The definitionition of “American” is pretty flexible. If you move here, live here, and want to consider yourself an American, then you are an American. Some loud zealots may say otherwise (typical in any country) but most Americans literally do not think about this at all.
I’m pretty sure all cultures adapt and learn from other cultures. That’s just how human culture develops. Vietnamese takes on French favourites resulted in bahn mi and Vietnamese coffee, both of which are very good. Poor Hongkongers wanting to eat like Brits resulted in Hong Kong’s famously weird “Cha chaan teng” food and Hong Kong-style milk tea. And, of course, Europeans went crazy over Mesoamerican chocolate and created a cornucopia of confectionery products made from the cacao bean.
Well, colonialism did bring tomatoes and potatoes to Europe.
I think the joke is that Americans like to adopt foods or cooking techniques from other cultures, then change them to fit local tastes. This is how a lot of “traditional American” foods came to be. There is also a stereotype that American cultural practices (gastronomy included) are “not real” or that American culture as a concept doesn’t exist because it comes as a fusion of cultural practices from other countries. The meme is poking fun at people who may hold that belief.
People also have a habit of describing the American versions of things to be “not real”, even if it never really claims to be. For example, fettuccine Alfredo in the US is an adaptation of fettuccini al burro (a real Italian dish), but is described as “not real Italian food” because it isn’t actually eaten in Italy. Or that orange chicken is “not real Chinese food” because it isn’t eaten in China. Which, to be fair, is true, but most American diners are aware that Panda Express, Olive Garden, and Taco Bell aren’t accurate representations of food eaten in China, Italy, or Mexico. They’re Americanised versions of food inspired by Chinese, Italian, and Mexican cuisine.
Americans associate the orange colour with cheese so it’s more cultural than practical. Other than the fact that some cheese being orange and some not being orange helps tell apart different varieties. For example, bright orange cheese is usually young cheeses that are used to make sauce or for sandwiches. Duller orange cheeses or slightly brown ones are expected to have a more sophisticated flavour (e.g. aged longer or smoked).
This is false, due to contaminants our air is legally considered dairy in Europe, and thus the average American actually consumes twice this quantity daily
Red paint and yellow paint both mean parking against it is forbidden. Red is typically, but not exclusively, used for fire lanes, which are spaces which must not be obstructed because they are where the fire trucks park in the event of a fire.
Additionally, in the Los Angeles area, green paint is used to indicate that parking is allowed there, but there is a low time limit (such as 30 minutes).
America really has a litigation culture, not because people are particularly fond of lawsuits, but because problems which are generally solved by legislative enactments or actions by regulatory bodies in other countries, aren’t in the US, and thus the only way to find out who is right is to go to court.
Imagine paying $100 to drive a car there just to have to ride a bus anyway 💀
Surely this means that the hotel or the stadium will be providing a free shuttle bus service, right?
Right…?
LLM: $20 per day and 49104503 gallons of water
Clock app on cell phone: free
What replacement services are available? The American service actually works. Making your own would cost an order of magnitude more (as your contractors mysteriously “lose” half the money and bill the defence ministry 10 million roubles for “pens”) and a decade of your time.
Maybe they could hire Chinese firms to do it but I think China has a tendency to keep its military technology to itself.
That would be a dream come true. AI agents are not legal entities with the right to own or inherit property. Therefore, all of his stuff has no legal owner. By the principle of escheat, it now belongs to the State.
Sadly, I doubt Elon’s lawyers are quite this dumb.
I remember when Musk was the cool electric car guy and not the chief accomplice to the dismantling of Western democracy.
Copyright infringement is not suitable as an analogous case because the law specifies statutory damages for it, so proving damages is not typically necessary for the types of works which you are thinking of.
Let me give a detailed analysis with some concrete, but arbitrarily-chosen numbers, and then I’ll show you what a lawyer representing Amazon would say to attack the argument you’ve presented.
Suppose you notice that 5 per cent of people whom you ask to subscribe to your mailing list actually subscribe (it is almost certain a real number would be much lower). Then, of those who subscribe to your mailing list, 10 per cent of them make a purchase when you send an advertisement to them through that mailing list. And then, of those who make a purchase, the average sale is $50, of which $20 is profit. Therefore, you argue damages of 5% × 10% × $20 = $0.10 per customer. Suppose Amazon placed 1,000 orders this way. You therefore plead damages of $100 (the fact that this is a trivial amount is not relevant to the legal analysis).
The legal method for the calculation of damages is to compare what your financial situation would have been had Amazon not done the thing they were not supposed to. Amazon will argue that had they complied with your terms of service, 0 orders would have been placed as you forbade AI agents from placing orders, and therefore the profit can be calculated as 5% × 10% × $20 × 0 = $0. After this argument is made, it then becomes your burden as the claimant to rebut it. You will have to prove what percentage of people ordered through Amazon, who would have otherwise ordered from you directly (and thus you would have the opportunity to advertise to). This is a fundamentally very difficult task. Amazon would probably propose to the court that you ask all of the customers to testify that they would have otherwise ordered from you directly, and then you can count it as ten cents per witness.
All of that notwithstanding, Amazon will still argue your damages are zero, because you have not actually lost the ability to connect with the customers they have given you, because you still have the ability to ask them to subscribe to your mailing list by including a card to that effect in the package you send them. The fact that both of us very well know that nobody will do that is not legally relevant: the action is possible and the law does not particularly care about whether it is easy or effective.
I know it’s tempting to call me a bootlicker or whatever, but the fact of the matter really is that the law is not favourable to the claimant in this case. This is just a bad argument to make with no sufficient legal justification to claim anything more than a nominal amount of damages. Yes, Amazon are a bunch of assholes, but sometimes, being an asshole really is legal. The law is not a proxy for morality and the courts are not infallible guardians of justice. They are institutions that interpret fallible, imperfect, human-made rules.
No, the burden of proof is on the claimant. If you sue Amazon, you have to prove your claims to a perponderance of the evidence.
Can you prove that these people would have visited your site had Amazon not intervened?
If you think you can find a way to quantify damages in a legally sufficient way then go ahead.
That’s a different thing. In that case, Doordash actually blocked people from ordering from the restaurant in question and redirected them elsewhere. Had the restaurant been listed without its permission and all it did was cause a Doordash employee to appear at the restaurant, place an order on the users behalf, then go deliver it, it would be a similar case to this one.
I doubt many restaurants would have a problem with Doordash listing them without their permission if all that happened when someone placed an order, is that they get a call from Doordash (automated or not) to place a to-go order, and then someone picks it up later and pays for it.
It’s shocking similar to how the Chinese government used the excuse of “national security” to arrest the publisher of the largest anti-Beijing tabloid in Hong Kong and jail opposition politicians for “sedition”.