But then they’d have to spend money on shoes to send to Russia, instead of not paying their lawyers!

Like the custom endocrine systems of combat sleeves in Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon edit: I think I was thinking of Iain M Banks’ “Culture” series actually, but both are worth a read! Need to be strong or fast? Just give yourself a little squirt of adrenaline! Time for slow heart rate and low energy use? Slow-release a skoche of acetylcholine.

You make a good point about subscriptions. The repo when you stop paying would be pretty grim.

Training complete! Next challenge: fold this prion into a viable protein.

It’s like they all miss the “subject to final accounting and receipt of good funds”, even the reps they (claim to) speak to, as though that single phrase doesn’t show exactly what the issue is. I guess the magical legalese allows them to ignore whatever text is convenient at the time, conveniently.

Accurate. In order for this to stop the punishment needs to be more than the cost of doing business. Thankfully, Valve seem to be hell bent on doing right by their customers, in most cases at least (just to leave room for scandals I haven’t heard about or forgot 😅)

If you think that an arbitration company isn’t going to end up sympathetic to the people signing their cheques after some amount of time in operation, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Even if the loser pays (and that’s not a guarantee, some companies foot the bill regardless to make it seem like the better option to the consumer), it’s still the company contracting the arbitrators and the consumer doesn’t get a look in on that, so future business is absolutely an incentive to put the thumb on the scale. “After all, both parties agreed to be bound and waive their right to trial, so what are consumers going to do?” is the logic. Most will drop it after losing arbitration, and there are savings on court costs there too.

I don’t assume arbitration wraps up in any arbitrary amount of time (🥁). I say it’s quicker than litigation because it is, every single time. Because it is quicker it is also cheaper, every single time. Small claims court is different again, and not at question here, just to head that off at the pass.

You however do assume a lot like my location and the location of the suit I brought though, based on my vernacular, and I’d recommend against that. “Mate’s rates” could put me in the UK, or Australia, or New Zealand, or even some places in South Africa and other former colonies. None of those would be accurate.

If you push everybody into arbitration, you’ve already got the arbitrator in your pocket and your costs will still be less than litigation in 99% of cases - even class action. I don’t think you understand just how long and expensive and unpredictable litigation can actually be, but I’ve brought suit before so I do. It took four and a half years to get an initial court date from first filing the complaint. Not the trial, just a date so the judge could hear the facts of the case and opening statements from attorneys. Four and a half years of paying my attorneys, as a private individual, with a lot less money than you might think. And they were giving me mate’s rates; I’ve worked with companies where the legal work billings were in the tens of thousands per day for a single participating law office. That shit is expensive.

Maybe Valve did this to fuck their customers, but they don’t really have a track record of that, and since in the majority of cases arbitration is without question an anti-consumer move, I’d say that if your aim is to paint Valve to be the villains for this then it’s going to be an uphill battle.

Arbitration is always cheaper and faster than the courts, because the courts are very backed up especially since the pandemic, and there’s a lot of admin cost which doesn’t exist in arbitration. That is why almost every other company is trying to force arbitration. So if the goal was to save money, forcing court would have the opposite effect.

“Free Taco Bell” is the name of the GoFundMe for your legal defense because you got arrested for protesting the war after class

Follow it up with

Thanks, Taco Bell

And lean into Taco Bell being your new nickname. Easy.

If he’s decided to block reporting on it, it’s real.

Yeah, but I’m far more articulate than those things ever were which is what makes it so insulting >:[

NewJeans were put together between 2019 and 2022 by by ADOR, a subsidiary of Hybe Corporation, under the direction of the label’s CEO Min Hee-Jin.

So it’s vapid manufactured pap and nobody has any real reason to care, at all. Sweet as 👌

My Gul isn’t very friendly at all, he keeps trying to genocide pastoral societies, is he broken?

I was gonna say cunt, but you’re right that he lacks the warmth and depth, so yeah - this one!

I didn’t know it could turn your desktop into a toy, I thought it was more like all those other wallpaper apps which just “help” you switch between images. Have you found the live wallpapers to be much of a battery drain on Android?

Rua must never have worked tech support. I’ve been accused of being a robot more times than I can count, years before ChatGPT was even a thing.

Okay, that’s pretty sick. Looks way cooler than MKBHD’s thing, sounds like that only does static images. I probably won’t use it on mobile (battery considerations) but on desktop…

Okay, genuine question: why pay for an app like that at all when you can make any image your wallpaper for free? I mean, I like mine:

All of those mean the same thing, though.

Also, for added pedantry, it’s “pedantry” 😉 (I wish the troll face was a standard emoji as it would fit better, but you get I’m just playin’ I hope 😅)