MBFC bot, this is the Agence France-Presse. Barron's frequently sources their international news from the AFP, but I know your very existence erases nuance, so I understand how you as a bot wouldn't understand that.

I'm 100% with you on this. It sounds like copium, but creative limitation absolutely comes into play here. Before becoming pescetarian, vegetarian, and then eventually vegan, my diet was terrible and had almost no variety despite the fact that I like to cook for myself. If I went to a restaurant, it would be the one thing I knew I liked. At home, even though I could technically make essentially anything I wanted, there was an intense gravitational pull around meat and cheese keeping me in the same sets of dishes with little variety. It was generic burgers or pepperoni pizza or canned soup or basic burritos or pasta Alfredo/with meat sauce or paninis consisting of 90% meat/cheese and 10% everything else. If I was feeling "healthy", it was either a type of meat with a baked potato and broccoli or a salad of iceberg lettuce with ranch, garlic croutons, bacon bits, and cranberries.

Now, I try (and often end up loving) new foods almost on instinct including the "weird" ones; I've come to understand that so many foods I didn't previously like were either prepared improperly or I wasn't getting the right kind; the meals are almost inherently healthier; I use a huge variety of spices and sauces to make my meals different and vibrant every single day; and my dishes don't revolve around essentially "a single type of meat with some ancillary stuff" or cheese and carbs.

Nothing was physically stopping me from doing that on an omnivorous diet, but I personally would never have because I treated meat and cheese like a crutch.

Nintendo sues OpenAI after determining it infringes on its patent (JP2002-905518) for a "dystopian AI assistant" used in Metroid Fusion.

??? No, no it does not. SB 490 does. SB 1050 when discussing the agency says "as provided by SB 490 of the 2023–24 Regular Session". It is unambiguously predicated on the passage of SB 490. This is just mental gymnastics trying to take what's ultimately a fuck-up by the state legislature and push it onto Newsom for no reason whatsoever.

"Just put the bill on the books because I don't understand that a veto doesn't make a bill start from scratch and that the bill sets out legal obligations it can't fulfill."

"Just use the bill to create the agency that the bill never creates and thereby doesn't grant you the power to create."

Boy, you know you fucked up when not only does such a divided Senate vote unanimously against you, but it's to hold you in criminal contempt after they've spent the last half-century not doing that.

No you don't, because the tasks set out by this bill (SB 1050) are delegated to a non-existent agency (the "California American Freedmen Affairs Agency") established by SB 490 (not passed), and the bill requires that this non-existent agency carry out those responsibilities. This bill can be sent back to Newsom's desk whenever; it's simply the case that right now, it's not viable legislation, because it's bestowing responsibility onto an agency that presently doesn't exist and can't be created. In fact, it strictly sets a deadline for January 1, 2026, that the agency will "create a database, to be updated annually thereafter, of rightful owners". If that second bill never gets passed, then you have legislation on the books that says "you will have this thing done in 15 months even though you physically can't because the agency tasked with doing it does not exist."

This doesn't make the bill start over from scratch, and I don't understand where you're getting that idea from.

Okay, many of Newsom's vetoes are complete BS, but I think this article really buries the lead:

The proposal by itself would not have been able to take full effect because lawmakers blocked another bill to create a reparations agency that would have reviewed claims.

“I thank the author for his commitment to redressing past racial injustices,” Newsom said in a statement. “However, this bill tasks a nonexistent state agency to carry out its various provisions and requirements, making it impossible to implement.”

I mean... If you have two co-dependent bills, one where people can make claims and one where you create an agency that reviews those claims, I feel like you kind of have to veto one if the other fails. If the bill fails to establish the agency to review the claims, then how do claims get processed? Have you just created a bill that allows the people you've wronged to send their complaints into a black hole? Here's hoping this gets pushed back through at some point but either with both bills intact or combined into the same piece of legislation.

You never had morning meetings at your retail job where the pep talk was "Let's get out there and do our best, and whatever you do, guys, remember not to violate the law today"?

Pigs are intelligent, emotional, and cognitively complex. They don't deserve to have their good name compared to cops.

Yeah, I would tentatively agree that nitrogen hypoxia when performed correctly is in fact painless (although we're also talking about the same Sarco that just got several people arrested by running afoul of Switzerland's product safety and chemical laws on the first ever test of their capsule). Of course here, whatever method Alabama is using is not painless and caused its first victim intense, prolonged suffering.

For those wondering, this is part of a quote attributed to Lincoln by Teddy Roosevelt in a 1910 speech where he attributes several quotes to Lincoln. A fuller excerpt of the Roosevelt speech is as follows:

Part of our debt to [Lincoln] is because he forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. He said: "I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind." And again: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." If that remark was original with me, I should be even more strongly denounced as a Communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln’s. I am only quoting it; and that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear. Now, let the working man hear his side. "Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable; is a positive good in the world." And then comes a thoroughly Lincoln-like sentence: "Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

Per the John Oliver episode on the death penalty, there's substantial evidence that murder by nitrogen suffocation is extremely painful.

Edit: the episode and timestamp in question. Nitrogen hypoxia (edit: at least as it's being performed by these ass-backward hicks) is not painless as some commenters are suggesting. Section lasts from about 23:00 to 24:45. An excerpt from the Wikipedia article properly sourced to the Associated Press, BBC News, and the Montgomery Advertiser (local Alabama newspaper):

Though the State Attorney General said afterward that Smith's execution showed that nitrogen hypoxia was an "effective and humane method of execution", several people watching the execution reported that Smith "thrashed violently on the gurney" for several minutes, with his death reportedly occurring 10 minutes after the nitrogen was administered to the chamber. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the use.

And to be clear, the only reason these sick fucks are using nitrogen is because it's becoming increasingly difficult to source ~~potassium chloride~~ the barbituate and paralytic for lethal injections because the optics for companies supplying them is abysmal.