> Roadside Picnic I believe would also fall into this category. Though the aliens are just theoretical in the book and the characters deal with what is speculated to be the aftermath of an alien visit.
Another sci-fi classic sorta made into a movie (Stalker).
I've only read the first book, and that a while ago, but my memory is that, while humans are the focus of Thompson's Rosewater trilogy, they are again neither the Big Bad nor the Big Good.
> Rather than think in terms of making things cheaper for people to afford we should think how to produce wealthier people who could afford better than the cheapest of cheapest crap.
I'm not trying to be snarky, but, if the principle is broadly applied, then what is the difference between these two? (I agree that, if it can only be applied to a limited population, making a few poor people wealthier might be better than making a few products cheaper.)
> If that were true, how could it be anything but ok? Should I feel guilty because I evolved from monkeys and carry around the leftist equivalent of original sin?
I think that there's a gap between "how can it be anything but OK" and "should I feel guilty." There are plenty of things that aren't OK, but about which you don't need to feel guilty. Should you feel guilty that your body intrinsically craves foods that aren't good for you? I'd say that no purpose is served by feeling that way, but that doesn't mean that it's healthy to indulge those cravings.
> Reputation guides your behavior toward that person. But they're no longer around. There is no behavior toward them. They're gone. Their reputation is no longer relevant.
It also culturally informs someone's perceived suitability as a role model. It doesn't matter to the dead person if they are held in high or low esteem, but it may matter to people in their formative stages deciding whose influence they follow and whose they shun.
My suspicion is that Ken Paxton thought Samsung was Chinese, and soon after the court action was submitted found out they were actually South Korean (or at least 'not Chinese').
It's the routine fascist shakedown playbook at this point:
1. Make some big noise and token action about an issue that has been festering for decades, while their own party has been the primary opposition to any kind of substantive lasting reform (eg US GDPR)
2. Rally the useful idiots to rally around the cause of widely-desired reform, backfitting all the ideals behind the issue as if fascists have any appreciation for lofty ideals
3. Let the target company marinate and roast under the pressure until they capitulate and send a bribe and/or other tribute
4. Drop the token action after the attention spans of their useful idiots have expired and they've moved on to the next spectacle
5. If the issue comes to a head again, the useful idiots blame the "libuhruls" rather than having an ounce of self-awareness to realize their own leaders sandbagged and sold them out
Fairly typical in state courts, where trial-level judges are generally left to do what they please and often give little if any rationale. In federal courts, judges generally explain themselves (sometimes they are required to) en route to doing what they please.
There is no written decision on the vacating other than what you already linked.
Reading the TRO, a lot jumps out at me. To pick a single thing:
"The Court HOLDS that because the State seeks injunctive relief pursuant to an
authorized statute, which supersedes the common law, it need not prove immediate and irreparable injury, nor does the Court have to balance the equities when the State litigates in the public interest."
A quick search doesn't show me that texas courts have interpreted it to do so anyway, but maybe they have - i'm not familiar enough with texas law to say for sure.
It's likely that they set some conditions and said "if you meet these conditions, we'll vacate the order" - probably some sort of compliance with Texas regulations governing what can and can't and should and shouldn't be tracked, and Samsung technically complied?
> [1] I once worked on a system that kept logs of certain types of query so it could display a guess of how long things were going to take and a progress bar to go with it, but this was actually more irritating to the users than no progress display as it would sometime jump from a few % directly to done or sit at 99% for ages (in the end the overly complicated guessing method was replaced by a simple spinner).
In the Tiger era, the OS X start-up progress bar worked this way—it kept track of how long boot-ups would take, and then displayed its best guess based on that.
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