Ask and answer stupid questions here! - Page 387

On January 19 2016 21:03 SoSexy wrote:
Do you think my flatmates (not roommates: flatmates) will get mad if I bring my mechanical keyboard with me? It's a waste to leave it at home

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On January 23 2016 02:33 ThomasjServo wrote:
Pretty much the same because the apple thing was just an anecdote Newton would shill was my understanding.

On January 23 2016 02:24 Epishade wrote:
How different would the world be if Newton sat under a bowling ball tree instead of an apple tree?

On January 23 2016 17:59 Oshuy wrote:


Any world with (natural) bowling ball trees would be quite different from ours I assume. Chances are bowling balls do not fall from a bowling ball tree, but simply fly away when ripe to move with their siblings to better hunting grounds.

On January 23 2016 18:20 Simberto wrote:
I started thinking about what kind of evolutionary pressure would lead to Bowling Ball trees developing.

Until i realized that we already live in a world with Bowling Ball trees.

On January 23 2016 21:42 Acrofales wrote:


Lucky for us and the theory of gravity, coconut palms don't do very well in cold and rainy England (or alternatively: good thing Newton was English and not Brazilian or Indonesian).

On January 24 2016 02:39 Djzapz wrote:
So I feel like I should know this but maybe one of you can help me to understand.

You guys may have heard that some idiot Canadian guy tweeted at some feminist ladies, they considered it harassment and they sued him or something, even though they could have blocked him. The courts wisely found out that being an asshole on the internet is not a crime (thankfully for at least one of the twitter ladies who herself apparently would bully people on the webs herself). The story is much more complicated than that but essentially it lasted 3 years and cost the guy $100,000 in legal fees, he lost his job and he's unemployable because his name was dragged through the mud since he was formally accused of harassing people on the webs, etc.

My question basically is, how do you go and recuperate the legal fees you paid to defend yourself from frivolous litigation? It seems like if you're out there you're at risk of being hammered down by the law, and even if you win, you lose. Those women who went after him, they lost their case, surely they lost some money but it was their decision. And he won, but at the end of the day his life is ruined. How can you trust a legal system which has outcomes like this?

On January 24 2016 03:56 KwarK wrote:

If it becomes a larger problem people should buy legal defence insurance. As it is I'm happy with the result. The man had the right to defend himself and he did so and he won. That defence is like any other purchase, he could have spent less on it and got a worse defence or more and gotten a better defence.

It's also worth noting that he was targeting them. What the court found was that he was not threatening them and that they had no reason to feel threatened and that his actions fell under free speech. I could go through the post history of people I disagree with on reddit and downvote all their posts and that would be targeting them online. If people don't wish to hire him because of his notoriety that's just a consequence of him being an asshole online, albeit not one he could reasonably have foreseen. In the last few days we've seen a Taco Bell exec and a neurologist resident lose their positions after going crazy at an Uber driver who put them on youtube. The fact that this guy was found not guilty of anything criminal does not mean that people have to hire him.

On January 24 2016 03:17 Simberto wrote:
Isn't it often the case that in the case of a frivolous lawsuit, the person filing the suit has to cover the defendants bill? I have never actually been in contact with the law, but that is how i assumed it worked, because anything else is ridiculous and would allow people with money to destroy people with less money just by constantly filing suits against them.

On January 24 2016 08:23 Cascade wrote:
Again, no sympathy for the guy, but if you successfully defend, you still have to pay?? :o wtf? So a rich person can in practice jail or bankrupt or both a poor person by just going after them with all kinds of random actions? That can't be... Right?? :o

On a different note, I've never understood the "on the internet" defence. How is being an asshole on a webpage any different from publishing it in a newspaper? How is a PM on a website different from a SMS or phone call? People don't seem to

I feel it's similar to the "i was drunk" defence in a way, where people try to argue that it's not as bad to be demeaning, rude or even violent because you were drunk.