The only time I didn't pay a lawyer up front was to represent me on contingency and they'd take a percentage of the settlement. No fucking way a lawyer would just represent me without a retainer in any other kind of trial (unless they were pro bono).
It’s pretty common for corporate stuff (legal or otherwise) to start with no payment changing hands, just a contract. Then an invoice lands either monthly or on completion afterwards.
That makes it easier for the work to actually start (otherwise you need to engage the finance dept up front and they’re often slow), and once the contract is signed and the work started that’s the sales process complete.
It’s common, but probably shouldn’t be for these right wing grifters. Or just grifters in general. If you know someone is trying to start some idealogical bullshit in order to satisfy a personal grievance, you can just kind of assume that you’re not getting paid.
Agreed, but it’s hard to feel bad for people with no morals. ’ I will absolutely represent this delusional shitbag, if the money is right’ should not be a thing.
Hopefully it sinks all of them. It won’t of course, the lawyers will be fine, their interns might be laid off, MyDildo has already been abandoned by his hero. Nothing changes.
I understand the moral outrage, but remember that our laws guarantee everyone the right to effective legal counsel—even shitty, guilty people. For this reason, I think one has to give some pause before judging lawyers who defend obviously shitty/guilty clients. I saw an expose once on a hated defense lawyer who almost always took cases wherein the defendant was obviously guilty and had virtually no shot at trial due to overwhelming evidence. He maintained he took the clients in question specifically because he felt everyone deserved the right to a decent lawyer and this class of people are often shunned by attorneys who prioritize their win/lose ratio.
The fediverse have a better incentive to keep itself spam free. Our platforms are not driven by "attention retaining" and "user engagement", or at least until ads are not coming here.
It would be interesting to see Lemmy communities that pay u to see their ads. We really need to make sure communities don’t decide to fund themselves with ads. It will be a whole new game of doing what the current companies are doing thus i hope the fediverse if nothing gives us competition.
Normally I counter such false equivalencies by stating the obvious “It’s possible to care about more than one thing at a time.”, but in this case, nobody actually cares about the “crisis” at the border (not even Republicans) because it is a manufactured talking point that doesn’t require any action. It’s just an easy scapegoat to point to when the right wants to distract from whatever other untenable position they are currently losing ground in.
I’ve survived more than a dozen “Migrant caravan” armageddon events complete with 24/7 news coverage about how life as we know it in America is coming to an end because the brown man is here to steal my job and fuck my sister or whatever. Every time it goes away quietly because adding a few hundred illegals who manage to slip by the fence never makes a significant impact on anything anywhere.
People do care. The stupid cultists who believe all that Republican bullshit. The ones that eat up Newsmax and Fox News.
It’s so stupid. Anyone who actually has paid attention over the last 20 years knows that maybe the only thing that has changed is you hear Ranchero playing at construction sites instead of Country. Seriously, how have they impacted anyone’s life. They take the shit jobs no one else is taking for the shit pay no one wants to apply for. It’s not like there’s a ton of people looking for jobs right now. Unemployment is low.
Alright I am making a deal right now. If Murdoch goes on a submarine and what I really hope happens does happen I am going to seriously reconsider my atheism.
Come on deity I am pretty sure doesn’t exist. Return me to the fold.
Maybe, as long as it isn’t Cthulhu since I am pretty confident that if he has a hand in this it is because he wants the man for some reason. Plus I am sorry but I don’t trust anything that sleeps for strange aeons but doesn’t die.
After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab."
“A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.”
“When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out.”
“No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself.” A scab has not.
“Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British army.” The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class."
What did a toad ever do to anybody? And rattlesnakes are just being rattlesnakes. They’re polite enough to generally warn you to go away before they bite you.
Well, I think rattlesnakes used to be a lot more common. Like maybe you never got bit, but you definitely knew someone, or someone’s kid, that did, and they likely died in utter agony. Pretty much hunted them to near extinction, along with wolves. We go hard on earth.
Plus it was at the time of his betrayal the revolution looked like it was gonna fail. And he wouldve been right if the United States wasnt born of the same crack addled main protagonist syndrome Rome was born with.
Seriously the US and Rome are both the empire equivalent of a crack addled lunatic who has fought trains and won.
My English teacher hated that I read London when at senior school. But the guy was probably the finest American writer I ever read. Its been 30+ years, must track down some audio books!!
Because it was an old English former Grammar school. Quite conservative in its curriculum so they preferred English writers. Even Robert Louis Stevenson was frowned upon.
Honestly, why allow them to mine on the grid at all until it is upgraded? It’s just a big wasteful use of energy that uses public resources but doesn’t benefit the public at all. It just prints money for the guys doing it.
Sure, but I don't know how much that would matter. In the short-term, batteries might be a viable solution, but $31million would get you about a ~15MW storage system from my understanding, which is about 1 order of magnitude too small to be more than a rounding error and 2 orders of magnitude off from being a fix. Also, electric companies profit off of cryptominers (which theoretically could be used to improve the grid) and ERCOT sees them as a flexible demand that can be turned off in emergencies (at the cost of money).
That's 15MW for 4 hours. Typical period of tight conditions is probably more like 1 hour, so 4 hour capacity is overkill for what Texas has been going though this summer). You could get more capacity for a 2 hour period. I think Texas peak power demand was about 100GW (I think that excludes some parts of Texas that aren't part of the Texas grid at the East and West ends)
In theory: if you are charging at proper (optimally tiered) rates and have the capacity to support it, there is no problem allowing people to run a mining farm. In fact, this is why most crypto mining farms aren’t actually economically viable and a lot of it is based off of finding rentals with “included” power bills and the like.
But this is texas so gotta lower prices on your half busted grid to encourage people to move in and destroy the environment.
Because they are buying the power, which pays for grid upgrades. The grid won’t be improved without demand, and miners provide a flexible, profitable demand for power.
ERCOT’s incentives are a bit off, though. They should be offering power to miners at very low rates when they have excess supply available, then jacking up the rates to miners well beyond the point of profitability when they don’t have it. Ideally, they would convince the miners to install their own solar and wind generation (and maybe pumped storage as well) and pay them more than they would earn mining to backfeed the grid during power shortages.
Paying miners not to use power is just fucking stupid.
Was in the thread yesterday saying the same thing. What you describe is exactly what TVA does in essence.
Ideally, they would convince the miners to install their own solar and wind generation (and maybe pumped storage as well)
Texas has a ‘problem’ that prevents them from being able to incentivize this well. At least from what I overheard during my stint at a mine. Texas’s big draw are all of the abandoned oil wells. You can simply go purchase a plot of land with a capped well, uncap it and install a Natural Gas generator that captures and burns the NG often released when drilling for oil. This gives you a one time fee for the generator costs and then after that you are in the clear with ‘free’ (relatively, minus initial costs) energy. This isn’t exclusive to Texas, but obviously it can be done at a higher rate in the state compared to others.
It probably falls under a general policy where they compensate big industrial users if they shut down to save the grid, think like a factory shutting down for the day. It would make sense in those instances, but for crypto mining it’s just wasteful.
That makes sense, but if that’s the case, ERCOT needs to adjust its rates for that plan. They need to increase the cost of power and decrease the reward for discontinuing their use.
Miners should be pushed toward a plan with highly variable power costs. They should have the very lowest rates when power is plentiful, but the highest rates when it is scarce. They are ideal candidates for this kind of “demand shaping”.
Yeah, a compensation plan should basically compensate a user for their fixed costs involved in shutting down (wages, etc), and not things like opportunity cost (the products you would’ve otherwise been able to produce and sell).
Thing is, you can’t tailor different rates per customer, so a crypto miner is probably always going to be ahead, because they basically have no running costs besides electricity. The only other cost is basically the cost of acquiring the ASICs and having a security guard on site.
You certainly can establish different rate plans for your customers to choose from. You don’t need a fixed cost per kWh. You could offer discounts for off-peak consumption, and surcharges for on-peak. You could establish reliability tiers, where you get a discount in exchange for being ready to shut down consumption when needed. The lower the tier you select, the cheaper your power, but the more you have to shut down.
Agreed. This is a good solution for the wasteful energy usage of the miners. I don’t see how they arrived at paying them not to use the grid. Does literally any private citizen get paid not to use large amounts of electricity?
Certain large industrial customers might get paid to voluntarily shed loads as part of a service level agreement, but those agreements should include rates structured to make mining unprofitable.
Because its Texas: the state run by idiots that refuse to connect to the rest of the american grid because if they did, theyd have to actually get everything to code eventually.
They also built much of the solar in one region instead of diversifying. So even when other places are under fire-weather watch from high winds, we can have low wind energy because of low winds where they're built...
Individuals can do whatever they want and the costs are set appropriately. Mining bitcoin is more profitable than the cost of electricity. They can either jack the prices up for everyone, or pay miners not to mine. It’s cheaper to pay.
Is it cheaper to ban mining or improve infrastructure? Sure, but there is no societal good, only individual. Banning mining would be an “infringement on the right to make money”.
all of your downvotes - many more than the person you’re replying to - are for trying to claim that a system that’s functioned as a pyramid scheme for most of its existence is not a pyramid scheme.
Capitalism. Socialism would allocate energy and eliminate BTC mining. Social Democrats would give people energy allowance for home use and increase the price by taking it. Pure capitalists say it’s good.
Bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme because nobody controls bitcoin.
FIAT is closer to a pyramid scheme than bitcoin. Do I like bitcoin? No, I prefer monero when it comes to crypto transactions because it actually serves a purpose, but it is the truth.
It basically is. Crypto itself has no inherit worth. You don’t actually own anything. It is purely speculative. If the value of crypto collapses today, there is nobody who will ever recoup any value.
Let’s contrast that with the stock market. Are a lot of people screwed as well? Yes. But the business has physical assets that can be sold or auctioned off to recoup something
Actually, yes, you DO own crypto. If you hold the private keys to your crypto, you OWN that crypto.
To own is to have something that you control. If you have the private keys and nobody has the seed phrase or the spend address to your wallet, literally no one can take it from you.
Everything you just said applies to any form of currency. Don’t tell me you actually believe FIAT is backed by anything.
stock market
Stop. You’re already fucking up there. Cryptocurrency as a concept is not meant to be a stock. Yes there are people who treat bitcoin and shitcoins as such, that doesn’t make it a stock. That is the mistake that many people and so many others make on a daily basis. This is why I don’t support shitcoins, the only currency you should support is one with a purpose, such as the many time aforementioned monero.
If the Japanese yen had the volatility that it could go from now to worthless to 3x it’s current value in a week, would you not put money into it at the dip and cash out at the peak? Yet yen is not a stock, it is a currency. Currency is something you exchange for goods.
The word pyramid scheme does not apply to bitcoin, it applies to RUGPULLS, but nobody controls bitcoin.
That is literally nothing. It’s worth what they say it is worth.
Bitcoin and monero is worth the efforts of the community to support it. Pretty much nothing backs FIAT, that is LITERALLY what fiat is, fiat is Latin for “let it be done”.
You can argue that without FIAT currency, crypto has no value, but in reality that is not the case because they have their own value. That value is determined by the community as well as the difficulty and abundance of coins. It is literally more stable than real world cash, you just have to USE it as such. ACTUAL COINS, not shitcoins.
The US government has an entire country it could liquidate if it really had to. It just is not linked to gold. There is nothing to liquidate for bitcoin. It is pure speculation. It is simply not backed by any physical value - and never will be.
I simply cannot wrap my head around how you are still not understanding this.
What exactly do you think would happen if the government liquidated all of its assets? Police, military, tax offices, literally everything that it does to be able to extract money from the public?
The US dollar is not backed by anything. It only has value because a large body says it does. They mint more money when they want to, which means that they can always just pull more money out of their ass when they want to.
Bitcoin and other actual coins require you to actually put in work to acquire them. They are agnostic of any body, person or government. They are still assets at the end of the day, they are just not backed by a governing body, they are instead backed by a community.
It sure ain’t looking good for fiat, almost seems like fiat is a tool for the government to conduct a pyramid scheme while actual coins have no one pulling the strings.
Police, military, tax offices are NOT assets that can be liquidated.
The US can cede high-value land, lease ports, etc. to back the US dollar with something physical. The US dollar is not backed by a metal, that much is true. However, it is backed by the entire US now.
Blockchain is essentially a huge, decentralized database (or ledger) that says who owns what. The big issue with crypto is you can manipulate who owns what if you own a majority of the coin available. The other big issue is that nobody accepts bitcoin. Therefore, people are using exchanges and getting absolutely fucked by malicious smart contracts.
You keep talking about the fall of fiat, but you fail to prove that crypto is a valid replacement
They already do the second thing, and answer this, what EXACTLY is on that high value land you’re talking about?
you can manipulate who owns what if you own a majority of the coin available
This is a blatant lie. I don’t know who told you that. The closest thing to what you are describing is a 51% attack in which you have +51% of the network hashrate, in which you try to insert an alternate blockchain because everyone will have to do confirmations on you. This allows them to:
block transactions
double spend coins
prevent the creation of new blocks
It does not allow them to steal crypto from confirmed transactions. At most, it will allow them to spend a coin somewhere and then yoink it to another address.
You may point your finger and be all like “See! You just admitted it right there, that’s PROOF”
Nuh uh uh, not so fast buddy
If you are using a reputable coin, this is prohibitively expensive to perform, and the thing about this is, you get ONE SHOT to do this.
The thing that is comical about this, is that the government’s mint has the exact issues you are describing right now.
nobody accepts bitcoin
And who’s fault is that exactly? Besides, that’s not even accurate to begin with. Some of the largest companies on earth accept bitcoin. Tesla for instance accepts bitcoin. Many smaller vendors accept multiple cryptocurrencies, hell, I’ve bought real world goods including food off of MoneroMarket.
using exchanges
Lol. Do you think I got my crypto from an exchange? Don’t you think the idea of KYC defeats the entire concept of a CRYPTO currency? A currency based around cryptography? One that allows for privacy and anonymity on different levels based on which one you choose (which should always be monero or its forks)? Also, what do you mean smart contract? None of that shit matters if you transfer your coins to a wallet you own and get confirmations.
If you are buying crypto from robinhood, first off you’re fucking retarded, but second off that’s not an exchange, that’s a stock broker who is using crypto (that they likely are not even holding) as a stock.
I call bullshit. He sold them fucking internet as a fucking contract with the damn Pentagon. What else would they be used for. If you wanted to use that excuse then you should’ve never made the contract. This was planned from the start. He sold the contract to have greater control over their military operations. This is just the first of a long line of items to come
Sounds an awful lot like elon musk needs to be sent to the Russian front his fucking self. I hope ukraine charges him as a Russian spy and puts out a bounty on him.
I’m okay with this. They’ll pull him out and try to get secrets from him… Only to realize he knows literally nothing about rockets and electric cars. Then he’ll get thrown back onto the front line.
Unless you’re Waukesha, Wisconsin, where they specifically voted to stop giving kids handouts (i.e. free lunch). Because, you know, kids should work for their food or something instead of using their energy to learn.
I’ll raise you the most voted pre-candidate to president in my country, who said that people should be able to sell their own organs if they want to. (He plans to worsen things for workers in such a way that they would need to.)
Of course it is. But you know, kids lives only really matter up until they are born. At that point the kids, their parents and their livelihoods and happiness…all that can fuck right off.
kids just don’t want to work anymore these days. they’re too busy with their avocados and ipad games. meanwhile the child unemployment rates are at historical highs. won’t someone think of the economy?
Waukesha County is by far the most conservative in the state, and has been playing a massive role in destroying our state’s democratic process for a few decades now.
Another fun fact about it is that they’ve been trying for years to glom onto the Lake Michigan watershed, which, geographically, it is not a part of. They want to straight up take our water, which they do not need, in exchange for nothing whatsoever of any real value.
I live in the mke area and when looking for housing Waukesha was a tempting area because of how much more house you can get for the money, but I just don’t think I can handle living there. Not to mention I want my kids going to schools in a community that gives a shit about kids and their education.
her sentence absolutely should have been reduced further as that asshole not just raped but trafficked her, this is only fair for her to delete his ass.
The sentence that ass would have got would never ever bring her any justice.
I hear you. My wife was put through the wringer (to put it mildly) so I understand. None of them ever experienced justice. I had an old girlfriend who was abused by her stepdad. No justice. That was all almost 40+ years ago. I hope we’re doing better as a society now, but we still have a long ways to go.
I crunched the numbers a while ago ~ 3 out of 100 people who commit rape will be sentenced in the US. His odds of being adequately punished for his crimes were incredibly low. Most rapists serve less than 10 years as well. On a good day he probably would’ve gotten 3-5 years tops
Most cases of rape are probably in private: no witnesses or evidence. The literal “he said vs she said” situation with no objective support for either side. Of course prosecuting that is difficult.
This ought to have been easier to find evidence, after they knew what was happening and by whom
Maybe humanity just deserves to die, all of it. That’s why I joined the submarine force, so I can be there to flip the toggle when the order comes to end it all. I even look forward to it, sometimes, like when I read shit like this.
Wow, that is really a terrible shame. ECT saved my grandfather’s life. We were all nervous about it because of the bad marketing and myths out there (which in retrospect are likely perpetrated by scientology).
It was an overnight change after years of failed treatments. We had our Pop-Pop back.
Boneless is a “cooking style?” No. It’s which bag of chicken I pull out of the freezer before I even turn the oven on. I’m not going to sous vide the fucking bones out of my wings.
If the restaurant is deboning wings to order, fine. I’ll accept that. But then that shit had better be on the menu so I know to be careful.
Boneless wings are usually breaded chunks of rib meat, not actually wings at all. Sometimes a cooking style starts with cutting raw meat off of bones and into don’t-call-them-nuggets.
It’s just how the industry markets chicken nuggets to adults “these aren’t children’s chicken nuggets, they’re BONELESS WINGS for manly men who enjoy suicide hot sauce”
Twitch disabled the account following the Jan. 6 riot on the US Capitol in 2021 due to “the current extraordinary circumstances and the President’s incendiary rhetoric” before issuing an indefinite suspension two weeks later, according to a Twitch spokesperson.
Guess we’ll all just collectively forget about this now that’s he’s the Republican nominee again ¯\(ツ)/¯
So three years is the proper amount for an unrepentant failed coup, insurrection and inciting murder? You are just an absolute ding dong and you have boot polish all around your mouth.
Comments like these make me seriously want to leave Lemmy. Some people here are just foaming at the mouth to attack anyone who doesn’t conform exactly to their rhetoric, as opposed to just having a normal discussion.
Insulting that previous poster and calling him a bootlicker diminishes and undermines your actual point. I hate Trump and his actions as much as anyone here, but we gotta be better than this and not polarize everything on our side.
“I hate Trump and his actions as much as anyone here, but…”
Of course, this is the traditional phrasing used by us fellow legitimate, absolutely genuine, haters of fascism and their associated ideals - We just can’t stop qualifying it, we can’t help ourselves…
“Women should have equal rights, but…”
*“Love who you love, marry who you want, but…”
“I’m definitely not racist, but…”
“I support a person’s right to choose what they do with their pregnancy, but…”
“The Nazis were out of line, but…”
“UH, SEE… Now look what YOU made me do!!!”
Will anyone else in this thread commit to stepping up and adding absolutely nothing to this conversation, in this person’s place, if they do leave Lemmy? Who’s going to do their part?
You’re talking as if they were ever able to graduate elementary school. The last time I saw police near an elementary school they were too scared to go in
OK, I’ll argue for the cops on this one. Just this once!
Community engagement is a real thing, gets people talking to cops who otherwise wouldn’t. And that can be a positive experience all around.
For example; The Tulsa cops had a bitchin’ (my 80s coming out) Corvette Stingray they showed off at the fair and every other chance they had. They had quite an audience gathered around, talking about the car at first and then asking questions about LE.
Idea being, it’s not supposed to be a regular cruiser.
For all it’s flaws, you can’t deny it looks different from all the other cars around, and most people aren’t online enough to have an opinion about Musk and his bullshit, so to them it’s just an interesting looking car.
I mean, sure, if a Cybertruck parked next to me somewhere, I’d probably take a close look and talk to the owner if they were around. I’m curious as much as anyone.
I don’t have high expectations, and I’m not interested in owning one, but I’d still check it out.
But that’s just because these cars are rare and novel. If anything, the questions I’d ask would be tilted towards figuring out just how shitty a car it is.
If the police are roaming around in them, they become less novel, and generally speaking people aren’t usually interested in approaching random cops for conversations. People who socialize around cars usually aren’t a big fan of the cops.
most people aren’t online enough to have an opinion about Musk and his bullshit
I don’t understand this point. Not only does Elon Musk’s bullshit appear regularly on boomer tv stations, but you don’t have to be very online to get exhausted with Musk content. It’s not exactly niche content, he owns Twitter and is constantly attracting media attention with dumb stunts. You have to go out of your way to avoid hearing about him.
to them it’s just an interesting looking car.
Anyone interested enough in cars to be influenced by what kind of car the cops drive, is someone likely informed enough to know that the Cybertruck is a misengineered lemon of a car.
To car people. To other people it can be a “generic fancy car”, while the Cybertruck can be something unusual that no other car looks alike. Can’t get everyone.
Ok. They could put police lights on a weiner mobile too. That would get a ton of community engagement. But for some reason I can’t put my finger on, they have chosen a very expensive tiny dick toy instead.
Yeah, brutalist and brutal are different. The cyber truck is a fucking stupid design that will hurt people far more than most vehicles (big dumb truck hoods not withstanding).
They aren’t even going to be able to sell them anywhere that has reasonable pedestrian safety laws. CA needs to pass some and kill the fucking thing, not give them to cops who already want to kill anyone who makes them nervous.
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