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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • IMAX film is twice as wide as standard film. 70 mm instead of 35 mm. The IMAX film platters are physically ginormous. All that extra film gives you a bunch of extra resolution compared to regular film.

    The first catch is that “IMAX standard” may not be real IMAX. I don’t know exactly what that means. Perhaps it could even be digital projection that aims to be comparable to IMAX in some ways?

    Second catch is that a lot of films that are shown in IMAX theaters were not actually shot on IMAX originally. If a film was shot on 35mm, say, and then printed onto IMAX, you don’t get all of the resolution benefits, and you may also get letter boxes or pan-and-scan because the aspect ratio isn’t the same. IMAX cameras are massively more expensive and logistically difficult than regular film cameras.


  • Usually in these stories, Batman or whoever leaves behind enough evidence to support a successful prosecution, along with the tied-up bad guy.

    The vigilante broke the law to gain evidence, so all the evidence the vigilante obtained would be thrown out,

    That’s actually an interesting situation. The fourth and fifth amendments put restrictions on the government, not private vigilantes. So if the cops just happen to find evidence in plain view, there won’t be a direct constitutional reason to suppress it.

    Now if the local prosecutor has a pattern or practice of deliberately turning a blind eye to the unlicensed private investigators that routinely supply them with illegally obtained information, there’s probably a claim there. But it’s a lot more complicated to make that case than a straight-up 4th amendment case.







  • They don’t like the U.S. either, as they believe that they are an imperialist power that wants to take advantage of the Middle East. That is one reason that the United States deems Iran an enemy.

    In 1953, the CIA and MI6 effectively ended representative democracy in Iran when they backed a coup d’etat that deposed Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mosadegh. Mosadegh had tried to audit the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which later became a division of BP).

    The 1953 coup resulted in the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, ruling autocratically and with heavy support from the United States. This status continued until 1979, when an Islamist revolution deposed the Shah and installed the Islamist government led by a clerical Supreme Leader that exists today.

    In 2013, the CIA released declassified documents that showed that the CIA planned and carried out the 1953 coup using all kinds of abhorrent tactics, including bribery of public officials, astroturfed paid protesters, and false flag operations.

    So hopefully that explains why the US is “the great Satan” to Iran, and why Iran keeps spouting “death to USA” rhetoric.








  • More like after they lose the prelim injunction and the stay pending appeal. My guess, in the 8th circuit, is that they stand a chance at winning the stay pending appeal, which would let them keep rolling for a while.

    It’s a non trivial piece of 10th amendment litigation. Maybe Minnesota has a sovereign right to investigate a homicide. But does that oblige the feds to do or not do something? Does it matter if the feds are the only way to get critical evidence? Is it important whether the feds are actively trying to thwart and deny MN’s police power? Does MN have to prove they can beat the Supremacy Clause on this case before they can get stuff?



  • The credit card companies have always tried to prevent merchants from doing this by inserting language prohibiting either credit card surcharges or cash discounts into the contract agreements with the merchants. Obviously, credit card companies want to make it easy and convenient for consumers to use their credit cards.

    I can’t immediately find it, but at some point I think 10-15 years ago, some merchants sued the credit card companies over this, and they won a court ruling that said that the clauses forbidding cash discounts and surcharging are unenforceable. As a result, merchants are now free to do it, but there are various rules. And some state legislatures have started to get involved with regulating things.



  • The long term problem is that lawyers are often not stupid, and they can see that working for this DOJ will have deleterious effects on their future careers when this stuff is over. I’ve heard that the Minneapolis office is down to 9 attorneys, and should be staffed for 50.

    But the immediate problem here dates back to Rumsfeld v. Padilla*. In that case, the supreme court decided that habeas petitions must be filed in the district of actual, physical confinement. This created a race condition, where ICE is trying to get these people out of Minnesota as fast as possible, and these people’s lawyers are trying to file the lawsuits in Minnesota before their clients physically leave the state. ICE would prefer for these petitions to be filed in Texas, because the Texas district courts are a lot more favorable to them. The Minnesota lawyers don’t want to have to file in Texas, both because it’s a disadvantage to them, and because they aren’t admitted to practice in Texas, and it’s a big hassle to work around that.

    Combine that with Trump v. CASA, and no one wants to try a habeas class action. So you have a crap ton of individualized habeas petitions, all over the same issue, which is ICE’s incorrect interpretation of federal immigration law. And in many, many of these cases, they properly got filed in Minnesota, but the prisoners got shipped to Texas anyway. The Minnesota judges are figuring out that all these cases are the same, and they’re making the decisions real fast now, and ICE is not keeping up, by design. It’s a total logistical cluster.

    *Yes, it’s that Donald Rumsfeld, and that Jose Padilla, the dirty bomb guy.