I've written about this here before, but I've been involved in two civil lawsuits in my life. One was in the USA, the other was in mainland China.
I should stress that I am an American, and I wasn't even in China when the lawsuit over there was moving along.
The Chinese process was very fast -- it went before a judge who reached a verdict in something like ten months -- and it was extremely inexpensive. Total fees were less than $10k. What's more, the court attained the right outcome, and I won the case. Still better, the court itself enforced the verdict, and I was able to attain the monetary damages it decided were owed me.
The US process was interminably slow. A year on, we were barely past the starting line. Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system. At that point bills far exceeded $150,000. I realized that I was looking at spending >$1M and taking five or ten years to fight the case, and, though I was sure I would have won in the end, decided that I had to settle and get the hell out.
The US civil legal system is basically a game of financial attrition. This is why the big corporations seem to get away with whatever they want, whereas being dragged to court can be life-ruining for smaller entities and persons.
I don't know how things are in Europe, and hope I never have to find out, but the Chinese civil system is truly something like 20x better than the US system. (>10x cheaper, >2-5x faster.)
It's only part of the tapestry of the story, but IIRC in the New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, she notes that the USA stopped funding the creation of courts/judges after the 1960s as it had in prior years so now the number of cases per judge is much higher than it has ever been, this is also mentioned the season three of Serial podcast which indicts the American criminal justice system for a variety of reasons through the entire process, but both indicate the perverse incentives to avoid trial, it kind of reminded me of the persecution of innocent protagonist in The Count of Monte Cristo simply by having the justice system work the way it was supposed to with just one bad actor condemning the guy to years of injustice.
> . Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system.
This is common in almost all legal systems. How else would the defendant get to examine the evidence against them and how else would you provide evidence if there was no discovery process?
Its hard to imagine there would be a legal system without it.
In China I recall that "the burden of proof was on the parties" and both sides were asked to submit all relevant evidence to the court. Then there were a couple of meetings where my lawyer met with the other side's lawyer to review the evidence.
If you're the plaintiff and you have evidence that supports your version of events, you give it all to the court. If you're the defendant and you have exculpatory evidence, or anything that shows that the case is frivolous, you give it all to the court. The judge can then ask for more evidence, or utilize what's provided.
My legal team didn't need to sift through ten years of emails in order to find a few needles hidden in the haystack. The process wasn't adversarial. The parties can't use "discovery" to get trade secrets or proprietary information.
And the costs were near enough to zero.
I wouldn't even say that it's a "better" system. I'd characterize US-style discovery as simply broken, and the Chinese system as something that works in a common sense way.
> If you're the plaintiff and you have evidence that supports your version of events, you give it all to the court. If you're the defendant and you have exculpatory evidence, or anything that shows that the case is frivolous, you give it all to the court.
Yes, but what if you're the plaintiff/defendant and the other party has evidence in your favor? How do you get it before the court? That is what discovery is for.
Honestly it just sounds like you had an easy case tried in China and a hard one tried in the US and are making some really broad assertions about the two legal systems based on a small sample size.
In most countries it's the judge who oversees discovery not the rival lawyers to avoid the whole 'using discovery as a weapon to waste your opponents money' issue while still allowing for the right evidence to come to light.
> Yes, but what if you're the plaintiff/defendant and the other party has evidence in your favor? How do you get it before the court? That is what discovery is for.
What do you know of this evidence and how do you know about it?
> Honestly it just sounds like you had an easy case tried in China and a hard one tried in the US and are making some really broad assertions about the two legal systems based on a small sample size.
lol, no. It was actually the other way around. The US case was completely open-and-shut, whereas the Chinese case hinged on a matter of sensitive technology with military or "dual use" potential and it could have gotten ugly. I'll swear on whatever you like that I could hardly wait to get our US case in front of a US judge, but it was practically impossible. There are just so many absurd pretrial hoops to jump through. And all of them expensive.
The Tesla ran into me while I was crossing the crosswalk and then took off. I was able to capture their license plate. We tracked them down and were able to ask them, but they denied that they had done this. I sued them in civil court to cover my medical expenses. I happen to know what Teslas keep a video log of these. The defendant wouldn’t provide it willingly until we went into discovery and they were compelled to provide it, which made my case.
This is but one of infinite examples of the other party having evidence helpful to the other side and harmful to themselves.
> I happen to know what Teslas keep a video log of these.
You provide the court with that information, and the judge presiding over the case can (and almost surely will, if you're correct,) ask for the logs. If they don't provide them upon request, they're hit with a adverse inference, just as they would be if they withheld documents in discovery.
It's plain common sense.
Now, it's true that "you don't know what you don't know" and that discovery can be an investigative process, but for the vast majority of cases it's totally unnecessary. And, in very many cases, discovery will actually impede access to justice. In court systems without discovery, judges tend to take on a slightly more investigative role, besides.
The 95 year old lifetime appointment judge with dementia and cataracts: “Cars have cameras you say? In my day we only had daguerreotypes. We wore an onion on our belts, the style at the time. Request denied.”
This is an old tired stereotype. Judges are perfectly able to handle complex novel concepts such as technology. The judge before the oracle c. google case learned to program to gain insight, for example.
> > . Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system.
>
> This is common in almost all legal systems.
This statement is false, both the German and French legal systems do not have something like discovery. To confirm for yourself just Google "is there something like discovery in the German/French legal system". Considering that many legal systems are based on these two (one could argue the German one is based on the French as well) I think we can conclude that not having discovery is in fact common.
> How else would the defendant get to examine the evidence against them and how else would you provide evidence if there was no discovery process?
>
> Its hard to imagine there would be a legal system without it.
You don't sue people for fun, right? It's either they did something to you and you have damages, costs, paperwork, records, CCTV footage, medical examination records, whatever, or you want them to do something based on some regulation/statute/right.
Discovery usually tries to show that so and so higher up knew about it all along, no?
I was sued in the US once. Between all the stuff it took about 3mo.
You can't just spew blanket judgements when the actual course of events depends so heavily on the specific facts. I question the intelligence of anyone who managed to have a lawsuit going on for 2yr and not come away with an understanding that specific facts matter greatly.
Federal civil court averages 33.7 months from filing to trial. Needless to say, it can be a lot busier than that in slower districts. (~43 months in the 2nd District!) And then there are appeals, etc...
Best case, we were looking at 40 months from filing to trial in the 9th District, which is statistically nominal, but the whole process would probably have taken far longer.
I've never heard of a single 21st century US (Federal) civil case that went to trial in less than a year, to say nothing of three months. I can point to a mountain of cases that have been dragging for many years.
In civil (and criminal) law, yes, but in "förvaltningsrätt", public law, it's somewhat different. Cases are judged mainly from documents and sometimes the state can sort of force you to provide documentation in a manner similar to discovery and subpoena. It's also where you might end up with a reversed burden of proof, notably in tax cases.
It's still a much saner jurisdiction in many respects, especially for physical persons. You might get marginally nicer judgements in commercial law in certain US states, though I'd personally prefer both swedish law and swedish arbitration due to a combination of lower costs and the average quality of commercial law here. The Stockholm Chamber of Commerce arbitration institute is actually rather popular among international corporations for roughly these reasons.
Memantine is an antiviral/nootropic (NMDA agonist) that's considered one of the best conventional therapies for Alzheimer's. For e.g., https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32914577/
Amantadine is a related compound that's seemingly more potent as an antiviral, and less potent at the NMDA receptor.
Medical hypothesis: This makes me wonder if amantadine might be an effective drug in Alzheimer's treatment. It would come as a total shock to the med chem community if memantine's activity had to do with its suppression of viral replication, and much less to do with its activity at the NMDA receptor.
As an aside, the Russians have a similar drug called bromantane which is sold OTC as a sort of mental energy booster. It's not really a stimulant, and its effects are mild enough for daily use. It might also be very interesting in this context.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromantane
I've had some experience here and will add a couple notes.
Memantine has been useful for slowing down Alzheimer's and temporarily improving responsiveness. However, Memantine has not shown any effectiveness in reversing Alzheimer's or fully stopping its progression (sadly). Memantine does seem to increase self-awareness clarity but, counterintuitively, seems to also disrupt memory recall. Word of caution, in one rat study, I had read that Memantine could have long term side-effects of hindering memory recall.
Amantadine has a fascinating structure, but it seems like it's not super useful by itself from studies. It seems more like a very promising 'base structure' to build future compounds upon (like Memantine and bromantane).
Anyways, this family is rather interesting for a number of its properties and are still not very well known or understood. Please do share any more insights.
- There's another paper which may shed some light on the herpes-Alzheimer's connection, and it notes that treatment with tromantadine (among others) is starkly beneficial: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5935641/
- If the connection is established, it could be that a tromantadine-like molecule with activity against herpes simplex -- plus mild activity at the NMDA receptor reducing excitotoxicity and protecting neurons -- could potentially be a good prophylactic against Alzheimer's.
- It would be interesting to test amide-linked amantadine-phenylalanine and memantine-phenylalanine conjugates. Such things would probably penetrate the BBB very well, as they could take advantage of amino acid transporters. (The LAT1 transporter in particular.) And they resemble tromantadine -- where it is said that the amide itself is a necessary moiety in countering HSV. Structure: https://i.ibb.co/7tS4MGGL/Amantadine-Phe.png
Thanks, man. I'm more of a general-purpose chemist. I've done medicinal chemistry for drug development, but also inorganic compound development, metallurgy, all kinds of other stuff. It's a broad and fun field.
I believe most nootropics work for Alzheimer's, probably Huperzine A, too. Perhaps even Noopept.
NMDA agonists and acetylcholinesterase (they inhibit the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine) in general.
Benadryl (DPH) and first-generation antihistamines are the opposite of that, they can cause delirium (and it messes up your memory and cognition in general) and whatnot, they are anticholinergic, some more than others. I had anticholinergic toxicity from DPH before.
I take Alpha-GPC (a very soluble form of choline) and Huperzine A for cognition / memory, others couple it with racetams (e.g. piracetam, pramiracetam, aniracetam, etc.).
My primary care doctor is telling all of her patients not to take Zyrtec for an anti-histamine because it is causing dementia side effects in her older patients. Antecdotal but interesting.
But Zyrtec is second-generation. It shows 20,000-fold or greater selectivity for the H1 receptor over the five muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, and hence does not exhibit anticholinergic effects, so it should be OK. May still cause drowsiness, however.
Desloratadine (Clarinex, Aerius) is a selective H1-antihistamine which functions as an inverse agonist at the histamine H1 receptor.
From Wikipedia:
> At very high doses, it is also an antagonist at various subtypes of the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors. This effect is not relevant for the drug's action at therapeutic doses.
Thus, it is an anticholinergic only at very high doses, and it does not readily pass the BBB, therefore drowsiness is NOT likely (probably at very high doses only). At any rate, it does not affect the CNS at therapeutic doses, so memory / cognition issues, along with drowsiness are not an issue.
FWIW "2% of Caucasians and 18% of people from African descent are desloratadine poor metabolizers.", meaning "In these people, the drug reaches threefold higher plasma concentrations at seven hours after intake, and it has a half-life of 89 hours (compared to a 27-hour half-life in normal metabolizers). Adverse effects were reported at similar rates in poor metabolizers, suggesting that it is not clinically relevant.".
I do not think that there are any definitive single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) currently known to be specifically correlated with poor desloratadine metabolism.
I think perhaps the genetic variation in the enzymes involves in its metabolism like UGT2B10 and CYP2C8 may contribute to differences in metabolism. There is just no conclusive identification of specific SNPs that definitively determine poor metabolizer status. The precise genetic variants (if any) have not yet been definitively pinpointed.
For all we know, the differences may be attributable to variations in study design, sample sizes, definition of what constitutes a "poor metabolizer", and genetic heterogeneity among populations. Some reported rates of poor metabolizers vary, some studies report around 7% overall and 20% in African descent individuals, while others suggest the figures I have mentioned. There was a somewhat recent randomized study in healthy Chinese subjects, and found no statistically significant association between the UGT2B10 or CYP2C8 genotypes.
What is clear is that while genetic factors are likely involved and poor metabolizer phenotype exists for the drug, no single genetic marker has yet been found to predict poor metabolism of this drug, and there is a notable interethnic difference in desloratadine metabolism.
TL;DR: Currently there is no definitive evidence linking specific SNPs to poor desloratadine metabolism, but genetic variation in enzymes like UGT2B10 and CYP2C8 is implicated, but further research is needed.
I hope this answers your question, but the bottom line is that more research is needed. If you know something, let me know though!
Interesting, and thank you for the informative response. I have very weird reactions to cholinergic/anticholinergic drugs ranging from severe hallucinations to massive impacts to working memory. I've always figured there is something unique about that part of my biology but don't really no where to look to try and identify why.
I have weird or controversial reactions to most medications, especially psychiatric and drugs. I have no clue why. I have MS, I have brain lesions, they might play a part.
- For example nothing happened from 190 x 1 mg alprazolam + 0.5 L whiskey.
- None of the psychiatric medications worked for me (tried almost all there is, it took a long time). No pros, nor cons.
- Opiates do not cause euphoria, nor sedation for me. Without tolerance.
- The list goes on...
I have never figured out why medications affect me extremely differently from other people.
I took 5 x 50 mg DPH, nothing happened, then the next day I took it again, and I got anticholinergic toxicity. Perhaps it accumulated in this case, but yeah, it was one of the worst experiences I have had (delirium with dysphoric hallucinations, cognitive decline, memory issues). Took me months to recover. I have had auditory hallucinations for a couple of days, too.
What cholinergics and anticholinergics have you tried and what were your experiences?
I advise against taking aGPC because it is very much associated with TMAO production due to adverse gut fermentation, leading to harmful effects on blood vessels. Switch to citicoline which doesn't look to have this issue.
Yes, Citicoline is great, too, I agree. As long as it is not Choline bitartrate (most common form) which is pretty useless, the body cannot utilize it whatsoever.
As for what you said regarding alpha-GPC, it is somewhat true:
> Although alpha-GPC is largely considered to be safe due to its structural feature, multiple studies have indicated that a high plasma choline level is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease through trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) produced by gut microbiota from choline. Some studies have highlighted that TMAO increases the likelihood of stroke and cardiovascular disease.11
> In line with this observation, a recent animal model study revealed that even though alpha-GPC supplements improved neurological functions, they increased the risk of atherosclerosis in hyperlipidemic rats. In the future, scientists must elucidate the possible mechanism that associates alpha-GPC with increased cardiovascular risks.
That said, "However, the currently available evidence is preliminary in nature, so randomized controlled trials and large cohort studies are needed to confirm these findings.".
Oh also, it says "multiple studies have indicated that a high plasma choline level is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease", but I wonder why it does not apply to CDP-Choline (Citicoline) since it does increase plasma choline level, too, but perhaps not as highly? I am not sure of the exact mechanisms.
Memantine is in no way a disassociative though at therapeutic doses. It also has dopaminergic activity which manifests gradually over months while the NMDAr antagonist activity dials down.
Oh come on. This article is peak midwit "ackshually."
Like all of the game's weapons, how exactly the sniper rifle works is not described. The bullet's diameter is not described. Its ballistic coefficient is, of course, not described. Most pointedly of all, the bullet's velocity is not described.
There are existing guns that can fire projectiles at hypervelocities. These are mostly "two-stage gas guns" that utilize incompressible gasses to accelerate small metal projectiles for NASA experiments -- sometimes to velocities over 32000 feet per second. (10km/s! Roughly 10-11x faster than conventional rifles, but a common velocity for micrometeoroids.) There's absolutely nothing to suggest that similar mechanisms can't be adapted to smaller arms; it's impractical, but it's an engineering problem, not magic.
There are other possible mechanisms, e.g. a conventional weapon with a magnetic rail that assists in the acceleration of the bullet. Science fiction? Sure. As is the game.
So, anyway, assume the UT gun fires a small iridium slug at 10km/s and there's nothing to complain about. Very fast bullets are very flat-shooting, as any .22-250 appreciator can corroborate.
Love this. "Akshually" is kinda what I'm going for (maybe not midwit), the point is to take something a bit incongruous and pull it apart pedantically.
I definitely think UT's sniper rifle is "coded" as a regular one familiar to us, with its ammo as shells in a cardboard box. I think adapting gas gun mechanics to a man-portable weapons system with interchangable ammo is a bit more complicated than you allow, but indeed it's not magic. Thanks for giving me more ideas to write about.
There's a lot you missed .. although much of it is bollocks.
FWiW my neighbour shoots targets at 5,000 yards - that's well past the confirmed kill sniper head shot record .. it's worth pondering why, how or if someone is telling porkies.
> Love this. "Akshually" is kinda what I'm going for (maybe not midwit), the point is to take something a bit incongruous and pull it apart pedantically.
You got the pedantic part down, but I don't think that you took a charitable view of the game's systems, and your assumptions were maximally conventionally-minded.
Rather than assume "this is bullshit and doesn't work," I think you'd do better to try to imagine "how could this possibly work?" That question can lead down interesting paths.
It doesn't even take much, in this case. Very fast projectiles and/or scopes that account for variables like bullet drop, wind, etc. Both of these things already exist, in a sense, or are on the cusp of existing.
HM17 as well, there's a reason you can't legally use it to hunt, in some states. (If you miss, it just keeps going for miles. Even if you don't miss, it can still just keep going for a mile.)
Are you talking about .17 HMR? That round does have a very flat trajectory, but it’s illegal to hunt deer in some states because it isn’t lethal and won’t penetrate vital organs (just like .22 rimfire.) .17 HMR is primarily used for shooting small game where precision and minimal damage are preferred.
London at this point is mostly immigrants from the third world. Huge swaths of Frankfurt and Paris are the same way.
Sure, if you immigrate to a random town (population = 1500) in the French Alps from Africa, I grant that you'll never fit in. But the same goes if you immigrate to a small Iowa farming town (population = 1500) from Ecquador.
Both the French and the Brits have nukes. They're at no risk of hostile foreign invasion and everybody knows it. Entire libraries of books and whitepapers have been written about it.
If it were about self-defense: Build more nukes, build some mobile launchers capable of also launching targeting satellites, maintain the missile and submarine fleets, and your job is done. This can be done on current military budgets, or even smaller budgets.
It's not for "self defense". It's for foreign adventurism and geopolitical posturing. Like the opposite of realpolitik.
Besides, waging proxy wars is very far removed from self-defense.
Building outposts in, e.g., Cameroon to ward against Russian aggression over there is perhaps justifiable in some abstract respect, but it's rather the opposite of self-defense. (Without getting into complicated game-theoretical "we have to stop them over there so we don't fight them over here" justifications, which have long been discredited and have even become something of a joke.)
> "But either way, as stars go, [a few hundred thousand to a couple million years is] not a lot. Our own Sun will outlive multiple generations of such giants, and red dwarfs, the smallest stars in the universe, can stretch for trillions of years at a time. In fact, just a fun side note, red dwarfs live for so long that the entire universe isn't even old enough for them to start dying yet."
A little bit off base there.
The sun is going to eventually turn into a white dwarf. White dwarfs are indefinitely stable; our sun is going to stick around, in some form, for roughly 10^15 years as an energy-emitting body, and for far longer than that as a cold "black" dwarf. After some 10^1500 years, it'll probably turn into a lump of iron, as the only indefinitely stable isotope is 56Fe, and all other elements will eventually turn into 56Fe via quantum tunneling.
Our sun is going to change form, but it's among the longest-lived things in the cosmos.
Neutron stars also have no expiry date. Once they're stable, they barely even cool down. The only thing that can kill them is proton decay (not likely) or if they're in a busy neighborhood and absorb enough interstellar gas to push them into black hole mass territory. They're effectively eternal.
Anyway, it's nice that Betelgeuse isn't going to harm life on Earth.
"Do not send voice recordings" back to Amazon HQ =/= "privacy focused." It's arguably a necessary feature for minimal privacy in one's home, and I expect that a lot of people bought those devices with that in mind.
If the FTC doesn't fix this kind of spontaneous downgrade, I'm not sure what they're for at all.
If somebody falls for a criminal's fraud, I suppose "they just made a mistake and can learn from it"? No need for anybody else, or any authority, to do anything?
Jumping to criminal fraud feels a bit hasty in this context. It'd be important to know whether Amazon ever marketed this feature specifically, promised privacy, defined what that privacy they promised meant, and whether there's any legal argument to be made that this setting should be considered core to the basic functionality of Alexa.
IMO no one should have ever expected Alexa, or products like it, to be private. The meet fact that it has a microphone, and potentially a camera, and promises to respond simply by you saying something to it means they're always listening. I don't really care what they say they'll do with the recordings, I care what they can do with the recordings without me ever knowing about it.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/25/communicative-intent/
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