I dont know why we can’t just build a few cities for them. I’m not sure the cost of these detention centers vs a functioning town, but if we gave them real housing, infrastructure, and gave them a place to work and earn income during their asylum or immigration process, it sounds much less cruel and more productive, and would treat them like human beings and get a start on building a life here.

Thanks for sharing these. There has really been a bunch of good to come out of this administration. Much of it isn’t flashy stuff that gets talked about, but there is a lot that really should be important to a lot of people.

I think Biden has exceeded most expectations many of us had for him. There are always going to be things presidents do that we won’t agree with. Obama was also pretty crappy with immigrants, drone strikes, and a number of other things, but it seems we’re able to look back at his terms as a net positive. If Biden didn’t have to clean up after Trump and Covid, I think he could have been a very memorable president.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pissed about Gaza and the border, but Gaza is a result of almost 100 years of bad policy of many parties, and the number of regular people still bitching about false immigration stories is pressuring all representatives to be harsh on that. We can only expect a president to do so much if a large swath of Congress and the people themselves are against something.

How any business or their associates have a say in the final regulation and enforcement of that regulation on themselves seems antithetical, and we see it fail over and over from oil companies, the police, chemical manufacturers, mining and logging industries, and so on.

They don’t leave us to write ourselves traffic tickets or fine ourselves for zoning violations, because that would be an idiotic approach. Suddenly when it comes to business and industry, it magically makes sense then? Some things I’ll never understand…

I’d like to see a world more like that, but it feels like something that would require a society much different than the one we currently have.

Even your simplified mention of freeing IP not being marketed, in the Internet age, does having an item listed as for sale but out of stock or for an unreasonable price counted as being marketed? It’s technically advertised for sale at no real cost, and can be done so in perpetuity. Or they could sell themselves product to show legal sales.

Simple rules and judgement operating under the intentof the law makes sense to rational individuals like us, but with scammy business and individuals, that’s why we end up with a complex legal system. If we hate when legal loopholes are taken advantage of, we can’t outright hate when laws get more complex.

Did some more digging to get us some more helpful info here. I assembled quotes from 3 articles to make you guys a more cohesive story. Take that AI, I’m coming for your jobs! 😆

First quote is from OP’s PBS article. The rest is assembled from this BBC article, and this other article that the BBC referred to for their info.

Deaths from illegally brewed alcohol are common in India, where the poor cannot afford licensed brands from government-run shops. The illicit liquor, which is often spiked with chemicals such as pesticides to increase potency, has also become a hugely profitable industry as bootleggers pay no taxes and sell enormous quantities of their product to the poor at a cheap rate.

The district police had arrested one person on Wednesday, June 19, identified as Kannukutty (49). He is accused of peddling the liquor. The police had also seized 200 litres of liquor from his possession. According to the police, Kannukutty had mixed methanol in the country liquor and had sold it in packets.

Family members of the deceased, however, told TNM that the police are complicit. “Illicit liquor is regularly sold in this area. The police know. If someone complains, they will stop for 10 days but resume again. If a person complains, the police will tip the peddler off on who raised the complaint and immediately, that person is threatened by the peddlers. That’s why people have refrained from complaining. The peddlers definitely pay a sum of money to the police to continue selling illicit liquor,” a family member of a victim said.

Another family member of the victim added that Karunapuram’s Dalit Colony has seen the most number of deaths. “The sale of illicit liquor is so rampant here that even 13 and 15-year-old boys are being sold packets by peddlers. These peddlers are now also selling Marijuana. Today, despite so many deaths, no one apart from the Tahsildar and a few police have come to this Dalit Colony. We want the officials to initiate strict action and put an end to the sale of drugs and illicit liquor,” she added.

A day earlier, Chief Minister MK Stalin expressed his shock over the tragic incident and announced actions against officials who failed to prevent it. In a post on X, MK Stalin said, “I was shocked and saddened to hear the news of the deaths of people who had consumed adulterated liquor in Kallakurichi. Those involved in the crime have been arrested in this matter. Action has also been taken against the officials who failed to prevent it.

Authorities have also suspended a senior police official and ten members of the state’s prohibition enforcement wing - which overseas the smuggling of illicit alcohol in the state - for negligence.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has announced a compensation of 1m rupees ($12,000; £9,425) to families of those who have died and 50,000 rupees each to those who are hospitalised.

It may be noted that earlier, in May 2023 as well, 22 persons lost their lives after consuming illicit liquor in Villupuram and Chengalpattu districts of Tamil Nadu. The Villupuram police had confirmed that the fatalities were due to the presence of methanol in the spurious alcohol consumed.

“The deaths caused by illicit liquor in the past two years under the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] regime have decelerated Tamil Nadu by four decades, taking us back to the 1980s,” said K Annamalai, the state chief of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

He demanded that the minister in charge of overseeing the sale of alcohol should resign immediately.

I largely agree. I don’t know the best solution for copyright. On one hand, I don’t think that necessarily the creators’ kids deserve rights forever. They didn’t make the stuff. But on the other hand, who does get the money after the creators are gone? The publisher in this case should get something for publishing physical materials or for marketing their wares that sell, but again, they didn’t create it so someone should get something.

I do think that if nobody does anything with a work for x amount of time (maybe 10 years) then it should be fair game for anyone that does.

Even things like old games, if I download a Contra NES ROM, how am I hurting Nintendo or Konami?

If I download LotR, how am I ripping off Tolkien? I’m not stealing a hard copy. I could borrow it from a physical library. Why can’t I borrow it from an electronic library? The person that deserves the rights to the literal story is dead. He doesn’t care.

There’s absolutely a good number of duplicates among the list they shared.

The bigger implication is of the 4 publishers in this lawsuit, 3 of them are in The Big Five publishers, who hold rights to the vast majority of books (60-80-ish % of English language books) from this century and probably a good chunk of the last one. If they win, this is the tip of the iceberg.

Internet Archive post about it

Google Doc List of the books from the IA

They’re well mannered and don’t take up much space is the answer in seeing in all the search results.

Just have the Hussars bring buckets with them next time they come…

I do give them credit for running a creative scam this long while staying technically on the right side of the law, but I gave up on going to shows about 8 years ago now.

Between the crazy cost and dealing with rude fans at the shows, I just pass on going now.

Lol exactly, hence the monopoly accusations. We’re on to you Ticketmaster/LiveNation!

I do remember this episode. They go into it a bit at the 5 minute mark, but didn’t get into many specifics.

It looks like Hollywood accounting to me still. If we look at the statements from Ticketmaster’s site for answers, we get:

Who sets the ticket price? Artists, promoters, sports leagues, or teams decide how they want to sell their tickets on Ticketmaster. That includes setting the face value prices, determining how many tickets to sell, and when to put them on sale.

How much money does Ticketmaster make from a ticket? Ticketmaster doesn’t keep anything from the face value cost of a ticket. We take a portion of the fees added to the ticket. As a ticketing vendor selected by the venue, Ticketmaster’s portion covers the costs of the technology, people, and resources needed to provide a safe and secure ticket-buying experience. It also covers the equipment and support we provide venues with, helping them to manage their box office and seamlessly get everyone into the venue on event day.

What are service fees? Service fees are an essential cost of putting on a show. The venue sets the service fee rate card and keeps most of the service fees, sharing a portion with Ticketmaster, sports teams, leagues, promoters, and other parties who have a hand in making live events happen.

Can you tell me how many tickets have been sold for an event? For all inquiries on pricing and sales you must reach out to the event organizer directly.

And if we look at LiveNation:

As the world’s largest live entertainment company, Live Nation is the one-stop solution for all your event needs. From corporate events to private live concerts, to social gatherings, our event specialists provide seamless execution, including event planning, experiential marketing, state-of-the-art equipment, live entertainment and more.

And also:

With over 150 venues across North America, we offer unique event spaces, state-of-the-art production and branding capabilities, as well as an experienced staff ready to exceed your guests’ expectations.

So while plenty of money is leaving Ticketmaster, a very large chunk of that is likely going right back into several of their other pockets.

The LWT piece also goes into how only a minority of tickets actually go to sale to the public, leaving the rest up for resale, which they also have the potential to get a slice of as well, and they have seemingly done nothing to combat resllers or bots.

So LiveNation I can understand having slimmer margins since they seem to be providing actual services and have overhead on their physical ownings and staff, but Ticketmaster itself still seems to mainly by an app and marketing department.

Live Nation said Thursday it doesn’t benefit from monopoly pricing, saying that Ticketmaster service charges “are no higher than elsewhere, and frequently lower.” The company noted its overall net profit margin is at the low end of S&P 500 companies.

How do they not make a killing? What are they spending their money on? I can’t remember how many years ago it’s been since I got a physical ticket besides the ones I had to pay them for to print myself.

I was born during the Reagan era, so a bit too young to know much about it from the time, so it never ceases to amaze me how much he helped facilitate the backwards slide of our society. I think his administration was so effective as it was the combined efforts made by conservatives from what they learned by what happened with Nixon. The conservative “think tanks,” the creation of purposefully biased media platforms, the Powell Memorandum, courting the evangelicals, etc. were all effective both then and to this day. There is a ton we can all still learn about from this era.

My thoughts are just that surely much of this could have been prevented if we had taken better action when we had half of American aristocracy backed into a corner, and instead of doing anything about it, we just collectively said, “well, it looks like you guys learned your lesson, so here’s all your stuff back, just don’t call them slaves anymore and try to be discrete with your racism for a few decades.” Our ancestors defended this country, won, but then allowed 90% of the causes of the war to persist. To think they wouldn’t try to claw back the rest of what they had was naive and the “peace” gained by pardoning these people responsible has led to over a century of misery, especially to the people that had suffered most prior to the war, was not worth the cost of us not harshly correcting our national politics when we had the chance.

Seeing Lee and others argue for peace and moving on is no surprise. He was the perpetrator, and the loser of the fight. Why wouldn’t he want the world to forget about that? Who would expect the losing enemy general to call for harsh punishment for their actions? It’s the same reason why these Nixon, Reagan, and Bush officials are willing to publicly bash Trump when he’s not looking like a sure winner. It takes the attention off of what they got away with, and if they keep us mad at Trump, that less time to focus on their actions.

This is why while all this news ticks me off and makes me unhappy, I still try to keep learning about it and at least staying aware of who is saying what. Just because they people are “agreeing” with us now doesn’t mean they really support what they are saying, and it doesn’t make up for the actions they took against the American people.

Very true, but his time in an official position was limited to a matter of days. I was just trying to think of the names that jumped out at me as still being regularly in the spotlight for no good reason. His platform should have ended as quickly as it began, but media is still giving him a voice over better options, and he’s still a symptom of a greater issue in how people get news.

I see people blame Trump, Bush Jr, Reagan, and Nixon for our current political woes, and while not incorrect, how our country canceled Reconstruction and made peace with those who tore our nation apart to be cruel to those they felt were subhuman and gave them back their property and power is a slap in the face to what we supposedly stand for and is disrespectful to all those that died in the war and were formally enslaved before the war and systematically enslaved after it. We just acted like the whole thing never happened. And people wonder why that sentiment of racism, classism, and entitlement still persists…

We had a chance to do something, and we chose to just forget. Stories like this just show we still choose to forget, or worse yet, some people do remember, because they benefited in the long run.

As a fellow BtB fan, that was my first thought as well. No one should give a damn what Lee said regardless of what side he appears to be taking. He was a terrible person, a terrible general, and only ever seemed to do what he felt would benefit him the most personally.

It’s the same reason I get annoyed seeing media portray Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, John Bolton, and Anthony Scaramucci, etc as a source of valid, balanced, and impartial viewpoints. We all saw what you guys did when you had control, but some of us don’t forget as quickly as others. You’re only concerned for your reputation and legacy and to preserve another chance to do what you did all over again.

Never listen to a traitor, me boys!