Patterico's Pontifications

2/10/2014

“Dumb” Starbucks Opens, Soon to Close, in Los Feliz

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:54 am



Rainn Wilson put up these pictures on Instagram of a new business calling itself “Dumb Starbucks.”

Screen Shot 2014-02-10 at 7.47.30 AM

The store uses the Starbucks logo and other intellectual property belonging to Starbucks, but — here’s the clever part!!!! — puts the word “dumb” in front of it!

According to a Frequently Asked Questions document posted at their location, they seem to think they can do this because of parody law:

Screen Shot 2014-02-10 at 7.48.27 AM

Despite admitting that it’s not actually a parody, but a cheap dodge:

Screen Shot 2014-02-10 at 7.49.12 AM

Yeah, good luck with that. Nothing like providing a big corporation a giant EXHIBIT A in their lawsuit against you.

So long, “Dumb Starbucks”! We hardly knew ye.

Thanks to Dana and Popehat on Twitter.

P.S. My first reaction to this was that it was some kind of hoax or weird advertising ploy. I’m still not sure it isn’t.

Michael Hiltzik Continues His Absurd Shilling for ObamaCare

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:44 am



Michael Hiltzik is the key ObamaCare shill at the L.A. Times, and he continues to carry their water by talking about how totally awesome it is that ObamaCare will cost 2.5 million jobs over the next ten years, because, you know, CHOICE!!!!

The CBO projects that [ObamaCare] will reduce the supply of labor, not the availability of jobs. There’s a big difference. In fact, it suggests that aggregate demand for labor (that is, the number of jobs) will increase, not decrease; but that many workers or would-be workers will be prompted by the ACA to leave the labor force, many of them voluntarily.

As economist Dean Baker points out, this is, in fact, a beneficial effect of the law, and a sign that it will achieve an important goal. It helps “older workers with serious health conditions who are working now because this is the only way to get health insurance. And (one for the family-values crowd) many young mothers who return to work earlier than they would like because they need health insurance. This is a huge plus.”

The next thing you know, he’ll be saying it’s awesome that the Web site didn’t work well, because of all the subsidy money we saved.

Wait, what? He actually did say that??

[T]he problems of the healthcare.gov website reduced enrollments, cutting the government’s bill for premium subsidies.

Woo-hoo!

In twenty years, I guess the argument will be that the severe deterioration of our health care system has contributed to the early deaths of millions of Americans, thus cutting down significantly on overall health care costs.

Why, there’s simply no end to the benefits of this wonderful law, comrades!

Monday Morning Silliness: L.A. Times Reports Suspect in Fatal Crash Suffered a Ruptured “Blatter”

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:34 am



A piece by Matt Stevens in the L.A. Times says:

Authorities have identified a suspected drunk driver who they say drove the wrong direction on the 60 Freeway in Diamond Bar early Sunday and caused an accident that killed six people.

Olivia Carolee Culbreath, 21, of Fontana has been arrested on suspicion of felony DUI and felony manslaughter, said Rodrigo Jimenez, a California Highway Patrol spokesman on the scene. Culbreath is in serious condition at the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center with a broken femur and a ruptured bladder, Jimenez said.

No problem there. The thing is, that last sentence initially read that the suspect had a ruptured “blatter.” And when professional newspeople put that stuff on the Internet, it stays there — if you know where to look.

The tipoff comes in the comments. The first one (at the bottom) says:

Ruptured “blatter”? What is wrong with this newspaper. It’s a ruptured BLADDER! Please read what you write/type.

And it turns out that if you put this phrase into Google:

Culbreath is in serious condition at the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center with a broken femur and a ruptured blatter, Jimenez said.

You get a result that shows two links: one to a news aggregator that scraped the L.A. Times article, and one to the L.A. Times article.

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The link to the aggregator is still available and I have preserved a screenshot here. (That URL in the bottom left of the screenshot is the URL you get when you hover the cursor over the “more” at the end of the quote.)

By the way, in response to the commenter “Please read what you write/type.” another commenter replied:

That would require someone that is being paid above minimum wage.

An argument for increasing the minimum wage!

Thanks to a sharp-eyed reader.


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