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Justice Stevens reads the fine print

matthewbutterick.com

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Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#151

Post by mountainb »

denton-scratch wrote: post #137
rileymat2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this a great example of what the OP was talking about? You did not get off because of absolute innocence, but “technical minutiae as if they are source code”. But it does answer the OPs question, some are better at navigating it.

I don't think it's "technical minutiae"; I was charged with an offence that I didn't commit. My advocate just took the trouble to read the Act that I was charged under. Given that the court knew I hadn't committed the offence I was charged with, it would certainly have been a miscarriage of justice to go on and convict me anyway, and I could have got it overturned on appeal.

Prosecutors make this kind of mistake on a routine basis.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#152

Post by lbriner »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #134
lordnacho wrote: post #43

Someone needs to do something about the legal-industrial complex. It's a complete fiction that normal people read pages and pages of contracts, EULAs, and that type of stuff. It's basically impossible to read the docs for all the services you buy, and even if you did you wouldn't know what it meant in terms of law. Yet we have lawyers talking through the technical minutiae as if they are source code. There's a huge d…

What's likely to happen is we develop some sort of UCC-esque base contract that normalizes all the fine print boilerplate so that future contracts can just reference it in a manner to the tune of "these terms of service are like literally every other terms of service you agree to but with the following exceptions/specifications".

I thought the same thing but ultimately, many organisations want loads of exceptions to the standards for whatever reason. My wife is a Solicitor and when I proposed this, she laughed. There are already standard legal forms in the UK for many things but it never works out like that.

Even if the general intention is to use standard contracts, each company will have its own concerns: "Our ships are cheaper but a little older, we should reduce the amount of liability accordingly", "We use cheaper off-shore staff so we need to add clauses around languages etc." All of these add up to the mess that we end up with in the Ts and Cs.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#153

Post by [deleted] »

irrational wrote: post #136

> Though David Foster Wallace’s famous jour­nal­istic argu­ment against cruising had damp­ened my interest Uh, did anyone else click this link? If you did, you find find a pdf that is effectively impossible to read on a mobile device. This seems ironic in an article about being able to read the fine print.

[deleted]

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#154

Post by marcosdumay »

cameronh90 wrote: post #78
Xcelerate wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone who has read cruise contracts in detail will never want to go on one. Cooks with experience in commercial kitchens never want to eat at a restaurant again. Someone who is familiar with standards of bridge inspections in most towns hesitates every time they drive over one... ...someone who writes software for a living is afraid to fly on airplanes (I joke, but only sort of)

On the contrary, as someone with a great interest in aeroplanes and aviation safety, I would choose to travel everywhere by airliner if airports weren't such a depressing experience. Learning more has made me extremely confident in aviation (737 MAX issue aside but even that is nothing compared to the risk of driving).

> 737 MAX issue aside but even that is nothing compared to the risk of driving

I run the numbers when the second accident happened, and the 737 MAX had a similar risk profile to using a motorcycle in the city. Way higher than driving.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#155

Post by bombcar »

rileymat2 wrote: post #142
denton-scratch wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's "technical minutiae"; I was charged with an offence that I didn't commit. My advocate just took the trouble to read the Act that I was charged under. Given that the court knew I hadn't committed the offence I was charged with, it would certainly have been a miscarriage of justice to go on and convict me anyway, and I could have got it overturned on appeal.

Oh I agree, but the law was confusing enough that an official bungled the charges.

This is way more common than people realize, and one of the reasons courts accept "no contest" and pleas so often, especially in things like traffic laws.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#156

Post by pvg »

irrational wrote: post #136

> Though David Foster Wallace’s famous jour­nal­istic argu­ment against cruising had damp­ened my interest Uh, did anyone else click this link? If you did, you find find a pdf that is effectively impossible to read on a mobile device. This seems ironic in an article about being able to read the fine print.

If you haven't before, you should definitely read the DFW piece since it's more or less the best thing he's written.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#157

Post by [deleted] »

lordnacho wrote: post #43

Someone needs to do something about the legal-industrial complex. It's a complete fiction that normal people read pages and pages of contracts, EULAs, and that type of stuff. It's basically impossible to read the docs for all the services you buy, and even if you did you wouldn't know what it meant in terms of law. Yet we have lawyers talking through the technical minutiae as if they are source code. There's a huge d…

[deleted]

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#158

Post by bombcar »

nerdponx wrote: post #109
runnerup wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who work in restaurant kitchens eat far more from restaurant kitchens, not less. I did for quite a few years and I’m still very happy to eat at any diner, drive through, or Michelin star restaurant.

I think the kitchen thing is mostly a myth. Although it's true that often the refrigerators used during meal service tend not to be as cold as they are supposed to be, because the door is constantly being opened.

I think the main thing I learned from my commercial kitchen work is how similar they all are behind the scenes - the equipment and often skill of the line cooks at your local truck stop and the local fancy dining are closer than you expect.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#159

Post by specialist »

lordnacho wrote: post #43

Someone needs to do something about the legal-industrial complex. It's a complete fiction that normal people read pages and pages of contracts, EULAs, and that type of stuff. It's basically impossible to read the docs for all the services you buy, and even if you did you wouldn't know what it meant in terms of law. Yet we have lawyers talking through the technical minutiae as if they are source code. There's a huge d…

Yes and: I'm fascinated by 5-4's critiques of law, the legal system (in the USA), law school, courts, and so forth. https://www.fivefourpod.com

IANAL. Emphatically. I just can't wrap my head around it all. I'm an outsider looking in, from a distance. But it seems important, like something I should know. So I've been reading books. Mostly stuff from the library. But I still don't feel any smarter about this stuff.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#160

Post by JumpCrisscross »

willcipriano wrote: post #124
krageon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spend a little time thinking about the amount of restaurants versus the amount of actual people there are in a country, you will realise one is relatively easy to enforce compared to the other. Furthermore, the conversation was about the average. It is not the case that the average human being goes around snorting coke in the toilet every day, just as it is not the case that the average restaurant is some bast…

Having worked in them for a decade I know how it works in practice. Perhaps whatever country you are from has sparking clean restaurants full of well paid, sober people but in the US, they are disgusting as a rule. My peers in the UK reported the same. We had to call a ambulance for our health inspector once beacuse they overdosed in the bathroom. Check out Kitchen Confidential if you want to see this backed up, and…

> in the US, they are disgusting as a rule

Sanitation is enforced at the local level. Making blanket statements about the U.S. carries little information.

Restaurants in New York (county) are spotless. Restaurants in San Francisco, less reliably so. The broader point holds, however--people in the restaurant industry tend to go out to restaurants.

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