Month: April 2020

Watching What Might Be the Best Police Procedural Movie Ever

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The 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, directed by Joseph Sargent, screenplay by Peter Stone, and starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Héctor Elizondo, Martin Balsam, and Jerry Stiller.

In addition to being an excellent cop movie, it’s also an excellent transit movie, and it has the most famous sneeze in cinema.

It is also a glorious snap-shot of the culture and weirdness of New York City in the 1970s.

It may be the most New York City movie ever.

After I saw the movie, I read the book, and was not impressed, but this movie was genius.

The 2 remakes that followed, not so much.

Today in Bullsh%$ IP Lawsuits

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AM General just had a lawsuit it filed against Activision thrown out.

The lawsuit claimed that the Call of Duty game violated AM General’s trademark on its Humvee truck:
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A federal judge ruled this week that Activision has a first amendment right to include Humvees in its Call of Duty titles, despite vehicle manufacturer AM General’s claims of trademark infringement and false advertising for the in-game use of the military vehicles.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit first filed by AMG in 2017, which suggested that Call of Duty players were being “deceived into believing that AM General licenses the games or is somehow connected with or involved in the creation of the games.” That’s not a completely ridiculous idea, since Activision and other major game manufacturers generally arranged licenses for their in-game guns until 2013.

In his ruling this week, though, District Judge George B. Daniels dismissed AM General’s claim. That decision hinged in part on a 1989 precedent that established that artistic works could make reference to outside trademarks as long as the usage was relevant to the work and did not “explicitly mislead as to the source of the content or work.”

We really need to reign in excessive IP protections.

They do not serve the needs of society.

The Denials of White House Interference Ring False

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The Trump administration has removed captain Brett Crozier as commanding officer of the Theodore Roosevelt after a memo of the dire straits of the crew as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak on board leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle.

They are claiming that there was no White House involvement, which is 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag:

Navy leaders have relieved the captain of a U.S. aircraft carrier after a memo to military officials in which he pleaded for help with a coronavirus outbreak at sea was leaked to a newspaper.

Capt. Brett Crozier, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, now at port in Guam, was relieved Thursday after superiors said they lost confidence in his ability to lead. The decision to remove him drew outrage from lawmakers and some relatives of crew members who backed the commander’s call for attention to the crisis.

Capt. Crozier had written a four-page memorandum recently demanding that superiors allow him to take the carrier to the port in Guam to offload sailors stricken with Covid-19. At least 114 of the vessel’s crew have tested positive for the new coronavirus.

“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die,” Capt. Crozier wrote in his March 30 memo, which was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. “If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our sailors.”


………

The decision to remove the Roosevelt commander came as a surprise to some Navy leaders, who said their focus had been getting resources to the ship, defense officials said.

………

Mr. Trump briefly addressed Capt. Crozier’s dismissal during a White House briefing on the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday, denying the move was punishment for calling attention to the plight of the crew.

“I don’t agree with that at all,” Mr. Trump said. “Not even a little bit.”

Bullsh%$.

Of course this was a political move, and it came straight from the White House.

Now We Know Who the House Oversight Committee Needs to Call as Witnesses

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It looks like Donald Trump is using his position as President to coerce forbearance out of Deutsche Bank and Palm Beach County for the Trump Organization.

Time for Congress to call senior leadership of both the bank and the county to ensure that Trump is not abusing his position for personal benefit: (Spoiler, he IS abusing his position for personal benefit)

All over the country, businesses large and small are seeking breathing room from their lenders, landlords and business partners as they face the financial fallout from the coronavirus crisis.

President Trump’s family company is among those looking for help.

………

Representatives of Mr. Trump’s company have recently spoken with Deutsche Bank, the president’s largest creditor, about the possibility of postponing payments on at least some of its loans from the bank.

And in Florida, the Trump Organization sought guidance last week from Palm Beach County about whether it expected the company to continue making monthly payments on county land that it leases for a 27-hole golf club.

………

The Trump Organization’s requests put lenders and landlords in the awkward position of having to accede or risk alienating Mr. Trump.

………

Other companies may be able to tap into a $500 billion rescue fund that will be administered by the Treasury Department. But the economic bailout package, which Mr. Trump signed into law last week, specifically barred the president and his family from access to that money.

Late last month, Mr. Trump’s representatives contacted their relationship managers in Deutsche Bank’s New York private-banking division, which caters to wealthy customers. They wanted to discuss the possibility of delaying payments on some of the hundreds of millions of dollars of outstanding loans that the Trump Organization has from the bank, according to a person briefed on the talks. The discussions are continuing.

………

Deutsche Bank has lent Mr. Trump and his companies about $2 billion since 1998, the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with Mr. Trump and his companies. At the time he became president, Mr. Trump owed the bank about $350 million, including on loans to buy and renovate the Doral golf resort near Miami and to develop a luxury hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington.

Both properties are suffering in the economic shutdown. In response to Miami-Dade County’s rules, the Doral resort has ceased all operations, while the Washington hotel continues to operate, albeit with few guests and with its restaurant and bar closed. The Trump Organization rents the Washington property from the federal government, and the company had been soliciting bids from potential buyers for the lease, a process that is now on hold, The Washington Post reported.

Mr. Trump received the loans for those properties, as well as another related to his Chicago skyscraper, from 2012 to 2015. Because of his history of defaults and bankruptcies, Deutsche Bank insisted that Mr. Trump provide personal guarantees on those loans, meaning that the bank has recourse to his personal assets if he were to stop paying back the money.

Ever since Mr. Trump’s election, Deutsche Bank executives have been fretting about what would happen if he were to default, according to bank officials. Seizing the president’s personal assets would be an unattractive proposition. But opting not to collect on the loans would be the equivalent of an enormous financial gift to Mr. Trump, whose administration wields enormous power over the bank. Deutsche Bank’s operations in the United States are supervised by federal regulators, and the Justice Department has been conducting a criminal investigation of the bank.

………

The Trump Organization reached out on multiple occasions last week to Palm Beach County to ask whether it expected the company to continue making the monthly payments of tens of thousands of dollars due under its long-term lease, according to people briefed on the discussions.

(emphasis mine)

It’s already clear that Trump is going to ignore any attempt at Congressional oversight of the bailout, and he’s already doing things like diverting ventilators to states with “friendly” governors.

Since he’s already issued a signing statement that he will not cooperate with Congressional oversight, subpoenaing Trump’s creditors is a way to get some leverage over him (remember, Trump is personally liable for the Deutsche Bank loan) to get compliance on oversight.

You grill folks from the bank and the county, and suddenly they will be disinclined to cut Trump slack.

Politics ain’t beanbag.

Not Enough Bullets

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Publisher lobbyists and their author lackeys, hoping to capitalize on increased book sales resulting from Covid-19 pandemic driven library shut-downs, has attacked the national emergency library project.

This is yet another case where the rent seeking from IP serves no public good:

Last week, when the Internet Archive announced its “National Emergency Library,” expanding access to more than a million digitized works, the group explained the move as a goodwill gesture in the time of coronavirus.

With so many brick-and-mortar libraries forced to close their doors, in other words, the group was opening up its lending program: Now, instead of its usual policy of just one digital copy per reader for a 14-day period, many frustrated readers could borrow copies of the same book during the same time — and could do so through the end of June or the end of the global pandemic, whichever came sooner.

But there’s one major issue that several media outlets, including NPR, failed to mention in covering the decision: Many writers and publishers say the website, even before the creation of this National Emergency Library, has been sharing full digital copies of their books without their permission.

………

“We’re librarians. We’re not social media gladiators,” Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive told NPR over the phone Monday. “The best I can tell, [the critics of the system] just think what they see on social media, and they retweet it.”

Kahle said the group uses the same controls limiting access to these works as the publishers themselves, with encrypted files that are meant to disappear from the user’s computer after a brief period. The copies the group lends, Kahle said, are owned by the Internet Archive — either through donations, straight-up purchases or collaborations with brick-and-mortar libraries.

As the cost of publishing and distributing creative works has dropped by over a factor of 100, copyright subsidized industries have invested these profits in lobbying congress to increase those subsidies.

The purpose of IP is public benefit, but the current level of rent seeking provides none.

Boeing Cannot Make Anything Anymore, Part MMMDCCXXIV

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It turns out that Boeing, the company that invented the airborne tanker, has mission critical fuel leaks on its new KC-46 tanker.

Seriously, saved this issue 60 years ago, and now, after 25 years of stock buybacks, they can’t even prevent a fuel tanker from leaking fuel:

The U.S. Air Force has upgraded an existing deficiency for the KC-46A Pegasus fuel system to Category 1.

The service’s program office first identified “excessive fuel leaks” in July after an air refueling test. The Air Force and Boeing are working together to determine the root cause and implement corrective actions. A Category 1 deficiency means the government has identified a risk that jeopardizes lives or critical assets.

“The KC-46 Program Office continues to monitor the entire KC-46 fleet and is enhancing acceptance testing of the fuel system to identify potential leaks at the factory where they can be repaired prior to delivery,” according to an Air Force statement.

Every senior executive at the firm needs to be fired, including the board of directors, and stock buybacks need to be banned for the next 4 decades.

Rule 1 of Monsanto, Monsanto is Evil

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Rule 2 of Monsanto is SEE RULE 1.

After creating a plague of Roundup resistant weeds, Monsanto decided to double down on Dicamba, which had the effect of KNOWINGLY poisoning neighboring farmers’ crops, if they did not pay for Monsanto’s own genetically modified crops:

The US agriculture giant Monsanto and the German chemical giant BASF were aware for years that their plan to introduce a new agricultural seed and chemical system would probably lead to damage on many US farms, internal documents seen by the Guardian show.

Risks were downplayed even while they planned how to profit off farmers who would buy Monsanto’s new seeds just to avoid damage, according to documents unearthed during a recent successful $265m lawsuit brought against both firms by a Missouri farmer.

The documents, some of which date back more than a decade, also reveal how Monsanto opposed some third-party product testing in order to curtail the generation of data that might have worried regulators.

………

The new crop system developed by Monsanto and BASF was designed to address the fact that millions of acres of US farmland have become overrun with weeds resistant to Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkillers, best known as Roundup. The collaboration between the two companies was built around a different herbicide called dicamba.

………

The companies said they would make new dicamba formulations that would stay where they were sprayed and would not volatilize as older versions of dicamba were believed to do. With good training, special nozzles, buffer zones and other “stewardship” practices, the companies assured regulators and farmers that the new system would bring “really good farmer-friendly formulations to the marketplace”.

But in private meetings dating back to 2009, records show agricultural experts warned that the plan to develop a dicamba-tolerant system could have catastrophic consequences. The experts told Monsanto that farmers were likely to spray old volatile versions of dicamba on the new dicamba-tolerant crops and even new versions were still likely to be volatile enough to move away from the special cotton and soybean fields on to crops growing on other farms.

Why did Monsanto do something so evil, beyond the fact that they are one step away from having a white Persian cat?

Because we allow companies to patent crops, and prevent farmers from replanting crops, and so we create an incentive to sabotage people into buying their (very) pricey seed.

This sh%$ is criminogenic, and for the life of me I do not understand how this does not constitute a criminal conspiracy under the RICO statutes.

Instacart Treats Its Employees Like Sh%$, and Now Its Customers Will Die

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Some Instacart employees went on strike because the the grocery delivery company was not protecting its employees from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Now we know that they have endangered their customers as well:

Late last night (Monday, March 30), an In-Store Shopper in the Cambridge, MA area shared with us an email they received from Instacart corporate —probably the last email anyone would want to see at this point in time:


Instacart’s email sent to an In-Store Shopper, as provided to Gig Workers Collective

As Instacart spent Monday discrediting our workers’ strike, downplaying the requests we and thousands of other Shoppers and customers were making, they were also busy informing their workers that they may have been working alongside a confirmed case of COVID-19 at a store in Cambridge.

This is the exact worst-case scenario we wrote about when giving our reasons for a strike. In-Store and Full-Service Shoppers work in close quarters with each other and with other people in stores. The virus is confirmed to be present in at least one of these workplaces now. These Shoppers handle produce, groceries and supplies that are then delivered to Instacart customers. Often many hundreds of customers per day. Without adequate measures, Instacart Full-Service Shoppers and In-Store Shoppers can unknowingly become vectors for the disease and multiply the danger for everyone involved.

(emphasis original)

Once again, I will remind you that if an employers treats its own employees like sh^%, they will treat their customers like sh%$.