...or "Excuse me, how much is a slice of Schadenfreude Pie?"

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Amy’s Baking Company gets lawsuit threat, nixes conference

ETA: Loopywafflehead with some further updated links HERE!

Return of the ETA: The International Meanies are looking to deport Samy!

Revenge of the ETA!: Amy's Baking Company kicks us out after we find flies in the vodka (three times)

Copy-pasta of the Dear Author article, because it's comprehensive, and Jane gave permission for it.

The Oatmeal is a satiric cartoon site run by Matthew Inman. About a year ago, he noticed that his content was being uploaded without attribution to a site called “The FunnJunk.” The FunnyJunk is a site that contains user generated content. This means that account holders post things that they like from all over the internet. Maybe a pre-Pinterest sort of site. The Oatmeal writes to the FunnyJunk requesting that the information be removed.

FunnyJunk took down the comics but proceeded to create a mirror image of The Oatmeal’s website. The Oatmeal responded by asking his readers what to do.

( Read more... )

A Dartmouth professor has decided to sue her students (with some faculty thrown in) for discrimination. Supposedly, "discrimination" now entails students disagreeing with you. Who knew?


(If you don't want to wade through all that, there are also summaries at Gawker and IvyGate.)

...So titled because I can't imagine anyone else a) counting to keep 'em honest and b) caring enough to sue them. And if it's not wanky to instigate a class-action lawsuit over thread counts, I don't know what is.

Retailer Bed, Bath and Beyond may be settling a class-action lawsuit over the thread count in their bedsheets. Generally if you've bought sheets there over the past seven years, you'll get yourself a reward for the pain and suffering brought by the false belief that your Egyptian cotton percale topsheets are, in reality, less than 1500-thread-count. How did they accomplish this dastardly feat? By "stating the number of threads in the warp and filling directions in one square inch of fabric, rather than the number of yarns." I have no idea why warp and filling rather than thread is important or even worthy of a class-action lawsuit, but it's likely to cost BBB lots of money.

The fabulous reward to the consumer swindled out of God's magical pubic threadcount sheets? A $10 gift card or a 20% off coupon. Linda Keenan, who received a settlement offer, has written an amusing response. Consumerist has also written about it here. Predictably, most of the actual settlement money is likely to go to lawyers' fees.

This is also the second time in a year someone's sued BBB for its thread counts. The original suit was dismissed in U.S. District Court because the consumer could not provide intent or real monetary or physical damage, and it was only then that the suit went to class-action. "Even if it assumed that the consumer had been able to plead an ascertainable loss, the Court further found that the consumer failed to demonstrate the causal relationship between the alleged misrepresentation and the ascertainable loss" is legalese for Really? Are you fucking kidding us? Thread counts? Go away.

(Note: Anyone bringing up the McDonald's lady does so at their own peril.)