Mea culpa, I should know better than to rely on Slashdot for my facts--in this case, that 1oz of hard liquor is a "drink." I should've consulted an authoritative source like urbandictionary, which tells me one drink is actually equal to casual sex.

Could I still try to argue that my 1 glass was closer than 8? Well, yeah, but a) that would be pretty obtuse, and b) drinking any positive integer number of 8oz glasses of vodka is inadvisable in any case.

A single 8oz glass of vodka is pretty close to 10 standard drinks. How can you be so obtuse?

I have already secured the domain name "nodeerzone.com" so that state and federal highway officials can start putting in for stretches of highway they don't want deer to cross over. They will pay $20K/km to add highway sections to a public list. The deer will know not to cross these sections because of signs ($500 apiece) that say:

--NO-- DEER CROSSING!

I mean it, deer, you better not fucking cross here

Oblig Bash.

No, all three of you missed the point.

"Facebook engineers" are "game changing" the game by "rejecting" the "paradigm" that is "popular" (they're closing Facebook), instead embracing a "yet to be proven" "new approach" where your "pipe dreams" "look and feel like s__t " (unclear, they probably mean 'shat', which is short for William Shattner, who will buy the empty husk of Facebook and fold it into the Priceline Syndicate).

Focusing on a "groundbreaking" new business model, they'll be "approaching natives" (aboriginal peoples) with "samples and tutorials" that will give them "huge success internally" (Levitra and a lesson on handjobs). This new approach will definitely get the natives "stirred up", but will ultimately cause them to "React" poorly (an erection lasting more than four hours).

See how easy that was?

GD, you're a regular and thoughtful poster, so I don't think you're intentionally trolling. But if SCOTUS upheld slave ownership back in the 1800's, that's because the Constitution specifically contemplated and provided for slave ownership. It took a constitutional amendment (13th) to abolish slavery.

That doesn't mean SCOTUS is always (or even usually) right when it comes to protecting civil liberties. But that was just a Supremely bad example. :: ducks ::

Oh it was whore! That was really bothering me. I mean, w***e? I was wracking my brain and the best I got was "waste" or... "weene"?

I need my iPad. For me, it is excelling in a critical role that neither phones nor laptops can fill. As a performing musician, I post the iPad up on my mic stand, and the access to music and lyrics triples (or more) the range of songs I can play. Granted, my use case isn't the most common. But there are actually tons of musical performers, and IME they're increasingly turning to tablets to replace sheet music and chord charts.

...was obliged to use a concise term of action instead of the oddly constructed term of obligation "has been obliged."

Iran canceled its space program; Ansari fled to the US. That wasn't so hard!

I, on the other hand, have erstwhile been obliged to undertake in grammatical pedantry.

The Invisible Hand does give the best HJs...

"I'm extremely angry that this monopoly-breaking company (the one that finally introduced innovation and competition into an industry stagnant for decades) isn't letting government officials use its own platform to bust it!"

I mean, countries/states/cities are free to enact bans and harsh penalties to prop up existing cartels. See also U.S. states banning Tesla direct sales to consumers, because, hey, entrenched dealership interests. And as a philosophical matter I encourage Uber to respect the rule of law (all over the world) and push for democratic change rather than just rolling down Main Street with a foam middle finger out the sunroof.

But I don't have to applaud legislative support for inefficient, customer-deaf monopolies, nor large-scale sting operations that look quite like a money making game. And Uber certainly doesn't have to welcome fake users into its app just so it can get fined. Cat, meet mouse.


P.S. - Maybe taxis in Australia are infinitely better than they are here in the U.S., in which case I'm infinitely sorry I painted them with the same brush. Good on ya, much-loved not-monopoly taxis!!

I went back and skimmed the complaint and... a few things. One, the whole thing is (predictably) batshit crazy. Legit verbiage in what look like the right places, but saying "on information and belief" before "Nixon put space monkeys in my timecube" doesn't somehow make it uncrazy.

Two, turns out Snowden is a named defendant, and he is in big trouble for enriching himself with all this Russian hospitality.

Three, you're correct--this constructive trust idea (along with everything else in the complaint) has absurd consequences. It's a clever but completely untenable attempt to game the threshold questions (standing, jurisdiction).

Correct (IAAL*). He has suffered no legally cognizable injury or adverse effect (nor even a plausible connection to harm). So no standing.

Also, there is no legal theory under which he has a cause of action. In order for there to have been a tort, the defendants must have owed this guy a duty, then breached that duty, and that breach must've been the factual and proximate cause of actual harm. But Joe Random USA was an unknown, unforeseeable, causally unconnected nonparty who suffered no harm. Snowden et al owed him no duty, certainly not a fiduciary one.** So no tort.

What about his quasicontract theory of unjust enrichment? Maybe he's taking the term too literally. It's not simply that someone was enriched and you find it unjust. It's that you had a real or implied contract with the other party and they benefitted to your detriment. Did this guy half finish building Snowden a deck and then not get paid? No? Then he can't sue for unjust enrichment. Similarly, he couldn't, as a random citizen, sue on my behalf if I was the one who built the deck for Snowden. Nor could he sue North Korea for "unjustly enriching" themselves at Sony's expense.

*I am not your lawyer and this is not legal advice.

**Snowden may have owed the US govt a fiduciary duty, or duty of confidentiality or loyalty. But despite this guy being a retired naval officer, he is not the US govt.

Err, NE for Nebraska, not NB for niobium....

I don't think that the 11th Amendment has been interpreted to bar states from suing each other, just citizens of states (or foreign nationals) from suing states for monetary relief. See e.g. the water wars between GA and FL.

Note that even if the 11th was implicated in State v. State, it would only stop a suit for damages. Anyone can still sue a state (or its agent/official, etc) for prospective injunctive relief. So, exactly the kind of thing OK and NB want: "Hey CO, stop selling legal pot!"