A Geek Goes Flying

... For, essentially, being deplatformed. I’ll be interested to see how this pans out, since I believe arbitrary and capricious denial of access, without meaningful due process or appeal ( an apparent example , although, also an example of someone who, based on that post, I personally wish would speak less ... but I don’t support YouTube banning them ...) is a huge issue for our present moment. (Yes, I know, they’re private entities, but they’ve also become the equivalent of the town square - see, e.g.,  Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins , 447 U.S. 74 (1980) - and IMHO there should be more protections; of course, that doesn’t scale ...). I don’t know anything about Tristan Tate. I don’t  really  know that much about Andrew, except that he seems like a loathsome individual, who has the douchiest take on reading I’ve ever encountered: But I would  like to see some good law re access to platforms like this. Good law. Which makes me worry that the apparently ...

We transitioned to a cloud-based SaaS legal practice management system about a year ago. It’s been going fine, after some initial hiccups in the roll-out (a story for another time). But we were just subbed out of a case, rare but it happens, and come to realize there’s no easy way to export all of the meta data we’ve created for a case. Our “file” is no longer just paper documents (or the PDF equivalents). When being subbed out, our ethical duty is to provide the client (or, in this case, their new counsel): “all client materials and property [] includ[ing] correspondence, pleadings, deposition transcripts, experts’ reports and other writings, exhibits, and physical evidence, whether in tangible, electronic or other form, and other items reasonably necessary to the client’s representation,” Rules of Professional Conduct 1.16(e)(1) . So I sat down today and created an API key and figured out how to at least authenticate, in hacked-together PHP code. Heavier lifting tomorrow. Er, later t...

Censorship emoji “The Chinese government has maintained that it’s ‘always been open and transparent’ about Covid.” ( Newly declassified report shows U.S. intelligence community remains divided over likely origin of Covid ) Sure. Like arresting a physician for “spreading rumors” when the virus first started circulating. ( Dr. Li Wenliang was arrested for warning China about the coronavirus. Then he died from it ) Sigh. ETA:  In Wuhan, doctors knew the truth. They were told to keep quiet : [T]his tableau of chaos was hidden from the Chinese people — and the world — in early 2020. Chinese authorities had acknowledged on Dec. 31, 2019, that there were 27 cases of “pneumonia of unknown origin,” and 44 confirmed cases on Jan. 3, 2020. The Wuhan health commission reported 59 cases on Jan. 5, then abruptly reduced the number to 41 on Jan. 11, and claimed there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission or any signs of doctors getting sick. That claim was a lie. The coronavirus ...