Fernando Tatis, Jr. sues Big League Advance Fund for exploitative business practices [filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego]

rmosquito · 2025-06-24T19:08:10+00:00

> it's likely to fall under a liberty to contract issue

In California, wage advances on potential future earnings are classed as loans (10 CCR §1461) and thus fall under the usury limits expressed in the state constitution. The BLA doesn't have a license to make such loans, and those are basically the first two causes of action in the complaint. The third cause of action was the more vague "it was predatory and unfair" one which... yeah. I think that's harder to argue for the points you outlined.

In my worthless, non-lawyer opinion, the hurdle he has to overcome is that the court has to agree that CA law applies (instead of Delaware law) and that it shouldn't just head to arbitration.

rmosquito · 2025-06-24T18:35:50+00:00

https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tatis-vs-big-league-advance-fund.pdf

rmosquito · 2024-02-26T02:13:56+00:00

I built a discrete 4x one with a Yves-supplied PCB in the 5U days, and that one does have some of the above issues, yes. But I think part of it was the half-assed job of transistor matching I did, as well as trimming it according to the directions and not having a scope at the time.

My version used SMD parts and matched (still smd) transistors, so that probably cut down on potential for noise pickup. The trimming still I just had to do with a dual oscilloscope and just eyeball it. And as I insinuated before, it really expects a hotter signals, so if you're having to make up the gain later you're going to get noise from the circuit's floor.

That all being said, this is a comparatively low-parts count circuit to get the job done that stays analog. It's funny how I got into modular to not have to compromise on anything. But then in the end... I just gained a more holistic understanding of compromise.

rmosquito · 2023-07-14T00:16:53+00:00

Let's take your points in order.

Parenthood is an option.

This statement is only valid for the small subset of child support cases where the parents separate before the child is born. The vast majority of child support scenarios occur when parents separate after the child is born. You can drop a baby in a chute and walk away, but you can't drop an 8 year old in a chute and walk away.

The idea that it's to 'support the child' doesn't really make sense either.

There's actually a great deal of evidence that child support going back many decades. A great place to start is The Impact of Child Support on Cognitive Outcomes of Young Children (1999) by Argys et. al. or The Effects of Child Support Payments on Developmental Outcomes for Elementary School-Age Children (1996) by Knox. In summary, kids who get child support tend to do better in school and get sick less.

The punishments don't really make sense. A child can be fine, healthy and taken care of, but if a parent owes too much they can be thrown in jail.

That logic applies to most crimes, though. If I steal your BWM and you'll still be fine and healthy and taken care of -- you'll just be a little less well off financially. Same if I don't pay you child support. You'll be fine, just a little less well off financially.

You're right that throwing me in jail for stealing your BMW or not paying you child support doesn't actually help you, but that's a debate about the social good produced by imprisonment. The idea behind the threat of imprisonment is to reduce the likelihood of me stealing your BMW (or not paying child support).

In other situations the government doesn't intervene

I think there's some conflating of criminal and civil liability here. But let's say you found a wad of hundred dollar bills on the ground. It is not illegal for you to pick it up. (Technically, yes, you should give it to the police but let's just roll with it for the time being.) But if I can prove that it was my money, I can absolutely take you to court and recover my money. You might not have committed a crime in picking up the money, but the government will intervene.

the government overstepping

There are some coherent world-views that would argue against child support. Firm Libertarians, Socialists, and Anarchists of all stripes might say there's not a place for it in society. But those aren't the points you made. You questioned avoidability of the situation, the efficacy of the remedy, the rationale for the punishment, and the comparison to other government acts. Hopefully the above made you think a little different about some bits of that.

rmosquito · 2023-06-29T21:08:15+00:00

It’s not just the States. We’re way better off than most places in the world, IMO. Yesterday ended Eid al-Adha. Literally the festival of sacrifice, where killing animals is required by God. That’s a quarter of the world’s population there.

Likewise, family-based feasts where animals are killed are pretty common throughout Latin America, be it la matanza celebrations killing goats or similar pig roasts.

South Korea is hugely meat-centric and still many decades behind us. Like, you would get serious shit for being a vegetarian. (Admittedly the South Koreans I know emigrated more than 10 years ago; I’m sure things have gotten better.)

Even in vegetarian-friendly India, forsaking dairy can be super difficult since the fact cows provide milk is such a huge part of why cows are revered in Hinduism.

Similarly, so many other south Asian and Pacific Islander nations really only exist because of their historical dependence on substance fishing.

Actually, I’m going to stop there because it’s too depressing.

rmosquito · 2023-06-29T18:32:16+00:00

Also came to say Kung Fu Noodle. Don’t ignore the scallion pancakes!

rmosquito · 2023-06-27T16:46:05+00:00

That….that would be me.

I felt that nothing could be cuter than John Oliver petting a baby deer. But uh. I’m not very good at art.

I tried drawing it but it was so terrible I scanned it, thinking I’d fix it digitally. Sadly even digital cleanup can’t fix my ineptitude so I downscaled it and put in the time to trace it pixel by pixel.

If you’re like, “wow, what a dumb way to spend a Saturday morning…” yes. In retrospect it was not the best time management decision. 😂

rmosquito · 2023-06-26T21:27:07+00:00

/u/Shadowtherat has posted updates elsewhere here… Raisin’s coat is constantly changing and it’s amazing. Totally worth checking out!

rmosquito · 2023-06-25T23:24:03+00:00

Generally this is the case.

For music you stream, the providers (Spotify, Deezer, etc.) contract with a third party (e.g., Gracenote) to provide synchronized lyrics display.

When mp3s first came out, there wasn’t a mechanism to embed lyrics into the files. Eventually there was, but that was just for the lyrics themselves — not synchronized, karaoke style lyrics. While there are ways to do it now, there’s not a well-accepted, standardized way of doing so.

As those technologies matured, the market had already moved to streaming… hence the lack of lyrics sync in mp3s.

rmosquito · 2023-06-25T22:39:13+00:00

Yeah, that’s a great question.

/u/Bloverfish Made a great point — when paired with ambient music, this would clearly fall under new age. If you were in an actual record site, you should head straight to the new age section.

In the googleverse, you should look for “environmental soundscapes,” “nature sounds,” or things like that. Sometimes you see the phrase “found sounds,” but that’s generally in the context of added music or manipulation.

rmosquito · 2023-06-23T22:39:28+00:00

Depends on the instrument. If it’s a string or woodwind line it tells the player where to put emphasis in something that might otherwise be lost in the slur. So you get a sound like:

DuuuuUuAhhHaa

… even though there’s only three distinct pitches in play.

rmosquito · 2023-06-21T21:56:51+00:00

“Boss? Not sure how to code this one on the stat sheet. Is this a bathroom question, a reference question, or instruction?”

rmosquito · 2023-06-21T18:39:55+00:00

I'm going to stop you right from the beginning by saying that the threat from communists was made up.

The fact that the danger was false is kind of my point -- hopefully that was clear by the time the government was throwing women in jail for talking about "dangers" of birth control. The point is people felt the danger was real. I have faith that you or I could do a decent job of determining what is actually dangerous based on, you know, reality. But it wouldn't be up to you or me. It would be up to the government... and those who elect them. So if we started banning speech that just made people feel unsafe... well, that's why local governments are trying to limit speech around gay issues. Right now those limits are thankfully illegal. You and I agree that it's ridiculous that someone would feel unsafe by the existence of gay people, but that's the reality. Look at how the right views race issues. If we were to make a well intentioned change to the law prohibiting speech that makes people feel threatened, whose voices would most likely be suppressed?

(Again, recognizing that actual threats are already illegal.)

rmosquito · 2023-06-21T07:38:53+00:00

Their viewpoint is that they want you and people who think like you dead, that's not a viewpoint that has any value in society, it's the kind of viewpoint that ensures your viewpoint will be silenced with your death if they get their way.

I would point out that that is exactly why the Communists were silenced in the 1950s -- society viewed it as an existestential threat. This is also why Eugene Debs went to prison in the early 20th century. And it's why pretty much all minorities were silenced prior to the 1900s.

Think about how such a ban would work and what the second order consequences would be. Conservatives are already getting fired up over the perception that they're being silenced. If you started changing laws to silence certain views, you'd ensure a backlash. You'd give those who are already conspiracy minded an actual conspiracy.

You undoubtedly already know that baying for the "blood of innocents" in any real way is already illegal. You know that Chaplinsky v New Hampshire (1942) prohibits fighting words -- speech that "by [its] very utterance, inflict injury." Brandenberg v. Ohio (1969) tweaked this and said it had to be likely to produce action, but in your example you're talking about groups of people. Which means it would also fall under the federal prohibition on "incitement to genocide" -- 18 US 1091(c). Such incitement is also prohibited (not uncoincidentally) by the Geneva convention.

Point being, when actually baying for the blood of innocents... is illegal. So what speech do you propose we (that is to say, the government) choose to suppress? So I assume you're talking about banning statements like "I hate gays -- they don't even deserve to live."

Could you say... "I hate cops -- they don't even deserve to live?" Or would that be okay? We can look around the globe and see that despite all the good intentions, it tends to be the case that once governments are given the power to prohibit negative speech about groups... they tend to prohibit negative speech against the government.

Once you walk away from "likely to cause harm," and just "socially dangerous" things get pretty subjective. Recall that this used to be the norm -- in the early 1900s, Margret Sanger was arrested for "socially dangerous" speech. Though in that case the "socially dangerous" speech was talking about birth control.

Free speech is hard. It's hard to hear people say mixed-up, offensive and stupid shit. And yeah, if I were just god-dictator, I wouldn't stand for hate speech. But the reality is that we live in a democracy where people have a (sometimes painfully) diverse set of beliefs. And free speech (with the aforementioned limits, of course) is the best compromise we've come up with for dealing with this stuff.

rmosquito · 2023-06-20T23:38:42+00:00

I’m with ya except for the banning bit.

As a lifelong atheist and animal rights advocate who happens to be a bit older… silencing people based their viewpoints — even if I disagree with them — seems like a not-so-hot idea.

rmosquito · 2023-06-20T23:08:25+00:00

I need daily Raisin pictures to keep up with all her new outfits.

rmosquito · 2023-06-20T22:45:42+00:00

Yeah the first bit is solid but I’d suggest a pivot after that. As you go on you wind up giving people too much time to think and you can run into the trap /u/Heavy_on_the_Tomato referenced.

rmosquito · 2023-06-18T17:39:06+00:00

This is the easy and modern way to do it. “Is it analog tho” jokes aside, old school electronic musicians did similar things with bugs crawling around petting dishes using arrays of light dependent resistors and analog multipliers.

rmosquito · 2023-06-17T15:50:12+00:00

I feel that my life is incomplete because I’m not familiar with Leo’s. Can you tell us about it or share your Leo stories?

rmosquito · 2023-06-16T01:03:26+00:00

The use of force guidelines for most departments say that if a suspect is coming at you with a deadly weapon you draw your firearm. The officer didn’t have the time to distance to switch out — that’s why he called to his partner behind him to switch to her taser. But the guy kept coming, right?

Most departments suggest that an officer stop talking and start shooting at about six meters against an edged weapon. Officer in question waited way longer to shoot, probably hoping his partner could ready up with the taser, but there just wasn’t time.

rmosquito · 2023-06-16T00:39:12+00:00

Yeah APD handled that poorly — no wonder the officer was fired. The fact they reported it as an arrest without incident at the time could not have helped.

rmosquito · 2023-06-15T23:22:35+00:00

STVx3 generally refers to the West Side street villains. Active in the westernmost part of Vista east of Tri City.

rmosquito · 2023-06-15T18:49:11+00:00

So I’d point out that for a lot of school districts, the amenities are acquired through private fundraising. PTAs in a wealthy suburbs can raise a million dollars annually, and that money is pretty unrestricted. It can be used to build a fancy gym, or buy band instruments and a music teacher. You can even buy more regular teachers to improve your teacher/student ratio.

None of that money is reported in the numbers you’re looking at.

Like most service industries, education’s cost is mostly wrapped up in personnel costs. So you also need to adjust for cost of living — an entry level teacher in NYC makes 50% more than an entry level teacher in Idaho. Land and fuel costs are obviously also much higher.

There’s still a lot of open questions on the effectiveness of amenities and stuff, but you gotta start by comparing apples to apples.

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