Category: Uncategorized

Expectations of excellence

While I hate Juve with a passion that is only exceeded by my loathing for Manchester United, I have nothing but respect and admiration for their relentless expectations of excellence. The Italian champions just fired their second manager in two years for the crime of only winning the Serie A title.

Juventus fired coach Maurizio Sarri on Saturday after his first season in charge ended with the team’s Champions League exit. Despite winning the Italian title, Sarri paid the price for the round-of-16 loss to Lyon on Friday.

“The club would like to thank the coach for having written a new page in Juventus’ history with the victory of the ninth consecutive championship, the culmination of a personal journey that led him to climb all the divisions of Italian football,” the team said.

Serie A success won’t be enough for the club’s gamble to be validated, given that it’s won nine straight domestic titles, and the last two have been followed by managers hitting the exit. Champions League success is the ultimate goal, and since Cristiano Ronaldo was acquired from Real Madrid two years ago to help Juventus return to Europe’s summit, its Champions League performances have ended in a quarterfinal exit under Massimiliano Allegri and a last-16 exit under Sarri.

This relentless and remorseless pursuit of excellence is the philosophy that I hope to inculcate in Castalia, in Unauthorized, in Infogalactic, in the LLOE, in my own writing, and in every other project in which I am involved.

And it’s fascinating to see Andrea Pirlo who was a brilliant manager on the field for the Mondiale-winning Azzurri as well as six Seria A-winning teams, ascend to the highest level of club football management. It will be interesting to see if Il Maestro’s on-field skills translate effectively to the sidelines or not.

No backsies

The God-Emperor’s executive orders cannot be reversed by future presidents:

The President’s twitter is hilarious today, because most of the tweets point out his taking over implementing Coronavirus relief by Executive Order from Twitter would have been unconstitutional, but for the Robert’s ruling recently on DACA, which held Obama could pass an EO, and it could not be reversed by a subsequent President, just like a law. So now Trump has accidentally been coronated King of America, and he appears set to abuse the privileged for the good of Americans, until he forces the Supreme Court to rectify their own bad ruling. And in the interim, Democrats are just completely neutered. Of course, if we get a Democrat President, say good bye to any vestige of America.

Great. So let’s see an executive order banning all post-1965 immigrants and their descendants from voting. That would be a nice start to get the American Inquisition rolling.

No football in 2020

It looks as if there will be no NCAA football this fall:

The MAC was the first domino. And it may end up being big enough to knock the other ones over. Multiple reports indicate that college football season will be scrapped within the week.

I would anticipate that if the NCAA season is canceled, the NFL season will soon follow suit. Fortunately, thanks to the SJWs, little of value will be lost.

Corona-chan + Qanon

It’s the dream team that can’t be beat by the Big Tech Cartel:

The Covid-19 pandemic has only helped the movement expand: Hundreds of thousands of people with nothing else to do have been exposed to the fringe fulminations. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a London think tank, says that from March through June, QAnon-related posts surged on Facebook and Twitter. While its believers were far from the only ones trying to discredit the use of masks or cast doubt on vaccines, they were among the largest groups.

Twitter took action on July 21, announcing measures targeting “so-called ‘QAnon’ activity” across its platform. “We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm,” the company tweeted as it detailed the crackdown. Twitter is suspending accounts for breaking existing rules and will no longer highlight as “trending” or recommend content and accounts associated with QAnon. It will also try to stop the movement from being played up in search. Users will no longer be able to share URLs associated with it.

Twitter’s plan has parallels with an earlier crackdown by Reddit in 2018 after its forums became QAnon hotbeds. The most prominent subreddits associated with the movement came down, and new ones even hinting they had something to do with it could not be created. Reddit’s move is considered to be among the more significant blows against QAnon.

But the tactics so effective on Reddit in 2018 may not work for Twitter. The QAnon movement is now a very different beast from the one that used to populate now-deleted subreddits such as r/TheGreatAwakening.

It’s really rather remarkable that the most reliably dishonest group of people in the West have the nerve to try to silence millions of people on the purported basis of passing on misinformation. But then, they seem to regard hubris as a virtue. If they were actually members of Western civilization, or even understood anything at all about Western philosophy, they would know that Nemesis always makes an appearance, sooner or later.

And since “free speech” has turned out to be a literally Satanic lie, the only interventions that are actually required are Crusade and Inquisition.

Perhaps The Storm is upon us, perhaps it isn’t. But the Prometheans are obviously afraid of something.

“The poop is everywhere!”

Lawyer and YouTuber Viva Frei acquired a complete copy of the original backer arbitration claims – courtesy of the Norton Law Firm – and analyzes them as well as the judge’s final ruling on the preliminary injunction:

And there you have it, a thorough update and breakdown of the Patreon lawsuit and a further illustration of the fact that when you’ve stepped in poop, sometimes the best thing to do is stop walking around and tracking it everywhere. Patreon definitely stepped in poop, and by the way of their highly-questionable amendment after the fact to try to undo their own mistake, I think they have just tracked poo-poo all over their house, in their bedroom, in their bed, on their pillowcase… the poop is everywhere!

He was clearly impressed by the case constructed by the LLoE, as he described it as “very intelligent” and even “genius”. And this didn’t even begin to get into the poop-tracking accomplished by the filing of the lawsuit and its inevitable consequences in the form of the amended claims by the 72 Bears being sued.

Interesting….

The God-Emperor seems to be strangely disinterested in the campaign trail:

Remarks made by President Trump during a speech have prompted speculation after he referred to having a lot of rich enemies and told the audience, “This may be the last time you’ll see me for a while.”

“So I have a lot of enemies out there. This may be the last time you’ll see me for a while. A lot of very, very rich enemies, but they are not happy with what I’m doing,” said Trump. “But I figure we have one chance to do it, and no other President is going to do what I do. No other President would do a favored nations, a rebate, a buy from other nations at much less cost. Nobody. And there are a lot of unhappy people, and they’re very rich people, and they’re very unhappy,” he added.

There are also hints and indications that something long-anticipated might be in the air. Stay tuned.

This won’t age well

The Economist makes its predictions for November:

Chance of winning the electoral college:
Biden 91{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}
Trump 9{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}

Chance of winning the most votes:
Biden 98{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}
Trump 2{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}

Estimated electoral college votes:
Biden 357
Trump 181

Just wanted to make sure we preserved it for the record.

Tortious interference in California

I have to admit, I initially assumed that Patreon was unexpectedly handed an advantage on at least one of the outstanding issues by a ruling from the California Supreme Court this week:

California recognizes two different torts involving interference with economic relations – interference with performance of a contract and interference with prospective economic advantage.  Originally California courts treated these two torts as essentially the same, the the only difference being that interference with contractual relations required the existence of a binding contract.  In 1995, however, the Supreme Court held that a plaintiff pursuing a claim for interference with a prospective contractual or economic relationship had to plead that the defendant’s conduct was wrongful.  Della Penna v. Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., Inc., 11 Cal. 4th 376 (1995).

Contracts that are terminable at-will occupy a sort of middle estate between these two torts, leading to the question of whether a plaintiff pursuing a claim for tortious interference with an at-will contract must plead that the interference was independently wrongful.  Yesterday, the California Supreme Court held that tortious interference with an at-will contract does require independent wrongfulness. Ixchel Pharma, LLC v. Biogen, Inc., 2020 Cal. LEXIS 4876.

Although the Court recognized that in an at-will contract the parties have more of an expectation of continuity of the relationship than when no contract exists, it found that there is no legal basis in either case to expect continuity from the perspective of a third-party.  The Court also found that legitimate business competition could be chilled if independent wrongfulness is not required.

As I commented on SocialGalactic, this particular decision by the California Supreme Court looked unfavorable to Big Bear on first glance, as well as almost comically untimely. However, it did at least serve to demonstrate that his case was very far from frivolous, considering that the court appeared to be addressing, for the first time, one of the primary issues at dispute in his arbitration.

Upon the LLOE’s review of the ruling, however, it quickly became apparent that despite its apparent relevance to his case, the Ixchel decision actually has nothing to do with Big Bear’s claim for tortious interference on the part of Patreon. This is for four reasons:

  1. As defined by the supreme court, an at-will contract requires mutual bargaining by the parties. The Patreon Terms of Use are a contract of adhesion that prevents bargaining and is unilaterally imposed upon one party by the other, so they are not an at-will contract.
  2. An at-will contract is, by definition, terminable at will by either party. The Patreon Terms of Use cannot be terminated by the user. Even if a user deletes his account, he remains bound indefinitely by the terms. So, again, the Patreon Terms of Use are not an at-will contract.
  3. Patreon did not terminate its contract with Big Bear or even delete his account. What they did was delete his creator page, deny his access to the platform, and prevent patrons from paying him.
  4. The Ixchel decision is not analogous to Patreon’s contract with Big Bear, but with Big Bear’s separate contractual relationships with his patrons.
It’s important to avoid confusing the user’s account with the contract between the two parties. They are two very different things. But the CA Supreme Court’s decision did add a little excitement and drama to what is otherwise an incredibly boring process, so that was fun.

The Silicon Curtain

President Trump opens a new offensive in the trade war:

President Donald Trump has issued executive orders effectively banning Chinese video sharing app TikTok and messaging service WeChat in a dramatic escalation of tensions with Beijing that sent stocks tumbling worldwide overnight.

Using national emergency powers, Trump on Thursday night signed the orders, which give TikTok parent ByteDance 45 days to sell the app, and bar WeChat from the U.S. after the same time period.

The orders also banned any U.S. transactions with WeChat owner Tencent, a major Chinese company that owns significant shares in Tesla, Snap Inc, and Reddit. Tencent shares fell as much as 10 percent in Asian markets overnight, and it was not immediately clear whether the company would be forced to divest its U.S. holdings.

Coming days after the United States ordered China to vacate its consulate in Houston, the move looks set to trigger retaliatory action by Beijing, stoking fears that a ‘Silicon Curtain’ is descending between the two superpowers. It raised the possibility that Beijing could retaliate by banning major U.S. tech companies from China, a major market for some of the top American firms.

‘China could block Apple or Microsoft from China. The information sector growingly looks divided into two camps. We could be seeing just the beginning of an information technology war,’ said Nana Otsuki, chief analyst at Monex Securities.

‘Investors in the West would have to hesitate to invest in China, missing growth opportunities there when there are not many investment opportunities except perhaps except for Nasdaq.’

Although this will tend to help the God-Emperor’s enemies in Silicon Valley fend off what would likely be a successful foray into the US market by Chinese technology companies, it’s the right thing to do in the long term. China has successfully defended and developed its technology sector, now it is time for Americans to free the US technology sector from the grip of the bad and mostly foreign actors who presently control it.

But this isn’t even the big news on the trade war front, as the report released yesterday by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets appears likely to drive even more significant changes:

In response to President Trump’s June 4 Memorandum on Protecting United States Investors from Significant Risks from Chinese Companies, the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (PWG) today released a report making five recommendations.  These recommendations are designed to address risks to investors in U.S. financial markets posed by the Chinese government’s failure to allow audit firms that are registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to comply with U.S. securities laws and investor protection requirements.

“The PWG examined the risks to investors posed by the Chinese government’s failure to allow access.  The PWG unanimously recommends that the Securities and Exchange Commission take steps to enhance the listing standards on U.S. exchanges for access to audit work papers, among other recommendations,” said Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, Chairman of the PWG.  “The recommendations outlined in the report will increase investor protection and level the playing field for all companies listed on U.S. exchanges.  The United States is the premier jurisdiction in the world for raising capital, and we will not compromise on the core principles that underpin investor confidence in our capital markets.”

The PWG recommends that the SEC take steps to implement the five recommendations outlined in the report.  In particular, to address companies from jurisdictions, such as China, that do not provide the PCAOB with sufficient access to fulfill its statutory mandate (“Non-Cooperating Jurisdictions,” or “NCJs”), the PWG recommends enhanced listing standards on U.S. exchanges.  This would require, as a condition to initial and continued exchange listing, PCAOB access to work papers of the principal audit firm for the audit of the listed company.

Translation: Chinese companies are not providing the US financial authorities the ability to audit their books.  The US government is now making it clear that any companies using auditors who are not subject to PCAOB oversight will not be permitted the ability to list or remain listed on US exchanges. So, this could lead to a mass exodus of US-listed Chinese companies from the US markets.

Urgent!

An SOS call goes out from the hive:

Urgent Message! Unauthorized cultists are on a mass flagging campaign to shut down our counter narrative. Accounts are getting suspended/deleted. Please keep your wits about things as we continue to fight. I’m working on setting up an off-site backup.

Oh dear, someone is using their tactics against them? How unfortunate!