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Blue Check Twitter, but Mostly Disney District #Jakedown #Upjake #Hotjakes
90 Plays1 year ago
Not really any links for this one, Jake IS THE SOURCE. But, if you must:
- https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1172387897
- https://www.wftv.com/rss-snd/florida-lawmakers-file-amendment-go-after-disney-monorail/37NGRTNL4BG7BGHA5JXNHNWFGI/
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Transcript
Humorous Introductions and Jokes
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, Jones. Mr. Kit Man. What's up? Hit me. What? Oh, man. What? Yeah. OK.
00:00:14
Speaker
Oh my god. Wow, you really are bringing this. You've been saving all your energy for the last two weeks for the pause. Last week, during our record time, you were just in a dark room making those noises on your own. Yeah, I was doing my little John impression. I'm going to be bringing the little John heat. Guys, give me a minute. I'm going to step away from the computer for a second to get my grill inserted.
00:00:35
Speaker
Okay, sure. Wait, are you actually... I was ready for you. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was a little weird timing. We just hit record. It'd be great for you to wait for that and then be like, you guys give me a minute and you walk away for 30 seconds. You weren't educated enough to the bit. You should have been dedicated. No, you gotta stick with it. Yeah, we should hear the mic get hit as you get up and we go, oh, he's like, where's it going? And then we should hear you off mic, like from another room. Hold on, guys. I didn't even know the bit was happening until it happened.
00:01:00
Speaker
Until you did it. Well, no, you started it. You started with the what? What? Oh, that was not. No, I was. That was pure confusion. Uh huh. He was not referencing little John. He was little Jake and he was confused. Little Jake. Little Jake.
00:01:17
Speaker
It's Lil Jake like a is that a Disney TV? They're Disney family channel. Really? They got to look this up now. It's going to be around. I guarantee it. It's somebody's Twitter handle. Lil Jake King Lil Jake on Twitter. We're going to be looking this up. This is what the podcast is now. This guy does not look like the third one is Lil Jake on SoundCloud. I knew it. I have no chance. And it's the back of Ving Rhames head from Pulp Fiction, as is outstanding.
Netflix's Quickster and Domain Squatting
00:01:47
Speaker
I wonder what Quickster is up to these days. So, you know, Quickster was the name of the Netflix DVD service that they broke out for like 20 days back in like 2009 or 2000 or something.
00:02:04
Speaker
And they didn't have the Twitter handle. The Twitter handle was a guy with an Elmo smoking weed. And that was his avatar. And he was like milking it on Twitter. And he was like, I'm going to make so much money making them buy this from me. And it didn't work out for him. But is there domain squatting for Twitter? I mean, can you sue? Is that is that are there any? No, because he was squatting. He was just he just was quickster. And then they decided to change their name.
00:02:32
Speaker
I don't think that works for the cyber squatting stuff for domains. I think there have been people named Michael Jackson who were like, I don't understand. I just want to keep the domain. No, you still can't. That's right. Well, there's a France enthusiast that owned france.com. He had a France history page and France just took it like the country France.
00:02:53
Speaker
Don't they get their own top level domain suffix? Yeah, they get a whole suffix. Why do they need .com? Who is going to France.com to try to... I would love to just sort of do a Netflix documentary chasing down the people who visit France.com and figure out what the hell they were trying to do. They wanted to get tickets to fly to France and they typed in France.com.
00:03:13
Speaker
I want to see the documentary on people who go to AltaVista to Google for, or go to AltaVista. Yeah, you can't do that. It's a short talk. That's illegal. Xerox, myself, a copy of france.com, who go to AltaVista to look up france.com. That'd be fun.
Esquiring Minds Podcast Introduction
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, type it as you're saying type in the domain into the search box of, yeah, that is a park parks and recreation bit where whenever Jerry, who's like the heel of the office, whenever he wants to go to his email, he goes to Alta Vista and does a search for, uh, how do I log into my email or something like that? He says, please take me to google.com. Oh, there you go.
00:03:56
Speaker
Okay, so we should tell people what this is because they're not going to know. This is Esquiring Minds, episode 16 for April 27, 2023. These are three lawyers chatting, but they're not giving legal advice. Lawyer friends, actually. We're all friends. You can't tell that we actually all like each other. I'm one of the friends. I'm Andrew Layfield with Accent Technologies, but the listeners can't tell because they don't have the video and how we're smiling and we're so upbeat.
00:04:18
Speaker
Jake doesn't look tired at all. But anyway, I'm Andrew Lakey. I'm a tax and technology attorney from New Jersey. And I'm joined as always by Jason Raimsland, who has been known to sue bad bosses by as many as eight at a time, I believe, right? I don't know if it's quite that many. He can take a lot of the time. He can take a lot. Oh my gosh. All right. Phrasing. That may have been a little bit hyperbole, but there was one demand letter that went out a couple of weeks ago that I think went to like 16 recipients. Were they all bosses? Yeah, in various degrees in various ways.
00:04:46
Speaker
Have you ever sued Bruce Springsteen? Oh, that's not worth the pee. That's not worth the like joke. I don't think that would get you.
Bruce Springsteen's Traffic Stop Story
00:04:58
Speaker
That's like Swifty level hatred. But I guess less online harassment from the boss. What do Bruce Springsteen fans call themselves?
00:05:09
Speaker
boss heads. I don't know, but a quick story. He got pulled over by a state trooper on Sandy Hook and like a federal park here riding his motorcycle. He apparently had like parked his motorcycle, got off and taken a shot and then got back on his motorcycle and rode for a little while. Shot of alcohol? Yeah, shot of alcohol. Okay. No, he fired in the air. He continued on his way.
00:05:30
Speaker
Oh, no, no. He took a shot of alcohol. I think it was tequila. He rode for a little bit further and the cop pulled him over, had him do like a whole field sobriety thing, passed it all, but gave him a ticket anyway. And like word got
Career Changes and Farewells
00:05:42
Speaker
out and the governor got involved. And my understanding is that police officer was summarily fired. He didn't exist anymore. Yeah, I was. Well, yeah, that's the thing. It's it's illegal to drink and drive.
00:05:54
Speaker
It's illegal to drive under the influence. So it's like you can have a beer and then get in your car. But you can't have open things on that. Obviously, yeah. It's not good. You should not do that. No, we're not recommending that. Unless you're Bruce Springsteen, in which case, what are you, 75? Whatever the hell you want to do. Especially if you're on a motorcycle. You're only going to hurt yourself. But anyway, the other voice you're hearing, the brilliant Disney experts voice is Jake. Yeah.
00:06:18
Speaker
I'm a local government and land use attorney, and I'm still going to have that title. Man, it's been a week. That's been two for us, right? We haven't talked. Yes, it's been two weeks. It's been two weeks. This is my last week at my current firm. I'm switching firms. I'm going to do slightly different stuff.
00:06:42
Speaker
But I'm still going to like land use and local government still going to do some of that. Going to do some construction defects stuff, too. But yeah, it's been an emotional week for many, many reasons. A lot of cheerful goodbyes and cakes and gold watches and parties. I'm sure all the all the riches that come with.
00:07:06
Speaker
Sure. Being on Central Florida Spotlight on WFTV. Right. ABC affiliate here. I heard that you were bribed with a free water bottle. I was given a free water bottle. I did not drink from that water bottle and I left it behind. It was silly of me.
00:07:23
Speaker
Um, but I, it was nice to carry. It was nice to carry around as just a thing to carry while I was walking around and we will be like a little, like a thing that comfort thing to, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was my stuffed animal, except it was my water bottle in case I got thirsty. This is a sad story. So much better. This is sad. This is really sad.
00:07:43
Speaker
It is. So I think I have a mini topic before we get to the main topic, which is just going to be all the House of Mouse all the time, right? It's the Jake Down, part two. It's the Jake Down. Yeah, number two. We haven't done Up Jake. It was Jake Down, Hot Jake, and I guess Up Jake.
00:08:00
Speaker
Yeah, I thought of Up Jake today. I was very proud of myself. Yeah, that's a good one. That's it. Oh, Up Jake is like update. I was like, what the heck is Up Jake? Nothing. What's up with you? Yeah, right. There you go. Oh, but hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Let me get the drums. Where's the drums? There we go. I was hoping for sad trombone, but I'll take it.
00:08:21
Speaker
That's all I got. Sorry. Excellent. We did not set that up.
Elon Musk's Twitter Changes and Verification Chaos
00:08:25
Speaker
That is really perfect, though. This is grade A podcasting. So Andrew, why don't you tell us all about what's going on with the Blue Check Boogaloo.
00:08:33
Speaker
Sure. So the Blue Check Boogaloo, there's not a lot to say other than everything has gone wrong. As anyone who's listened to this show for any length of time will know, Elon Musk bought Twitter for a hefty sum. And it seems like what he mostly wanted to do was get rid of all the legacy Blue Check people. He didn't like that there were people who had Blue Checks simply because they were supposedly noteworthy. I think
00:08:58
Speaker
I was a blue check person. I think there are a lot of people that aren't noteworthy enough to have a blue check that had a blue check. I would count myself among them. I don't think I needed to have one. I also count you among them. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. And so in the time since he's owned, he's done a lot with the blue check thing. First, I'm trying to get the timelines right. Basically, I think first what he did, and correct me if I'm wrong, is he made it so that anyone can have the blue check if they just pay eight bucks. He kept the legacy blue check.
00:09:25
Speaker
And he added in anyone who pays for Twitter Blue, which is the $8 a month, right? Yeah. Right. So he puts that in. That is a debacle because people basically are able to buy legitimacy with their account, right? And so they put whatever name they want. There's no verification of identity. There's no verification of your avatar. It doesn't
00:09:45
Speaker
your check doesn't get taken away if you update those things. So once you get a blue check, even if it is checked by Twitter at that point, you can then later switch your picture to Barack Obama, switch your name to Barack Obama and start talking about how you're going to like, you know, rob a Taco Bell or something and it'll be fine. And for a period, you could click on the blue check and it would tell you whether it was paid for or whether it was legacy.
00:10:04
Speaker
And so if it was legacy, that meant they actually did some verification and determined that they were, you know, notable or whatever. Of course, the description was after Elon Musk, they may or may not be notable, which is right now. That's just like a spite statement because that's true literally all for everyone. Right. Exactly. There is no authentication system where you'd be able to be certain this person is notable.
00:10:29
Speaker
Yeah. So right. So initially, it sort of was clear, or at least it was clear enough. If you wanted to sort of dig in, you could see a profile was blue check because it was legacy and therefore somehow notable for some reason, or if it was just an eight dollar a month pay person. He had been threatening for some time. I think the initial deadline was going to be April 1st. It was going to be all the legacy blue checks were going to go away. But there's an obvious problem there if not too many people are buying these blue checks is it's that
00:10:54
Speaker
If you over overestimate how popular the Twitter blue plan is going to be, when you take away the legacy blue checks, people are going to notice how they don't see any more blue checks, basically, right? If you only have a very, a fraction of the original blue checkers and maybe a few more people have purchased Twitter blue, all of a sudden, it's just not going to be blue checks anymore. That doesn't look great.
00:11:15
Speaker
That deadline, I think, got extended tacitly. I don't think he explicitly said, I'm not doing April 1st. I think April 1st just came and it didn't happen. And then there was a new deadline at some point, right? He said beginning April 1st and then just nothing happened. Except that New York Times lost theirs because they publicly said they weren't going to buy it.
00:11:36
Speaker
And he started with media, right? I mean, he started sort of laying into media first with like he was messing around with the NPR and the BBC stuff saying these are like state. We talked about it two weeks ago. These are state funded news outlets and stuff like that. Little changes on that. That sort of on some UIs, it's a hover on the blue check on others. It's when you click. It just tells you like basically why they have this check. He was messing around with that for some time. So and then come last week, he finally gets around to actually getting rid of all the legacy blue check.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, on 420 naturally on 420, of course, because that's a great joke on the day that his rocket I made to understand that like as funny as that rocket disaster is it actually was like not really a disaster. It kind of was what was supposed to happen, I guess. Well, I thought I thought it was the opposite that like, oh, really? It's a major serious problem. And SpaceX can't launch that until they've like proven
00:12:29
Speaker
They've proven themselves to NASA now. They have to re-prove themselves to NASA when it comes to that vehicle. It's also a major ecological problem. I heard about that. Because apparently there was some step that was skipped, I think probably with authorization it sounds like, but there was a step that was skipped that was supposed to contain the dust from the launch because it's Texas. Things in Texas often get very dry and a lot of dust gets kicked up when you launch a very, very, very explosive device.
00:12:59
Speaker
In addition to that, you have it exploding in the air and depositing debris in places. There's this, I don't know if it's a nature preserve or some sort of protected natural habitat or something like that that's near enough by that it has been meaningfully negatively impacted by this.
00:13:21
Speaker
Even if it was the anticipated result or like a reasonable probability result for SpaceX to have that rocket blow up because like you have a very, very explosive thing being shot up into the air, uh, explosion is a possibility.
00:13:36
Speaker
So, even if that isn't anticipated and even like reasonably likely result, the ecological fallout is disastrous as I understand it. So, congratulations. That was a rough 420. Yeah, it was harshing his mellow for sure. And maybe the thing that harsh Elon's mellow the most was just getting publicly dissed by LeBron.
00:14:01
Speaker
who was so upset that, yeah, I mean, the biggest and most important one, it seemed like to me, maybe he was among the first and the first of like the really big games. Okay, fine. Great. But Lebron came out and like somehow he magically through the power of Elon waving his Elon wand
00:14:25
Speaker
Uh, said, uh, well, certain people bring enough value to the platform that we're just going to keep them legacy marked. We're going to make it look like they pay for Twitter blue because they're influencers. Uh, and LeBron's like, no, I don't want any part of this. I'm not paying for this. Uh, and I don't want anybody to think I am. So let me just publicly announce.
00:14:43
Speaker
It looks like I paid for this. I didn't pay for this because this sucks. At that point, there were three people who are like that. It's like Stephen King, LeBron James, and I forget who the third person was, who are Elon personally verifying them.
00:15:04
Speaker
And then everyone else is somebody that paid and people who- Well, there were dead people, too, like Kobe Bryant. His got the stat. No, not yet. Not yet. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to spoil. Okay. So this is the beginning of the end. Not the beginning of the end, but this was the disaster scenario, which is
00:15:26
Speaker
Everybody except for those three people who has a blue check is somebody that's paid for Twitter blue and therefore is extremely easy to target all of a sudden for blocking.
00:15:37
Speaker
Um, and so, and also is getting elevated in replies and an algorithm. So they're easy, extremely easy to find. And also it's very annoying because if you're paying $8 for a month to have a megaphone, there's a good chance that you're trying to get attention in a way that's annoying. So, uh,
00:15:57
Speaker
it was just like block everybody was just blocking blue checks like just on site there were extensions created very quickly to automatically block or mute blue checks uh and it was a
00:16:12
Speaker
civil civil wars the wrong word it was a war uh it was a poster war uh out there mainly with blue checks getting hammered like just like a scarlet letter yeah and it was a lot of it was honestly a lot of fun because it was complete madness like the day that the all the blue checks couldn't post at all and it was just only normies that was a lot of fun
00:16:36
Speaker
And it was similar to that. But it was a disaster for Elon because all of a sudden the site was way less usable. His check mark, his Twitter Blue product became a mark of shame because it meant that you paid money to have a bigger audience, I guess, because you couldn't make it without the check mark or without the algorithm juice.
00:17:03
Speaker
And people were like having to defend themselves constantly. Ian McKellen tweeted, despite the implication when you click the blue badge that has mysteriously reappeared beside my name, I am not paying for the quote honor. Yes, which is just like I mean, that is not what you have some sort of like VIP club. You don't want people scrambling to Twitter to say that they don't know. I mean, it's yeah, they don't not affiliated with you in any way. They've never been there. They don't know anything about it. And they're not paying you.
00:17:30
Speaker
and then the number one and then the number one reply to that was a blue check person saying like oh you don't support free speech or something like that it's like oh this is yes this is exactly why twitter blue subscribers are getting blocked i'll say i do know some high quality twitter blue subscribers that said uh definitely on the whole
00:17:53
Speaker
Uh, that bad, bad posters, low quality. Um, so yeah. And then we, and then like, I dunno, like seven or eight hours later, blue checks start popping up on everybody and dead people.
Social Media Alternatives and Decentralization
00:18:07
Speaker
And yeah, it was, you were talking about.
00:18:09
Speaker
Did you guys see the thing that was being circulated around? I have no idea who this guy is. I don't want to name him because I don't want to give him attention. But the tweet that was going around where the guy was saying like, you know, I get replies where people are saying this MF paid for Twitter and he says, no, I didn't pay for Twitter. I paid for free speech. Is that what you're talking about, Jake? No, that's not that guy. But yes, that guy was hilarious.
00:18:29
Speaker
These are gold. I paid for 1776 to commence again. I paid for the founding fathers vision. I paid to tell Silicon Valley to go screw itself. I paid to show support for a man who put himself in the line of fire for the First Amendment. I paid because we support our own. This is the best one.
00:18:47
Speaker
OK. All right. I paid because if George Washington was alive today. That if that's I hope like that's really good satire. It's so good. That's a really good bit. Yeah. So I I'm going to assume that that's a bit. I know that's probably not. I don't I don't know. I mean, I clicked them quickly and I looked at it. He's deep in it. If it's satire, he's like, you know, a Borat level guy for this sort of stuff. If.
00:19:16
Speaker
This is satire. I think he's being serious. Yes. So George Washington would have paid. I mean, he should. George Washington should have a Twitter account and he should have a legacy blue check. It's obviously being dead. Doesn't he be off immediately because he owns like 400 slaves. So he'd be canceled and run away. So rightly so.
00:19:36
Speaker
But yeah, so Twitter is a mess. And so kind of in conjunction with that, I put out, I tooted out something on Macedon saying like, hey, if anybody has a blue sky invite, I'd wanna give it a shot. I was like half joking, but somebody said, somebody's nice enough to send it to me. I don't have his name in front of me. I didn't ask him if he wanted to be named, so I won't name him. But somebody sent me an invite. I played with it. It's clearly a Twitter knockoff. It seems like, sort of like, have you guys ever heard that Home Alone and Home Alone 2,
00:20:06
Speaker
Home Alone 2 is not really a sequel to Home Alone. It's more like just another whole way to conceptualize that type of movie. There's no need to know what happened in 1. 2 could work just as its own. You could reverse the order and it wouldn't matter. I feel that way about Blue Sky. It seems like this was clearly, if not designed and developed by
00:20:25
Speaker
Jack Dorsey, he was the brain trust behind it. He had the initial idea. And it's just little things are slightly different. I don't see what why it's Jake, you said something along the lines of like, you don't see why it doesn't seem like there's a compelling reason to abandon activity pub for it. I 100% agree. I don't I don't see it. Yeah, like, how is it different from mastodon?
00:20:44
Speaker
right now. The centralization, I think. Yep. I mean, other than the structure and that kind of stuff, functionally, what's the difference between it and a mastodon instance? I mean, it's a microblog, right? They're both microblogging platforms, and the mastodon is just a federated one, which just means dispersed administration and the ability to have
00:21:08
Speaker
To put put Nazis in a corner basically Does it have quote quote? It doesn't it appears to have like basically boosts like the same idea Yeah, from what I can tell unless I mean look I played for a little while I went this is Twitter if I'm wrong and there's some blue sky Defender who wants to you know yell at me or something go absolutely right ahead
00:21:35
Speaker
I played with it a little bit. It seems like there's, like I said, Chelsea Manning is on there. There's some like, I wouldn't say like, like celebrities necessarily, but like big name people are on there. You know, relatively speaking, big name people. It has worse features in terms of like integration with like posting a GIF or believe it or not, it is worse than Macedon right now. You basically have a text box and a little thing to put a picture in there. And that's it.
00:21:58
Speaker
Very, very limited. You can have custom domains seems to be the thing that people are interested in. So you would have like, at Jake at Florida land use, attorney.com would be like your full handle for blue sky, which is different than you having to start your own Macedon instance for Florida land use, attorney.com and have one user, which is huge. That makes sense. Like you can use a domain. So are there not, but it is federated, right? But there aren't instances.
00:22:25
Speaker
Correct. It's federated. I think it runs on top of activity pub, but I don't, I don't believe you can. It doesn't run off on top of it. I do know that it's its own protocol. Did they base it on activity pub? Maybe, maybe. Uh, but it's, I know that it's federated and you theoretically can, this is based on an interview from the verge that I read, right? But it was explicitly not activity pub because they wanted control over it. Gotcha. Um, supposedly.
00:22:55
Speaker
Because that's always worked out. Backwards. That's always worked out so well. Yeah. Social media companies are moving towards Activity Pub. Maybe there is a for-profit activity pub out there that still allows you to somehow have your own federated thing and they monetize it some other way. I can see that being successful and good. It's like Mastodon, it's a king.
00:23:23
Speaker
It's a you know, hopefully there's a good king in Eugene Rothko But if for some reason he's not doing what his users want. We just got to sit there Yeah, so I mean technically so since it's all since it all can like this I think Pleroma is another like it can work with Mastodon it's like its own software suite that is just like Mastodon that you could I could we could run esq.social on that and interface with Mastodon
00:23:51
Speaker
uh, servers or instances just as easy. So like, I guess what I'm saying is you can, you could get around it, but it would be a big, like the further sort of down that road you get in Mastodon and like developing on it and developing for it to switch would be difficult. So like you wouldn't be able to like take all the apps that work for Mastodon and suddenly use it for the new activity pub thing that runs. If I'm making sense, you know what I mean? That is similar to Mastodon. Right. Exactly. So the resources with Mastodon or whatever.
00:24:17
Speaker
Yeah, so there's inertia over time. But I think inertia is different from actually from point zero being locked into blue sky. You know what I mean? Like that seems to be different. And I mean, the thing is, like, I don't know if people care yet or if they ever will care about not being centralized as much as they don't like. Like, I think people's complaints about Twitter isn't that, you know, nerds will be upset about the fact that it's centralized, that it's all behind one person.
00:24:44
Speaker
regular people are just like Elon Musk is a jerk and I don't like the way the experience is on Twitter. I don't think they're like, I see the, you know what I mean? Now I see the matrix and I think it should be separated and you know, there should be separate instances and stuff. So I could totally see blue sky taking off is what I'm saying. But I personally, I'm not compelled by it. I'm happy that there's a lot of options out there in a way that, and it feels like even though it's just Twitter and Twitter is really not a huge player.
00:25:10
Speaker
and social media as much as as much airspace as it takes up. They are so much smaller than the Facebooks and the Instagrams out there and TikTok and LinkedIn even.
00:25:24
Speaker
I'm excited that it's called so much attention to Mastodon. Twitter following apart has called attention to Mastodon, called attention to these protocols, and now you have Tumblr and all these other places thinking maybe we'll play with ActivityPub, maybe we'll make this work. And they're getting excited about that.
00:25:43
Speaker
And I think that's really that's great. And I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that it means some good things for Facebook and other places that are really like maybe not. Facebook is the last one that would join. But, you know, if there if enough big for profit players like the tumblers out there start playing with Activity Pub.
00:26:05
Speaker
I would, that would be awesome. The Facebook going to something like activity pub is Facebook's business. And I know this because I went, I just did like a little ad hoc research project on this, uh, to figure out what proportion of the things that I see on Facebook are things that I actually want to see versus things that Facebook wants me to see. And that ratio was like four things that I don't want to see for every one thing that I do want to see. And that's like,
00:26:35
Speaker
It is by and large ads or things that Facebook thinks are reasonably calculated to lead me to additional
00:26:45
Speaker
ad identifying content. I once was part of a group for JL series Jeep Wranglers and now Facebook knows to advertise to me for Jeep, for Jeep accessories, for Jeep t-shirts, for Jeep expeditions, for the Outer Banks because apparently that's what everybody does with Jeeps as it goes to the Outer Banks.
00:27:08
Speaker
And so, like, no, Facebook and ActivityPub, they're just fundamentally incompatible, I think, because ActivityPub, as far as I know, doesn't have any good way to serve you ad content or algorithm-based content. And that's where Facebook, like, that's where they make their bones. Right. Well, I was thinking the real thing is the question that I had is, will they allow you to view a Facebook feed, your own Facebook feed, and
00:27:37
Speaker
activity pub through activity pub.
00:27:39
Speaker
apps or something like that. That's, I don't know. Like RSS, like an RSS type of thing. Like when RSS first came out, a lot of things, like that was the big thing was that, right? You could view, you know, you could look at your website of your, your, I think Instagram maybe still, I don't really know. I mean, I use RSS for blogs and stuff, but I don't use it for that, those kinds of things anymore. I know for a long time, like a Twitter feed had an RSS feed. You can go to like, I think it was like, you have twitter.com slash at the name and then dot RSS or slash feed. And then there just would be plain RSS of all their,
00:28:09
Speaker
And you can still do some like similar stuff. It's not exactly an RSS feed that you can like cobble together. But like on a website, you can have a Twitter box that has this tweets of a certain people, including a specific group of people like a list of people that just like keeps showing that up. And you can do like, if Facebook all of a sudden allows that and allows
00:28:34
Speaker
and Twitter and Facebook and all that all agree to the same protocol, then you can have one box that has tweets and Facebook. You might even be able to do that already. But to Jason's point, I think the difference you'd see there is that when you have one of those boxes, there's like an official Twitter API or official Twitter embed a timeline box.
00:28:57
Speaker
that's doing all sorts of other stuff in terms of tracking people who are visiting that page and what you're clicking and whatnot. There's more going on there and they can serve you ads in that box, right? But if they are giving access to just under the hood stuff of just the pure, either the pure tweets or the pure Facebook posts or something, that's different. That's harder to monetize for them. I acknowledge y'all are right. They're never going to play.
00:29:22
Speaker
I'll have the hope. To defend your never. Yeah. I mean, I think that you can't, you never say never, right? Like if they really start bleeding users, I don't think Facebook is worried right now. I mean, I know they had some pretty bad numbers, you know, six months ago or whatever, but like, I think they're still well in the lead. I think they're doing what they own Instagram, right? They're sitting pretty well there as these things go. Twitter never caught them and they're not going to catch them now.
00:29:48
Speaker
Hey guys, that was supposed to be a mini topic and we're 29 minutes and 50 seconds in. Hey, let's move on to the real topic. Jake, why don't you tell us what's, what the heck is going on in, uh, with the central Florida tourism oversight
Disney vs. Florida: Legal Developments
00:30:02
Speaker
board. Did I get that right? Yeah. Uh, well essentially the board of supervisors for the central Florida tourism oversight district.
00:30:11
Speaker
uh anyway excuse you sir gosh there's so many uh so i i was ready to do a follow-up like uh this last week um on this because you know last time was it last time
00:30:27
Speaker
We talked about the contracts that Disney entered with the old district before they took off, before the district was taking over. There are these two contracts that seem pretty solid and basically say that Disney gets to keep doing what it's doing for a long time, for 30 years and forever.
00:30:50
Speaker
Depending on the contract and so really it was basically I was prepared to talk about how the district is You know laying out a case for why they want to sue Disney or why they don't think that they are bound by these agreements
00:31:04
Speaker
Um, so, uh, I was all ready for this, um, on Wednesday, the board had its meeting, uh, and they had a 92, uh, point legislative findings that they, uh, adopted. And I did read them, um, about why they say Wednesday agreements.
00:31:28
Speaker
When you say Wednesday, do you mean the 26th or do you mean the 19th? 26, 26. Okay. Okay. So as we record, as we publish yesterday, God, I'm time is broken. It's a flat time is broken. April 26, yesterday. Um,
00:31:45
Speaker
they got together and they put it on the agenda as directions to counsel legislative findings. In those findings, they have some allegations that are pretty bad for Disney. Most of the allegations are not very important, or in some cases just like flat wrong.
00:32:04
Speaker
Um, like, uh, they say that the district can't enter contracts. Like no contracts can't, it can be entered without consideration. Uh, and that there was no consideration here, which, you know, like as lawyers, you all know, you need consideration for a contract. You need there to be a give and take for a contract to be lawful. Problem is the district, the enabling act from the 1960s said they can enter real estate contracts without consideration.
00:32:33
Speaker
Uh, so that's, I think that's just flatly gone. Uh, gone. Anyway, that's one of the like 93 92 things. Um, but, uh, some of them are like pretty potentially bad. So the development agreement, uh, as you may recall, froze the regulations within the district for the next 30 years.
00:32:58
Speaker
They allege that the regulations underlying that agreement, the things that were frozen, were never advertised in some cases, which is required, or they were advertised for first reading. You need two readings. They're advertised for first reading in 2019 and then passed in a completely different way in 2022. And that would be a big problem.
00:33:23
Speaker
Um, so, uh, you know, those could really cause problems for the development agreement. There wasn't anything to, um, to fight the covenants really, except for the fact that the covenants were theoretically partially based on the development agreement coming through. So they would say, Oh, well, the, since that goes away, these goes away, these goes away. Uh, I still didn't think that Disney, I still thought Disney would, um,
00:33:51
Speaker
would be able to keep its covenants and probably even its development agreement, but it's hard to tell without knowing the facts. So I was all prepared to try to figure out and try to explain these 92 points to news media or whatever, and why if you don't advertise an ordinance properly, it is void. There is law about that.
00:34:16
Speaker
And there are things we care about. Yeah. And there are things we don't. And that's one of the things that we can't pass. It's not a law if you don't pass it the right way. So if you can't freeze that law in place, that doesn't exist. And so, you know, they'd have at least some kind of argument, though. And by these meetings, you mean like public meetings where people can come and comment and hear the reading and like, yeah, basically what you'd imagine somebody reads it out or it's in the record and you have an opportunity if you're a citizen to come in and
00:34:43
Speaker
and say something. Yeah, no, we don't. OK, sorry. Yeah, no. So, you know, there's some question about whether they are allowed to complain about it since they were they being the district, whether they the district can complain about their own mistakes. Right. And though in some of the cases, the mistakes were of the cities.
00:35:04
Speaker
But the district and the cities worked together to do these regulations, so it was still their mistake, more or less. But literally moments after the district voted on this, Disney sued in federal court for the whole kitten caboodle to reverse the whole takeover.
00:35:24
Speaker
That was probably an accident that timing, right? Nobody had any idea what was going on. Nobody was just sitting there with their finger hovering over the Proceed button on CMECF.
00:35:37
Speaker
CMECF is that federal e-file? I assume it was filed in federal court because there's no way they would file this in Florida. It was. It was filed in federal court. It's only federal claims, which is a little bit surprising. We can get into it. Maybe a little surprising might be the wrong word. They file it moments after based partially on those findings, that 92 point findings.
00:36:06
Speaker
Um,
00:36:08
Speaker
and it lays out, citing the governor's own memoir, citing the plethora of public statements, basically saying, this is all plethora, cornucopia, the deluge. The listeners, you can't see this, but I am shaking my head in disappointment at Jake, plethora, you may continue.
00:36:36
Speaker
What's the problem? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, stop. Is that like the roof of your mouth or something? I don't know. Oh my gosh, this is the worst. The many, many, many public statements from Florida legislators, governor, everybody, spokespeople.
00:36:54
Speaker
more or less putting it in bright billboard letters. This is retaliation for Disney opposing and importantly saying that they would work to reverse the parents rights and education bill also known as Don't Say Gay.
00:37:13
Speaker
Like they have not been shy that it is because of that. And so they Disney says, yeah, this is retaliation. We, you know, we didn't want to do this. We didn't want to have to do this, but they give us no choice because they are also now disrespecting our contract rights. Look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. We didn't want to fight you, Florida. We love you. We're investing 18 billion dollars into you. Please don't make us do this.
00:37:43
Speaker
Um, so they, it's five counts. Hold on. Let me bring it up. Yeah. I just want to take note. Uh, you, yeah, I've got it pulled up here. Uh, the first cause of action appears on page 59 of this complaint. Uh, and, uh, this may harken back to a complaint that I made earlier where, uh, I do not like grandstanding complaints except for in this instance, I think you have to.
00:38:13
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, because basically what you're doing is you are making, so the first cause of action is a contracts clause violation, uh, which is like, uh, goes back to like the OG constitution. You don't even have to get to any amendments, although they do because the 14th amendment is implicated in it as well. Uh, but it's a contracts clause violation.
00:38:35
Speaker
where I think essentially they're arguing that Florida is taking action to impair contracts that are validly entered into and executed. You can't do that unless you've got some valid reason for doing it. Second cause of action is a takings clause violation. This would be a
00:38:55
Speaker
deprivation of a party's life, liberty or property, it'd be property, uh, without due process of law so that they didn't follow the required. Yeah. The taking is for just compensation, failing to give them compensation for that. And then they go to due process. That's, that's claim three. Well, right. But, okay. So, but the taking's clause is basically saying,
00:39:18
Speaker
the government can't deprive you of property without due process of law and that due process will include just compensation because they can't just seize your property for no compensation unless they have accused you of committing
Analyzing Disney's Lawsuit Against Florida
00:39:31
Speaker
a crime. And we can talk about civil forfeiture some other time. Third cause of action is a due process clause violation, similar sort of thing where they're depriving them of life, liberty or property without the due process of law, without following the strictures that are required of government when they're doing something.
00:39:49
Speaker
Uh, I think Jake may disagree with me on this or Jake may have, if Jake disagrees with me, chances are Jake is right. But I think the meatiest part of this is the first amendment violation. And that's, that's count for that starts on page 66. Uh, let me re-register my annoyance, but not annoyance. Cause Disney basically had to do this. Uh, cause this, this complaint is an, a,
00:40:14
Speaker
lawsuit initiating document, but also it is an important PR document for Disney. Even though ordinary people who are not law nerds probably will never read this. But this is basically saying government is taking action against us that is materially adverse and they're doing it because of our protected speech on a matter of public concern. And that's like,
00:40:44
Speaker
It is hard to imagine, it's hard to imagine a scenario where Disney doesn't prevail on count four of this complaint because the facts are just out there and published by Florida. It's not secret like behind closed doors. You know, this is not a deal. These are not deals that have been concocted in smoke filled, you know, cloak rooms in the governors or in the, I don't know, in the state house or something like that.
00:41:11
Speaker
They've been really out there and explicit about it. And fifth cause of action is another First Amendment violation. I haven't parsed these enough to identify the differences between four and five. Go ahead. Yeah. It's the takeover and the contract voiding. So those are the two different claims.
00:41:32
Speaker
Gotcha. One is you couldn't take over the district like this. Second one is you couldn't invalidate the contracts because separate retaliation actions is basically what they're saying. It probably didn't need to be pleaded as separate causes of action then unless there's some quirk about the particular district courts practice there because I think you could have probably pleaded those into the same thing. It probably looks better from a drafting and PR standpoint is my guess.
00:42:02
Speaker
There's a few things that were interesting to me about this. So the contracts clause, and I'll tell you guys, I don't buy their first three claims, actually. The contracts clause, the takings, and the due process claims. I don't think those are very good. The First Amendment retaliation, I think, are very strong.
00:42:32
Speaker
Question to me is, I mean, it's easy retaliation. It's obvious. The real question to me is the remedy. Well, first of all, does the appellate court or does the court even look into the motivations? Because there's some case law out there limiting when you can look into legislative motivations for bills.
00:42:58
Speaker
Um, and so, uh, because if it's facially neutral, you can't do it. And the question is, are these facially neutral? And I would say they'll find a way to say it's not because it's so clear they're holding out, they are holding up a billboard saying we're retaliating right now. Uh, here's our, here's the way we're retaliating. This is the loophole we think we've found.
00:43:21
Speaker
uh we're going to instead of naming reedy disney well the first bill dissolved reedy creek right as you may remember uh it said in as of june of 2023 it's going to dissolve um but it did so by saying
00:43:37
Speaker
all special districts created before 1967 shall be dissolved as of, you know, you know, as of 2023. And so they're gonna say that's facially neutral. It applied to five different special districts. It also applied to the Sunshine Water District and South
00:43:57
Speaker
in South Florida that provides water for 4,000 people. They'll try to find their way through that. And then when it comes to the bill taking over Reedy Creek, they'll say, this doesn't name Disney at all. It just amends the subdivision that we've already used.
00:44:21
Speaker
Um, I think uh, i'm gonna at the end i'm gonna ask us all to make a prediction as to how this plays out because I got one um the uh
00:44:33
Speaker
Uh, yeah, so that's so, uh, but the, so, sorry, I was, I was going to, I was reflecting on the first three claims, which are the contracts clause claims, the taking claim and due process. Here's the thing. It's not a violation of the contracts clause to break a contract.
00:44:52
Speaker
because you can still go and sue for breach of contract. You can still go and enforce the contract. So if you had a valid contract, you still get to go enforce it. The question is whether or not it's valid, because what they did at this meeting, they didn't pass a law saying that the contract is invalid, though the legislature is considering that, and that would be a contract clause violation.
00:45:16
Speaker
They just said, we consider it void. We're not going to follow it. Congratulations. You're repudiating the contract. That's normal. That's not a constitutional claim. And for the same reasons, if that contract is void, then you never had the property rights to begin with that you claim were vested. So they didn't take anything. They didn't deprive you due process because you didn't have an interest to lose.
00:45:43
Speaker
So, uh, that's kind of the, uh, I don't think that those work because if they have a valid contract, then it's not a constitutional case. You bring your law, you bring your lawsuit for breach of contract to enforce the contract for a declaratory judgment. And maybe you win. Uh, maybe you lose for the reasons that they claim you, you should lose. Uh, that's why I don't think those first three claims work retaliation.
00:46:13
Speaker
Easy, easy on the question of, is this retaliation? The only question is the remedy. Okay, so it was retaliatory. Now what? And when it comes to the district takeover, they've already installed new officials. Those officials have already passed laws.
00:46:36
Speaker
And so what does that mean? That's not all going to be unwound. I don't think you can unwind it. That's the thing. I don't think you can unwind it. I think if they decided, OK, and the prediction will be later. But it's a lot harder to unwind.
00:46:57
Speaker
to unwind that kind of thing than it is to stop the takeover from happening in the first place. So I got a, you know, I, I talked to NPR about this and I, and I said, like, one of the biggest weaknesses is that Disney waited until the new board was already seated. Right. And I got some questions about why, why do you think that is? And my thought is if Disney is going to lose here, which they still, they have the strong, a very, very strong case, they're going to lose because they don't have a remedy. They don't have a good remedy.
00:47:25
Speaker
Yeah, and I think part of the problem with the remedy here may get into the separation of powers because it's unlikely, like this whole principle of separation of powers is that the judiciary won't usurp a legislative prerogative or an executive prerogative and likewise the executive can't usurp a legislative or judicial prerogative. But we kind of see that happening a little bit all the time when we see
00:47:52
Speaker
the United States Supreme Court deleting as unconstitutional laws that have been passed by the legislature and signed by the president. So there's some commingling of that. But the logic there was never a valid law, right? Like they're interpreting the Constitution and saying therefore that law never exists. Like it's a faint, right? So like something that's been happening recently with this Supreme Court is
00:48:21
Speaker
lawsuits to challenge the structures of agencies, including agencies that have existed for a while. I think it's the SEC or is it the FTC? And they've succeeded in the Supreme Court, like some of these challenges, and they've also succeeded in appellate courts. So I think that I absolutely agree. Separation of powers is maybe Disney's
00:48:48
Speaker
worst weakness, that the court isn't gonna feel comfortable saying, no, you officials are removed. So I don't think they will do that. Because if Disney had done this, if Disney had taken this step at the point where the governor was removing the old board and replacing it with new members, at that point you have less of a concern about usurping an executive prerogative because not much has really happened yet.
00:49:17
Speaker
And I think a court would be more inclined to step in and issue equitable relief at that point because the toothpaste hasn't left the tube. Cows haven't left the barn yet. But now it seems like the cows have left the barn. And this was happening, what, three months ago, maybe? Yeah, it's a couple months ago.
00:49:38
Speaker
how much law does a special district really make in the course of three months? Ordinarily, not very much. But in this case. Politically motivated one, perhaps quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe that's the redemption that Disney can see here, can see here is, uh, yeah, you know, separation of powers is a problem, but everything that we've seen this district do, uh, I don't know if it's actually everything, but maybe we can say everything or,
00:50:05
Speaker
in a large proportion the things that this district has done since this takeover has been politically motivated. And so it's all tainted. Every single one of these actions is tainted, assuming that all of the actions are retaliatory. And maybe that is the door that Disney can squeak through that says, yeah, this may be potentially a separation of powers issue, but literally everything that they've done or close to everything that they've done
00:50:34
Speaker
is in the same vein of First Amendment retaliation that you should just undo it all and get a new board in here or reinstate the old board.
00:50:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's all part, I mean, it is all part of one retaliatory scheme. The scheme itself is retaliatory. How into the detailed individual decisions they're going to get is a question. So like the second, the retaliation claim about the two contracts, I think is weaker than the claim for the takeover itself, because really, they weren't retaliating against Disney for the contracts, or for the for their speech, they were
00:51:15
Speaker
saying, no, you don't get to bind us. They were retaliating against the contracts themselves because they want to have their authority back. You're saying if it's if you're not thinking of this as one whole scheme, but instead as like separate separate individual decisions, right? Like obviously the reason why they're there, the reason why they're taking control in the first place is retaliation for the speech. But they, you know, a reasonable
00:51:42
Speaker
Like a new government, any newly appointed board, even in a legit circumstance where there's no retaliatory interest in the first place, would have been pretty mad about having their hands tied on the way out by the old board. So, I mean, it happens all the time. People are mad about that all the time.
00:52:05
Speaker
That said, I do think that Disney is going to win on the takeover. I'll just get my prediction out of the way. I think the bill dissolving Reedy Creek is upheld.
00:52:18
Speaker
The bill taking over the new bill, the replacement bill, the specific sections that remove Disney's ability to vote for its representatives are the parts that get thrown out and replaced with the old way of voting.
00:52:38
Speaker
I think that's the way that it works. My prediction is going to be in the form of a question. I wanted to ask what the judgment of Solomon solution was going to be. I think we saw it the last time. Disney doesn't want to go to war with this. I don't think that Florida generally wants to go to war.
Speculating on Disney's Legal Strategy
00:53:00
Speaker
I think the worm has turned out. I think that Disney, so here's, I was ready. I was thinking we would talk about this. Why now? Why are they doing it now when they could have done it back then?
00:53:13
Speaker
Yeah, one of my follow-up questions, right? And I think that I think so. This is a sound. I have no evidence of this, except for some common sense, which I'll get into. Disney had just called the governor. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Disney had told the governor about these two contracts and it was part of a tacit or explicit agreement that they would that it was fine.
00:53:41
Speaker
Um, and so Disney allowed the takeover to happen because they thought they'd be fine. They'd be able to work with a bound board doing more or less nothing major. Um, and the board may, and maybe they assumed that the governor would tell the board the deal.
00:54:00
Speaker
But instead that didn't happen and not only that but the narrative around it suddenly twisted to the governor it becoming a liability for the governor politically.
00:54:16
Speaker
at least partially and Disney looking more strong. Uh, and they just decided there, they, it was now worth it that where the worm had turned. And not only that, because they told the governor, I'm, I mean, I'm betting that there's, uh, and this is, again, I don't have evidence. They told the governor, except that if you, they were quiet this whole time, but they advertise these development agreement meetings. And we know that they were talking.
00:54:44
Speaker
or we think that they were talking. Disney and the government. Yeah, Disney and the government. I mean, we know they were because I think Randy Fine talks about how they were talking. Right. And so why wouldn't they talk about it?
00:54:59
Speaker
why would they, they couldn't hide it. It's they're literally advertising in the newspaper. Like it would be completely consistent with the strategy they were taking of stay, you know, just like playing ball to try to like sneak this newspaper ad, uh, development agreement through.
00:55:18
Speaker
It's not that hard to do. Nobody reads those. Unless you are, I don't know, currently deliberating in the legislature for a bill affecting that district. I don't know. Maybe you'll actually look at the freaking agendas on the website. They will now. For the next little while anyway. They have some allegations that the agendas weren't on the website, which I
00:55:42
Speaker
I don't think is true, but also there was news media present at the meetings also. So anyway. Yeah, so I think that not only did they start feeling like it became a liability for the governor, but also they have this information that he knew that they can drop whenever they want.
00:56:05
Speaker
This is a complete no evidence free. Don't actually know this is true. This is just an idea of wondering why they would have brought it now.
00:56:14
Speaker
basically tacit agreements that were now not like, I mean, we talked about it, I think, in one of the other shows where a lot of these sorts of situations, there's, there's no smoky smoke filled room. There's no phone calls with agreements. It's like a tacit agreement. It's something that people understand that we're all going to sort of play ball. We're all going to sort of go along with this. We don't really want to, you know, go to the mattresses over this. Yeah. And sometimes there are, there are actual phone calls, though, and emails.
00:56:42
Speaker
But but it doesn't necessarily have to be the case that those things exist. Everyone understands that they don't want to, you know, we don't want this to go too far. And so now I'm just trying to like get your your prediction right. You're saying that. So Disney feels that the the governor is on his heels a little bit on this and has. Yeah, that's really, I think, you know, he the Bob Iger started talking about how
00:57:10
Speaker
Like saying this is retaliatory blah blah blah and you know, this story has been going on for so long. Yeah and Yeah, I I think that they they just decided that they their perception of the political situation is it's politically better than it was before or the energy is running out to punish them and
00:57:35
Speaker
Um, and so now they can fight back in a way they maybe couldn't before. So, or they didn't feel like they could, or they didn't think it was worth it before. All right. Well, I think that's our up shake on that, right?
00:57:49
Speaker
Andrew, what's your prediction? My prediction was, like I said, whatever the judgment of Solomon, split the baby. I think I'm going with Jake. I agree with Jake. I don't know enough about it too. I didn't think this was going to happen. I really thought we had heard the last of it. I thought Jake was going to be done being bugged by media outlets. I thought it was over. I was hoping he would still, I want him to have his many moments in the sun, as many as we can get him. But I didn't know that this was going to,
00:58:18
Speaker
Work out so well for him. That was, that was wild. So that yesterday, this happened yesterday. Yesterday was also my goodbye lunch at my firm. I was like, I literally had tears in my eyes and then I got to my email and then there was a CNN email saying like, so what do you think about the complaint? Disney just filed. I was just like, excuse me. What complaint? Disney just filed. You must be mistaken. Like it wasn't Disney that sued.
00:58:45
Speaker
That happened fast enough that I didn't hear the first part I only knew the second part I didn't even know that it that that the the first I came in on the end of that you know I mean like I just knew when everything was blowing up and you were saying you were getting all these emails and everything it I can't believe that was a day ago it seems like this was you know ten days ago yeah I imagine being you
00:59:04
Speaker
Yeah. Andrew, you're calling for a split the baby approach. You think that's what's going to happen? A split the baby approach. I think something like that, I'm not going to get it in the nitty gritty. What's the split the baby approach? You're talking about what is the actual outcome?
00:59:20
Speaker
Haven't we talked about this? Didn't we literally, I think Deja Vu, haven't we had, hasn't Jake in the past literally asked what to split the baby is and then one of us is changed? I don't know how you split the baby in half. I don't think, I don't know how you can split the baby without a settlement. Like I can imagine, like if there's perfect, there's nothing that says they can't settle.
00:59:38
Speaker
Um, but what is the settlement? Like, what do you mean? Right. So like to pass a new law to settle. Right. Exactly. They do have to pass a new law. Right. They, they pass a new law to settle it. I mean, it's very possible. Um, the new law says the new board is going to be a member of Orange County, a member, a member appointed by Orange County, a member appointed by Osceola County, two members appointed by the governor, one elected by Disney.
01:00:05
Speaker
Why not? The governor's office, governor's allies have been saying this was just a, you know, there's no case because all this did was put them on equal playing field with other parks. If that's their actual defense in court, they've already lost because that's a terrible argument. It is wrong and also not a real defense to retaliation.
01:00:29
Speaker
Uh, because the situation where Disney gets one seat, as you just said, that he, the governor's allies, office, whatever, would be able to say, well, that's, that's what we did. We've won. Yeah. Now we put them on equal foot. Yeah. And importantly, if you're going to have the reason why I mentioned the two counties is because of the equality issue.
01:00:49
Speaker
There is no other park that is subject to a district with land use regulations and 30 mil taxing power at all, but especially ones that are not that are controlled entirely by point political appointees rather than local elected officials. Universal is within a community redevelopment agency, which is a special district run by Orange County. They constantly have to go to Orange County for stuff.
01:01:20
Speaker
Right. They don't have to, but I mean, well, yeah, I guess they have to. Yeah. Um, and the thing is if they, if Orange County wrecks universal Orange County officials pay the price because they have to be elected by Orange County residents who work there, uh, who live there or live near there. Right. Like all of the tax revenue that's generated by universal. Right. Yeah. If you're the governor, you maybe don't care that much about wrecking Orange and Osceola counties.
01:01:50
Speaker
Um, maybe you don't really care compared because it's one little spot in the middle of Florida when you're, you're serving the entirety of Florida. Um, so, and those appointees certainly don't care because they don't get elected at all.
01:02:04
Speaker
So the appointees just care whatever they care about. Hopefully they would have good intentions. And the district did put out a wish list of things they want to do. And honestly, most of it is totally fine.
01:02:21
Speaker
within their, within their ambit within normal government operations. It's like, we're going to build, we're going to go more, we're going to build more solar, we're going to build workforce housing. And it's like, yeah, that's totally like, you know, go do it, I guess. Right.
01:02:37
Speaker
I don't have to do that they'll be I mean so yeah but thank you for you've assisted me with my prediction that's my prediction then through you is settlement with it allows both sides to carp that they I mean I don't think Disney will do a lot of touting that they won but the the governor's office will be able to say
01:02:55
Speaker
It won. And basically the idea that Disney's just on a level playing field will be the thing they can just keep put. Look, we brought Disney to heal. We put them on a level playing field. They were this out of control corporation. You see what I did now? They have one seat. That's it. Just like they would just like any other similar park would be, you know, the power it would have done. Yeah, I think that would be a very honestly, I think that would be a very fair solution that should have been maybe
01:03:24
Speaker
They could have done that from the first place, but I did. Yeah. Um, I think that'd be a very fair solution. Um, yeah.
01:03:37
Speaker
Jason is muted. He doesn't know that he's muted. Oh, man. OK. All right. I'm here. I'm here. I've been here the whole time. I think what's going to happen here is I have a double take on it, a dual and diverging take on it. There's the optimist take, which is
01:03:57
Speaker
I think that if a court finds some reason to look at the totality of the circumstances here and to see what is not very hard to see and is pleaded in the very, very extensive footnotes in this complaint, there is a well-established record that we can look at. This is clearly retaliatory. There's retaliatory intent, and it has a meaningful, adverse
01:04:27
Speaker
consequence for Disney. That part may be yet to be seen, but I think the optimist in me says Disney prevails on counts four and five. Counts one, two, and three are denied as moot or dropped as moot. Probably all happens on summary judgment.
01:04:50
Speaker
Uh, and maybe we don't even need to get four and five. Uh, but I think probably we, the court is likely to belt and suspenders it and say, uh, we granted on count four. But even if we didn't grant it on count four, we granted out count five. Uh, and we don't need to touch one, two, and three. The, the, the negative, uh, the negative take on this, my pessimistic take on it is yeah, dark, dark Jason, uh, is, uh,
01:05:20
Speaker
Courts often have a tendency to latch on to the simplest and easiest explanation that gets them out of making a controversial decision. Now not every judge is that way, but lately it seems like the United States Supreme Court is kind of this way, and a circuit where I practice a lot, the Seventh Circuit, if they can latch on to something that gets them out of making a decision on a bigger issue, they'll do that. And I think maybe they'll find that
01:05:50
Speaker
They'll latch onto that facially neutral thing and just say, oh, it's facially neutral. We got no business here. That's the pessimistic take.
Judicial Neutrality and Legislative Implications
01:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's the that facially neutral thing really keeps me up at night. But the only for one night though, right? It literally kept me up that that I think that. Oh, no, it kept me actually. I'm so sorry. You really to find that facially neutral thing, you really have to be willing to bury your head awfully deep in the sand. Not only are you burying your head deep in the sand, you are opening a giant loophole through which corporations can be absolutely hammered for political reasons.
01:06:26
Speaker
Right. You're basically giving. Yeah. Yeah. You give court like why doesn't California just create a law that facially that only applies to hobby lobby by saying arts and craft stores with more than X locations in this county for their name. I have to, you know, provide X signage that is like totally expensive or, you know, yeah, it's just opens up a can of worms that I think the 11th Circuit would not tolerate.
01:06:55
Speaker
And I don't think the Supreme Court would tolerate either. There's a history of trying to do stuff like this in ways that seem facially neutral. Like there's a technique that was used, I know it was used in Indiana, I don't know if it's been used elsewhere, but called banding, where you make this ordinance or you make the statute apply only in a county that has a population between X and Y. And it just so happens there's only one county that has that population between X and Y.
01:07:23
Speaker
and it happens to be the county that you know all of the uh non-white people not all of them but not literally all of them but the only like non-white majority county uh so like yeah uh oh is that who that bill applies to whoops that's problematic right and so if we can look beyond the facial
01:07:46
Speaker
kind of looks like facial neutrality and see like what they're really doing. That's, that's my hope. That's why I still have some optimism. And I think I'm going to go with the optimistic take that Disney prevails on counts four and five. The other three get dismissed as moot. The 11th circuit has
01:08:02
Speaker
has indicated that they don't take facial neutrality as it literally has to name them. They basically said it's not facially neutral if it targets someone and so targeting and that's because and the case that I'm thinking about is was a case about like basically a union campaigned against the law and in response the state
01:08:29
Speaker
limited, passed a law, if I remember correctly, I might be way off base here, the state then after that passed a law limiting base, like union funding and that kind of thing. And that is it applied to all unions, not just that union.
01:08:44
Speaker
And so, um, that there was no retaliation case there because it applied to all units and it was facially neutral. Uh, even that seems sort of problematic because I mean, just because the, the government is willing to have a high amount of collateral damage doesn't mean you weren't targeting someone. You know what I mean? Like a whole ball to get you.
01:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, I don't care. I get to do that. You know what I mean? That's one of the big takeaways that I've been telling the news organizations is look, governments can do a lot of terrible things when they're willing to cause pain to everybody as opposed to one specific person or one specific group. I probably just heard one of your interviews and you said that and I'm parroting it back. I didn't probably do that. That was the CNN interview where she like, yeah, she discussed that part. But yeah, the
01:09:35
Speaker
A government's news flash guys, governments can do terrible, terrible things. Like no, what? Don't say that. They might be listening. No courts will stop them from doing terrible, terrible things. They can set their own parks on fire if they wanted to. Um, so anyway, it's almost like the courts are kind of part of the government a little bit, sort of. Um, yeah, I forgot. I forget where I was going with that, but
01:10:02
Speaker
We're, we're at 70 minutes now. You guys want to just hop on over to recommendations and then, uh, and then I agree. Jake's been up since 3 AM. Yeah. He's got to be like, we got to let him go at some point. He's got to be sick of talking about Disney. So I'll be quick. We've got to finish. We'll finish the Jake down so that.
01:10:18
Speaker
can go lay down. Thank you. My recommendation is easy. The latest season of Barry is good. If you're not watching it, you should watch it. And I won't say anything to spoil you. Watch it from the beginning if you haven't watched Barry yet. It's a good show. Bill Hader, very good. It's very funny. Succession and Barry have opposite tracks where succession started as like, oh, this is a drama. And it's becoming more and more obvious that it's a comedy.
01:10:43
Speaker
And it was funny the whole time. Yeah, but it's being it's getting funnier and funnier. Yeah. And it's not like a laugh out loud like, you know, joke, you know, like laugh track or something, but it's very funny. And Barry has just gone the other way and gone darker and darker. It's still funny at times, but it's like it's a nervous one. Yeah. There's a lot of very dramatic stuff. Yeah. So that's OK. That's my recommendation. What do you guys got?
01:11:08
Speaker
My recommendation is more of a reminder, hey, you should think about doing your home projects before you're getting ready to sell your home so that you can enjoy the fruit of your labor. We're getting ready to put our house up on the market, and I finally have almost all of these house tours done that I've been building up for
01:11:31
Speaker
three or four years. It's great. I love living in this place now. Now I get to move. There you go. So do your home projects now, even if it's going to mean a Saturday and Sunday of hard work. Do your home projects now. If you can make that pithier, I think there's a metaphor.
01:11:47
Speaker
Yeah. If you can make that pithier, I think there's a metaphor for life, like something about like you have to live now before, you know, like your house being a metaphor for your, your existence or I don't know, I'll, we'll workshop it, but I think there's something there for bumper sticker. Get up and go outside and exercise. You're lapping everybody who's sitting on the couch still, right? There you go. It's never too late for now.
01:12:06
Speaker
Oh, we got our title. Yeah. That's a 30 Rock episode. You can't steal that title. All right. We don't have our title. I figured it was like a dashboard confessional song title or something. Yeah. One of those bands that, what is it? Mutant Vampires? What was it you referenced last time? Vampire Weekend. There we go. One of those bands. Your music. I have a quick recommendation follow up on my ThinkPad.
01:12:30
Speaker
Think that Nano X1, which I bought for like 800 bucks, which is really, I would like to confirm that it is really good for the price. It's crazy, crazy good. $800. Are you kidding me?
01:12:45
Speaker
Yo, it's so good for $800. It's a tiny thing, but it has a really nice keyboard and it's like, and then I get the screens really nice and it's touchpad, touch screen IPS. I don't know if you noticed this, Jake, but your voice got really high there for a minute. Yeah, it's good. I feel like you're going to try to sell it to me in a minute. No, I mean, I wouldn't sell it. It's mine now. Anyway, it's really good. I'm currently waiting.
01:13:12
Speaker
I'm going to have a week off here, you know, mainline Jedi survivor at the time. But in the meantime, I've been playing a Jedi, not Jedi, Dave, the Diver, which is an indie fish, another fishing game to add on to my fishing game that I recommended like two weeks ago or a dread. This is a you dive, you.
01:13:37
Speaker
catch fish and also like explore underwater civilizations and stuff. And then at night you cook sushi. You run a sushi restaurant with the fish that you catch. It again is a fun little fun little game play loop. Very different from dredge. No, no. Well, actually, there is a cool who monster. Oh, my God, there's there's a good little monster line for everything you play, isn't it? Or you search for that. Well, it's a giant squid.
01:14:07
Speaker
OK, it's it's pretty Cthulhu, though, like it's freaky. But yeah, no, that's coincidence. Coincidence. It's a good game. Dave the Diver. Dave the Diver.
01:14:22
Speaker
Night night. Get yourself to bed. Yeah. Yeah. I expect you to be rested in the morning, ready to give us Jake downs on private Slack. Chat on Slack. Next week, if we do, if we're, hopefully we'll be able to record Jake, you will only be a professional podcaster. Yeah. For that, for that one week. I'll be unemployed. I'll be fun employed. Can't wait. Have a good night guys. Outstanding.