There is a beautiful thing you can buy called bleach which is hostile to all life forms spanning six orders of magnitude in size.

Please understand that ChatGPT was released in November 2022.

And also understand that the distinction between chess and ChatGPT is the point of the comment. These two things both use AI but one is harmless and useful while the other is not.

Exactly right. That is the distinction I’m trying to draw.

Chess engines have been using AI, specifically, neural networks, for years before ChatGPT or other LLMs. Nobody complained.

There are plenty of people filing individual cases as well alleging liability under product liability law.

The sheer volume of those cases could possibly cause major financial issues for the company even if each one costs only a relatively small amount.

The short, general summary of these cases is that under US consumer protection law, the maker of a product is strictly liable for injuries and damages caused by the defective design of that product. An example in ordinary circumstances is that a farmer who uses an herbicide that contains a toxic chemical, and then later develops cancer as a result of exposure to that chemical, can claim compensation from the manufacturer under product liability law. This is what drove the chemical company Monsanto (maker of Roundup) into bankruptcy facing billions in product liability claims.

So a teenager who uses Facebook and then develops mental disorders as a result of that use, has a personal injury claim against Meta.

Even if each individual case is only worth around $20,000 to $50,000, Facebook has hundreds of millions of users in the US, of which possibly hundreds of thousands of people could have a valid claim under this legal theory. And many people could claim a great deal more in compensation. If a person uses Facebook, becomes addicted, gets depression as a result, and then commits suicide, that is potentially a wrongful death claim worth hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

Ambulance chasers to the rescue!

It’s about 2% of their annual net revenue per year for ten years. Hardly much of a punishment.

I’m not a big fan of Steve Bannon, but I think what he said about political power is among the truest things ever said about modern politics. These big corporations, they’re not so tough. The big law firms? They’re not so tough. But the state can be tough. They’re all gutless cowards at the end of the day that would crumble if even a fraction of the power available was displayed. If one truly takes power and exercises it, that would become apparent. Trying to play nice gets you nothing but lip service and pocket change.

I think that is a different situation in your city. I don’t know which city it is, and I don’t claim to know much about how the Italian economy works, but housing prices seem similar to what I’ve got in my city (Portland, Oregon, USA), except that wages are drastically lower. So my guess is that it’s a problem with people being underpaid as Italy is a developed economy, similar to the US.

€24,000 a year would be about €12 an hour which is below minimum wage in my city. A minimum-wage worker would be paid about $34,000 annually, or €29,500. The mean hourly wage in my city works out to about $76,000 annually (€66,000). I prefer the median as a better estimate of what ordinary people make, but the census bureau only reports the mean as far as I could find.

To make my point clearer because you missed it: Councils should NOT be paying for these regardless of whether anything relating to corporate bailouts happens, because detached single-family houses are a poor use of resources and an inefficient and wasteful form of housing.

I don’t agree that the reason single-family detached homes with lawns are necessarily unaffordable primarily because of greed. That might be one factor, but I think the main factor as to why they’re unaffordable is simple geometry. Councils don’t want to pay for miles of roads, pipes, and electrical cables just to serve less than a hundred families, so these costs get imposed on the developers and homeowners. Some states, including mine, will require new single-family developments to have an HOA, which is responsible for paying for the upkeep of some of these resources. That directly results in higher assessments for ratepayers. Or, where the council absorbs the costs, they still get passed on to owners and renters through higher property taxes.

So while I’m sympathetic to your arguments, I feel that blaming only greed is a shallow understanding of why nobody can afford a house.

I think that the US as a country needs to abandon the idea that every family should have a detached house with four bedrooms, two cars, and a lush green front garden surrounded by a picket fence. It’s just not sustainable. That made sense in 1960, but the country’s population has doubled since then.

On the other hand, I would like to see it possible for every family to be able to at least afford a basic 2-bedroom condominium with all the amenities that modern life has to offer, including walkable spaces, accessible green areas, and reliable public transportation.

11,000 hours of minimum wage labour in my city would be $185,000. Maybe a bit too low to be entirely realistic, but $200,000 is probably within reach with a bit of elbow grease on the government side.

I wrote this comment on a $150 phone which for all the purposes that I use it for, performs exactly as well as an $800 iPhone.

He said that because he thought his involvement in politics had cost him money. It damaged Tesla’s brand image and hurt its sales. He thought that this could cause his wealth to decrease. That Tesla’s share price would go down. That the markets would punish him for his folly.

It did not.

He has instead found himself richly rewarded for it.

“growing questions” this, “demands proof of life” that, all of that is meaningless. Either declare him dead and issue the writs of election or he shows his face in public.

So far, in the cases which have actually run to completion in the ICC, they have been about crimes committed in countries with weak or non-functional judiciaries. This, I would assume, is the court’s primary purpose.

Your assertion that the ICC Prosecutor is obligated to respect the decision of a state party’s procuratorial authority to not prosecute seems unsupported by the text of the Rome Statute. Article 20, Section 3 of the Statute only precludes the ICC from trying offences which have been fairly and impartially tried in another court. The key here, is that the accused must have actually been tried. A decision not to prosecute by local prosecutors does not prevent the ICC Prosecutor’s Office from pressing charges.

I do, however, agree for the most part that the United States can avoid the issue with respect to its own citizens by simply prosecuting all the possible crimes domestically in American courts, which would remove the jurisdiction of the ICC, averting all the nasty due process violation concerns. The US can accede with a reservation that all crimes involving US citizens will instead first be referred to the US Department of Justice for local prosecution, and then domestic legislation can force the Department of Justice to at least put some effort into a prosecution to satisfy the requirements of Article 20, Section 3 and foreclose ICC jurisdiction.

There are also some arguments about how the US being obligated to arrest visiting foreign heads of state or government with active warrants against them would be detrimental to the general peace-building process, but I don’t agree with this interpretation. Article 98 of the Rome Statute states that state parties are not required to extradite in violation of other obligations of international law, presumably including diplomatic immunity.

So yes, I agree that it is a weak argument for not adopting the Rome Statute. To be clear, I think the real reason the US did not ratify the Rome Statute is because the US military has its fingers in so many pies that it’s inevitable that some criminal conduct has occurred somewhere, but having even a single US service member appear before an international war crimes tribunal would be geopolitically embarrassing, especially since neither of the two other contemporary world powers subject themselves to ICC jurisdiction.

I will be honest, the genuine reservations voiced about the ICC and the due process problems are legitimate. I don’t agree that they outweigh the benefits of joining the ICC, but I do understand that a reasonable person could conclude otherwise.

For one, ICC proceedings take years and there is no right to a fast trial. Article 67 of the Rome Statute gives the defendant a right against “undue delay” but this clause is essentially toilet paper in reality. A defendant can spend years in detention awaiting a resolution to their case, even if they are later acquitted and released (which has happened).

For comparison only, there is a right to a speedy trial in American law. If exercised, this usually results in a trial scheduled in mere weeks, at most a month or two for complex cases.

If the ICC is known for anything, it’s the completely broken pre-trial process.

After the next presidential election, the US should accede to Rome Statue and dump this loser on the steps of the ICC. Might as well nab Bibi as well, Maduro-style.

The claims are already out of time. And Trump is only entitled to a few thousand dollars per occurrence anyway. If the IRS actually had reasonable lawyers representing them, they’d have settled this case for maybe $50,000. Ten billion dollars is a Dr. Evil-level demand.

Okay, so there’s a principle in law, which is that one calls a document by the thing it purports to be. If it is not valid, you prepend “purported” in the contexts where it would be ambiguous otherwise, and explain your reasons as to why and the readers will know what you’re trying to say. You do not play word games with finding creative and insulting things to call it.

This is what the judge ordered:

The Parties are prohibited from referring to the purported “settlement agreement,” or using, offering, admitting, or citing any of its provisions in any judicial, administrative, regulatory, arbitration, or any other official proceeding as evidence of a “settlement” reached in this matter, Case No. 26-cv-20609-KMW (S.D. Fla. 2026).63 “Plaintiffs” means the named Plaintiffs in this lawsuit: President Donald J. Trump, Donald J. Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, the Trump Organization, LLC and includes any of their agents, representatives, officers, directors, employees, partners, corporate agents, subsidiaries, affiliates, or any other person acting in concert with the party or under the party’s control, whether directly or indirectly. “Defendants” means the Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of the Treasury.

This order doesn’t seem to explicit prohibit the parties from following the terms of the settlement. Merely that the settlement is not to be spoken of again in court.

There are two other orders. One of them is to issue a disciplinary referral against Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar. This is the court telling the bar association that they strongly believe the lawyer in question has committed a violation of ethical rules. However, I frankly do not find it particularly likely that the Florida Bar will act strongly on this referral, though I’m open to being surprised. The second order is to ban Trump lawyer Daniel Epstein from filing any more applications for pro hac vice in the Southern District of Florida. A pro hac vice application is a tool used to request permission from a court to represent someone for one case only when the lawyer in question doesn’t have a valid licence to practise in the state where the case is being conducted.